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Title: Historic towns of the southern states
Editor: Lyman P. Powell
Release date: July 4, 2025 [eBook #76439]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1900
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORIC TOWNS OF THE SOUTHERN STATES ***
American Historic Towns
Historic Towns of New England
Edited by LYMAN P. POWELL. With Introduction by GEORGE P. MORRIS.
Fully illustrated. Large 8^o, $3.50.
Historic Towns of the Middle States
Edited by LYMAN P. POWELL. With Introduction by ALBERT SHAW. Fully
illustrated. Large 8^o, $3.50.
Historic Towns of the Southern States
Edited by LYMAN P. POWELL. With Introduction by W. P. TRENT. Fully
illustrated. Large 8^o, $3.50.
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, New York and London
American Historic Towns
HISTORIC TOWNS
OF THE
SOUTHERN STATES
Edited by
LYMAN P. POWELL
Illustrated
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK & LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1900
COPYRIGHT, 1900
BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
[Illustration: _The Library of Congress, Washington, D. C._]
[Illustration]
PREFACE
The triad of volumes dealing with the older _American Historic Towns_
along or near the eastern coast is now complete. The three volumes,
like the chapters of which they are composed, have their inevitable
limitations. While neither in historical value nor in literary quality
has it proved practicable to secure a uniformity of standard, editor
and contributors have done the best they could, and they now feel
assured that the series has proved its right to exist. It is quickening
interest in our historic towns, bringing to light important facts,
picturing for the patriotic reader who may not be free to make personal
visits the places he would visit if he could, and making clear to him
many things he would not be likely to learn in the towns themselves,
however long a stay he might be free to make.
Like the preceding issues, this volume has a patriotic and educational
purpose, but it goes forth also on an irenic mission. The editor’s
father, dead almost a quarter of a century, lived in a little border
town where in war times love and hate alike were hot. An avowed and
fearless Unionist, he was also a true and faithful pacificator. As Mr.
Rule has said of Louisville, James B. R. Powell “occupied a position
similar to that of Tennyson’s sweet little heroine, Annie, who, sitting
between Enoch and Philip, with a hand of each in her own, would weep,
“‘And pray them not to quarrel for her sake.’”
In planning and in shaping this volume, the editor hopes that he is
proving himself worthy of an honored father, whose name he would
connect in this way with the work and with the series.
His special acknowledgments are due to his wife, Gertrude Wilson
Powell, for discriminating and invaluable assistance at every stage,
and to Professor W. P. Trent, who, in addition to the preparation of a
comprehensive Introduction, has ever been ready with such counsel and
suggestions as enhance in many ways the value of the volume.
LYMAN P. POWELL.
ST. JOHN’S RECTORY,
LANSDOWNE, PENNSYLVANIA.
August 10, 1900.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
PAGE
BALTIMORE St. George L. Sioussat 1
ANNAPOLIS Sara Andrew Shafer 47
FREDERICK TOWN Sara Andrew Shafer 75
WASHINGTON Frank A. Vanderlip 101
RICHMOND ON THE JAMES William Wirt Henry 151
WILLIAMSBURG Lyon G. Tyler 185
WILMINGTON Joseph Blount Cheshire 219
CHARLESTON Yates Snowden 249
SAVANNAH Pleasant Alexander Stovall 293
MOBILE Peter J. Hamilton 327
MONTGOMERY George Petrie 379
NEW ORLEANS Grace King 411
VICKSBURG H. F. Simrall 433
KNOXVILLE Joshua W. Caldwell 449
NASHVILLE Gates P. Thruston 477
LOUISVILLE Lucien V. Rule 503
LITTLE ROCK George B. Rose 537
ST. AUGUSTINE George R. Fairbanks 557
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, WASHINGTON, D. C. _Frontispiece_
BALTIMORE
OLD COURT-HOUSE (1768) AND POWDER MAGAZINE 5
From an old print in the possession of the Maryland
Historical Society.
EDWARD FELL, IN UNIFORM OF PROVINCIAL FORCES 9
From original painting in possession of William Fell
Johnson.
MOALE’S SKETCH OF BALTIMORE IN 1752 13
From the original in the possession of the Maryland
Historical Society.
BATTLE MONUMENT 17
MOUNT CLARE, 1760, RESIDENCE OF CHARLES CARROLL, BARRISTER 19
BOOS HOUSE, NEAR WHICH LAFAYETTE’S TROOPS ENCAMPED 23
JOHN EAGER HOWARD 27
From the painting by Rembrandt Peale, owned by R. Bayard.
ST. PAUL’S CHURCH 31
From an old copper print, owned by Rev. J. S. B. Hodges.
BELVIDERE, 1786, THE HOME OF COLONEL JOHN E. HOWARD 35
From the original in the possession of the Misses McKim,
Belvidere Terrace, Baltimore, Md.
BUST OF JOHNS HOPKINS 43
From the original in Johns Hopkins Hospital.
SEAL OF BALTIMORE 45
ANNAPOLIS
GEORGE CALVERT, FIRST LORD BALTIMORE 48
Reproduced from an old print.
CECILIUS CALVERT, SECOND LORD BALTIMORE 49
Reproduced from an old print.
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE AND THE TREATY TREE 55
THE STATE HOUSE 57
CHARLES CARROLL OF CARROLLTON, 1737-1832 60
THE OLD HOUSE OF BURGESSES, NOW USED AS THE STATE
TREASURY 61
THE BRICE HOUSE 62
THE PEGGY STEWART HOUSE 64
THE BURNING OF THE “PEGGY STEWART” 65
From the painting by Frank B. Mayer.
THE NAVAL INSTITUTE 69
(Where the battle-flags are kept.)
THE OLD GOVERNOR’S MANSION, NOW THE NAVAL ACADEMY
LIBRARY 72
THE SEAL OF THE NAVAL ACADEMY 73
FREDERICK TOWN
PROSPECT HALL. THE DULANY MANSION 81
ROSE HILL, THE HOME OF GOVERNOR THOMAS JOHNSON 86
GOVERNOR THOMAS JOHNSON AND FAMILY 89
From the painting by Charles Wilson Peale.
FRANCIS SCOTT KEY 91
CHIEF JUSTICE ROGER B. TANEY 92
THE OLD REFORMED CHURCH 95
BARBARA FRIETCHIE 96
HOME OF BARBARA FRIETCHIE 97
THE HATED BRITISH TAX-STAMP, 1765-1766 99
WASHINGTON
PIERRE CHARLES L’ENFANT 105
STATUE OF GEN. WINFIELD SCOTT, WASHINGTON 118
THE CAPITOL 123
From the Congressional Library.
THE CITY OF WASHINGTON IN 1800 127
From an old print.
THE WHITE HOUSE 129
From the northeast.
STATE, WAR AND NAVY BUILDING 133
From the southeast.
THE “OCTAGON HOUSE” USED BY PRESIDENT AND MRS.
MADISON DURING THE REBUILDING OF THE WHITE
HOUSE IN 1814 137
GRAND STAIRCASE IN THE HALL OF THE CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY 139
THE UNITED STATES TREASURY 143
From the southwest.
ROTUNDA OF THE CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY, WASHINGTON 145
WASHINGTON MONUMENT 149
Looking across the “flats.”
THE SEAL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 150
RICHMOND ON THE JAMES
GRAVE OF POWHATAN ON THE JAMES 153
COLONEL WILLIAM EVELYN BYRD 157
From a painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller.
OLD STONE HOUSE, BUILT IN 1737 160
BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF RICHMOND 163
WASHINGTON MONUMENT AND CAPITOL, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA 167
HENRY CLAY 169
THE MARSHALL HOUSE, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA 172
RICHMOND IN FLAMES 177
MONUMENT TO GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, RICHMOND 179
THE WHITE HOUSE OF THE CONFEDERACY, RICHMOND 180
MONUMENT OVER CONFEDERATE DEAD AT HOLLYWOOD 181
SEAL OF RICHMOND 183
WILLIAMSBURG
“OLD POWDER-HORN” 186
INTERIOR OF BRUTON PARISH CHURCH AT WILLIAMSBURG, VA. 189
COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY 193
JACOBUS BLAIR 195
The founder of William and Mary College.
BENJ. S. EWELL 197
JOHN TYLER, SR. 200
MARY CARY, WASHINGTON’S EARLY LOVE 205
CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL 209
GEORGE WYTHE 213
JOHN TYLER, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 215
SEAL OF WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE 217
WILMINGTON
RESIDENCE OF JAMES SPRUNT 223
Formerly the residence of Governor Dudley.
ST. PAUL’S CHURCH, EDENTON, N. C., FROM THE SOUTHEAST 225
Begun in 1736.
HARNETT’S HOUSE, “HILTON,” NEAR WILMINGTON 230
“ORTON HOUSE” 232
THE WALLS OF ST. PHILIP’S CHURCH, BRUNSWICK 234
Showing part of the corner-stone broken out and rifled
by Federal soldiers in 1865.
COMMISSION OF LOUIS DE ROSSET AS CAPTAIN IN THE
FRENCH ARMY, SIGNED BY LOUIS XIV., AND COUNTERSIGNED
BY TELLIER 237
HUGH WADDELL 239
WILLIAM HOOPER OF NORTH CAROLINA, SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION
OF INDEPENDENCE 241
HEADQUARTERS OF LORD CORNWALLIS, WILMINGTON 243
COMMISSION OF LOUIS DE ROSSET AS CAPTAIN, GIVEN BY
WILLIAM AND MARY 245
SEAL OF WILMINGTON 247
CHARLESTON
PLAN OF CHARLESTON 253
From a survey by Edward Crisp in 1704.
ST. PHILIP’S CHURCH, CHARLESTON 255
A MODERN CHARLESTON RESIDENCE 259
DEFENCE OF FORT MOULTRIE 263
From a painting by J. A. Oertel.
THE ATTACK ON FORT MOULTRIE BY THE BRITISH FLEET, 1776 265
PHILADELPHIA STREET (COON ALLEY) 279
Scene in rear of St. Philip’s Church.
THE ATTACK ON CHARLESTON BY THE FEDERAL IRONCLAD FLEET,
APRIL 7, 1863 281
MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM MOULTRIE 285
From a painting by Col. J. Trumbull.
ST. MICHAEL’S CHURCH, CHARLESTON 289
SEAL OF CHARLESTON 292
SAVANNAH
THE POST OFFICE 295
HOUSE WHERE THE COLONIAL LEGISLATURE ASSEMBLED IN 1782 297
HEADQUARTERS OF WASHINGTON DURING A VISIT TO SAVANNAH 299
THE JASPER MONUMENT 303
THE BURIAL PLACE OF TOMOCHICHI 307
CHRIST CHURCH 309
OAKS AT BETHESDA ORPHANAGE UNDER WHICH WHITEFIELD PREACHED 310
GREAT SEAL OF GEORGIA IN COLONIAL DAYS 312
OLD FORT, WHERE POWDER MAGAZINE WAS SEIZED IN 1775 314
GENERAL OGLETHORPE 316
COUNT CASIMIR PULASKI 319
FORT PULASKI 321
R. M. CHARLTON, POET, JURIST, U. S. SENATOR 323
SEAL OF SAVANNAH 325
MOBILE
FACSIMILE PAGE OF BAPTISMAL RECORD (1704) WITH THE AUTOGRAPH
OF BIENVILLE 333
PLAN OF MOBILE AND OF FORT LOUIS IN 1711 337
THE BAY SHELL ROAD AT LOVERS’ LANE 343
MOBILE IN 1765 349
THE ELLICOTT STONE 351
PLACE WHERE AARON BURR WAS CAPTURED 354
JOHN A. CAMPBELL 362
RAPHAEL SEMMES IN 1861 364
C. S. S. “FLORIDA” ENTERING MOBILE BAY, SEPT. 4, 1862 367
From a painting by R. S. Floyd.
HOME OF AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON 373
AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON 376
SEAL OF MOBILE 378
MONTGOMERY
OLD CANNON OF BIENVILLE 380
DEXTER AVENUE DURING A STREET FAIR 387
OLD BUILDING IN WHICH LAFAYETTE BALL WAS GIVEN IN 1825 389
ALABAMA STATE CAPITOL WHERE PRESIDENT DAVIS WAS INAUGURATED 396
FIRST PAGE OF THE PERMANENT CONSTITUTION OF THE CONFEDERATE
STATES, AS REPORTED BY THE COMMITTEE 401
This is in the handwriting of Gen. Thos. R. R. Cobb,
who was a member of the committee. Taken from the
original, which is in the possession of Mr. A. L.
Hull, Athens, Ga.
THE PERMANENT CONSTITUTION OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES 403
As reported by committee and amended by Congress, is in
the possession of the daughter of Mr. Alex. B.
Clitherall, Mrs. A. C. Birch, Montgomery, Ala.
THE POLLARD RESIDENCE, BUILT BEFORE THE WAR 406
MONUMENT TO CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS ERECTED ON THE
CAPITOL GROUNDS BY THE LADIES’ MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION 407
JEFFERSON DAVIS 408
SEAL OF MONTGOMERY 410
NEW ORLEANS
TOMB OF AVAR, CITY PARK 413
THE CUSTOM-HOUSE, NEW ORLEANS 415
CHARTRES STREET AND CATHEDRAL 419
THE URSULINES CONVENT 421
THE JACKSON MONUMENT 423
CANAL STREET, NEW ORLEANS 427
THE CABILDO, OLD COURT BUILDING, JACKSON SQUARE 428
ST. FRIES CATHEDRAL 429
SEAL OF NEW ORLEANS 431
VICKSBURG
MEETING OF GENERALS GRANT AND PEMBERTON AT THE “STONE
HOUSE” INSIDE THE REBEL WORKS ON THE MORNING OF JULY 4,
1863 435
(From an actual sketch made on the spot by one of the
special artists of _Frank Leslie’s Illustrated
Newspaper_, now in the collection of Major George
Haven Putnam.)
GENERAL U. S. GRANT 442
PLAN OF THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG 445
SEAL OF VICKSBURG 447
KNOXVILLE
JOHN SEVIER, FIRST GOVERNOR OF TENNESSEE 450
WILLIAM BLOUNT, GOVERNOR OF SOUTHWEST TERRITORY 452
UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE 459
HUGH L. WHITE 464
ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 465
WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW, THE “FIGHTING PARSON” 467
BATTLE OF FORT SAUNDERS 473
SEAL OF KNOXVILLE 475
NASHVILLE
JAMES ROBERTSON 481
THE FIRST RESIDENCE OF ANDREW JACKSON 483
FORT RIDLEY, AN OLD NASHVILLE BLOCKHOUSE 485
ANDREW JACKSON 489
THE HERMITAGE MANSION, RESIDENCE OF ANDREW JACKSON 491
JAMES K. POLK 493
TOMB OF JAMES K. POLK, NASHVILLE 495
THE STATE HOUSE 497
THE PARTHENON, NASHVILLE, TENN. 499
SEAL OF NASHVILLE 501
LOUISVILLE
GEORGE D. PRENTICE 505
From an old painting owned by the Polytechnic Society of
Kentucky.
DANIEL BOONE 508
From a painting in the possession of Col. R. T. Durrett,
Louisville, Ky.
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK 510
From a painting in the possession of Col. R. T. Durrett,
Louisville, Ky.
BLOCKHOUSE AND LOG CABINS ON CORN ISLAND, 1778, FIRST
SETTLEMENT OF LOUISVILLE, KY. 513
From an old print in the possession of Col. R. T.
Durrett, Louisville, Ky.
RESIDENCE OF GEORGE ROGERS CLARK ON THE INDIANA SHORE,
OPPOSITE LOUISVILLE 515
From an old print in the possession of Col. R. T.
Durrett, Louisville, Ky.
THE CITY HALL 519
ON THE TOBACCO BREAKS 523
THE KEATS HOUSE (THE ELKS BUILDING) 527
THE COURT-HOUSE 529
A SCENE AT THE WHARF 533
SEAL OF LOUISVILLE 535
LITTLE ROCK
THE “LITTLE ROCK,” TO WHICH THE CITY OWES ITS NAME 539
LITTLE ROCK LEVEE 540
NEW STATE HOUSE 543
OLD STATE HOUSE 545
THE HOUSE WHERE THE ARKANSAS LEGISLATURE WAS HELD IN 1835 546
ALBERT PIKE 547
ROBERT CRITTENDEN 548
THE OLD FOWLER MANSION 549
Now the residence of John M. Gracie.
THE CRITTENDEN RESIDENCE 550
The first brick house built in Little Rock. Now the home
of Governor James P. Eagle.
THE OLD PIKE MANSION 551
Now the residence of Colonel John G. Fletcher.
CUSTOM-HOUSE AND POST OFFICE 554
LITTLE ROCK UNIVERSITY 555
ST. AUGUSTINE
THE OLD CITY GATE 558
PEDRO MENENDEZ DE AVILES, FOUNDER OF ST. AUGUSTINE 560
OLD FORGE 562
OLD SPANISH FORT ON MATANZAS RIVER 565
THE OLDEST HOUSE IN ST. AUGUSTINE 569
RUINS OF THE OLD SPANISH FORT AT MATANZAS INLET 573
HOTEL PONCE DE LEON 579
SEAL OF ST. AUGUSTINE 581
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
INTRODUCTION
BY W. P. TRENT
Probably the first feeling of the reader who glances over the table
of contents of this volume will be one of surprise at the number of
Southern towns of historical importance that the editor has seen fit
and been able to include. Neither from our study of American history
nor from our study of geography have we been led to look upon the
Southern States as a region characterized by urban development. Those
of us who took the pains to examine the statistics of the census of
1890 remember that the South stood far behind the other sections
in this respect. We remember, too, to have seen in our histories
the thickly settled New England township contrasted with the large,
sparsely settled Southern county. In literature the South has figured
as a region of plantations and manor houses inhabited by cavaliers
and chatelaines and old family slaves, possessors of all the feudal
virtues, or else as the home of a curious race, presumably Caucasian,
known as “crackers,” and of equally curious mountaineers known as
“moonshiners.” An exception is made, of course, in favor of New
Orleans, the home of the Creole and the carnival; of Charleston, the
home of secession; of Richmond, the home of the Confederate government;
and of St. Augustine, the home of hotels; but on the whole it is
probable that the average American of other sections, unless he be a
drummer or a valetudinarian tourist, rarely thinks of the South from
the point of view of its towns, historic or unhistoric.
For this state of affairs no one is to blame. The great growth of
municipalities in the North, East and West--the colossal development of
New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, of Boston and Baltimore and a dozen
other great cities--has naturally cast in the shade the urban status of
a section that contains no city of three hundred thousand inhabitants.
It is true that much is heard of the New South with its commercial
future; but probably the pushing Atlanta is almost the only Southern
city that has in the last few decades impressed itself to any marked
degree upon the nation’s consciousness.
Nor is it surprising that it is only since the Civil War that the
urban development of the South has begun to be of importance even to
close students of the past and present of the section. From the time
of the earliest settlements to the present day agriculture has been
the dominant industry. Virginia tobacco, Carolina indigo and rice,
far Southern and Southwestern cotton--these staples have meant more
to the South than manufacturing or commerce. She developed seaports,
which gradually lost their relative standing among the ports of the
country and administrative and distributing centers; but there was no
crowding of operatives into manufacturing towns, no haste on the part
of country-bred youths to leave their native fields for the shops and
warehouses and offices of the city. The gentleman’s son looked forward
in most cases to being a planter; the small farmer’s son grew up in an
environment that did not stimulate ambition. Cotton was king, and his
court was bound to be a rural one.
It is not to be supposed, however, that during the period from 1820
to 1860, which witnessed the amazing growth of manufacturing and
commercial centers in the North and East and the still more wonderful
rural and urban development of the West, the South was entirely content
with the spread of her cotton-fields and oblivious to the stagnation or
the slow growth of her towns. Her country-gentleman class was doubtless
content with this state of affairs, and her politicians actually
boasted of it, being put on the defensive in all respects on account of
the attacks made upon slavery; but the leading inhabitants of the towns
regretted the backwardness of their section and devised various schemes
for remedying it, while the merchant class openly complained of the
fact that young men were taught to look down upon every pursuit other
than planting. This is but to say that the people of the South were not
so different at bottom from their hopeful, energetic fellow citizens
of other sections as has sometimes been imagined. They were Americans
tied down to one occupation and rendered unprogressive by the hampering
influences of a belated institution.
This fact does not appear on the surface; indeed it becomes apparent
only to the careful student of sources of which the Southern historian
has not yet made full use. These sources are the local newspapers
and the fairly numerous magazines--particularly the financial and
commercial De Bow’s _Review_ published at New Orleans. The Southern
historian, like his brothers of the North and East until recently, has
laid disproportionate stress upon the colonial history of his section
or else upon its political history, and thus has failed to bring out
the interesting struggle between the old and the new economic orders of
things that took place in the South down to the time of the Civil War.
Hence it is that in the present volume we find in many chapters the gap
between the surrender at Yorktown and the firing upon Sumter covered
by only a few paragraphs. Some of the towns had a most interesting
history during these years,--as we may judge from Dr. Petrie’s chapter
on Montgomery,--but it has not yet been written.
When it is, we shall get abundant evidence of a heroic if, on the
whole, unsuccessful struggle for urban development. Charleston in
particular made a most gallant fight to recover the importance as
a port which she had lost through the rivalry of Baltimore and New
Orleans. Her leading citizens, some of whom labored for the cause of
public education and of literary and scientific development with an
earnestness that should not be forgotten in spite of the paucity of
results, saw clearly that something must be done to enhance the city’s
wealth and growth if the State herself, or, indeed, the section, was
to maintain an important place in the union of rapidly developing
commonwealths. They saw, furthermore, what this something must be.
The cotton of the South and the agricultural and other products of
the great West must be drawn away from Northern ports to ships lying
in the harbor of Charleston. The distance to be traversed and the
mountain barriers made all thought of a canal similar to the one that
had brought fortune to New York out of the question, and the hopes
of enterprising citizens centered on the newly invented railway. As
early as 1831 the first steam locomotive used successfully on rails in
this country was put on its tracks at Charleston by the South Carolina
Railroad Company, and, as Mr. Snowden tells us in his chapter, the
longest railway in the world was at one time contained within the
borders of what is not familiarly known as a progressive State. It was
but a short time before ambitious plans were set on foot to connect
Charleston with Cincinnati and the West.
The full story of these plans--of the faithful labor expended upon
them, and of their ultimate failure, through no fault of the unselfish
promoters--belongs to another place; but a few words upon the subject
may be pardoned here on account of the light that will be thrown
upon the difficulties encountered by every ante-bellum Southern city
in its efforts at progress. The first steps taken by the friends
of the Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad Company were
comparatively easy. Charters were obtained from several States,
enthusiastic conventions of promoters were held, engineers were
put into the field to decide between competing routes, and popular
subscriptions to the stock were opened in most of the towns and
villages. By November, 1836, South Carolina alone had subscribed for
nearly $2,775,000 of the $4,000,000 needed to start the enterprise.
Within a few days this latter amount was made up, and everything
looked bright. But Governor McDuffie in his annual message pointed out
unforeseen obstacles. Kentucky had subscribed only $200,000, and yet
claimed six directors out of twenty-four; Ohio had subscribed almost
nothing. Why should South Carolina cover Kentucky with railroads?
Why, again, should the promoters of the enterprise wish for banking
privileges when the whole country was crowded with banks already?
He urged the legislature to withhold the desired subscription of
$1,000,000 until the success of the road was more fully assured. His
advice was not followed, but we may learn two important facts from
his remarks: first, that the South suffered from the crude financial
methods and the fever for speculation that afflicted the rest of the
country. Second, that State jealousy was a rock upon which any great
Southern scheme was liable to split. The theory of States-rights united
the Southern commonwealths politically against the other sections, but
in internal matters it was a disintegrating agent of great potency.
The promoters of the road were not discouraged, however, by Governor
McDuffie’s pessimism. They organized their bank, purchased the
road which already connected Charleston and Augusta, known as “The
Charleston and Hamburg,” began a branch to connect the State capital,
Columbia, with this road, and commenced to realize on the popular
subscriptions to the stock. But they had not counted on the panic of
1837 and the continuing financial depression, in the midst of which
their bank was forced to suspend, nor had they expected to lose by
death their efficient president, Robert Y. Hayne, Webster’s famous
opponent. The great interstate scheme soon shrank to state proportions;
and by 1842 people were congratulating themselves that they had at
least a gratifying extent of railway mileage within the borders of
South Carolina itself. This seems a small return for a large outlay of
energy, yet after a careful study of the complicated history of the
road it can scarcely be said that General Hayne and his associates
made as bad a compromise with their magnificent dreams as the majority
of our more recent railway promoters have done. Certainly the way in
which the public responded to their efforts spoke well for the energy
and the civic intelligence of a people of planters. The effects of the
panic and of Western indifference could hardly have been foreseen; the
banking attachment was natural enough in an era of wild banking to
which the lessons of experience were wanting; and, finally, the method
of securing capital by instalments of subscription, crude as it may
seem, was almost the only available one among a people whose capital
was in the main locked up in land and negroes. We are warranted,
therefore, in concluding, from these early efforts to connect
Charleston with the West, and from later railroad enterprises of other
Southern cities that cannot be treated here, that the failure of the
_ante-bellum_ South to show a marked urban development was due not to
the backwardness and inertia of its influential citizens, but rather to
unfavorable economic conditions that could not be speedily overcome.
The student of Southern history will reach this conclusion by following
other lines of investigation. It is a well-known fact that in the
decade before the Civil War annual commercial conventions were held
in the leading Southern cities. These conventions tended also to
become political in character and furnished an opportunity for the
exploitation of some rather extreme propositions, such, for example, as
that looking to the reopening of the foreign slave-trade. They serve
to illustrate the important part played by the _ante-bellum_ towns in
developing and intensifying the movement toward secession; but it is
more to the point here to observe that they were preceded by a series
of conventions more strictly commercial in character--gatherings that
did all they could to stir up the people of the South to the need of
urban development and to open their eyes to the fact that their section
was yearly falling behind in wealth and political power.[1]
This first series seems to have begun with a gathering in Augusta,
Georgia, in October, 1837, the object of the meeting being to allow
merchants the opportunity to discuss projects for developing a direct
trade between the South and Europe. As the only speeches that caused
comment were made by two “Colonels” and a “General,” it is easy
to perceive that even in such a convention the commercial classes
were overshadowed. The delegates met twice, however, the next year,
and afterwards at Charleston and Macon, the presence of delegates
from all the Southern States being solicited and in part obtained.
These meetings did what they could to arouse the South to commercial
activity, on one occasion viewing “with deep regret the neglect of
all commercial pursuits” that had thitherto prevailed among the youth
of the section. That their efforts were no more successful than those
of the contemporary railway promoters proves only that the failure of
urban development in the South was due not to the supineness of the
entire population but to the presence of an institution during the
existence of which agriculture was bound to be the paramount industry.
It is interesting to notice that these efforts toward urban development
were contemporaneous with and in answer to the agitation of the early
abolitionists; that they practically ceased during the movement for
territorial aggrandizement in Texas and the Far West; and that they
began in full force when it became apparent that the South had gained
less of the new territory than she thought she would. So true is it
that all Southern history has a political background!
It is not, however, desirable that the present Introduction should
degenerate into a dry historical essay devoted to certain obscure
points in the economic history of the South, although it does seem
important that the reader should realize that the citizens of Southern
towns between the years 1800 and 1860 were not altogether lacking in
enterprise and foresight. Yet the period mentioned is so interesting
in many ways that it is hard to leave it. It would be pleasant to
sketch briefly the efforts made to develop literary centers--especially
at Richmond and Charleston: the establishment at the former place of
the _Southern Literary Messenger_, forever connected with the fame of
Poe; at the latter, of the earlier and the later _Southern Review_
and of Russell’s _Magazine_, connected, respectively, with the names
of Hugh S. Legaré, William Gilmore Simms and the ill-fated Henry
Timrod, whose genuine poetical genius is slowly being recognized. It
would be interesting, too, to discuss the political influence wielded
by such newspapers as the Richmond _Enquirer_ and the Charleston
_Mercury_. A topic no less important is the effect of the classical
culture undoubtedly possessed to a considerable degree by the leading
citizens of the older towns upon the problem, only now being solved by
the New South, of affording every child a free and sound education. A
discussion of this topic would naturally lead one to inquire into the
status of the lower and middle classes in the _ante-bellum_ Southern
towns, and this would necessarily carry us very far afield. Perhaps the
best way to break the train of these suggestions and reflections is to
ask the reader whether he would ever have thought it possible for a
German immigrant to become a day-laborer in a Southern town, to save
enough money in six years to build an important bridge and wharf, to
found a town of his own which soon became a flourishing cotton market
and actually, as its leading personage, to enter into quasi-diplomatic
relations with the government of Hamburg, Germany! Yet all this
actually happened in the “unprogressive” _ante-bellum_ South. The man’s
name was Henry Schultz; the town in which he made his fortune, and,
sad to relate, subsequently lost it, was Augusta, Georgia; the town he
founded was Hamburg, South Carolina, which it must be confessed has not
become a metropolis and is chiefly known in connection with certain
important riots.[2]
Next to the large number of towns worthy to be included in the volume,
perhaps the most striking feature is the fact that nearly every
town described has experienced the vicissitudes of war. No walls of
long standing or traces of them may be pointed out to the curious
visitor of to-day, but battlefields there are, and in more than one
instance stories may be told of long-sustained sieges and heroic
defences. The Sunny South ought naturally to be a land of languorous
peace, but over no other section have the clouds of war rolled so
heavily. Its oldest town, St. Augustine, was born of war. Baltimore
and Washington suffered during the War of 1812, and the latter was
seriously threatened during the War for the Union. Frederick Town lives
in our memories along with Stonewall Jackson and Barbara Fritchie.
Before Richmond Lee foiled the troops of McClellan, and the gallant
capital, after four years filled with high hopes and reckless gayety
and solemn mourning, surrendered when the same undaunted Lee had but a
few thousand starving veterans to oppose to the splendid and puissant
hosts of Grant. The ghosts of long-dead cavaliers must have shivered
when the streets of Williamsburg echoed to the tramp of soldiers
from Puritan New England. The name of Wilmington brings to mind the
daring exploits of the blockade-runners; that of Charleston recalls the
heroic defence of Fort Moultrie, the occupation by the British, the
threatened bloodshed of the Nullification crisis, the capture of Sumter
and the magnificent resistance offered the Federal arms throughout
the Civil War. Like Charleston, Savannah can tell of encounters with
Spaniards and British undergone gloriously by her sons, although she
doubtless does not yet relish having been Sherman’s Christmas gift to
the nation. Mobile and New Orleans are forever associated with the
illustrious name of Farragut, and the latter can boast of being the
scene of the most splendid victory in our annals, that won by Jackson
and his backwoodsmen over the picked troops of Wellington. As for the
great siege of Vicksburg that set the seal upon Grant’s fame, or for
the battle of Nashville that gave almost equal renown to Thomas, men
will not forget them even when Tolstoy’s dreams of universal peace have
become a blessed reality.
But peace hath her victories no less renowned than war, as these
chapters all tell us in language as convincing if not so noble as that
of Milton. The history of the brave and successful efforts made by the
South to recover from the losses of the war and from the still more
disastrous effects of the worst-devised legislation ever inflicted upon
a conquered people cannot yet be fully written, but when it is, the
part played by the Southern towns will surely be paramount. Population
and business have greatly increased in the urban centers; the cause
of truly public education has been fostered to a remarkable extent;
political prejudices have waned; respect for human life has increased;
and, finally, a true national spirit has been developed. Much remains
to be done in the way of municipal improvements,--for example in the
founding of public libraries,--but the history of the past thirty-five
years warrants us in believing that the citizens of the Southern towns
will be able to work out their own salvation. The outlook for the rural
districts, where the commission merchant has his liens and mortgages,
where ignorance and lack of thrift foster political unrest, where race
hatred is partly extenuated by its causes and wholly discredited by its
results, is less hopeful but still by no means hopeless.
The present volume, however, deals with what has been rather than with
what is or will be, and, as has been already remarked, mainly with
what took place before even our great-grandfathers were born. To some
of us the history of our fathers’ times is more interesting than the
story of what remoter ancestors did, even though the costumes and the
furniture of the former are by no means so picturesque as those of the
latter. But _tot homines, tot sententiæ_. To Colonial Dames, and Sons
and Daughters of the American Revolution, and readers of the Colonial
and Revolutionary romances that are in such vogue, many pages of this
book ought to prove both interesting and instructive. Nor are devotees
of the modern wholly unprovided for, and the special student finds
matter for reflection. He can speculate, for example, upon how far the
South’s comparative freedom from French and Indian attacks rendered
early urban development less urgent. He can notice how few great
Southern statesmen and generals were of the urban type. He can contrast
Charleston and New Orleans, in their relations with their outlying
districts, as a miniature London and a miniature Paris, respectively.
He can wonder whether any subtly psychological cause was at work to
prevent the various writers dwelling upon slavery, duelling and other
features of the past that are not especially relished by the present,
yet assuredly had much to do with making Southern towns as picturesque
and interesting as occasional travelers used to find them and as the
investigator finds them to-day. Yet, if what is omitted reminds the
student of the immense opportunity for original and important research
that lies before the rising generation of Southern historical scholars,
neither he nor the general reader should forget the gratitude due to
the editor, the various writers and the publishers of this volume for
first giving the public in an attractive form adequate proof of the
interest and charm attaching to the towns of the _ante-bellum_ South.
In more than one important series of books relating to our national
history the South is but scantily represented, but such a reproach
cannot attach to this series of American Historic Towns. For weal or
woe the South is now an integral part of the nation, and the attractive
and inspiring, no less than the warning features of its history, should
be a portion of the intellectual inheritance of every American.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The later series of conventions is well described by Mr. Edward
Ingle in his interesting and valuable volume, based mainly upon
magazine and newspaper research, entitled _Southern Sidelights_ (pp.
220-261). Mr. Ingle pays but slight attention to the earlier series,
which seems nowhere to have been fully described.
[2] Schultz was a party for years to a very important case known as
“John W. Yarborough and others _vs._ The Bank of the State of Georgia,”
etc., for documents relating to which I am indebted to William K.
Miller, Esq., of the Augusta bar. The interesting career of the man
became known to me some years since through researches undertaken in
the early volumes of the Edgefield (S. C.) _Advertiser_.
[Illustration]
HISTORIC TOWNS OF THE SOUTHERN STATES
BALTIMORE
THE MONUMENTAL CITY
BY ST. GEORGE L. SIOUSSAT
For many a year after the weary passengers of the _Ark_ and the _Dove_
had disembarked at St. Mary’s, there to make the first settlement
under the proprietary government of the Lords Baltimore, the rivers of
Maryland ran, like Mr. George Alfred Townsend’s Rappahannock,
“All townless from the mountains to the sea.”
The Chesapeake and its almost numberless tributaries made every
plantation accessible to shipping, and so precluded that concentration
of trade and population at points of vantage which is the essential
condition of municipal growth. As Charles Calvert, third Baron
Baltimore, wrote, in 1678:
“The principall place or Towne is called St. Maryes ... other places
wee have none, that are called or cann be called Townes. The people
there not affecting to build nere each other but soe as to have their
[houses] nere the watters for conveniencye of trade and their Lands
on each side of and behynde their houses, by which it happens that
in most places there are not ffifty houses in the space of thirty
myles. And for this reason it is that they have been hitherto only
able to divide this Provynce into Countyes without being able to make
any subdivision into Parishes or Precincts which is a worke not to
be effected untill it shall please God to encrease the number of the
People and soe to alter their trade as to make it necessary to build
more close and to Lyve in Townes.”
When Lord Baltimore offered to the Lords of Trade this explanation of
the dearth of municipal life in Maryland, he emphasized precisely those
facts which have distinguished the political development of the South
from that of the North, and unwittingly explained the late appearance
upon the map of America of the city which now perpetuates his family
name.
Boston had lived and grown for nearly a century, New Amsterdam had been
New York one half that time, and a whole generation of Philadelphians
had passed away before the future metropolis of the South came into
being. A half-century passed, and the Revolution found the town
upon the Patapsco about the size of Salem or Providence; in another
half-century it had become the third city in the United States. The
pre-eminence which Baltimore thus attained was many years ago termed
“an unsolved problem in the philosophy of cities.” Now, when one views
this phenomenon in a longer perspective, it is possible, perhaps, to
discern more clearly some of the elements which combined to give rise
to it. Certainly, late years have brought to light much which one is
enabled to add to the story of historic Baltimore that the fathers have
handed down.
As Lord Baltimore’s letter to the Lords of Trade indicates, the
economic disadvantage of the absence of town life in Maryland was
appreciated by the Government of the Colony at a very early period in
its history. It was not due to the lack of desire or of effort upon
the part of the Proprietaries that in Maryland “towns there were
none.” For, first by proclamations, then by Acts of Assembly, towns
were “erected” in a great number of places situated upon the water and
selected, apparently, with little reference to any previous exhibition
of a tendency to municipal growth, and with equally little reference
to any expressions of desire upon the part of the inhabitants. That
the success of this policy was hardly proportionate to the efforts
made in its behalf is indicated by the statement made at a later time,
that “the settlers, and now the Government call town any place where
as many houses are as are individuals required to make a riot, that
is twenty, as fixed by the Riot Act.” Indeed, these “fiat” towns were
in nearly every case total failures. Harvy-town, Herrington and many
similar creations have passed into oblivion, and now only serve as
institutional fossils for the political palæontologist. As Jefferson
said of Virginia, “there are other places at which the laws have said
there shall be towns: but nature has said there shall not.”
[Illustration: OLD COURT-HOUSE (1768) AND POWDER MAGAZINE.
FROM AN OLD PRINT IN THE POSSESSION OF THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY.]
Among these shadow-towns of early Maryland were some of particular
interest to the history of Baltimore. The settlement upon the Patapsco
was not the first in Maryland to bear the proprietary name. The first
Baltimore seems to have been a point of land in St. Mary’s County,
spoken of only once in the early records, and never again mentioned.
A more important predecessor of the Baltimore of to-day was Baltimore
upon the Bush, a small river emptying into the head of Chesapeake
Bay, not far south of the Susquehanna. “The town-land on Bush River”
is mentioned as early as 1669, and, some years later, it was made the
seat of the court and court-house of Baltimore County. Though the
court-house was removed before long to Joppa, upon the Gunpowder,
farther to the south, many of the eighteenth-century maps of Maryland
show Baltimore as still upon the Bush. Of the history of this early
settlement no details have been preserved; only lately has its site
been determined.
Meanwhile, in the course of this general “towning,” the Patapsco had
not been neglected. In the town acts were included provisions for
towns upon Humphreys Creek, and upon Whetstone Point in that river. Of
the actual existence of any corporate life at these points there is,
however, no record; and it is probable that King George’s accession
found the Patapsco watering the same broad plantations as of yore. But
a new era in the town history of Maryland was dawning. Governmental
stimulation was being supplanted by private enterprise. Certain
progressive individuals conceived the idea of erecting a town upon
a point of land which runs out into the main stream of the Patapsco
and to-day is included within the limits of Baltimore city. At that
time, this land was the property of a Mr. John Moale, and was known as
Moale’s Point; but if it is Baltimore now, Mr. Moale was resolved that
it should not be Baltimore then, and taking his seat in the Assembly,
to which he was a delegate, he prevented the location of the town
upon his property. Tradition has censured this worthy for preferring
the excavation of iron ore to the development of a municipality, but
colonial experience in town lots had doubtless been such as to yield
him ample justification for his determination.
“The rejected of Mr. John Moale” was not, however, to wander far, for
slightly to the north lay property belonging to Charles and Daniel
Carroll, sons of the former agent of the Lord Proprietary. Here the
Patapsco formed a basin, a safe harbor for vessels of light draft; and
near by a stream, known to this day as Jones’s Falls, after the name
of an early settler, running from the hills near by, through lowland
and marsh, poured a muddy torrent into the river. In 1709, was passed
an act “for erecting a town on the north side of Patapsco in Baltimore
County and for laying out into lots sixty acres of land in and about
the place where one John Fleming now lives.”[3]
The owners of the land, the Carrolls, were more complaisant than Mr.
John Moale: they readily parted with sixty acres of land at the rate of
forty shillings per acre, payable in tobacco at one penny per pound.
The town was then surveyed and laid out into lots, after the most
approved “boomer” fashion of to-day. To secure an estate in fee simple,
“takers-up” of lots were required to erect thereon, within eighteen
months, a building covering at least four hundred square feet: failure
to comply with this condition laid the lots open for other takers-up.
Baltimore’s boom seems to have started well, for after Mr. Carroll, as
former owner, had selected the first lot, no less than fifteen other
persons invested the same year. This success was so much appreciated
that two years later _another_ town was established, consisting of two
acres laid out into twenty lots, just east of the Falls, “where Edward
Fell keeps store.” Communication between the new town, known as Jones
or Jonastown, and Baltimore was soon improved by a bridge across the
Falls, and a few years later the two towns were by Act of Assembly
formally made into one.
[Illustration: EDWARD FELL, IN UNIFORM OF PROVINCIAL FORCES.
FROM ORIGINAL PAINTING IN POSSESSION OF WILLIAM FELL JOHNSON.]
A third distinct element in the early growth of Baltimore was a
settlement somewhat farther to the east, known as Fell’s Point. In
1730, Mr. William Fell, a Lancastrian Quaker, purchased a tract of
land known as Copus’s Harbor and erected thereon a mansion. A little
to the south, a point jutting out into the Patapsco offered wharfage
facilities to vessels of large draft that were denied entrance to the
shallow basin of Baltimore town. This fact was soon appreciated, and at
a later time Edward Fell, who was the son of William, and an officer in
the Provincial army, laid out Fell’s Point into lots, thereby reaping a
fortune magnificent for those times.
During the first half of the eighteenth century little of note happened
in Baltimore. Within a few years, however, some of the most important
influences in its later development began to make themselves felt.
In Northern Maryland, particularly near the Pennsylvania border,
settlement was going on rapidly, and denser settlement meant the
extension of commercial intercourse. In 1736, communication was
established between the settlement on the Conewago--Hanover, in
Pennsylvania--and the Patapsco. Seven years later, the people of York,
also, “have opened a road to Patapsco. Some trading gentlemen there
are desirous of opening a trade to York and the country adjacent.” “In
October, 1751, no less than sixty waggons loaded with flaxseed, came
down to Baltimore from the back country.”
Baltimore, though vigorous in action, was as yet but mean in
appearance. In the rooms of the Maryland Historical Society hangs
a sketch of the town, drawn in 1752, by John Moale, the son of him
that would have none of towns or town lots. Rude in perspective as
this youthful effort is, it is treasured as one of the oldest and
most interesting of the city’s heirlooms. Twenty-five houses--four
of them built of brick--and two hundred inhabitants were then to be
found in Baltimore. Upon the hill we see perched the first of four St.
Paul’s churches successively erected upon the same lot, though not all
upon the same site. At anchor in the harbor are the brig _Philip and
Charles_ and the sloop _The Baltimore_. The merchant navy of Baltimore
was still small: the large vessels of foreign trade still waited at
Whetstone Point to receive their freight, transported in large lighters
from the plantation landings on both branches of the river.
More flattering than this early artistic attempt is Governor Sharpe’s
description of Baltimore, two years later, as having
“the appearance of the most increasing town in the Province,”
though “hardly as yet rivalling Annapolis in number of Buildings or
inhabitants: its situation as to Pleasantness, Air and Prospect is
inferior to Annapolis, but if one considers it with respect to Trade,
the extensive country beyond it leaves us room for comparison: were
a few Gentlemen of fortune to settle there and encourage the Trade,
it might soon become a flourishing place, but while few besides the
Germans (who are in general masters of small fortunes) build and
inhabit there, I apprehend it Cannot make any considerable Figure.”
The requisite “gentlemen of fortune” were not long lacking. One soon
appeared in the person of Dr. John Stevenson, who, in 1754, came from
Ireland, accompanied by his brother, Dr. Henry Stevenson, a man also
noteworthy among the founders of Baltimore. Dr. John Stevenson turned
his attention to commerce, and began the systematic development of
Baltimore’s foreign trade. He contracted for large quantities of wheat,
which he shipped to Scotland with such profitable results that general
attention was attracted to the development of a more extended commerce.
[Illustration: MOALE’S SKETCH OF BALTIMORE IN 1752.
FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE POSSESSION OF THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY.]
“Soon after, the appointment of Mr. Eden to the government of
Maryland, Sir William Draper arrived in that Province on a tour
throughout the continent. He contemplated the origin of Baltimore
and its rapid progress with astonishment, and when introduced by the
Governor to the worthy founder, he elegantly accosted him by the
appellation of the American Romulus.”
These words were written many years later: to quote them here is to
take a long glance ahead. When Dr. Stevenson came to Baltimore, the
clouds of war were lowering over the colonies. Governor Sharpe of
Maryland exerted himself to the utmost to co-operate with General
Braddock in the conquest of the Ohio for England, but fell out with the
Lower House of the Provincial Assembly. The war was never popular in
Maryland, although large sums were finally appropriated for the defence
of the Province. When the news of Braddock’s defeat reached Baltimore,
the alarm was intense. Tradition relates that upon one occasion such
terrifying reports of the proximity of the Indian allies of France were
brought to Baltimore that the women and children were put aboard ships,
while the masculine portion of the inhabitants prepared to withstand
the attack of the savages. But the attack never came; instead, many
settlers in Western Maryland and Western Pennsylvania hurried back
to the East, impressed with the necessity of closer settlement for
defensive purposes. This powerful incentive to unity was one that
had never been felt by the early colonists of Maryland, who, unlike
their brethren in the North, for the most part dwelt in peace with the
natives.
During the war, several companies of royal troops were quartered in
Baltimore. Among the officers in command, Captain Samuel Gardner, of
his Majesty’s Forty-seventh Regiment, was engaged in recruiting for his
Majesty’s service. His recruiting sergeant displayed such great zeal in
the pursuit of his duty that strenuous opposition was aroused among the
gentry of Baltimore, who found their indentured servants disappearing
one day, to appear the next in his Majesty’s uniform. Upon one
occasion, Mr. Charles Ridgely and others rescued--or recaptured--six
recruits, claiming that they were indentured servants, which proved,
Captain Gardner said, “not to be the truth _as to all of them_.” The
irate Captain appealed to the civil authorities, with a long story
about a conspiracy of “some of the better sort at the Church in the
Forest [St. Thomas’s]--to raise a body of about two hundred men, and
take all my Recruits from me.” The plan of the conspirators, if such
existed, never materialized, but Captain Gardner received cold comfort
from Mr. Bordley, the Attorney-General. “He put a case,” laments
Captain Gardner to Governor Sharpe, “not very much to the Honour of the
Recruiting Service--_Suppose a man steals a horse, etc._”
While the French and Indian War was in progress, Baltimore received
a large addition to its population. When the “French Neutrals” were
removed from Acadia by the British Government, many came to Baltimore,
and were hospitably quartered in the mansion of Mr. Edward Fottrell,
which stood upon the square now covered by the stately court-house
recently completed. When the Abbé Robin visited Baltimore during the
Revolutionary War, these unfortunate people and their descendants
filled about one quarter of the town, a quarter mean and poor in
appearance. They still spoke their native dialect, and treasured the
altar vessels given them, with his parting benediction, by their
old curé, M. Le Clerc, who had been the loving guardian of their
souls. Though they began in great poverty, this portion of Baltimore’s
population by industry and thrift rose to a high place in the life of
the city. Many of the seafaring men who later played so important a
part in the commercial development of Baltimore were the descendants of
this sturdy fisherfolk of Acadia.
[Illustration: BATTLE MONUMENT.]
Between the French and Indian War and the Revolution Baltimore grew
apace. Marshes were drained and a market-house was erected. In 1768,
Baltimore became the county-seat, and a court-house was built upon the
site where now the Battle Monument commemorates the defence of the city
in 1814. “The Town” and “the Point” vied with each other, and those
with an eye to the future bought lots in both places. Many mansions
were erected, among them Mount Clare, the residence of Charles Carroll,
Barrister. Dr. Henry Stevenson, brother of the “Romulus of America,”
built a house on the York road near the Falls, which was called
“Stevenson’s Folly” because of the contrast between its elegance and
the simplicity of the surrounding dwellings. It deserved a better name,
for later it was transformed into a hospital for inoculation against
the smallpox. Here the Rev. Jonathan Boucher brought “Jacky” Custis,
to be “given the smallpox,” and we find recorded in Washington’s
correspondence an account of Dr. Stevenson’s charges of “2 pistoles and
25 s. for board.” At the close of the century, the venerable doctor was
one of the founders of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland.
When he came to Baltimore, the youth of the town already enjoyed the
instruction of one schoolmaster, and there was demand for another.
[Illustration: MOUNT CLARE, 1760, RESIDENCE OF CHARLES CARROLL,
BARRISTER.]
Of Baltimore in this pre-Revolutionary period, a few odd, disconnected
facts have been handed down. The tax upon bachelors--levied to raise
supplies for his Majesty’s service--cannot have been very productive,
as only thirteen “taxables” are reported. The commercial activity of
the community was stimulated every October and May by a fair, when
residents and visitors were free from arrest, except for felony and
breach of the peace. Among other police regulations, fines were laid
upon those whose chimneys blazed out at the top, or who neglected to
keep ladders. Baltimore began to look like a busy, thriving town,
enjoying life to the utmost.
And if our ancestors lived well, they endeavored to die well--at least
with regard to the comfort of the guests at their funerals. One bill
for funeral expenses, besides yards upon yards of crape, tiffany,
broadcloth, shalloon and linen, several pairs of black gloves and other
necessary attire, includes these items:
47¹⁄₂ lbs. loaf sugar
14 doz. eggs
10 oz. nutmegs
1¹⁄₂ lbs. allspice
20⁵⁄₈ gall. white wine
12 bottles red wine
10³⁄₈ gallons rum [!]
The first recognition of Baltimore’s existence by the Proprietary
appears to have been in connection with an inquiry as to the
possibility of making the growth of the town a source of additional
income. Cecilius Calvert, the secretary of Frederick, the sixth Lord
Baltimore, writes to Governor Sharpe that in Philadelphia William
Penn has reserved property that brings him “much income now” and will
produce to his heirs “immense revenue.” Sharpe replies that Baltimore
town is built upon land patented to private persons, and embraces the
opportunity to moderate the extravagant reports of Baltimore’s size
that had reached the ears of the Proprietary, by adding that it “is
almost as much inferiour to Philad^a as Dover is to London.” However,
the twenty-five houses and two hundred people of 1752 had become, in
1764, two hundred families, and the town “is increasing.”
Such was Baltimore town when the citizens met together in town meeting
to adopt a non-importation agreement, and to propose, upon the last day
of May, 1774, the assembling of a general congress of delegates from
all the colonies. The suffering of Boston under the Port Bill awoke
deep sympathy, and in August of this year the sloop _America_ sailed
from Baltimore Harbor carrying three thousand bushels of corn, twenty
barrels of rye flour, two barrels of pork and twenty-one barrels of
bread, “for the relief of our brethren, the distressed inhabitants of
your town.”
Though never the scene of actual hostilities, Baltimore lacked neither
employment nor excitement. Early in 1776, a demonstration was made
against the town, which had hitherto been entirely defenceless, by a
British sloop of war and some smaller vessels. Fortifications were
hastily erected upon Whetstone Point, where Fort McHenry later was to
check the entrance of another British fleet; vessels were sunk in the
channel, and the ship _Defense_ was hurriedly fitted out and put under
the command of Captain James Nicholson. The British commander did not
risk an action, but stood off down Chesapeake Bay, leaving behind a
valuable prize that he had shortly before captured. “Such was the ardor
of the militia,” wrote Samuel Purviance, Secretary of the Committee of
Safety of Baltimore town, “that not a man w^d stay in Comm^{ee} room
with me but Mr. Harrison.” Captain Nicholson was complimented as having
“first had the honor of displaying the Continental colors to a British
man-of-war without a return.”
[Illustration: BOOS HOUSE NEAR WHICH LAFAYETTE’S TROOPS ENCAMPED.]
Upon Baltimore, formerly Market, Street, between Sharp and Liberty, a
tablet commemorates the site of “Congress Hall” a “three story and
attic” brick building, which, in 1776, belonged to one Jacob Fite,
and was at that time one of the most imposing buildings in the town.
Hither the Congress of the United States adjourned in 1776,--when the
British approached the Delaware,--and remained several weeks, during
which period Washington was made a virtual dictator. A few squares to
the east was the Fountain Inn, which entertained Washington and many
other statesmen and soldiers who came to Baltimore, or passed through
the town on their way north and south. Among these visitors was the Duc
de Lauzun, whose legion lay encamped around the knoll where later, in
1806, was commenced the erection of the Roman Catholic Cathedral. Upon
Bond Street, Fell’s Point, there was standing, not many years ago, an
old farmhouse belonging to a German named Boos, near which Lafayette’s
troops were encamped, and at which they obtained milk for their
syllabub, and other products of the dairy and the garden.
When Lafayette passed through Baltimore _en route_ for Yorktown, a
ball was given in his honor; his melancholy demeanor upon this joyous
occasion, explained by the Marquis as due to his concern at the
sufferings of his ill-clad soldiers, awoke such sympathy that next
morning “the ball-room was turned into a clothing manufactory. Fathers
and husbands furnished the materials; daughters and wives plied the
needle at their grateful task.” “My campaign,” said the General upon
his return, “began with a personal obligation to the citizens of
Baltimore, at the end of it I find myself bound to them by a new tie of
everlasting gratitude.” When, forty-three years later, Baltimore again
welcomed Lafayette, one of the most touching incidents of his visit
was his especial inquiry for Mr. and Mrs. David Poe,--grandparents of
Edgar Allan Poe,--the one of whom had advanced Lafayette money from his
private funds, and the other had herself cut out five hundred garments
for his ragged troops. Mrs. Poe, with feeble body but unclouded mind,
was yet alive to welcome the General, but her husband had preceded his
venerable friend to the rest which comes after toil.
Another foreigner well known in Baltimore was Pulaski, who completed
here the organization of the legion in command of which he fell at
Savannah. In the library of the Maryland Historical Society hang the
now faded folds of
“The crimson banner, that with prayer,
Had been consecrated there,
by the Moravian nuns at Bethlehem, before
“The warrior took that banner proud,
And it was his martial cloak and shroud.”
Besides welcoming those from elsewhere, Baltimore gave to the war the
best and bravest of her own. To aid Smallwood and Williams, Baltimore
sent General Mordecai Gist, who as Major commanded the Maryland troops
that covered the American retreat at Long Island. Another was John
Eager Howard, who at Cowpens seized the critical moment, and turned
the fortune of the day. At Guilford and at Eutaw Colonel Howard was
equally conspicuous, and when peace came Maryland honored him by thrice
electing him to the national Senate. “He deserves,” said General
Greene, “a statue of gold, no less than Roman and Grecian heroes.” A
third was Captain Samuel Smith, who held Fort Mifflin, the “Mud Fort on
the Schuylkill,” for seven weeks, against powerful land and sea forces
of the British, who were seeking to open the communication between
Philadelphia and the Atlantic. It was largely due to the energy of
General Smith that, in the second war with Great Britain, Baltimore
escaped the fate of the national Capital. And with these officers went
hundreds of lesser rank, to join New Englanders and fellow-Southerners
in the common cause of Independence.
[Illustration: COL. JOHN EAGER HOWARD.
FROM THE PAINTING BY REMBRANDT PEALE.]
When the cry “Cornwallis is taken!” announced the final success of
Washington and Lafayette, Baltimore’s exultation was unbounded. In
the evening, we are told, there was a “Feau d’ Joy”: “the Town and
Fell’s Point were elegantly illuminated; what few houses that were
not, had their windows broke.” Upon the Point, Mr. Fell, “a gentleman
of princely fortune,” nephew of the first Edward, gave a “genteel
Ball and Entertainment,” where, Lieutenant Reeves tells us, “we danced
and spent the night until three o’clock in the morning of the 23rd as
agreeably as one could wish; as the ladies were very agreeable and the
whole company seemed to be carryed away beyond themselves on this happy
occasion.”
Many years ago, one of the most distinguished of Baltimore’s sons,
the Hon. John P. Kennedy, himself a scholar and an orator of the old
_régime_, gave, in an informal lecture, some of his reminiscences of
Baltimore town as it was at the end of the eighteenth century. Though
often quoted, the quaint and charming spirit of the author makes his
description yet as fresh and sparkling as his conversation ever used to
be, and it is never too late to give in his own words some of his early
memoirs of Baltimore town:
“It was a treat to see this little Baltimore town just at the
termination of the War of Independence, so conceited, bustling and
debonair, growing up like a saucy, chubby boy, with his dumpling
cheeks and short, grinning face, fat and mischievous, and bursting
incontinently out of his clothes in spite of all the allowance
of tucks and broad salvages. Market Street had shot, like a
Nuremberg Snake out of its toy box, as far as Congress Hall, with
its line of low-browed, hip-roofed wooden houses, in a disorderly
array, standing forward and back, after the manner of a regiment
of militia, with many an interval between the files. Some of these
structures were painted blue and white, and some yellow; and here and
there sprang up a more magnificent mansion of brick, with windows
like a multiplication table and great wastes of wall between the
stories, with occasional court-yards before them; and reverential
locust-trees, under whose shade bevies of truant schoolboys, ragged
little negroes and grotesque chimney-sweeps ‘skied coppers’ and
disported themselves at marbles.
“In the days I speak of, Baltimore was fast emerging from the village
state into a thriving commercial town. Lots were not yet sold by
the foot,--except perhaps in the denser marts of business,--rather
by the acre. It was in the _rus-in-urbe_ category. That fury for
levelling had not yet possessed the souls of City Councils. We had
our seven hills then, which have been rounded off since, and that
locality which is now described as lying between the two parallels
of North Charles Street and Calvert Street presented a steep and
barren hillside, broken by rugged cliffs and deep ravines, washed
out by the storms of winter into chasms which were threaded by paths
of toilsome and difficult ascent. On the summit of one of these
cliffs stood the old church of St. Paul’s [the second], some fifty
paces or more to the eastward of the present church [the third],
and surrounded by a brick wall that bounded on the present lines of
Charles and Lexington Streets. This old building, ample and stately,
looked abroad over half the town. It had a belfry tower, detached
from the main structure, and keeping watch over a graveyard full of
tombstones, remarkable to the observation of the boys and girls, who
were drawn to it by the irresistible charm of the popular belief
that it was haunted, and by the quantity of cherubim that seemed to
be continually crying about the death’s-head and cross-bones at the
doleful and comical epitaphs below them--images long since vanished,
without a trace left, devoured by the voracious genius of brick and
mortar.
“... I have a long score of pleasant recollections of the
friendships, the popular renowns, the household charms, the
_bonhomie_, the free confidences and the personal accomplishments of
the day.... In the train of these goodly groups come the gallants who
upheld the chivalry of the age, cavaliers of the old school, full of
starch and powder: most of them the iron gentlemen of the Revolution,
with leather faces--old campaigners, renowned for long stories: not
long enough absent from the camp to lose their military _brusquerie_
and dare-devil swagger; proper roystering blades, who had not long
ago got out of harness and begun to affect the elegancies of civil
life. Who but they! jolly fellows, fiery and loud, with stern glance
of the eye and brisk turn of the head, and swash-buckler strut
of defiance, like game-cocks, all in three-cornered cocked hats
and powdered hair and cues, and light-colored coats with narrow
capes and marvellous long backs, with the pockets on each hip, and
small-clothes that hardly reached the knee, with striped stockings,
with great buckles in their shoes, and their long steel watch-chains
that hung conceitedly half-way to the knee, with seals in the shape
of a sounding-board to a pulpit; and they walked with such a
stir, striking their canes so hard upon the pavement as to make
the little town ring again. I defy all modern coxcombry to produce
anything equal to it--there was such a relish of peace about it, and
particularly when one of these weather-beaten gallants accosted a
lady in the street with a bow that required a whole side pavement to
make it in, with the scrape of his foot, and his cane thrust with a
flourish under his left arm till it projected behind along with his
cue, like the palisades of a _chevaux-de-frise_; and nothing could be
more piquant than the lady as she reciprocated the salutation with
a curtsey that seemed to carry her into the earth, with her chin
bridled to her breast, and such a volume of dignity.”
[Illustration: ST. PAUL’S CHURCH.
FROM AN OLD COPPER PRINT.]
The “rus-in-urbe” life of Baltimore was nearly ended; with the close
of the Revolutionary War began a new period in its history. Soon
streets were paved and lighted, better bridges built, and a watch was
established. Commerce sprang up with renewed vigor. The tobacco trade
found other markets than the mother country; the West Indies bought
flour, Spain and Portugal, wheat. By 1790, Baltimore skippers had
rounded the Cape of Good Hope and cast anchor in the harbors of the
Isle de France. The year 1793 brought another foreign addition to the
already polyglot population of Baltimore. The revolution in San Domingo
drove fifteen hundred of the inhabitants to Maryland, to develop a
great trucking and garden trade, with Baltimore as its centre. The
Baltimore clippers, too, with their jauntily raked masts, showed
their heels to the craft of the rest of the world, and the reign of
Baltimore’s merchant princes began.
Previous to this time, all large payments of money were made in bags
of heavy coin: in 1790 a bank was organized. Several papers were now
published, and a circulating library was established by Mr. Murphy. A
series of medical lectures was preparing the way for the University
of Maryland, and education in general was receiving more attention.
Population increased continually, and in 1796, the change from town to
full municipal life was made legal by the incorporation of Baltimore
city.
Now, also, began again the improvement of internal communication.
For many years the white-topped Conestoga wagons had rumbled down to
Baltimore from west and north; and from time to time efforts had been
made to improve the main roads. In 1805, the main routes converging in
Baltimore were turnpiked. Western Maryland was now becoming thickly
settled, many thriving towns had sprung up, and in a few years the
“National Road” joined Cumberland, on the Potomac, with the Ohio
River. The connection between Cumberland and Baltimore was completed
by means of a curious tax on the banks of Maryland. Thus the line of
communication between Baltimore and Wheeling was continuous, over one
of the best roads in the world. This and six other turnpikes were as
seven great rivers, bearing their precious freight of grain, tobacco,
dairy products and whiskey to Baltimore for foreign shipment; and in
spite of overtrading and the resulting period of depression, such
was Baltimore’s progress that in 1825 Jared Sparks could say, “Among
all the cities of America, or of the Old World, in modern or ancient
times, there is no record of any one which has sprung up so quickly
to so high a degree of importance as Baltimore.” At this time the
population of Baltimore was five times as great as it had been thirty
years before, and commerce had increased proportionately. The causes of
this remarkable progress were enumerated by Sparks as the advantages
of Baltimore’s local situation, the swift sailing-vessels, the San
Domingan trade, the two great staples, tobacco and flour, “for which
the demand is always sure, and the supply unfailing,” and lastly, the
energetic spirit of the people.
[Illustration: BELVIDERE, 1786, THE HOME OF COL. JOHN E. HOWARD.]
During all this period the city improved in appearance as well as in
size. Especially characteristic of the new Baltimore was “Belvidere,”
the residence of Colonel John Eager Howard. Belvidere was completed in
1794, and only a few years ago was dismantled by the ruthless hand of
the city surveyor, to make way for the progress of the ever-expanding
city by the extension of North Calvert Street. From Belvidere, which at
the beginning of the century was a half-mile from Baltimore, one could
look down, as from some mediæval castle, upon the bustling town below.
In the view from Belvidere, we are told,
“the town,--the Point, the shipping in the Basin and at Fell’s Point,
the bay as far as the eye can reach, rising ground on the right and
left of the harbor,--a grove of trees on the declivity on the right,
a stream of water [Jones’s Falls] breaking over the rocks at the foot
of the hill on the left, all conspire to complete the beauty and the
grandeur of the prospect.”
Here, as at many of the country-seats near Baltimore, a lavish
hospitality brought strangers from America and from Europe into
pleasant association with the leading Marylanders of the day. A little
to the south of Belvidere, in what was then the woodland of “Howard’s
Park,” there soon rose the grandly simple column of the Washington
Monument.
If Maryland escaped actual invasion during the Revolutionary War,
she bore the brunt of the second contest with England. After the
British had sailed up the Patuxent, laying waste the manor houses and
wide plantations along its banks, after they had burned the national
Capitol and routed a body of American militia, they proceeded to
attack Baltimore by land and sea. The story is told that some faint
hearts came forward with a proposition to compound for the safety of
the city with a heavy ransom, when Colonel Howard replied, “I have as
much property at stake as most people, and I have four sons in the
field; but sooner would I see my sons weltering in their blood, and my
property reduced to ashes, than so far disgrace the country.”
It was such spirit as this that checked the land attack at North Point,
and that held out in Fort McHenry during the anxious night of September
12th. When day broke upon Fort McHenry, the flag was still there. And
in the gray dawn, Francis Scott Key, detained upon the _Minden_ in an
effort to secure the release of a captive friend, wrote upon the back
of a letter the thoughts which were passing through his mind. Printed a
little later, and first sung in a restaurant near the Holliday Street
Theatre, the song of _The Star Spangled Banner_ was caught up in
intense enthusiasm, till now, following the flag it celebrates, it is
sung in every portion of the globe.
No less important with respect to the final outcome of the war than
the repulse of the British at North Point and at Fort McHenry, was
the offensive warfare carried on by the privateers of Baltimore,--the
clippers turned fighters. The log-books of these illusive craft make
interesting reading. “Chased by a frigate: outsailed her,” is the
entry that seems to occur most frequently, and thrilling accounts of
hairbreadth escapes are numerous. The English Channel was a favorite
hunting-ground of the privateers, and many a British vessel was taken
or burnt outside of and in view of her own port. The amount of property
taken or destroyed in this way was enormous, and the moral effect of
American success exceeded the material.
With the return of peace, overtrading led to a commercial crisis. In
1818, the Baltimore branch of the Bank of the United States became
insolvent, and the darkest period in the history of the city ensued.
But in less than ten years the shock had been so far forgotten that
Baltimore was again seeking to develop commercial connection with
the West. “The enterprising citizens of Baltimore,” we are told,
“perceiving that in consequence of steam navigation on the western
waters, and the exertions of other States they were losing the trade of
the West, began seriously to consider of some mode of recovering it.”
The means adopted were twofold: the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, and the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The amount of money which Maryland and,
relatively to a greater extent, Baltimore invested in these schemes has
perhaps been more than subsequent events have justified; but the effect
of the idea of internal improvement cannot be overestimated.
That the troublous times of the war between the States should bear
upon Baltimore with especial affliction was but the natural result
of her geographical situation. In the more southerly cities, popular
sentiment was usually nearly unanimous; in Baltimore, the combination
in municipal life of the foreign with the native Southern element
involved the existence of two ideas, two ways of looking at things.
When, therefore, the great question had to be decided, the citizens
of Baltimore, ever characterized by an excessive political activity,
immediately divided into two camps, in which were often ranged in
deadly opposition those who before had been bound by common ties of
Church, of State and of kindred; while beneath and between the better
elements of both parties, the turbulent mob, well schooled in political
lawlessness, eagerly embraced every opportunity for riot and disorder.
The most serious cause of difference was not the question of slavery,
for Baltimore was, it has been said, “the paradise of the free colored
population.” In 1789, Samuel Chase, Luther Martin, Dr. George Buchanan,
and in fact most of the leading men of that day, formed one of the
earliest of American abolition societies; and to the same cause, in
later times, Charles Carroll of Carrollton lent his influence and
William Pinkney his eloquence.
The most powerful stimulus to secession lay in the policy of Lincoln’s
administration. While the attack upon the Sixth Massachusetts was the
work of the mob, the passage through Maryland of the Northern troops
made sympathy with the South temporarily predominant. The excitement
subsided; the city, like the State, was held for the Union, but the
military policy of the national Government inaugurated a period of
bitter oppression to those whose hearts were across the Potomac.
Newspapers were suppressed, all exhibitions of sympathy with the
Southern cause were rudely brought to an end, and the personal liberty
of the individual was destroyed by the suspension of the _habeas
corpus_--a suspension which henceforth estranged the executive and the
judicial heads of the nation. Yet in spite of this military policy, or,
more properly, because of it, the Union sentiment increased, and in
1864, in the city where four years before each of his three opponents
had been nominated for the Presidency, the Union-Republican convention
chose as its candidate for a second term the President, Abraham Lincoln.
* * * * *
With the development of the policy of internal improvement began the
modern city. In spite of financial crises, periods of bitter political
disturbance and the shock of the Civil War, the expansion begun by
the uniting of Baltimore town first with Jonas town and then with
Fell’s Point, has been continued over the neighboring hillsides to the
north, east, and west, until the hamlet of two hundred inhabitants
has now become the city of more than half a million souls. With this
numerical increase has come a proportionate commercial development;
the advantageous situation of “the northernmost southern and the
westernmost eastern city” is as potent a factor in its life to-day as
it was of old. In the higher things, also, that enrich the life of a
great city, progress has been no less constant. The schoolmaster, to
whom, in 1752, “encouragement” was offered by advertisement in the
Maryland _Gazette_, has been succeeded by a thorough system of public
education, while the ideas that found expression in the “Stevenson’s
Folly,” and the “Murphy’s Circulating Library” of a century ago, have
subsequently inspired the foundations of McDonogh, Shepard, Watson,
White, Wilson, Peabody, Hopkins and Pratt.
Of all the institutions, charitable or educational, with which
Baltimore has been blessed, none have brought her more honor than
the Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Founded
upon the bequest of one of Maryland’s sons, who had amassed his great
wealth in the city he loved so well, the University was fortunate
in the selection as its President of Daniel C. Gilman, a man with
extraordinary genius for educational organization. Fortunate, also,
was the bringing together, at the start, of a faculty of eminent
specialists: the first were Gildersleeve, Sylvester, Remsen, Rowland,
Martin and Morris. These men, and their successors, have fostered
a spirit of intellectual advance which has made the importance of
the University in the educational history of this country assume a
proportion simply incalculable.
[Illustration: BUST OF JOHNS HOPKINS.
FROM THE ORIGINAL IN JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL.]
Across the city, upon a site open and commanding, stands the Hospital,
with its ever-growing Medical School, and its Training School for
Nurses. Equally successful in its first choice of leaders, and in
the character of those who follow them, the Hospital has been far
more fortunate than the University in the financial stability of its
endowment.
Between the two, and lying almost at the base of the Washington
Monument, is the Peabody Institute, with its magnificent library.
Farther downtown is that of the Maryland Historical Society, and these,
with the Congressional Library in Washington, only forty miles away,
afford every advantage for study and research; while the more popular
demands of Baltimore’s readers are met by the great Free Circulating
Library endowed by the late Enoch Pratt.
In the solution of the problems that arise from the organization of
modern society Baltimore has done pioneer work. It was a Baltimore
lawyer, Hon. John V. L. McMahon, who drew up for the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad the charter which “formed a model for the organization of all
future railroad corporations.” It was in Baltimore that a municipality
first “secured a valuable revenue from street-railway corporations, and
applied it to the purposes of public parks.”
The ploughman and the fisherman that, upon the Great Seal of Maryland,
support the shield of the Lords Proprietary may be considered as
typical of the influences which have combined to further the growth
of the city of Baltimore; while to the happy result that has crowned
their joint endeavors may be applied the words of the motto that
surrounds the whole:
“SCVTO BONÆ VOLVNTATIS TVÆ CORONASTI NOS.”
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[3] John Fleming was a tenant of the Carrolls. This homestead is
supposed to have been located near the point where now Lombard Street
intersects the east side of South Charles Street.
[Illustration]
ANNAPOLIS
“YE ANCIENT CITY”
BY SARA ANDREW SHAFER
Neither of the North nor of the South, of the Old nor of the New, the
fair State of Maryland possesses a thousand charms that are all her
own, as she clasps the blue, river-fringed Chesapeake to her breast,
and stretches out her lovely leagues of hill and vale, of field and
forest and rocky glen, from where the sun rises out of the ocean beyond
her “East’n Sho’” to where he sets behind the mountain ramparts of her
western frontier. And of Maryland surely the heart lies in the quaint
old city on the Severn, where the days are longer, the nights stiller,
the sunshine more full of peace, and the moonlight more fraught with
mystery than any place else in the world. To saunter through the
streets of “Y^e Ancient City” of Annapolis is to take a University
Extension course in American history; to gaze upon her old houses is
to behold the finest type of colonial architecture; while to read her
annals is to be fired with the truest patriotism and to mingle in the
best society of the picturesque days of long ago.
[Illustration: GEORGE CALVERT, FIRST LORD BALTIMORE.
REPRODUCED FROM AN OLD PRINT.]
From our New World point of view, Annapolis is very old, dating back
to 1608, when Captain John Smith, exploring the Chesapeake Bay, sailed
up the Severn in search of favorable sites for settlements. She is
fortunate in the figures that stand on her threshold, for next after
the gallant Captain come the noble Calverts--George, Cecilius, Leonard,
than whom were never lordlier men. To Cecilius, pledges made to his
father were redeemed when, in 1632, Charles I. made him vast grants
of lands beyond the Atlantic, in return for which all that was asked
was allegiance to the English Crown; one fifth of all gold and silver
to be discovered in the new domain, and an annual offering, to be made
at Windsor Castle on Easter Tuesday, of two Indian arrow-heads. The
charter thus given was the freest ever bestowed upon any colony, and
in return Lord Baltimore named his new possessions in honor of Queen
Henrietta Maria, whose bigotry and arrogance had so much to do with
the loss of her husband’s crown and life, and which--so strange are
the relations of cause and effect--formed one of the broad foundation
stones on which the modern superstructure of civil and religious
freedom rests.
[Illustration: CECILIUS CALVERT, SECOND LORD BALTIMORE.
REPRODUCED FROM AN OLD PRINT.]
On November 30, 1633, two little ships, the _Ark_ and the _Dove_,
set sail from Cowes, under command of Leonard Calvert, brother
of the Lord Proprietary, and having on board a goodly company of
gentlemen--adventurers. It was but the common sight of the putting out
to sea of two insignificant boats to those who watched them from the
shore that autumn day; but it stands out as marking a great era in the
history of human progress. The pious and catholic Cecilius Calvert,
carrying out the designs of his great father, had decreed that all
men living under his protection should be free to serve God according
to the dictates of their own consciences,--a decree so far in advance
of their times as to place the names of the Calverts forever in the
foremost rank of the world’s greatest and wisest men.
After many adventures, on the 25th of March, the Feast of the
Annunciation, the colonists landed. A precious early chronicle tells us
that
“Heere we went to a place where a large tree was made into a Crosse,
and taking it upon our shoulders, wee carried it to the place
appointed for it. The gouvernour and Commissioners putting their
hands first vpon it, and then the rest of the chiefest aduenturers.
At the place prepared wee all kneeled downe and said certain Prayers,
taking possession of the Countrey for our Savior, and for our
Soueraigne Lord the King of England.”
The early relations between the new comers and the aborigines seem to
have been of the most friendly character, and the _Relation of the
Successful Beginning of the Lord Baltimore’s Plantation in Maryland_,
from which we have just quoted, is full of the praises of the climate,
the soil, the flora and fauna, and the general goodliness of the land.
An Eden it must have been in its primeval loveliness!
As ever in Eden, there were serpents. The world was not yet worthy
of the lofty ideas of the founder of the _Terra Mariæ_. The first
Provincial Assembly, which met in 1637-38, had many grave questions
to discuss, and these grew only graver as the political situation in
England became more complicated--the power of the King waning while
that of the Puritans waxed.
In 1642, the Churchmen in Virginia passed a Conventicle Act, which bore
so heavily upon the non-conforming Puritans that, in 1648, Governor
Stone sent an invitation to the persecuted men to come and enjoy
the liberties which, in the next year, were to go upon our Statute
Books, and to be their glory forever, as the Toleration Act. In 1649,
therefore, ten families crossed the Potomac, and on Severn-side built a
few huts, to which they gave the name of Providence.
Affairs were moving rapidly. The King had laid down his life. It was
declared treason to own allegiance to his exiled son. The shoe was now
decidedly on the Puritan foot, and without loss of time they proceeded
to re-read the Act of Toleration, and to make out a case for everybody
but Church of England men and Romanists, who were now proscribed. This
act of bigotry and ingratitude makes the darkest spot on the escutcheon
of the Palatinate, nor is there much that is pleasant to read in the
jealousies, bickerings and aggressions of the next few years. A county
was formed in 1650, and named in honor of the gentle Anne Arundel, wife
of Lord Baltimore. A treaty of peace between the white men and the red
was signed in 1652, and the name of the village was changed to “The
Town at Proctors.” These things are about all we need to know until,
the Revolution of 1688 having been accomplished, Maryland became a
royal province, and the first royal governor, Sir Lionel Copley, came
over. In 1694 the seat of government was removed from the original
seat, St. Mary’s, to the place which, after bearing three or four
names, finally settled upon that of Annapolis, a mongrel title, assumed
in honor of the then heiress to the Crown.
There is but one rational way of beginning a sketch of the old town,
and that is to look first, as did the wise-hearted early Annapolitans,
at the Church, the State House, and the School, and to picture them as
they stand on smooth green lawns, high on the little peninsula, almost
encircled by the silver marriage-ring of the Severn and its estuaries.
The Church (for although the praise of God arises from many altars,
the interest naturally centres in the eldest born) is a long, low
structure, giving an odd impression of some seaworthy craft cast
adrift upon the green tideless sea of its spacious Circle. It was
named, we fancy, for various Annes: the mother of the Virgin, the
Lady Anne Arundel, and the Queen-to-be. St. Anne’s it has ever been,
bearing the name through three baptisms of fire, in one of which, it
is said, the bell, Queen Anne’s own gift, rung its own knell in a most
weird and pathetic manner. Once upon a time its yard was the village
burying-ground, but its early tenants have all been disturbed in their
rest, and only one or two box-tombs remain, on which the sparrows,
which have built themselves nests in the ivy on the walls, hop and
chirp contentedly. The only relic still possessed by St. Anne’s is the
Communion Plate, which bears the arms of William III. and the date,
1695. It, too, was a gift from that “great Anne whom three realms
obeyed,” who seems to have had a special fondness for sending like
mementoes to the infant colonies. The first clergyman, Dr. Bray, sent
out to care for the souls of the Annapolitans, received ten thousand
pounds of tobacco as his stipend--this, of course, after the Church
of England was made the Established Church. Seats were reserved in
the sacred edifice for the Governor and members of the legislative
bodies; and in addition their attendance was made compulsory. The first
missionary meeting of which we hear in America was held in St. Anne’s,
when a pious annual five-and-twenty pounds was voted to be applied to
the conversion, not of the heathen Susquehannoghs, as one might have
expected, but of the Quakers of Pennsylvania!
[Illustration: ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE AND THE TREATY TREE.]
Not far from the Church stands the first free school on the
continent, once King William’s School, and under the direction of the
Archbishop of Canterbury, but, for many a long and useful year, St.
John’s College. Its principal building, McDowell Hall, was built in
1744, for a royal governor, and is flanked by dignified houses standing
well back upon the green campus, a picture of ivy-clad repose that is
very pleasing. A part of a gift of books sent by the good King William
is still cherished in the library, and on the roll of students are
many of the brightest names the State can boast. On the campus stands
a very old tulip-tree. Tradition says that under its shadow the treaty
with the Susquehannoghs was signed in 1652, and it is certain that
it must have been of great age even then. A fire burned away part of
its trunk years ago, but the hole was boarded up, a friendly ivy has
done its best to hide the scars, and the brave old tree yields its
toll of blossoms to each passing June, and bids fair to do so when
the grandsons of the youngest lad now playing beneath its branches
shall come to visit this lost monarch of a vanished forest. Here were
pitched the tents of the French troops which came to aid us in our hour
of peril, and here were camps again during our second struggle with
England, and during the Civil War. Nor did all leave when the order to
strike tents came.
[Illustration: THE STATE HOUSE.]
“Under the sun and the dew,
Waiting the Judgment Day,”
the tenants of some low grassy mounds here sleep in nameless peace.
If Annapolis is the heart of Maryland--its _cor cordium_ lies in
the State House standing in the great green circle which overlooks
the city, the river and the bay. Like the Church, it is now nearing
its third outward and visible form, fire having destroyed the two
earlier structures. The corner-stone of the present edifice was laid
in 1772, and it was designed in the best spirit of the style we
call colonial. Ample spaces of English patterned brick divide its
rather small windows, a simple pillared portico guards its doorway,
and it is covered by a curious but very agreeable dome. Under its
roof the various executive, legal and legislative branches of the
State government find lodging. Its rotunda is decorated with the
most elaborate stucco work, and throughout the old pile are many,
many memorials of days gone by: none of them more interesting than
the Great Seal, brought over by Governor Stone in 1648, and which
is, substantially, the coat-of-arms of the Calverts. From the dome
and the portico fine views can be obtained. There is a dignity and
consequence about the building which not even the noisiest session of
the Legislature can wholly dissipate; in a word, the old State House is
the pride and glory of the commonwealth.
We have not even touched upon the gallant part played by the citizens
of the town and the colony in the Revolution; but at last the war was
over, Washington had bidden adieu to his troops in New York, and had
come hither to lay in the hands of the Congress of the States, in
session in the chamber in which the Treaty of Peace was to be signed a
year later, his commission as Commander-in-chief of the armies. That he
had been nominated to that high office by a Marylander, Thomas Johnson,
who had, in 1777, become the first Governor of the State, added not a
little to the interest of a scene described by every pen that writes of
the times. The simplicity, manliness, pathos and true dignity of the
event have never been better portrayed than in the vast painting which
adorns the historic room. Portraits of our four signers, Paca, Stone,
Chase, and Carroll of Carrollton, are also seen here, as well as those
of other men who fought with pen or sword to make us free.
[Illustration: CHARLES CARROLL OF CARROLLTON.
1737-1832.]
An odd little building, with flagged floors, huge bolts, and most
ponderous keys, still stands on the Circle, and serves as our Treasury.
It was once the home of the House of Burgesses, and is perhaps the only
building left to us from the seventeenth century. And there are statues
here of Chief Justice Taney, and of Baron DeKalb, who fell at the head
of his Marylanders in the battle of Camden; but, more distinctly than
these, we see the figures of Washington and Lafayette and all that
goodly fellowship, and it is they who will walk the State House green
when the bronzes are dust.
[Illustration: THE OLD HOUSE OF BURGESSES, NOW USED AS THE STATE
TREASURY.]
Wandering through the leafy streets, with ever a glimpse of bright
water, or a white sail shining between the trees, one notes the Old
World flavor of their names; Cornhill, Hanover, Prince George (of
Denmark), King George (the First), Duke of Gloucester--in honor,
this, of the pathetic little royal child whose early death broke the
heart of William of Orange, and left Queen Anne a childless woman.
And the houses that border the streets, sometimes set close to the
pavement, sometimes half hidden by trees, are worthy of them, and of
the air of unspeakable contentment and aloofness from the cares of
this world which is characteristic of the place. Here is one built by
the Proprietary Governor, Ogle, spacious and elegant, in whose garden
are yet some bits of the box-bordering of a forgotten labyrinth, and
here is one whose carved doorway arrests every eye. The Paca homestead
has wings that are little houses of themselves, joined to the house
proper by long, low corridors; and opposite to it, in the delightful
little Iglehart house, there is a panelled room where ghosts might
walk. The façade of the Brice mansion, built of English brick, as is
many another in the town, with long corridors and transverse wings,
is said to be two hundred feet long; while within, the drawing-room
situated in the old fashion at the back of the house that it might
overlook the garden, is yet the delight and despair of architects, so
noble are its proportions, and so fine the carved work of its cornice
and chimney-piece. The fame of the latter is, indeed, international.
On the State House Circle the Randall or Bordley house, built in 1740,
stands in a proud seclusion of magnolias and ivy-hung trees, and behind
a tiny paddock where a pretty Jersey cow sometimes grazes. Not far away
the Lloyd or Chase house lifts its walls in a haughty consciousness of
being the finest specimen of its class in America. It not only boasts
of mahogany doors with wrought-silver latches, carved shutters and
cornices, noble drawing-rooms and chambers, a vast hall with a curious,
double-flight of stairs, but has also a carved breakfast-room which is
ideal.
[Illustration: THE BRICE HOUSE.]
On Hanover Street is the stone mansion of Anthony Stewart, the merchant
whose brig, the _Peggy Stewart_, came into harbor one October day in
1764, laden with the repudiated tea. So incensed were the stout-hearted
Annapolitans that, to escape their ire, poor Anthony, with his own
hands, set fire to the ill-starred brig, his wife, the Peggy for whom
the boat was named, watching from her chamber window the sacrificial
flames mounting from the water’s edge. We keep a Peggy Stewart Day,
now, in Maryland, and some of us like to remember that Peggy, too, was
once the mistress of a breakfast-room which was ideal.
[Illustration: THE PEGGY STEWART HOUSE.]
At the foot of Duke-of-Gloucester Street, in 1760, John Ridout built
for himself and his children three houses that are like a castle;
and just across, hidden by the beautiful St. Mary’s Church, lies
Carrollton, the home of Charles Carroll.[4] It is occupied now by the
Redemptorist priests, and the profane shoe of a woman can gain for its
owner no nearer view than that to be had from the bridge that spans
the waterway below. It looks a very charming place, built in the Dutch
rather than the Georgian taste: gray, small windows, high-roofed, and
set in a garden which is what all Annapolis gardens are, and what all
gardens everywhere ought to be, an ordered wilderness of hollies, box,
magnolias, roses, lilacs, more roses and yet more lilacs, jessamine,
wallflowers, iris, lilies, violets, daffodils,--all the old-fashioned
flowers which ever were and ever will be the dearest and sweetest
flowers in the world.
[Illustration: THE BURNING OF THE “PEGGY STEWART.”
FROM THE PAINTING BY FRANK B. MAYER.]
It is hard to come back even to the first days of the century just
closing. The defence made by the guns of Fort Severn, which kept
Admiral Cockburn at bay, seem but recent history in the light of other
years, nor can the stirring scenes of the Civil and Spanish wars claim
even a glance. Filled with the spirit of the golden days of the Athens
of America, we sit in the deep window-seat of a panelled room, looking
out across intervening lush and flowery growths, at the dome of the
State House and at the aërial procession of the old denizens. What a
procession it is! Indians, explorers, Lords Proprietary, Governors
Royal, Republicans, Puritans, Cavaliers, priests, shipowners, sailors,
slaves! Ships sail out with rich freights of tobacco and other Colonial
produce, and ships sail in, bearing yet richer stores of silks and
spices, wines and perfumes, silver and porcelain and sumptuous
household furnishings. We see the growth in aristocracy, in wealth, in
hospitality, in luxury, the plenty of those lavish boards, the splendor
and courtliness of dress and manners of the gentry. Sedan chairs,
carried by the liveried servants, attended by link boys and by bowing,
perruqued gentlemen in gold-lace waistcoats and buckled shoes, bear the
patched and powdered ladies to balls and routs. We hear the gossip of
the playhouse--the first in America--or of the races. The _bon mots_ of
the Tuesday Club are told again; the wit flashes at the dinner given in
honor of the King’s birthday; the defeat of the Pretender, the birth
of the Dauphin, the repeal of the Stamp Act, the coming of Washington.
Anything would
“Serve as excuse for the glass”
in those
“Very merry,
Dancing, drinking,
Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking times.”
We hear, above the grave tones of the men who are talking of the
affairs of state, the clear voices of the women--fair, slender,
sweet, in pearls and brocade, singing to the accompaniment of spinet
or harpsichord music, as unlike ours as were their faces or their
thoughts, and we all but forget that the Past is dead and can come no
more, and that these are but echoes and shadows and the ashes of roses.
Behind a long brick wall, gated and sentried, lies the United States
Naval Academy, and another world.
“But that,” as Hans Andersen says, “is another story”; a story
familiar at a thousand American firesides where the life of a son
dedicated to the navy is lived over by fond hearts; a story told on
every wave of every sea where our American ships ride on their mission.
[Illustration: THE NAVAL INSTITUTE.
(WHERE THE BATTLE-FLAGS ARE KEPT.)]
On the 13th of June, 1845, James K. Polk, being President of the
United States, and George Bancroft, Secretary of the Navy--a letter
was written by Mr. Bancroft to a Board of Examiners of Midshipmen,
sitting in Philadelphia, proposing the foundation of a naval school,
and suggesting Fort Severn as a suitable site. Urged by Commodore
Thomas Ap-Catesby Jones and Captain Isaac Mayo, the Committee approved
the suggestion, and, although the usual congressional and sectional
opposition had to be overcome, the School was opened on October 10th of
the same year. During the war there was a temporary flight to Newport,
and there have been, from time to time, various schemes for removing
it permanently from Annapolis. It has long since become a permanent
fixture, and additions have been made to the Fort Severn property
(purchased in 1808), making an ample and beautiful home for the cadets
and their corps of instructors.
Time ceases to be subject to clocks when one enters the green, shady
Academy grounds, beside which the waters flash and gleam, and bells
divide the hours of the busy lives of the lithe young sailors who are
forever marching under the trees to this duty or to that; and whose
four years of residence are crowded with ten thousand things which a
landsman need not know, but which go to make a finished seaman. Among
the officers, gravely saluting them as they go to classes, one sees
many a famous face, for many of the simple, quiet gentlemen have done
great deeds in their day.
There are some memorials of older days--the monument which recalls our
victory at Tripoli, some cannon captured in some
“Sea-fight far away,”
and some figure-heads of ancient ships. Most precious of all is the
worn flag, guarded jealously in the Naval Institute, which bore the
wonderful message
“Don’t give up the Ship.”
By the docks lie various craft needed for the instruction of the
midshipmen; and with them the old _Santee_, dismantled, a ghost of
herself, lies at her last moorings. She has seen strange sights in her
day, the old _Santee_, none perhaps stranger than the trim young steel
giants of our modern navy which steam up the Bay at times.
[Illustration: THE OLD GOVERNOR’S MANSION, NOW THE NAVAL ACADEMY
LIBRARY.]
Historically, the gem of the Academy is the Library building, which was
built by Edmund Jennings, and served as a home for our governors from
1760 until 1868. It has had Washington for its guest, and many another
great man of his time. And so, no doubt, had the fine old home of the
Dulanys, near by, which was built as early as 1751. An iconoclastic
superintendent ordered its destruction in 1883,--a loss irreparable to
the lovers of the old town.
And all are its lovers, who have once felt its abiding charm.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Of all the deeds whereby Charles Carroll served his country, none,
perhaps, was more noteworthy than the writing of the four letters to
the _Maryland Gazette_, in 1773, signed “First Citizen.” In them he
pitted his young strength against the marvellous learning of Daniel
Dulany, the greatest lawyer of all the colonies, whose letters to the
same paper were signed “Antilon.” His brave defence of the rights
of the people brought Mr. Carroll the unprecedented honor of an
adjournment of the Legislature that that body might visit his house _en
masse_, to express its thanks and appreciation.
[Illustration]
FREDERICK TOWN
“THE GARDEN SPOT OF MARYLAND”
BY SARA ANDREW SHAFER
Long after the lower counties and the eastern shore of Maryland had
been turned from a wilderness into a rich and prosperous country, and
after Annapolis had grown to be one of the most brilliant and important
cities of the New World, there lay in the western part of the domain
granted to the Calverts and their heirs forever a vast and beautiful
region, which was not only _Terra Mariæ_, but _terra incognita_ as
well. Noble mountains, the remains of far older and nobler Alps,
guarded the valleys worn by innumerable streams, and rich with the
detritus of uncounted ages of erosion. Vegetation flourished under
the kindly skies, and green things of every kind, from loftiest oaks
to humblest mosses, grew in rank luxuriance over the heritage of the
wild creatures of earth and air, and the scarcely less wild Indians.
The Susquehannoghs, who chiefly lorded it here, were of the fearless
and noble Iroquois stock, and, whatever they lacked, had certainly “a
genius for nomenclature.” Their
“Love of lovely woods”
has left in one fair valley such names as Catoctin for its long western
mountain range; Linganore for its eastward hills, and Potomac, Monocacy
and Tuscarora for its rivers and streams. Vanished, like the red leaves
of an autumn forest, in these soft syllables we hear, even yet, the
voices of the “First Families” of Frederick.
One of the far-reaching consequences of the Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, in 1685, was the unrest and fear which spread all over
Europe, and scattered to the four winds tens of thousands of the
best men, not only of France and the Low Countries, but of Germany,
Switzerland and Bohemia. It is to one of these waves of emigration
that we must look for the hardy pioneers who came southward from
the settlements in Lower Pennsylvania. With the land-hunger and the
land-judgment characteristic of the Teuton, they “took up,” as the
phrase goes, the lands lying along the river they--and the Carrolls,
long after them--called Monnokasi, or Monockessy. Certain traits they
brought with them as a matter of course, these Palatines,--as they were
indiscriminatingly called,--industry, economy, honesty, and an absolute
devotion to the principles of civil and religious liberty. Some were
Labadists, some Mennonites, some Lutherans, but for the greater part
they were of the Calvinistic churches, and held the Helvetic Confession
and the Heidelberg Catechism next in honor to the open Bible. Hardly
less picturesque than the Indians were these pioneers: the women in
homespun kirtle and linen bodice; the men in the deerskin costume of
the frontiersman, tomahawk, rifle and fringed leggings included. It
was not long before they had built roads, cleared fields, sowed crops,
built houses and barns, and had planted those countless lovely orchards
that make the valley one drift of rose and snow when May-time comes.
In 1745 another settlement was begun along one of the newest roadways,
the first house being built by Thomas Schley. There is a glimmer of
doubt as to whence came the name of the village and the county formed
a year or so later. There was, it is true, a very dissolute Frederick
Calvert who died--the last Lord Baltimore--in 1771; but there was also
a Frederick, Prince of Wales, father to King George III.; and it was
no doubt in his honor that the name was given by Charles Calvert, then
bowing and smiling at the English court.
In 1766, the frontier troubles known as the French and Indian War had
assumed such proportions that General Braddock came over to see what
could be done about it. A young surveyor from Virginia, tall and brave,
with splendid physique and a judgment which impressed all who came in
contact with him, was invited to act as _aide-de-camp_ for the British
commander. The meeting between Braddock and George Washington took
place in Frederick, in April of the ill-fated year 1755, as all men
may read, not only in the pages of more serious historians, but also
in a chronicle steeped with the very spirit of the eighteenth century,
wherein William Makepeace Thackeray has recounted the adventures
of _The Virginians_. Another visitor at the same time was Benjamin
Franklin, Postmaster-General of the Colonies, who came to arrange
for the delivery of despatches to and from the expedition, and who
then first saw the younger soldier. A court-house was building, by
the way, but, by fair means or foul, Braddock, whose angry bluster
and loud oaths we can yet almost hear, aided by the wily Franklin,
impressed so many hundreds of horses, wagons, teamsters and servants
that the work was delayed for some years after the testy General, in
his coach-and-six, drove off over the mountain on May-day morning. He
left a memorial on Catoctin,--a walled-in spring of icy water, covered
by a great flat rock, under whose shelter tiny ferns and silvery-green
mosses love to grow.
There was a road to Baltimore and to Annapolis as early as 1760, and
a curiously large commerce with the Saltzburgers who had settled
in Georgia. The town flourished apace, and, besides the Palatines,
some Scotch-Irish and many English began to arrive. The gentry had
not been slow in obtaining patents to the fertile lands. In 1723 the
Carrolls received the splendid manor of Carrollton, ten thousand acres
in extent. Daniel Dulany had eight thousand acres, and the last Lord
Baltimore nearly twice as much, while other gentlemen had estates
of immense value. With fortunes such as these figures represent a
splendid style of living was possible, the effect of which was seen on
every hand. In 1760, the Market House was built, and the Presbyterians
had their pastor, while as early as 1764 the Reformed Church boasted of
a belfry, which, remodelled in 1807, is yet one of the
“Clustered spires of Frederick”
that rise from what the enamored Washington called the “garden-spot of
Maryland.”
In 1765, Father Hunter began the arduous duties of a priest whose flock
was scattered over uncounted miles of wilderness; and even before that,
perhaps, the whole county, which embraced all that is now known as
Western Maryland, was one parish of the Established Church, with All
Saints’ for its centre. Her clergymen had an annual revenue of five
thousand pounds, and this rich plum was given to one or another of
the beneficed clergy who too often disgraced the reign of the early
Georges. The most notorious of all the New World incumbents was,
perhaps, the Rev. Bennett Allen, who came to All Saints’ in 1768,
greatly against the will of the people. On the first Sunday after his
arrival the vestrymen left the church in a body. A peace-making
worshipper ventured up to the pulpit with a remonstrance, only to be
met with a drawn pistol in the clerical hand, and an oathful threat
of immediate happy despatch if he interfered with the service. That
his wild career included the murder of one Dulany in a duel, and the
plotted assassination of another, and that he died an unknown, drunken
outcast of London streets, is the shameful and pitiful ending of this
o’ertrue tale. That he has been succeeded by a long line of devout and
godly men has long ago effaced the stain he left upon the parish annals.
[Illustration: PROSPECT HALL. THE DULANY MANSION.]
Some miles to the northeast of the town a young man, Robert Strawbridge
by name, who had imbibed the doctrines of the Wesleys, formed a class
after their ideas in 1764, which Bishop Asbury said was “the first in
Maryland and America.” The small log chapel which they built antedated
any other Methodist meeting-house in America by three years, which
gives the county the right to the title of the Mother of American
Methodism.
History was fast making in those days. In 1764 the Stamp Act was
passed, and a commissioner was appointed to distribute the detested
paper in the province of Maryland. Court was sitting in Frederick Town,
but there was no paper of the prescribed variety on hand. On the 23d
of November, 1765, twelve free men of Frederick decreed and declared
that Frederick Court could attend to its own affairs without any aid
from his Majesty the King, and that, paper or no paper, its work should
proceed. John Darnell, the clerk, demurred, refused to issue unstamped
paper, was committed for contempt, submitted, and thus the first
repudiation of the Stamp Act was accomplished. The names of the twelve
justices who, without hesitation or fear, took this great step, were
these: Joseph Smith, David Lyon, Charles Jones, Samuel Beall, Joseph
Beall, Peter Bainbridge, Thomas Price, Andrew Hugh, William Blair,
William Luckett, Thomas Dickson and Thomas Beatty.
People took their pleasures gladly in those days, and in an old
New York _Postboy_ (January 2, 1766), and a yet older Philadelphia
_Gazette_ (December 26, 1765), we read of a right jolly mock funeral,
in which the Stamp Act was buried with much ceremony, the chief mourner
being the unlucky distributor, Zachariah Hood, in effigy, which, during
the frolic, was hanged in the Court-House Square, near the stocks and
whipping-post. The usual supper and ball of the period ended the day.
The skies grew ever darker, and, in the next old paper to which we
turn, we read of pledges made to support the blockaded Bostonians, on
whose shoulders the burden of a common injustice was laid. Next came
the call to arms, and the start, on their long march to Boston, of
two companies, in command of Captain Michael Cresap, whose father had
blazed his way to the Ohio. One of his lieutenants was John Ross Key,
whose son Francis, yet unborn, was to make his name forever famous.
On the roll of honor the county gives high place to Sergeant Laurence
Everhart, who, in the battle of Cowpens, prisoner though he was,
bore himself right haughtily in the presence of Colonel Tarleton.
Escaping by good fortune, a better fortune enabled him to deal a blow
at a British officer whose sword was lifted against Colonel William
Augustine Washington, so saving that brave life. Long years afterward
we hear of a meeting between the veterans, when “with tears and kisses”
the old bond was strengthened.
At home work scarcely less patriotic was doing. Flax, hemp and wool
were grown, spun and woven; a gun-lock factory was established,
saltpetre was made and in the iron furnaces owned by D’Hughes and by
Thomas Johnson and his brothers, cannon and bombs were cast. The Market
House became an arsenal. Hessian prisoners, hundreds of them, were
confined in a log jail built for them, and in some stone barracks,
still partly standing. To reinforce Washington, and to share the perils
of Valley Forge, seventeen hundred men left home, and until peace was
declared, the people of Frederick bore their share of the danger and
the loss with all bravery and cheerfulness. It is like a page from the
history of the darkest ages, however, to read this sentence passed upon
seven Tories, convicted of treasonable conspiracies:
“_You shall be carried to the gaol in Frederick town, and be hanged
therein: you shall be cut down to the earth alive, and your entrails
shall be taken out and burned while you are yet alive. Your heads
shall be cut off; and your body shall be divided into four parts;
and your head and quarters shall be placed where His Excellency the
Governor shall appoint. So Lord have mercy on your poor souls._”
This terrible sentence was in four instances executed!
[Illustration: ROSE HILL, THE HOME OF GOVERNOR THOMAS JOHNSON.]
A mile or so north of the town, where the lands are richest, and the
view up and down the valley and the blue mountains is finest, lies
Rose Hill, where Thomas Johnson lived and died. Born in 1732, of sires
who had commanded ships against the Invincible Armada, this man had
few peers in the era which his wisdom, his industry, his sterling
honesty and his pure patriotism adorned. He had made a name at the
brilliant provincial Bar, when in 1765, in answer to an appeal made
by the Massachusetts Assembly, a Maryland Assembly was formed, and
he took his place among the men who had set for themselves the task
of righting the wrongs of the colonies. He became a member of the
Committee of Safety and the Committee of Remonstrance, and, in 1774,
he aided John Adams, Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry in framing
the Address to the Crown. On the 15th of June, 1775, Thomas Johnson
nominated George Washington to be Commander-in-Chief of the Continental
armies. This act, which would seem to be glory enough for one life, was
but an incident in his busy days, for his name is heard of wherever
probity and wise-heartedness were needed. That it does not appear on
the Declaration of Independence is owing to the fact that the serious
illness of a member of his family made his absence from Philadelphia
necessary on that fateful 2d of July.
When the partition from England was completed, and the Colony became a
State, he was chosen to be its first Governor, an office he filled for
three terms. He was an ardent supporter of the Federal Constitution,
and was one of those instrumental in making Washington our first
President. The portfolio of Secretary of State and the District
Judgeship were earnestly and affectionately urged upon him by his old
friend, who finally persuaded him to accept a seat upon the Supreme
Bench. This he soon resigned, by reason of delicate health. Together
with Daniel Carroll and Dr. Stewart he selected the sites for the
Capitol, the President’s mansion and various other public buildings
of the new seat of government, after which he retired to private
life; his one subsequent public appearance being on the occasion of a
commemorative funeral service after the death of Washington, when he
pronounced a beautiful eulogy. His own life drew to its earthly close
in 1819, and his dust rests in All Saints’ burying-ground, surrounded
by the ancient tombstones of his friends and neighbors, overgrown with
wild grasses and myrtle, swept by the pure mountain winds and brooded
by the deep peace of the valley he loved so well. His best eulogy was
the few words spoken by John Adams in which he said that “but for such
men as Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Chase and Thomas
Johnson there would have been no Revolution.”
[Illustration: GOVERNOR THOMAS JOHNSON AND FAMILY.
FROM THE PAINTING BY CHARLES WILSON PEALE.]
After the peace the town grew steadily in wealth, comfort and luxury.
The road which is called the National Pike, the great artery between
East and West, was also the main street of Frederick, and was the
scene of much life. Inns of great excellence divided the journeys
into pleasant stages, wagons and coaches dashed out and in to a great
snapping of whips, jangling of bells and blowing of horns, and while
the horses were changed many a glimpse was had of the men who were
talked about early in the nineteenth century.
In 1797, Frederick College was founded. The church on the hill was
outgrown. The older gentry had worshipped there; Bishop Claggett had
held there in 1793 the first Confirmation in the State, and the grassy
churchyard was sacred with much holy dust,--but it was too small and
remote for the growing congregation. Partly by gift, and partly by the
curious aid of a lottery, a second church was built in 1814, still used
and loved as All Saints’ Chapel. It had a ceiling of singular beauty,
high-backed pews, a gallery for servants, and in 1826 the “new organ,”
yet in daily use, was placed therein.
[Illustration: FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.]
One of the faithful worshippers in the church was Francis Scott Key,
who was born in the upper part of the county in 1780, but who spent
some years of his early manhood practising at the Frederick Bar. Of his
quiet, lovely life, but little is known, comparatively, although a few
persons yet linger who remember him. A good citizen, a good master, a
good lawyer, a poet of very sweet and true, if limited, powers, the
deep spirituality of whose few hymns can never sound elsewhere as in
the old church, he would probably have passed through and out of life
as many other good men do, but for the strain of one September night in
1814, when his eager eyes watched for the first ray of dawn, if haply
they might yet see the Star Spangled Banner afloat over Fort McHenry,
and a nation’s love and loyalty found everlasting voice through his.
To Frederick, in 1801, came Mr. Key’s close friend, soon to be his
sister’s husband, Roger Brooke Taney, for many years Chief Justice of
the United States. For twenty-one years he lived there, and returned,
his long life, full of work and of honors, over, to sleep beside his
mother in the little burial-place of the Jesuits at the Novitiate.
[Illustration: CHIEF JUSTICE ROGER B. TANEY.]
May a brief pause be made in this hasty chronicle to look at the great
Roman Catholic foundations of Frederick which lend such an unusual
aspect to the part of the town in which they stand. The long, dull
façade of the Novitiate fronts the school and the beautiful church,
and next that the great walls of the convent arise, shutting out the
world from the still, cloistered life within. Many men eminent in the
order have been part of the place--none of them more interesting,
perhaps, than Father John Du Bois, who came thither in 1792. He was an
_émigré_ of the French Revolution, in which his old classmates at the
College of Louis-le-Grand, Camille Desmoulins and Robespierre, figured
so largely, and he afterwards wore a mitre.
In 1824, Lafayette included Frederick in his great tour of rejoicing,
and was accorded the usual welcoming parades, speeches, dinner and
ball. Only a few years ago a beautiful, blind old lady, who had been a
beautiful, bright-eyed young wife, used to tell of her noble guest. She
was a favorite granddaughter of Governor Johnson, and in her girlhood
had helped Louisa Johnson, the wife of John Quincy Adams, to dispense
the unpretentious hospitality of the White House. Mr. Adams, she said,
got up and built his hearth-fire of a morning himself! It was a chapter
from an old romance to listen to her kindly talk of “the old times and
the days that were before us,” and when she “went away,” almost the
last of the perfect breeding and high simplicity of the old, old days
left Maryland forever.
So much must be left out that hardly a word can be given to the Civil
War, which found the old town alive with the old fervor. Not that
all its sons thought alike. Sometimes the gray uniforms thronged the
streets; sometimes the blue; once there was even a skirmish on the
main street. In the terrible Battle Autumn of 1862, Frederick was the
heart of the war. Dr. Holmes came down, after Antietam battle, to make
his famous “Hunt after the Captain,” and even the sad, gaunt face of
President Lincoln was seen among the rows of wounded and dying men that
filled convent and church--every available space. The roads for miles
in every direction were crowded with the paraphernalia of war--of hurt
and of healing.
[Illustration: THE OLD REFORMED CHURCH.]
In the early September days, Generals Lee and Stonewall Jackson were
both here with the armies, gathering for the fearful struggles of South
Mountain and Antietam. On the night of the 7th General Jackson drove
into town in an ambulance, to attend divine service in the Reformed
Church, where, as he wrote to his wife, and as is told of him by many
who saw him, he fell asleep. On the morning of the 10th, the camps
breaking, and the march over the mountain beginning, General Jackson,
with Major H. Kyd Douglass of his staff, rode to the Presbyterian manse
on Second Street, to pay his respects to his friends, the Rev. Dr. and
Mrs. Ross. As they had not yet arisen, the General pencilled a line of
greeting and farewell, with military precision noting the hour, “5¹⁄₄
A.M.,” and remounting his horse under the great silver-poplar rode down
Mill Alley, a narrow lane which crosses Carroll Creek by a ford and a
high foot-bridge, and so on to the Pike, or Patrick Street, where he
rejoined his command, and led them westward.
[Illustration: BARBARA FRITCHIE.]
A few hundred yards to the east of Mill Alley, and again across a
winding of Carroll Creek, lived a very old and intensely loyal woman,
Barbara Fritchie, who was no myth, but a figure familiar to Frederick
from time immemorial. Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on December
3, 1766, she had come, as Barbara Hauer, to Frederick so many years
before that on the occasion of the visit of General Washington in 1791
and a ball given in his honor, she loaned some of her choice china to
adorn the table, and his Excellency drank a cup of tea poured from her
yet carefully cherished teapot. She and her husband, John Fritchie,
a glover, had long lived in a small house adjoining the creek which
was demolished after one of the perilous floods to which the stream
was formerly subject. On the opposite side of the creek is a tiny
park, with a deep, cool spring which is often called by her name, and
from which many a weary soldier drank. She was of the Reformed faith,
and her devotion to the Union cause was almost passionate. Small
hospitality had she for the tired Confederate who sometimes dropped for
a moment’s rest upon her “stoop.” Such visitors were shown her cane,
and in most vigorous Saxon were invited to “move on.” It was said that
just before the battle of South Mountain, as the Union troops were
passing her house, General Reno, seeing her venerable welcoming face,
asked her age.
[Illustration: HOME OF BARBARA FRITCHIE.]
“Ninety-six! Boys, give three cheers for ninety-six!” he cried, and
so rode on to his death. Perhaps she waved a small flag at him, but
this one thing we know, that until Barbara Fritchie, who died on the
18th of December of that year, and Stonewall Jackson met in Whittier’s
stirring ballad, they never met at all. Those who honor the memory of a
brave Christian soldier are glad that the story is not true; those who
see in the poem an incident too picturesque to be willingly lost from
the story of the war, are sorry that it is not; but all who have seen
the valley will be for ever grateful for the perfect picture of its
loveliness.
Clinging to its old faiths, its old churches, its old traditions, its
old customs; clinging to its old houses, its old mahogany and china
and portraits, its sweet old gardens and its sweeter friendliness and
helpfulness and loyalty, the generations come and go.
“And ever the stars above look down
On the stars below in Frederick town.”
[Illustration: THE HATED BRITISH TAX-STAMP, 1765-1766.]
[Illustration]
WASHINGTON
THE NATION’S CAPITAL
BY FRANK A. VANDERLIP
Many generations before George Washington, as the New World Romulus,
paced off in person the metes and bounds of the Federal City, the
powerful Algonquin tribe of American Indians had established their
capital within the confines of what is now the District of Columbia.
Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas, conducted, with his eighty painted
chiefs, his savage councils of war, or peaceably smoked his calumet
within view of the hill destined to become the site of the forum of
the Republic. Nacochtank, afterwards Latinized as Anacostan by the
Jesuit fathers who accompanied Lord Baltimore to Maryland, and now
called Anacostia, a suburb of Washington, was the precise location of
Powhatan’s wigwam capital.
The first white man to approach the seat of government of these
barbarian warriors was Captain John Smith, who sailed up the
“Patawomeke” in 1608. The famous adventurer only partially explored the
country, the principal item in the log-book of his voyage being that
he found the river “full of luscious fish and its shores lined with
ferocious savages.”
Sixteen years later there began to appear in British publications vivid
recitals of adventure in the regions bordering the Patawomeke, and
alluring descriptions of the “fair and fertile” domain surrounding the
ancient capital of the Algonquins. These articles were written by Henry
Fleet, a daring trader, who, in search of furs, and braving the perils
of capture, had gone fearlessly as an uncommissioned ambassador to the
council-seats of the Monahoacs, the Monacans and the Powhatans, had
established trade relations with these crude inhabitants and had roamed
at will through their wildernesses. “The most healthful and pleasantest
region in all this country” was his characterization of that portion
of Maryland embracing the district to be chosen nearly three centuries
later as the seat of our national Government.
The description of this region sent to England by the intrepid fur
trader attracted, in 1660, a party of emigrants who founded homes in
the Maryland forests and meadows, fought or bargained for advantage
with the Indians, and soon reduced to ruin the rude huts of their
primitive capital. Husbandry invaded their domains and corn and wheat
crops were grown. It looked as if romance had fled to remoter forests,
and that henceforth that portion of the New World now the capital
city of the United States would be given over to the “homely joys and
destiny obscure” of emigrant farmers and their heirs.
For more than a hundred years the only record these humble settlers
gave the outside world was that they had found the soil productive and
that their farms were bordered by a majestic river on which white swan
floated in innumerable flocks.
It was reserved for the father of the American Republic to discover
that from the time of the original occupation of the region this simple
colony of wood-choppers and ploughmen had cherished a reputed prophecy
made in 1663 that this locality would, in the course of destiny, become
the renowned capital of a great nation.
To Washington and Major L’Enfant, who in an antique tavern in
Georgetown met the heirs and descendants of these pioneers to negotiate
the transfer of property to the Government, the strange story was told
that one, Francis Pope, in the year 1663, had had a vision wherein he
beheld a stately house of parliament on what is now Capitol Hill. In
pursuance of this dream he had purchased that eminence and had called
it “Rome,” and in further keeping with his sense of divination had
given to a sluggish yellow stream at the base of the hill the name
of “Tiber.” Pope, it was asserted, died in the faith that the wooded
hill he had christened would some day be crowned with a grand edifice
devoted to the deliberations of a mighty empire. Some of the more
irreverent settlers, dolefully observing the continued remoteness
of Pope’s uninhabited “Rome” from any possible capital, derisively
substituted, it was claimed, the name Goose Creek for the Tiber and
denied the hill the dignity of even a colloquial title.
The Tiber still flows on, but in the obscurity of a modern sewer.
The poet, Tom Moore, who stumbled through the bogs and over the
“magnificent distances” of what pretended to be a capital city in
1804, turned the story around and pictured the founders of the city
reveling in burlesque dreams concerning the future of the capital, and
attempting to mimic the glory of Rome and give absurd dignity to Goose
Creek by naming it the Tiber.
[Illustration: PIERRE CHARLES L’ENFANT.]
The original maps of the city, drawn by Major L’Enfant in 1790, give
both names to the stream, and there has come to light a much older
document, proving the groundlessness of the poet’s lampoon, and
giving substance to the romantic tale concerning Francis Pope and his
prophecy. It is his original abstract of title and reads as follows:
“June the 5th, 1663. Layd out for Francis Pope of this Province
Gentleman a parcel of land in Charles County called Rome lying on the
East side of the Anacostian River beginning at a marked oak standing
by the river side, the bounded tree of Captain Robert Troop and
running north by the river for breadth the length 200 perches to a
bounded oak standing at the mouth of a bay or inlet called Tiber ...
and now laid out for 400 acres more or less.”
Whether this nomenclature in the title attests the dream of this
pioneer or was adopted by him in a spirit of whimsical humor may be
left to the fancy of the reader, but the fact that 237 years ago
Capitol Hill was called Rome, and a stream at its base the Tiber, gives
dramatic interest to the reputed prophecy. It is one of the several
beautiful traditions that impart a romantic interest to the genesis of
Washington.
The record of the complicated circumstances resulting in the final
location of a site for the capital is one of the most fascinating
chapters in American history. The Continental Congress was a migratory
body. It had no abiding capital, the exigencies of war forcing it
from city to city. During the stress of the Revolution it convened
its sessions at Philadelphia, Baltimore, Lancaster, York, Princeton,
Annapolis, Trenton and New York City.
For four years prior to the capitulation of Cornwallis, Congress had
held its sessions in Philadelphia, and the city seemed destined to
become the permanent capital. Public sentiment favored such selection,
for the Quaker City was identified with most of the great and
far-reaching acts of the American colonies. There a document of human
rights, unparalleled since Magna Charta, had been signed by a company
of immortals, and there the Liberty Bell had pealed forth its joyous
tones for freedom.
Notwithstanding the splendid sentiments favoring the retention of
Philadelphia as the capital, there were statesmen in that day who
opposed selecting a city whose immediate interests and political
strength might influence and perhaps dominate the legislation that
should be national. Paris had not yet risen to override France,
but London had at times shown its mastery over Parliament and the
King. Some of the public men, therefore, hopeful of establishing the
capital remote from the concentrated power of a great city, favored
the creation of a city that should be wholly under the control of the
nation.
The project might never have been accomplished but for the mutinous
uprising of a body of unpaid soldiers who attempted to compel Congress
by force of arms to settle their arrears. In this extremity, the
Executive Council of Pennsylvania was appealed to, but declined to
interfere, claiming that the State militia could not be relied upon,
as its members were largely in sympathy with the revolters. In the
bankrupt condition of the Treasury, however, Congress had a sure
defence, and the hopelessness of further sedition served to disarm the
insurrectionary band. But Congress had learned its lesson and sought a
more peaceful session at Trenton.
From this time, with Congress sitting in various cities until 1790, the
question of selecting a permanent site for the capital became one of
the most engrossing issues before the American people. New York offered
public buildings free; Virginia and Maryland offered to cede districts
ten miles square and to furnish additional subsidies as an inducement.
The advantages of Philadelphia and Baltimore were ably advanced, while
Germantown, Conogocheague, Wright’s Ferry, Peach Bottom and other
ambitious centres sent persuasive orators into the acrimonious forum to
plead their respective claims.
Contumacy, satire, hatred, envy and unreason struggled with wisdom
and patriotism for nearly a decade. It was conceded by all that the
American capital should be fixed as near as possible to what would
remain the centre of population, but as to the location destined to
enjoy the distinction there was the greatest possible conflict of
conjecture. Goodhue declared that it would remain in the North for
countless ages, and that when it did shift it would travel toward the
manufacturing districts of New England.
Stone of Maryland argued that as the tides of humanity followed the
lines of least resistance, they would flow into the warm and fertile
South.
The vast domain to the westward was not taken into the calculations of
statesmen predicting the course of empire. The profoundest philosophers
of the latter part of the eighteenth century were unable to grasp the
transformations soon to be wrought by the application of steam. They
could not dream that subsequent generations would establish a teeming
civilization in the distant and unmeasured solitudes. A century later,
when the eleventh census was taken, the centre of population was five
hundred and twenty miles westward of the spot Congress had fixed
upon as the unchanging focus of our growth. Madison alone caught a
glimpse of continental possibilities, and believed that America might
“speedily behold an astonishing mass of people on the western waters;”
and although for that reason it might be impossible to select a site
for the capital that would remain central as regards population, it
was of the utmost importance to choose a point whence the knowledge of
new enactments could be the most quickly disseminated throughout the
land. If it were possible, he contended, to promulgate the proceedings
of Congress by some simultaneous operation, it would be of less
consequence where the seat of government might be established. A site
along the Potomac began to be favored, as the then projected canal, now
paralleling the Potomac from Georgetown to Cumberland, would afford the
most convenient and rapid means of conveying to waiting citizens beyond
the Alleghanies the documentary decrees of the Congress of the United
States.
Could Washington and his colleagues have imagined that in a later age
the tidings of the deliberations of Congress, instead of depending
for transmission upon canal-boats, would be flashed instantly, by the
clicking of mysterious keys, to the distant shores of the continent,
and even to possessions beyond the seas, the Potomac to-day would
probably not be graced by the beautiful city of Washington.
Nearly all the members agreed that the capital should be located on
some waterway communicating with the Atlantic and connected with the
territory of the West. The Delaware, the Susquehanna, the Potomac, and
even Codorus Creek, were urged.
In the midst of the diatribes which these debates created, the
unconscious comedian of the House, Thomas Vining of Maryland, delivered
a speech in favor of the Potomac which became famous not for its
lucidity or logic, but for the absurdities of its bombast.
Charles Dickens’s comment concerning Congressional debate of a later
day, that the constituents of American statesmen boasted not of what
their representatives said, but of the length of time they talked,
would have fittingly described the attitude of the popular mind
toward the fight for the capital. Every member of both Houses had won
the plaudits of his respective followers by almost endless speeches
championing some locality, or devoted to arraignment of the sinister
motives of opponents.
Mr. Vining’s speech was a decided relief. In the first place, it was
brief, and secondly, its freedom from malevolence together with its
bizarre humor gave it a distinction unique in the famous controversy.
“Though the interest of the State I represent is involved in it,”
said he, “I am yet to learn of the Committee whether Congress are
to tickle the trout on the stream of the Codorus, to build their
sumptuous palaces on the banks of the Potomac, or to admire commerce
with her expanded wings on the waters of the Delaware. I have, on
this occasion, educated my mind to impartiality and have endeavored
to chastise its prejudices. I confess to the House and to the world,
that viewing the subject with all its circumstances, I am in favor of
the Potomac. I wish the seat of government to be fixed there, because
I think the interest, the honor and the greatness of the country
require it. I look on it as the centre from which those streams are
to flow that are to animate and invigorate the body politic. From
thence, it appears to me, the rays of government will most naturally
diverge to the extremities of the Union. I declare that I look on the
western territory in an awful and striking point of view. To that
region the unpolished sons of earth are flowing from all quarters,
men to whom the protection of the laws, and the controlling force of
the government are equally necessary; from this great consideration I
conclude that the banks of the Potomac are the proper station.”
Obscurity of logic and serio-comic rhetoric had accomplished what
solemn oratory and studied satire had failed to do, and the House, for
the first time since the question of locating the capital had provoked
the ambitions and hostilities of every State, joined in unanimous and
jocular applause.
The Constitution adopted in 1787 gave to Congress the power to
“exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over such
District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may by cession of
particular States and the acceptance of Congress become the seat of
the Government of the United States.” This provision served only to
increase the competition. After the conflicting efforts of several
States to secure the prize, a bill was passed on September 27, 1789,
locating the capital at Germantown, but, pending an amendment to the
bill, the Senate adjourned, and when the next session was convened both
Houses had decided to change their vote.
The contest might have continued long enough to dismember the Union
but for the genius of Jefferson and Hamilton, who brought about a
compromise. Jefferson, in his _Ana_, has recorded the inside history
leading to the final selection of a site for the capital. At the
time Hamilton was urging the passage of his bill to have the Federal
Government assume the State debts, amounting to $20,000,000. The
measure was defeated in the House, and Hamilton invoked Jefferson’s aid
to secure a reconsideration, stating that the creditor States of the
East threatened secession if their claims were not considered.
“I proposed to him,” says Jefferson, “to dine with me the next
day, and I would invite another friend or two and bring them into
conference together, and I thought it impossible that reasonable men,
consulting together coolly, could fail by some mutual sacrifices
of opinion, to form a compromise which was to save the Union.
The discussion took place. It was finally agreed that whatever
importance had been attached to the rejection of the proposition,
the preservation of the Union and of concord among the States was
more important, and that, therefore, it would be better that the
vote of rejection should be rescinded, to effect which some members
should change their votes. But it was observed that this pill
would be peculiarly bitter to the Southern States, and that some
concomitant measure should be adopted to sweeten it a little to them.
There had been propositions to fix the seat of government either at
Philadelphia or at Georgetown, on the Potomac; and it was thought by
giving it to Philadelphia for ten years and to Georgetown permanently
afterwards, this might calm in some degree the ferment which might be
occasioned by the other measure alone. So two of the Potomac members,
White and Lee, agreed to change their votes, and Hamilton undertook
to carry the other point.”
Some historians have accepted Jefferson’s account as final, but
others, studying the inflexible purposes of Washington, believe that
a controlling power more potent than the wine and compromises at
a political dinner finally secured the vote for the Potomac site.
Years before, when a young lieutenant, encamped with Braddock’s army
on Observatory Hill, Washington had “noted the beauty of the broad
plateau” on which the Capitol was destined to be reared, and had
“marked the breadth of the picture, and the strong colors in the ground
and the environing wall of wooded heights which rolled back against the
sky, as if to enclose a noble area of landscape, fit for the supreme
deliberations of a continental nation.”
The loftiest minds in Congress were swayed by Washington’s judgment.
They agreed with him that America should establish the splendid
precedent of a nation locating and founding a city by legislative
enactment for its permanent capital. Furthermore, they wished to honor
their first President and the great general and counsellor who had
made their independence possible, by conferring upon him the power to
select for this Federal city the locality he had in prophetic fancy
chosen as a suitable site for the capital of the Republic.
In the act passed July 16, 1790, Congress expressed its faith in the
President by permitting him to establish the capital anywhere along
the Potomac between the East Branch and the Conogocheague, a distance
of eighty miles. The boundaries of no other city were ever fixed by
so illustrious a surveyor. It is recorded that, as he walked over the
wilderness with his engineering instruments and corps, he was harassed
by the “importunities of anxious residents and grasping speculators,”
but not for a moment did he waver in his purpose to select the site
whose majesty had appealed to him in former years as a fitting
environment for the Federal home. Within nine months the confines of
the federal territory were established. The corner-stone was laid with
appropriate ceremonies at Jones’s Point, Alexandria, April 15, 1791,
but the territory west of the river was retroceded to Virginia in 1846.
Not a cent was advanced by Congress for buildings or grounds. In fact,
with an empty treasury and no credit, Congress was unable to give
financial aid.
Washington himself drew up the original agreement by which the owners
were to convey the land to the Government. The proprietors agreed
that all lands necessary for streets, avenues, alleys, etc., should
be surrendered free of cost. The building lots were to be equally
apportioned between the Government and the individuals. For the larger
plots necessary for public buildings and other government uses, the
owners were to receive compensation at the rate of £25 per acre.
Washington thought that by this arrangement the Government might sell
the smaller lots and with the proceeds buy the large ones needed for
public uses.
It is a memorable picture, that of the “Cincinnatus of the West,” the
renowned statesman, President, general and engineer, planting his
theodolite here and there, marking the confines of the capital city,
or travelling on horseback to the Georgetown tavern to discuss terms
and titles with the owners of the land. The spectacle of Washington
laying out the city and presiding at the laying of the corner-stone
of its Capitol, appealed to the dramatic sense of Daniel Webster,
who in delivering the oration on the occasion of the laying of the
corner-stone of the extension of the Capitol, July 4, 1851, alluded as
follows to the city’s illustrious founder: “He heads a short procession
over these naked fields; he crosses yonder stream on a fallen tree; he
ascends to the top of this eminence, whose original oaks of the forest
stood as thick around him as if the spot had been devoted to Druidical
worship, and here he performs the appointed duty of the day.”
[Illustration: STATUE OF GEN. WINFIELD SCOTT, WASHINGTON.]
The planning of the city was entrusted to Pierre Charles L’Enfant,
who had been a major of engineers during the Revolution, and later
had proved a popular architect both in Philadelphia and New York. He
studied the Potomac situation and drew up the plan of a city on so
magnificent a scale that it was considered wild and chimerical. Nothing
like it existed in the New World, and few cities in the Old equalled
the grandeur of his projections. L’Enfant was removed before having
progressed far with the work, and Andrew Ellicott of Pennsylvania
was appointed in his place. But the present widely admired plan of
Washington had its origin in the artistic, creative mind of L’Enfant.
In 1792, Congress voted him a sum of five hundred guineas, and deeded
him a lot in Washington, as compensation for his services; but the
designing of the capital city had been to him a work of art and love,
and he rejected all considerations of payment. His dismissal had been
brought about by his refusal to submit his plans to the Commissioners,
his defence being that if his design were published speculators would
seize upon the “vistas and architectural squares and raise huddles of
shanties which would permanently disfigure the city.”
When Madison became President, he sought to honor L’Enfant by offering
him the professorship of engineering at West Point, but again the
artistic foreigner declined to accept anything at the hands of the
people who, he felt, had failed to appreciate the supreme effort of his
genius. His final years he spent as a pensioner at the manor houses of
the Digges family in Maryland. He died in the home of Dudley Digges in
1824, and was buried in the garden of the Chellum Castle Manor near
Bladensburg, where to-day his grave is marked only by a cedar tree.
Inasmuch as the great projects of L’Enfant are receiving to this day
the attention of the Government, it would not be inappropriate, in the
centennial year of Washington’s existence, to give his remains fitting
and affectionate sepulture in the city he designed.
The Commissioners, at a meeting held in Georgetown, September 8, 1791,
decided to call the Federal district, “Territory of Columbia,” and the
Federal city, the “City of Washington.” At this same meeting the method
of designating the streets by letters and numbers was adopted. The
name of the city has remained unchanged, but the name of the territory
was afterwards changed by Congress to the “District of Columbia.”
For a short time after the city was plotted, Washington enjoyed its
first real-estate boom, although that word was not then known. The
lots sold more readily abroad than at home, and for a time brought
extravagant prices in London. However, comparatively few seem to have
been disposed of, and the meagre return from sales was most unfortunate
because the money was badly needed to pay for the first public
buildings. Finally, the President made a personal appeal to Maryland,
which lent $100,000, not, however, without first securing the personal
bond of the Commissioners.
The Capitol was planned by Dr. William Thornton, an Englishman, who
seems to have been a man of some natural talent, but unskilled in
architecture. Stephen L. Hallett, a professional house-builder, also
submitted specifications for the building, and there is good reason to
suppose that Thornton’s plans, as finally accepted, were considerably
affected by Hallett’s more practical drawings.
When the corner-stone of the Capitol was ready to be laid, great
preparations were made for the event. Companies of militia and
artillery were called out, and civic societies, public officials and
many distinguished citizens were invited. With appropriate ceremonies
of the military and of the Masonic order, the President deposited in
the corner-stone, together with corn, wine, and oil, a silver plate
bearing this inscription, which the Commissioners first ordered to be
read aloud:
“This Southeast Corner Stone of the Capitol of the United States
of America in the City of Washington was laid on the 18th day of
September, 1793, in the thirteenth year of American Independence,
in the first year of the second term of the Presidency of George
Washington, whose virtues in the civil administration of his country
have been as conspicuous and beneficial as his military valor and
prudence have been useful in establishing her liberties, and in the
year of Masonry, 5793, by the President of the United States, in
concert with the Grand Lodge of Maryland, several lodges under its
jurisdiction, and Lodge No. 22, from Alexandria, Virginia.
THOMAS JEFFERSON,
DAVID STUART,
DANIEL CARROL, Commissioners.
JOSEPH CLARK, R. W. G. M. P. T.
JAMES HOBAN,
STEPHEN HALLETT, Architects.
COLLEN WILLIAMSON, M. Mason.”
[Illustration: THE CAPITOL.
FROM THE CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY.]
Two years later Thomas Twining, an English traveller who had taken an
important part in laying the foundations of the Indian Empire, visited
Washington, and thus describes a trip from Georgetown to Mr. Law’s
house at Washington:
“Having crossed an extensive tract of level country somewhat
resembling an English heath, I entered a large wood through which a
very imperfect road had been made, principally by removing the trees,
or rather the upper parts of them, in the usual manner. After some
time this indistinct way assumed more the appearance of a regular
avenue, the trees here having been cut down in a straight line.
Although no habitation of any kind was visible, I had no doubt but I
was now riding along one of the streets of the metropolitan city. I
continued in this spacious avenue for half a mile, and then came out
upon a large spot, cleared of wood, in the centre of which I saw two
buildings on an extensive scale, and some men at work on one of them.
The only human beings I should have seen here not a great many years
before would have been some savages of the Potomac, whose tribe is
said to have sent deputies to treat with William Penn at the assembly
he held at Chester.
“Advancing and speaking to these workmen, they informed me that I
was now in the centre of the city, and that the building before
me was the Capitol, and the other destined to be a tavern. As the
greatest cities have a similar beginning, there was really nothing
surprising here, nor out of the usual order of things; but still the
scene which surrounded me--the metropolis of a great nation in its
first stage from a sylvan state--was strikingly singular. I thought
it the more so, as the accounts which I had received of Washington
while at Philadelphia, and the plan which I had seen hung up in the
dining-room at Bladensburg, had prepared me for something rather more
advanced. Looking from where I now stood, I saw on every side a thick
wood pierced with avenues in a more or less perfect state.”
Sometime before this, and in answer to an advertisement by the
Commissioners, James Hoban, an Irish architect, then acting as
supervising architect of the Capitol, had submitted plans for a
“President’s House,” and they had been accepted. Inasmuch as the Act of
Congress creating the District decreed that the houses for Congress and
the President should be ready for occupancy by the year 1800, the work
on both was now carried forward vigorously. Washington, retiring to his
home at Mount Vernon at the close of his second term in 1797, gave over
the care of the Federal city to his successor, John Adams. President
Adams first appointed a new architect for the Capitol, Stephen Hallett,
who resigned after holding the position for one year. George Hadfield,
an Englishman, next appointed, resigned in 1798, and left James Hoban,
the supervising architect, to finish the work alone.
Congress having adjourned about May 20, 1800, to meet in Washington
in November, the seat of government was removed from Philadelphia to
Washington early in June of that year. The records and files of the
various departments were transferred by vessels chartered for the
purpose, and, as soon as possible, were put in order in the buildings
to which they had been assigned. The government officials and clerks
came by stage, bringing their families with them. From the records of
the Treasury Department it appears that the Government met all the
expenses of moving them and their household effects.
When the government officials arrived, only the north wing of the
Capitol had been completed, while the Treasury Building, a plain
two-story structure of thirty rooms located on the site of the south
front of the present edifice, was the only public building ready for
the occupancy of the executive departments. Work had been begun on the
War Office at the southwest corner of the White House grounds.
When Congress convened in November, little progress had been made. The
few hotels and buildings of the city were so overcrowded that few of
the members could secure quarters nearer than Georgetown, three miles
away through mud and forest. Streets existed for the most part only on
paper, and Pennsylvania Avenue, the principal thoroughfare, was really
a bog lined with bushes. The only sidewalk, that from the Capitol to
the Treasury, being made of stone chippings, so wounded the feet and
tempers of pedestrians as to make the mud of the street preferable.
[Illustration: THE CITY OF WASHINGTON IN 1800.
FROM AN OLD PRINT.]
One of the few ladies to follow their husbands into “the wilderness”
at this time was Mrs. Adams. To her belongs the distinction of being
the first mistress to grace the President’s house. The house itself
was but partially finished, and, though Congress had appropriated
$6000 with which to furnish it, but little of the furniture was in
place when she arrived. Mrs. Adams, however, seems to have been of a
bright and cheerful disposition, for, in her letters to her daughter,
she gives a more lenient account of the inconveniences and a more just
view of the possibilities of the city than many of the new residents.
During the short remaining period of President Adams’s term, Mrs. Adams
assisted her husband to receive at many formal dinners and stately
functions, and under their combined influence Washington society became
as polished and as exclusive as the best in other cities.
[Illustration: THE WHITE HOUSE.
FROM THE NORTHEAST.]
A drawback to the city’s progress lay in the constant agitation for
the removal of the capital--an agitation that in no wise abated until
in very recent times, when the railroad and the telegraph overcame
“remoteness and inaccessibility,” the chief grounds for complaint. The
press of New York and Philadelphia united with the Northern members
in declaiming against the discomforts of the infant city, and such
pressure was brought to bear that in March, 1804, a bill “to remove
the seat of government to Baltimore” passed to its second reading in
the Senate. However, the “Capital-movers,” as they came to be called,
succeeded only in retarding the growth of the city. As a result, at
the close of Jefferson’s administration there were but five thousand
inhabitants. The North spread the sarcasm that Washington was a city of
streets without houses and houses without streets. The ludicrous fame
of America’s capital created laughter even in Europe. Foreigners after
gazing at the President’s house were said to peer into the woods and
inquire ingenuously where the city was. The satire of Tom Moore has
been mentioned. Here is his picture of Washington:
“In fancy now beneath the twilight gloom,
Come, let me lead thee o’er this modern Rome,
Where tribunes rule, where duski Davi bow,
And what was Goose Creek once is Tiber now.
This famed metropolis, where fancy sees
Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees;
Which travelling fools and gazateers adorn
With shrines unbuilt and heroes yet unborn;
Tho’ naught but wood and ... they see
Where streets should run, and sages ought to be.”
With the inauguration ceremonies of President Madison, March 4, 1809,
the capital returned from Jeffersonian simplicity to the stateliness
and fashion of Washington and Adams. Mrs. Madison, the charming hostess
of the White House, revived the stately dinners and formal levees, and
a court circle gradually grew up resplendent at balls and assemblies.
The War of 1812 had a special bearing on the history of Washington.
It had been in progress almost two years when, early in the summer of
1814, rumor told of a great British armada fitting out at Bermuda,
some thought to attack New York, others Baltimore, Annapolis and
Washington.
On the night of August 19, 1814, a courier, dashing at full speed over
the sandy roads of Maryland, drew rein for an instant at every little
post-town and shouted the warning note: “To arms! The British have
landed at Benedict, and are marching inland. To arms!”
Then at once it was known that the city of Washington was the object of
the invasion. The British forces now marching upon the city numbered
5123. They were some of Wellington’s veterans, fresh from the fields of
France and Spain. Opposed to them and in defence of the city, General
Winder had nearly six thousand men. Only nine hundred of these were
regular troops.
The attempt to resist the invasion resulted in the battle of
Bladensburg, which was fought near the spot which later became famous
as duelling-grounds. A brief but brave defence was made, the raw
and undrilled American troops being compelled to give way to the
disciplined veterans who had fought with Wellington.
[Illustration: STATE, WAR AND NAVY BUILDING.
FROM THE SOUTHEAST.]
Washington has had its days of tragedy. Two American Presidents have
been assassinated within the city, and its inhabitants shuddered at
the approach of Southern armies during the Civil War. But at no other
time in the history of the Federal city has there been such a moment
of supreme terror as on the night of the 24th of August, 1814, when
the British gave to the flames the Capitol, the President’s house, the
Navy Yard and the Treasury. President Madison and his Cabinet had taken
refuge in flight; the frightened citizens were hurrying bewildered into
Virginia when, towards sunset, General Ross and Admiral Cockburn drew
up their troops on the esplanade east of the Capitol. Thus far the
movement had been conducted according to the rigid etiquette of war,
but the spectacle of the American capital at their mercy awoke both in
officers and men the wanton spirit of revenge.
American school-books have perpetuated the unique fable that
the British held a mock session in the Hall of the House of
Representatives; that Cockburn from the Speaker’s desk, while the
soldiers filled the seats, put the question: “Shall this harbor of
Yankee democracy be burned?” and that, when the motion was boisterously
carried, gave orders to apply the torch. The scene is an imaginary
one; the tale is a piece of romance. It is the sort of historical
fiction that Lamartine delighted to invent to add dramatic interest to
events.
It is unnecessary to resort to imagination to make a vivid picture of
the sacking of Washington. By the glare of the burning Capitol the
red-coats marched up Pennsylvania Avenue to the President’s house. The
Palace, as the Federalists called it, was not palatial. The portico had
not been built; what was to be the garden was a field of rocks and tree
stumps; the interior of the house was crude, and the East Room, since
associated with great historical events, had, since the time of Mrs.
Adams, been given over to the uses of the laundry.
A second fiction connected with the British raid is that they found
a great dinner spread on the President’s table and in much glee and
derision sat down to devour it. That tale, like the fable of the
mock session at the Capitol, was given to a London paper by a merry
midshipman.
At midnight a violent thunder-storm checked the four conflagrations.
The next day the British renewed the devastation, adding to the flames
the Departments of State and War, and private buildings. But nature, as
if protesting against the outrage, came to the rescue with a cyclone
that drove the enemy to seek shelter.
Panic seized the combatants. On the Washington side, General Ross,
perceiving Americans on the Virginia shore, set fire to the great
bridge spanning the Potomac. On the Virginia side, Americans, believing
the British were about to cross, simultaneously applied the torch.
While the two sheets of flame rushed together, the British army left
the ruined capital.
Sentiment in England was divided over the destruction of Washington.
“Willingly,” said the London _Statesman_, “would we throw a veil of
oblivion over the transactions of our buccaneers at Washington. The
Cossacks spared Paris, but we spared not the capital of America.”
Other British authorities justified the ruin as a reprisal for the
burning and destruction of York, the capital of Upper Canada, though
that unwarranted act was the work of soldiers acting without authority,
and had been generally condemned in America and publicly disavowed by
General Dearborn, who commanded the expedition.
[Illustration: THE “OCTAGON HOUSE” USED BY PRESIDENT AND MRS. MADISON
DURING THE REBUILDING OF THE WHITE HOUSE IN 1814.]
The preparations for rebuilding the city were begun before the
smoldering ruins had ceased to glow. The designs of the Capitol and
other public buildings were somewhat altered, but the White House,
under the supervision of Hoban, the original architect, was reared on
the old walls--almost a replica of the former mansion. Although the
reconstruction was begun immediately, there was a continuation of the
old difficulties. The question of removing the capital again became an
issue, and continually hampered the work of rebuilding. However, the
old buildings were slowly replaced, new ones were constructed, and the
Government was soon comfortably housed. But the city itself developed
with woeful languor. The few attempts to beautify it failed. By 1860,
there were but two or three miles of poorly constructed pavements.
Most of the streets were worse than country roads. In summer the dust
rose in clouds and blinded and choked those who ventured forth, while
in winter the mud was so deep that at times the streets were well-nigh
impassable. Until 1862 there were no street railways.
Charles Dickens, who was a visitor to Washington during its period of
struggle and reconstruction, drew this startling picture of the capital:
“Take the worst parts of the City Road and Pentonville, or the
straggling outskirts of Paris, where the houses are smallest,
preserving all their oddities, but especially the small shops and
dwellings, occupied in Pentonville (but not in Washington) by
furniture-brokers, keepers of poor eating-houses, and fanciers of
birds. Burn the whole down; build it up again in wood and plaster;
widen it a little; throw in part of St. John’s Wood; put green blinds
outside all the private houses, with a red curtain and a white one in
every window; plough up all the roads; plant a great deal of coarse
turf in every place where it ought not to be; erect three handsome
buildings in stone and marble, anywhere, but the more entirely out of
everybody’s way the better; call one the Post Office, one the Patent
Office, and one the Treasury; make it scorching hot in the morning
and freezing cold in the afternoon, with an occasional tornado
of wind and dust; leave a brick-field without the bricks in all
central places where a street may naturally be expected; and that’s
Washington.”
[Illustration: GRAND STAIRCASE IN THE HALL OF THE CONGRESSIONAL
LIBRARY.]
As there were few attractions to tempt the wealthy, plain and
inexpensive dwellings were mostly in evidence. During the sessions the
members of Congress could hardly find suitable quarters, since the
inns and hotels, with few exceptions, were of such a character that
they brought forth vilification from those who were compelled to live
in them. Boarding-houses were somewhat better. An old directory shows
that in 1834 Senators Daniel Webster, John Tyler, John C. Calhoun,
Henry Clay; Representatives John Ouincy Adams, Franklin Pierce, James
K. Polk and many other well-known men of the time sought homes with
private families or in semi-public boarding-houses. The modern method
of numbering houses was not then used, and we find addresses given as
follows: Henry Clay, “at Mrs. Ditty’s, C Street near the corner of
Four-and-a-half”; Nathaniel Silsbee and Daniel Webster, “Boarding-house
of Mrs. Bayliss, opposite Central Market.”
The Civil War added the final touch to the national significance of
the capital. From the straggling city of seventy thousand inhabitants,
those stirring times transformed it into a vast military post of
two hundred and fifty thousand. In appearance the city resembled an
extensive military camp and hospital. Yet when the foe did come the
city was in but poor condition to withstand attack. In the summer of
1864, General Jubal Early was sent north to attack Washington, and,
if possible, to divert Grant from Richmond. General Lew Wallace was
then in command of the Middle Division, which included Washington.
Home Guard, crippled soldiers, and Department clerks were mustered in;
but in all there were not more than thirty-five hundred men. General
Early had by his own account ten thousand picked veterans, including
nine field batteries with forty guns. At Monocacy, thirty miles from
Washington, after a brave contest, the Union forces retreated in good
order. At night, Early camped within ten miles of the capital; But
Wallace had delayed him long enough to enable Grant to send a part of
the Sixth and Nineteenth corps, and Washington was saved.
Meanwhile, work on the public buildings went steadily forward. During
the war the dome of the Capitol was raised, and the Treasury and
Patent Office buildings were almost completed. In 1863, the statue of
Freedom was placed upon the dome with imposing ceremony, accompanied
by the salutes of guns of the surrounding forts. The enormous military
population during the war brought greatly increased responsibilities
to the city, and a better realization of its importance to the nation.
From 1860 to 1870, more noteworthy and substantial improvements were
made than had been before undertaken in the whole history of the
city, and the population in this single decade increased from seventy
thousand to 120,000.
With the return of peace the habitual slothfulness returned, and the
old do-nothing policy seemed about to be resumed. But there were a few
energetic citizens in whom the short period of progressiveness had
instilled an unquenchable desire for a better order of things, and
by their untiring energy they prevented a recurrence of the former
stagnation.
[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES TREASURY.
FROM THE SOUTHWEST.]
One man in particular seems to have been inspired with a resistless
ambition for the city’s salvation. Around this person--Alexander R.
Shepherd--the little body of reformers rallied their forces.
A territorial form, with a governor, legislature and delegate to
Congress, was created for the District. A Board of Public Works,
appointed by the President with the approval of the Senate, was created
to undertake the remodelling of the city. Subsequently this Board
became the pivot around which the rest of the municipal machinery
revolved. Shepherd was appointed Governor, and under his guidance the
Board immediately began its difficult and thankless task.
The changes which the Board wrought in the city were stupendous. The
result is Washington as it is known to-day. The enormous expense
entailed by the great reconstruction created an opposition which
forced Congress to appoint committees of investigation. The extent
of the Board’s operations are best illustrated by the enlargement
of the District’s debt. The debt of the territory, which in 1871
was but three millions, had risen in 1875 to twenty millions, and of
this “astounding increase only the original loan of four millions was
submitted to the vote of the people, and this, at the time it was voted
on, was understood to include all the main improvements necessary for
remodelling the city.”
[Illustration: ROTUNDA OF THE CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY, WASHINGTON.]
Shepherd, whose master mind had directed the whole undertaking, finally
left the city. When, a few years later, he returned on a visit from
Mexico, his advent was celebrated by the citizens of the new and
beautified capital by demonstrations of welcome so sincere and genuine
as to atone for the former lack of appreciation.
Washington to-day is richer in historic memories than any other city on
the continent. To the literary worker and historian it is a boundless
treasure-house. Standing on the hills of Anacostia, and musing on the
story of Powhatan’s vanished capital, one may read in the surrounding
spires and domes and monuments of the city the eventful story of
Anglo-Saxon triumph in the Western Hemisphere. One smiles now at the
satire of the poet Moore; for the morasses have indeed become parks,
and imposing shrines have been built to commemorate heroes that were
then unborn. In what was once the wilderness of “magnificent distances”
are the palatial houses in brick and granite of men and women
celebrated in letters, in art and in public life. In the galleries of
the Capitol will be found the portraits and memorials of America’s
illustrious dead. In the State Department is to be seen the faded
original of the Declaration of Independence.
The city that Washington founded has become one of venerable memories
and matchless triumphs.
From the “Rome” of Francis Pope the visitor looks down Pennsylvania
Avenue, the Via Sacra of the new world, whereon the men most
illustrious in the annals of the Republic have walked and ridden to
their public offices, and along whose historic thoroughfares the heroes
of great wars have enjoyed their triumphs. Here Lafayette was received
with joyous welcome when, in 1824, he returned to measure the majestic
growth of the Republic during the fifty years that had passed since he
and Washington were comrades in the fight for freedom. As, standing
on the superb terraces on the west front of the Capitol, one views
the monument, the sacred hills of Arlington, the Potomac winding
towards Alexandria, which Adams predicted would become the continent’s
metropolis and greatest export city, the imposing declivities of old
Georgetown, at whose base were once anchored merchant ships from
foreign ports, there passes before the mind a vivid panorama of the
history of the American people. Beauty and majesty have obliterated
the infant city of a hundred years ago. The achievements of science
have mocked many of the ancient prophecies. The canal, starting at
Georgetown, which was to have carried the deliberations of Congress to
the Western world, knows no such use, and the ships that were to crowd
the Potomac are content to moor at railway termini along the Atlantic
coast.
But although applied science has confounded the wisdom of a hundred
years ago, the hopes and dreams of the founder of the capital have
been realized. In 1798, before the Government moved to the new city,
Washington wrote concerning the capital:
“A century hence if this country keeps united, it will produce a city,
though not so large as London, yet of a magnitude inferior to few
others in Europe.”
Had Washington looked down the century and caught the gleam of
the gigantic shaft that attests his glory, and the golden dome of
the Congressional Library, the most superb temple ever reared to
literature, or in an illumined moment beheld the Goddess of Liberty
standing between Heaven and earth and symbolizing freedom for
seventy-five millions of people, he could not have written with loftier
faith in the destiny of the Republic.
[Illustration: WASHINGTON MONUMENT.
LOOKING ACROSS THE “FLATS.”]
Washington is no longer the city of magnificent intentions; it is
Washington the Magnificent.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
RICHMOND ON THE JAMES
BY WILLIAM WIRT HENRY
“And in regions far
Such heroes bring ye forth
As those from whom we come,
And plant our name
Under that star
Not known to our North.”
DRAYTON.
On the 11th of April, 1606, a patent was issued by James I. of England
to Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers and others for the establishment
of a colony in Virginia. The charter prescribed that it was to be
managed by a council of thirteen persons, under the direction of a
council of thirteen in England. On December the 19th of that year, one
hundred and nine years after the discovery of North America by Cabot,
three small vessels, the _Susan Constant_, the _God Speed_ and the
_Discovery_, sailed for the New World, bearing one hundred and twelve
passengers and a crew of thirty-nine men.
They encountered many perils by sea, having bad weather and losing
their reckoning, but the 26th of April, 1607, brought them to the
shores of Chesapeake Bay, and they soon entered a noble stream called
by the natives the “Powhatan,” but renamed by them the James, in
honor of their King. On the 13th of May, they landed on a spot which
seemed suitable for a settlement, and called the place Jamestown.
The colony previously planted at Roanoke Island by Sir Walter
Raleigh having perished, this was the beginning of the permanent
Anglo-Saxon occupation of North America. From it has developed English
possession of the continent with free institutions based upon English
representative government.
In 1619, a General Assembly was held, which was the first legislative
body elected by the people to convene this side of the Atlantic. It
was an English acorn germinating in American soil, and from it has
sprung the tree of liberty which has filled the continent. Among the
colonists who landed at Jamestown, was the celebrated Captain John
Smith, who was destined later to be snatched from the jaws of death
by the lovely Indian princess, Pocahontas. From the story of his life,
told by himself, and the Rev. Samuel Purchas in his _Pilgrims_, we
learn that he had already been the hero of many adventures. He had been
robbed, had encountered pirates, and had been shipwrecked at sea. He
had slain three Turks in single combat while serving under Sigismundus
Báthori, the Prince of Transylvania. He had been beloved by the fair
Turkish lady, Tragabigzanda, besides having had many other _affaires du
cœur_--notably one with the good lady Calamata of Russia.
[Illustration: GRAVE OF POWHATAN ON THE JAMES.]
Nine days after the landing of the colony at Jamestown, and thirteen
years before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth, Captain
Newport, with Smith and a party of men, ascended the James River,
and discovered the site of the city of Richmond. In Smith’s _True
Relation_, printed in London in 1608, he says:
“The two and twenty day of April [or rather May, 1607] Captain
Newport and myselfe with diuers others to the number of twenty-two
persons, set forward to discouer the Riuer some fiftie or sixtie
miles.... In the midway, staying to refresh ourselues in a little Ile
foure or fiue savages came vnto vs which described vnto vs the course
of the Riuer, and after, in our journey, they often met vs, trading
with vs for such provision as wee had, and arriuing at Arsatecke,
hee whom wee supposed to bee the Chiefe King of all the rest, moste
kindely entertained vs, giuing vs a guide to go with vs vp the riuer
Powhatan, of which place their Great Emperor taketh his name, where
he they honored for King used vs kindlly.
“But to finish this discouerie, we passed on further, where within
an ile [a mile] we were intercepted with great craggy stones in the
midst of the river, where the water falleth so rudely and with such
violence, as not any boat can possibly passe, and so broad disperseth
the streame as there is not past fiue or sixe foote at low water, and
to the shore scarce passage with a barge.”
This was the first view had by Englishmen of the situation where the
city of Richmond was located.
In September, 1609, when Smith was president, he set out to find a
more favorable spot for the colony than marshy Jamestown. He sailed
again to the Indian village Powhatan, at the falls of the river, and
bought of the natives some land near the present site of Richmond,
where the landscape presented such charming features that he called the
place “None Such.” On his way home he was wounded by the explosion of
a bag of gunpowder, and the next month he left the colony and sailed
for England, leaving only a small settlement to occupy the site he
had purchased. In 1645, “Fforte Charles” was built below the falls of
the James, but no permanent settlement was effected. In 1675, Colonel
William Byrd was granted 7351 acres of land beginning at the mouth
of Shockoe’s Creek, which joins the river at the falls, and again,
in 1687, he had a patent of 956 acres on the east side of the creek,
extending up and down the line of the James River. On a part of these
two tracts the present city of Richmond was founded some years later
by his son, Colonel William Evelyn Byrd, who gives this account in his
journal:
“Sept. 19th, 1733. When we got home we laid the foundation of two
large cities,--One at Schocco’s, to be called Richmond, and the other
at the Point of Appamattuck River to be nam’d Petersburgh. These
Major Mayo offered to lay out into lots without fee or reward. The
truth of it is these two places being the uppermost landing of James
and Appamattuck Rivers, are naturally intended for Marts where the
traffick of the outer inhabitants must Center. Thus we did not build
Castles only, but also citys in the air.”
He also advertised in the Virginia _Gazette_ of April, 1737, “that on
the north side of James River, near the uppermost landing and a little
below the falls, is lately built by Major Mayo a town called Richmond
with streets sixty feet wide in a pleasant and healthy situation, and
well supplied with springs of good water.”
[Illustration: COLONEL WILLIAM EVELYN BYRD.
FROM A PAINTING BY SIR GODFREY KNELLER.]
The founder of Richmond was one of the worthiest and most
intellectual men in the Colony of Virginia. His portrait, by Sir
Godfrey Kneller, shows a face of remarkable beauty, framed in the curls
of a flowing peruke of the time of Queen Anne. He was noted as “the
Great Virginia wit,” and his writings are among the most valuable that
have descended to us from that era. His library was the largest that
had ever been brought over to the New World. A catalogue of it, in
folio, is now in possession of the Franklin Library in Philadelphia. He
was the father of the beautiful Evelyn Byrd, whose death of a broken
heart because her father refused to give his consent to her marriage
with her lover--said to have been Lord Peterborough--has furnished
a theme for poet and novelist. He was buried at his family estate,
Westover, and his tombstone, in the old flower garden there, not only
gives a history of his life, but tells us also of several of his noble
and illustrious friends and their good qualities.
Richmond was established as a town by the Assembly of Virginia in 1742.
Originally built on seven hills, it has been called the “Modern Rome,”
and one of Richmond’s gifted daughters once wrote:
“O Richmond! Richmond! Richmond!
Upon thy seven hills
Like one of old, we wot of well
Thy fame the wide world fills.”
In 1842, when Dickens visited Richmond, it already covered yet another
hill, and he wrote of it as
“delightfully situated on eight hills overhanging James River, a
sparkling stream studded here and there with bright islands, or
brawling over broken rocks. There are pretty villas and cheerful
houses on its streets, and nature smiles upon the country ’round.”
The oldest house in Richmond, the “Old Stone House,” situated on Main
Street, was built by Jacob Ege in 1737, and is now used as a museum
filled with relics and curiosities.
St. John’s Episcopal Church, which was built in 1740, is in a
state of excellent preservation, and religious services are held
in it as they were in the days before the Revolution. It was built
under the superintendence of Richard Randolph of Curls Neck, the
son of William Randolph of Turkey Island and Jane Bolling, the
great-great-granddaughter of Pocahontas. In its graveyard are many
quaint old tombstones--the oldest, that of the Rev. Robert Rose, is
dated 1751. The learned and accomplished George Wythe, one of the
signers of the Declaration of Independence, and many other famous sons
of Virginia lie buried in the graveyard. The most interesting event
in the history of the Church, and one with which its name will be
forever linked, was the meeting within its walls of the famous Virginia
Convention of March 20, 1775. A few months after the adjournment of
the first Continental Congress, this convention met to hear a report
of its proceedings, and to deliberate on the political situation. The
bitter hostility to the patriots on the part of Lord Dunmore made it
unsafe for them to meet in Williamsburg, the capital of the colony, and
the importance and sacredness of the cause made it appropriate to meet
in the sanctuary of God, to whom they humbly looked for guidance on
their sea of troubles. The vestry recognized this, and offered to the
convention this, the largest building in the town. It was during the
session of this convention that Patrick Henry made his famous speech,
in which he proclaimed the folly of longer expecting peace, and the
necessity of arming for immediate war, ending with the words: “Is life
so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains
and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may
take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.” The very spot
where the orator stood is pointed out.
[Illustration: OLD STONE HOUSE, BUILT IN 1737.]
Some six years later, January 6, 1781, Benedict Arnold, the traitor,
entered the city at the head of nine hundred British soldiers. That
night part of his troops were quartered in the old church, desecrating
it as far as they were able.
In 1779, the Legislature ordered the removal of the seat of government
from Williamsburg to Richmond, then only a collection of disjointed
villages placed amid the ragged ground at the falls of the James.
Virginia had been settled largely by sons of country gentlemen, who
brought from their far-off homes the love of country life. Her citizens
preferred that life, and the title “Country Gentlemen” was the most
desired. In consequence there were no large cities in the State.
In 1781, the Marquis Chastellux, who served with honor in the French
army, thus described the city:
“Though Richmond be already an old town and well situated for trade,
being built on the spot where the James River begins to be navigable,
that is, just below the rapids. It was before the war one of the
least considerable in Virginia, where they are all in general very
small, but the seat of the government being removed from Williamsburg
it is become a real capital, and is augmenting every day.”
[Illustration: BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF RICHMOND.]
In 1782, Richmond was incorporated as a city, and three years later
the foundations of the Capitol were laid. Especially beautiful in the
summer months, when the grass is as green as emerald and the noble
trees give grateful shade, is the Capitol Square. Squirrels play as
if at home about the grounds, much to the delight of the children.
The square, with its area of about twelve acres, includes the lot on
which the Executive mansion stands, and is supposed to be a part of
Nathaniel Bacon’s plantation, where his overseer was murdered by the
Indians, whose punishment by him, without permission of the Governor,
Sir William Berkeley, was the beginning of the famous Bacon’s rebellion.
Of the Capitol itself, Thomas Jefferson wrote:
“I was written to in 1785, being then in Paris, by Directors
appointed to superintend the building of a Capitol in Richmond, to
advise them as to a plan.
* * * * *
Thinking it a favorable opportunity of introducing into the State an
example of the classic style of antiquity, and the Maison Quarrée of
Nismes, an ancient Roman Temple, being considered as the most perfect
model existing of what may be called Cubic architecture, I applied
to M. Clerissault, who had published drawings of the antiquities
at Nismes to have me a model of the building made in stucco, only
changing the order from the Corinthian to Ionic on account of the
difficulty of Corinthian Capitals.”
The model sent by Jefferson is still preserved, and looks like a
miniature of the Capitol with very slight variations. Jefferson says
of it: “Here I am gazing whole hours at the Maison Quarrée like a lover
at his mistress.”
The corner-stone was laid in 1785, and on October 19, 1789, eight years
to the day after the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, the
Legislature convened in it.
The Capitol is full of memories of bygone days. Here were debated and
adopted the famous resolutions of 1798-99, drafted by James Madison as
the true interpretation of the Federal compact. Here sat the convention
of 1829-30, of which Marshall, Madison, Monroe and John Randolph of
Roanoke were members, the convention of 1851, which enlarged the right
of suffrage and, ten years later, the body which adopted the Act of
Secession. Here, in 1862, met the congress of the Confederate States
of America, which sat until April, 1865, when it adjourned--“Not _sine
die_ indeed, yet never to meet again.”
In the rotunda of the Capitol is the most valuable marble in America,
Houdon’s statue of Washington, modelled from life. Virginia had voted
this statue to him May 15, 1784, and Madison penned the inscription
which appears on the pedestal:
“The General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia have caused
this statue to be erected as a monument of affection and gratitude
to George Washington, who uniting to the endowments of the hero,
the virtues of the patriot, and exercising both in establishing the
liberties of his country, has rendered his name dear to his fellow
citizens, and given to the world an immortal example of true glory.”
Mr. Jefferson, being then in Paris, engaged Houdon to come to Virginia
to make the statue, saying of him: “He is without rivalship, the first
statuary of his age, as proof of which he receives orders from every
other country for things intended to be capital.”
It is a tradition that Houdon spent several days at Mount Vernon
before he selected the attitude for the statue. One day Washington was
summoned to inspect a pair of horses offered for sale. He asked their
price, and was told “a thousand dollars.” At once he drew himself up,
with an expression of indignation at the price, and Houdon, watching
him, exclaimed, “Ah, I ’ave him, I ’ave him!” and immediately set to
work to make the pose immortal.
In the Capitol grounds stands Crawford’s famous equestrian statue of
the great hero.
[Illustration: WASHINGTON MONUMENT AND CAPITOL, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA.]
Thomas Crawford, father of F. Marion Crawford, the distinguished
novelist of our day, had received an order from the State of Virginia
to make this statue of Washington and also to make effigies of Thomas
Jefferson and Patrick Henry to stand at its base. He had just completed
his work when he was afflicted with a mortal disease, and when an
order came to add the figures of Mason, Marshall, Nelson and Lewis he
was unable to fill it, and the monument was subsequently completed by
Randolph Rogers. The statue was unveiled February 22, 1858, the one
hundred and twenty-sixth anniversary of Washington’s birth, and a proud
day it was in the history of Richmond. Henry A. Wise, Governor of the
State, presided and delivered an eloquent address. Senator R. M. T.
Hunter was the orator of the occasion, and John R. Thompson and James
Barron Hope, who were then the “rose and expectancy of the State,”
recited poems prepared by them. It is considered one of the best
equestrian statues in the world.
A fine marble statue of Henry Clay, executed by Joel T. Hart and
erected by the efforts of some patriotic ladies, stands near by.
Contemporaries of Mr. Clay pronounced it lifelike. Virginia claims Mr.
Clay for a son, as he was born in Hanover County, and did not move to
Kentucky until he reached manhood.
[Illustration: HENRY CLAY.]
On the Capitol grounds is an old building known as the Bell House
which, though erected many years previous, is chiefly interesting for
its association with the Civil War. The bell had been purchased in
1790, when the Directors of Public Buildings were authorized to “fit up
a sufficient bell for the use of the Capitol.” Tradition says the bell
rang an alarm at the time of the “Nat Turner” insurrection, but it is
consecrated to the trying times of 1861 to 1865 as is no other object
connected with the Civil War. When its well-known peal rang out three
quick taps and an interval, soldiers and citizens, old men and young,
rushed with common impulse to the rendezvous, with hearts and hands
ready for the defence of the city.
There is also on the grounds a statue of the great soldier, Thomas
J. Jackson, executed by Foley, the celebrated English sculptor, and
presented to Virginia by some of his English admirers. Old soldiers say
of this, that it is the best likeness extant of their great leader.
“Look! there is Jackson, standing like a stone wall,” is inscribed on
the pedestal.
One of the most interesting sites in the city is that now occupied by
the Monumental Church, on Broad Street, on what was formerly known
as Academy Square. Here a certain Chevalier Quesnay de Beaurepaire
erected a large wooden building for an academy of fine arts. He was
full of enthusiasm, and visited Paris to present his plan to the French
Academy, which body gave their approval, but his scheme failed and the
building was turned into a theatre. Here assembled in 1788 a brilliant
coterie of statesmen--Marshall, Madison, Mason, Monroe, Randolph,
Henry, Lee, Wythe, Pendleton and others, who met to discuss and finally
ratify the Constitution of the United States as framed in Philadelphia.
Twenty-three years afterwards on a fatal December evening it was the
scene of a dreadful disaster, when seventy-two persons, including the
Governor of the State, who were attending a performance at the theatre,
perished in the flames which destroyed the building. The portico of the
church covers the tombs and charred remains of most of the victims of
the fire, and a monument bears their names.
[Illustration: THE MARSHALL HOUSE, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA.]
The house of Chief Justice Marshall stands on the street named in his
honor. It was built in 1795, and is as simple and unpretentious as was
its distinguished owner. Still in the possession of his descendants,
the house has not been remodelled and but few changes have been made
inside. By some mischance, in the absence of Judge Marshall, the house
was built rear side front. The handsome hall and staircase, with
their carved balusters of cherry, are at the back, opening towards
the garden, the dining-room looks out on Marshall Street, and the
entrance for visitors is by a small door on the side street. Here lived
and loved, in the simple, good old fashion, the great lawyer and his
lovely wife, Mary Willis Ambler. Their married life was a peaceful idyl
lasting forty-two years. Folded in his will was a touching tribute to
his wife, ending:
“She became at sixteen a most devoted wife. All my faults, and they
were too many, could never weaken this sentiment. It formed a part
of her existence. Her judgment was so sound and so deep that I often
relied upon it in situations of some perplexity. I do not recollect
once to have regretted the adoption of her opinion. I have sometimes
regretted its rejection.”
Both Washington and Lafayette visited the city in 1784, and were
welcomed by the citizens and legislature then in session, who expressed
their appreciation of the great services they had rendered the country.
In response to an address made upon the occasion of this visit,
Washington said: “That this growing city may enjoy the benefits which
are to be derived from liberty, independence and peace--that it may
improve such of its advantages as a bountiful nature has bestowed, and
that it may soon be ranked first in the Union for population, commerce
and wealth, is my sincere and fervent wish.” Lafayette visited Richmond
again in 1824. Houdon had made a bust of him, which Virginia gave to
France, and a copy of which she kept in the rotunda of the Capitol.
By chance, just before his visit, the nose was broken off, and there
was great concern lest he reach the city before it could be restored.
Happily, however, the nose was finished in time.
The Swan tavern, still preserved on Broad Street, was an ancient place
of entertainment kept by Major Moss, who was said to be “full of good
feeding, breeding and fellowship.” His home was the Lincoln’s Inn or
Doctors’ Commons of Richmond, for there assembled in term times the
non-resident judges and lawyers. Though of unpretending exterior, the
Swan was of highest repute for good fare, good wine and good company.
An annex to the Swan was the house where Aaron Burr was kept prisoner
during his trial for treason in 1807, the Federal Court having then no
prison under its control. Chief Justice Marshall presided at the trial,
and the Court sat in the Hall of Delegates in the Capitol.
Edgar Allan Poe spent many of his boyhood days in Richmond, with
John Allan, a rich merchant of Scotch descent who adopted him. Until
recently, the fine old residence of Mr. Allan was standing on Fifth
Street, and near by was the residence of William Wirt, who loved the
place and thus writes of it:
“I never met with such an assemblage of striking and interesting
objects as here, the town dispersed over hills of various shapes,
the river descending from west to east, and obstructed by a multitude
of small islands, clumps of trees and myriads of rocks--the same
river, at the lower end of the town, bending at right angles to the
south and winding many miles in that direction, its polished surface
caught here and there by the eye, but more frequently covered from
the view by trees, among which white sails exhibit a curious and
interesting spectacle; then again, on the opposite side, Manchester,
built on a hill, which, sloping quickly to the river, opens the whole
town to view, interspersed with flourishing poplars and surrounded
to a great distance by green plains and stately woods,--all these
objects falling at once under the eye constitute by far the most
finely varied and most animated landscape I have ever seen.”
The Valentine Museum, which was given to the city by one of its most
valued citizens, the late Mann S. Valentine, contains archæological
specimens numbering more than one hundred thousand, also an art
collection and a number of original works donated by his brother,
Edward V. Valentine, Virginia’s talented sculptor. A short walk brings
you to the studio of this artist, where, among many beautiful and
interesting figures, the chief interest centres in the model for the
recumbent statue of General Robert E. Lee, the marble of which is in
the annex to the Episcopal Church in Lexington. This statue has won
for Valentine the admiration and love of the people of the South.
[Illustration: RICHMOND IN FLAMES.]
At once the capital and the citadel of the Confederacy, Richmond was
the objective point of assault in the Civil War, and the greatest
generalship on both sides was displayed in its attack and its defence.
From May, 1862, to April, 1865, it may be said to have been in a state
of siege, holding out steadily and grandly against great odds. During
this period it is said that fifteen pitched battles and more than
twenty skirmishes were fought in the effort to capture it. When its
defenders were finally obliged to leave the city to its fate, they set
on fire the warehouses to prevent the capture of the tobacco which they
contained, burned the bridges behind them as the last soldier crossed
the river, and left the business portion smoldering in flames--a
barren trophy to the victors. It is in consequence of this that so few
of the typical old buildings remain standing, for the flames leaped
from house to house and destroyed many old landmarks. The city was
not long in rising from its ashes and taking on new life, and there
could be no greater contrast than that between the city of 1865 and
the Richmond of to-day. Nevertheless it will always be remembered
as the capital of the Lost Cause, and, as such, it will be invested
with a pathetic interest. Its suburbs, attractive as they are from
their natural beauty, derive their chief interest from having been the
scenes of the conflict. In many places there remain the earthworks
thrown up for the defence of the city, and every avenue out of the
city for miles around leads to battlefields. Many monuments mark the
love and veneration of the people for the heroes of the war. Foremost
of these is the equestrian statue of General Robert E. Lee by Mercie,
a French sculptor. It represents the great general riding slowly down
the line, mounted on “Traveller,” his well-known war-horse. It is
located in Lee Circle, one of the most beautiful parts of the city.
A monument, the corner-stone of which has already been laid, will be
erected to the memory of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate
States. His residence while occupying that office is a building
imposing in appearance, with grounds beautifully laid out, and adorned
with fountains and flowers. It is known as the “White House of the
Confederacy,” and is kept in admirable condition by a band of devoted
women, the Confederate Literary Memorial Society. The residence
occupied by General Lee and his family is in the care of the Virginia
Historical Society, and contains the extensive library of books,
manuscripts and publications of that society.
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, RICHMOND.]
[Illustration: THE WHITE HOUSE OF THE CONFEDERACY, RICHMOND.]
A favorite drive is to Hollywood, silent city of the dead, which nature
and art have united to beautify. Here sleep many of Virginia’s famous
men; among them, Monroe and Tyler, Presidents of the United States,
Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, John R. Thompson, the
poet, John Randolph, caustic Master of Roanoke, and Matthew F. Maury,
“Pathfinder of the Seas.” A beautiful monument of granite, pyramidal in
form, and covered with Virginia creeper and ivy, marks the graves of
twelve hundred Confederate dead.
[Illustration: MONUMENT OVER CONFEDERATE DEAD AT HOLLYWOOD.]
The Government has lately finished a fine road, leading from Chimborazo
Park to the National Cemetery, where lie buried 6547 of the Federal
soldiers who fell in the attempts to capture the city.
Nature has done much for the city. The climate is pleasant and
healthful; trees shade and flowers beautify the residences. The
river glistens as it flows around wooded islands and rushes toward
the sea over craggy rocks. Numerous lines of travel centre in its
midst and there is a growing spirit of enterprise among its citizens.
The water-power is very fine, and besides being utilized for many
manufactories, is about to be used for the generation of electricity on
a large scale. Richmond claims the honor of being among the first, if
not the very first city, to be lighted with gas. A man named Henfrey
visited the city early in the present century, and induced some of
the prominent citizens to witness experiments made by him in which he
poured flame instead of steam from the spout of a tea-kettle. Money was
raised by subscription and a lighthouse was built. On a tower forty
feet high was a large lantern with many jets, and gas was generated
in the basement and conducted by a pipe to the burners. Not, however,
until many years after were the gas-works erected, and though Henfrey’s
light was short-lived, his tower remained a monument of the enterprise
of the citizens.
The people of Richmond are refined and hospitable. “It is the merriest
place and the most picturesque, I have seen in America,” wrote
Thackeray.
The city is filled with the echoes of the past. She cherishes tender
memories of brave men and gracious women. Rich in historic interest,
progressive in her industries and in education, Richmond easily takes
the lead in the State. Perhaps it is not too much to say that her great
mental activity to-day, and her rapid advancement of late years in
material concerns, gives her a position by no means insignificant among
the cities of America, a fitting capital of the “Mother of States and
of statesmen.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
WILLIAMSBURG
THE ANCIENT CAPITAL
BY LYON G. TYLER
Williamsburg is situated on the famous Peninsula of Virginia, between
the James and York rivers. On this Peninsula have occurred some of
the most important events in history. One thing alone entitles it to
pre-eminence in American history.
At Jamestown, seven miles distant from Williamsburg, was established
the first permanent English settlement on the North American continent.
There at Jamestown English settlers planted English institutions,
had the first jury trial, and summoned the first assembly of the
people. There, too, was the first enunciation on this continent of the
memorable principle that taxes must not be imposed except with consent
of the people in their representative assembly. All subsequent English
colonization in America had its chief inspiration in the successful
upbuilding of the settlement at Jamestown. The Peninsula is in truth
“the cradle of the Union.”
[Illustration: “OLD POWDER-HORN.”]
But the Peninsula has also its Yorktown, thirteen miles distant from
Williamsburg. This place, which once had a very great trade with
Glasgow and London, but which was never more than a village of a few
hundred inhabitants, may, nevertheless, claim to be the beginning
and ending of Colonial resistance. Towering on the river bank is the
beautiful monument, erected in 1881, which tells that there Lord
Cornwallis surrendered in 1781 the British power in America to George
Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the American armies. But another
monument might stand in close proximity, with this inscription, that
there the first meeting of the people of Virginia was held in 1635
under the leadership of Nicholas Martian, an ancestor of Washington, to
protest against the tyranny of the Governor, Sir John Harvey, who was
shortly after deposed and sent a prisoner to England in the custody of
two members of the Assembly. Nor, in referring to this neighborhood,
must I omit mention of Hampton at the extreme end of the Peninsula,
which is the oldest town in English America, which boasts the oldest
free school, and which, twice a victim to the flames of war, gave its
name to the great landlocked haven where the _Merrimac_ revolutionized
naval warfare by its victory over the Federal wooden battle-ships in
1862.
Finally, six miles from Hampton is Newport News, where the first
cotton was planted in America, and where there has suddenly sprung up
a rushing, driving city, tremulous with the hopes of the future, and
already realizing the dream of its first settlers, who relied on the
magnificent opportunities which its situation at the conjunction of
the James River with Hampton Roads afforded. The Peninsula has been
traversed by British, French, and American armies, and in our own
times is memorable as the scene of the tremendous struggle between the
opposing armies of the Northern and Southern States, under the lead
of McClellan and Johnston--a struggle sustained on both sides with
conspicuous bravery and endurance, and culminating in the battles about
Richmond in 1862.
Until 1630, the settlements of the English in Virginia were confined
to the Accomac Peninsula, on the other side of Chesapeake Bay, and
to the valley of the James. In that year the Governor and Council
determined to make a settlement in the Indian district of Chiskiack in
the neighborhood of Yorktown. Soon after one of the leading men, Dr.
John Pott, from Harop, in Yorkshire, England, observed the advantages
of a location on the ridge between Jamestown and Chiskiack, obtained a
patent for a plantation there, and called it “Harop.” The authorities
endorsed his judgment and in 1632 sent settlers thither for the
purpose of establishing a town upon the spot. This was the beginning
of Williamsburg, which was called at first the “Middle Plantation,”
because of its location midway between the York and the James.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF BRUTON PARISH CHURCH AT WILLIAMSBURG VA.]
The Middle Plantation, though for many years a small village, was from
the first a strategic point of much value. Two deep creeks, with wide
morasses, penetrate to the spot from the James and York respectively,
so that no hostile force can proceed up or down the Peninsula without
passing through the place. The first settlement was walled in with
palisades, and the corn-fields lay on the west of these. In the war
with Opechancanough in 1644, the place was commanded by Captain Robert
Higginson,[5] a soldier of credit and renown. When Bacon in 1676 drove
Sir William Berkeley from Jamestown, here at Middle Plantation, just
a hundred years before the American Revolution, the former, calling
himself “General by consent of the People,” held his famous parliament
of the leading men of the Colony, who published those papers which
sound so much like the inspiring literature of the Revolution.[6]
In preparing an oath to be administered to the people, the three
articles proposed were read by James Minge, Clerk of the House of
Burgesses: First, that they should aid General Bacon in the Indian
war; second, that they would oppose Sir William Berkeley’s endeavor to
hinder the same; third, that _they would oppose any power sent out
from England, till terms were agreed to_.
The overweening confidence of the people of Virginia in themselves was
shown in the remark of Bacon that “one Virginian was equal to four
red-coats.” Middle Plantation, however, witnessed a sad sight some
months later. The hero of the people had succumbed to disease, and
Sir William Berkeley was again in power. Among those who supported
Bacon with their counsel and sympathy, though not with arms, was
William Drummond, first Governor of North Carolina, and here at Middle
Plantation he expiated his offence on the gallows. The circumstances
surrounding the execution were unusually affecting. Tried by a drumhead
court-martial, he was condemned, stripped, the ring torn from his
finger, sentenced at one o’clock and hanged at four. Berkeley, however,
did not long exult in his power, for the British Government recalled
him to England, where he soon died.
Jamestown with all the public buildings had been destroyed during
the course of the war. The suggestion was now offered to make Middle
Plantation the capital, but was not adopted, and Jamestown was again
restored.
[Illustration: COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY.]
In 1683, a handsome brick church was erected at Middle Plantation,
and fifteen years later the “old fields” in front of the town were
selected as the site for the “Royall Colledge” of William and Mary.
Then in 1698, the State House at Jamestown falling again a victim to
flames, Governor Francis Nicholson proposed to carry out the original
suggestion of making the Middle Plantation the seat of government. The
Legislature seconded him in this, stating in the preamble to their act
that “the Middle Plantation had been found by constant experience to
be healthy and agreeable to the constitutions of the inhabitants of
this, his Majesty’s, colony and dominion;” that “its air was serene and
temperate,” and that “its land was dry and champaign, and plentifully
stored with wholesome springs.”
Soon there rose at Middle Plantation a building in the shape of an
“H,” the first “Capitol” so called in the United States (the term
“State House” being used in the other colonies), then a palace for
the governor, a theatre, the first also in English America, for the
enacting of tragedies and comedies, an armory for the care of the
public arms and ammunition, a public prison, the first hospital for the
insane in America, and other buildings--all of brick. In honor of the
reigning monarch the name of the place was in 1699 changed to that of
Williamsburg, for which a city charter, in 1722, was obtained in the
name of King George I., and under the seal of the Colony.
Thenceforward, the history of Williamsburg became the history of
Virginia--for here until 1779 resided the Governor of the Colony, and
here were held the sessions of the Council and the House of Burgesses,
and the sessions of the Supreme Court.
[Illustration: Jacobus Blair
THE FOUNDER OF WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE.
]
But the life in Virginia was essentially a rural one, and Williamsburg
never attained a population of over two thousand. During great
public occasions, it assumed something of a real city character. On
such occasions, the streets of Williamsburg were crowded with the
chariots of the great planters, who rolled in great state from their
plantations, carrying their families and attended by postilions and
outriders.
In 1716, Governor Spotswood left Williamsburg on his memorable trip
to the Blue Ridge Mountains, instituting on his return the order of
“The Knights of the Horseshoe,” which has been celebrated in story and
verse. This expedition was the beginning of that march of empire to
the West which in our time has arrived at the far-distant Philippine
Islands.
In 1754, from the same city of Williamsburg, went George Washington
to demand of the French commander an explanation of his occupation
of Virginia soil on the Ohio. This was the first act in the drama of
the French and Indian War, which, by driving the French power from
this continent, laid the foundation of the future American nation.
Subsequently, in all the events that finally culminated in war with
Great Britain, Williamsburg was not only the capital of Virginia, but
in many ways the capital of the revolting colonies.
[Illustration: Benj. S. Ewell]
It was a memorable day in 1765, when Patrick Henry offered in
Williamsburg his famous resolutions against the Stamp Act. Samuel
Adams of Massachusetts led the way in 1764 in remonstrating against
the passage of the Stamp Act, and Virginia and the other colonies had
quickly followed along the same line; but protests and petitions
were unavailing. Parliament enacted the stamp bill into law, and the
alternatives presented were submission or resistance. There was a
painful silence throughout the colonies. In the North “there was no
declared purpose of action.” The usual and constitutional method of
petition and remonstrance, often resorted to in the past history of
the colonies against governmental action, had been tried. Otis advised
submission, and was elected by Boston to a seat in the Legislature.
When the Massachusetts Legislature met, Oliver, the stamp distributor,
was elected councillor. Samuel Adams advised only a meeting of the
colonies to confer on the condition of things. It was a supreme
moment, but Virginia rose to the occasion. From the Capitol at
Williamsburg rang out the clarion voice of Patrick Henry. He maintained
by resolutions that the inhabitants of Virginia inherited from the
first adventurers and settlers of that dominion equal franchises
with the people of Great Britain; that royal charters had declared
that equality; that taxation by themselves or by persons chosen by
themselves to represent them was the distinguishing characteristic
of British freedom; that the people of that most ancient Colony had
uninterruptedly enjoyed the right of being thus governed by their own
laws respecting their internal policy and taxation; that this right
had never been forfeited or in any other way given up, but had been
constantly recognized by the King and people of Great Britain; that the
General Assembly of the whole Colony had the sole right and power to
lay taxes on the inhabitants of the Colony; that any attempt to vest
such power in any other person whatever tended to destroy British as
well as American freedom; that the people of Virginia were not bound
to give obedience to any law designed to impose taxation upon them
other than the laws of their own General Assembly; and that any one who
should, either by speaking or writing, maintain the contrary should be
deemed an enemy to the Colony.
In the maintenance of these resolutions Henry, lifted out of self,
shouted those immortal words, “Tarquin and Cæsar had each his Brutus,
Charles I. his Cromwell, and George III.”--and here he was interrupted
by the cry of “Treason!”--“may profit by their example; if this be
treason, make the most of it.” “This is the way,” says Bancroft, “that
the fire began. Virginia rang the alarm bell for the continent.”
After this, with each of the great epochs in the constitutional
development following the Stamp Act, Williamsburg, either through the
men born and raised in the place, or educated at its famous college
of William and Mary, had an imperishable connection. It was Richard
Bland, an alumnus of the college, who first announced, in a pamphlet
entitled _An Enquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies_, the
startling doctrine that America was no part of the kingdom of England,
and had never been united with it except by the common tie of the
crown. Dabney Carr, another alumnus of the college, was the patron of
the resolutions in 1773 for appointment of intercolonial committees of
correspondence,--the first step taken towards united action on the part
of the colonies. Then it was Peyton Randolph, born in Williamsburg and
educated at its college, who when the first Congress came together in
1774, offered himself as the conspicuous mark of British resentment in
consenting to act as first President of the Continental Congress. In
1776, it was another alumnus of the college, Thomas Jefferson, who,
in the language of Ezra Stiles, President of Yale, “poured the soul
of the continent into the monumental act of Independence.” In 1786,
John Tyler, Sr., born in the country near Williamsburg, and another
alumnus, carried through the Virginia Legislature the proposition for
a convention of the States at Annapolis. In 1787, Edmund Randolph,
a native of Williamsburg and an alumnus of the college, opened
the proceedings of the convention at Philadelphia by submitting
“the Virginia plan” of a constitution which gave direction to its
proceedings.
[Illustration: JOHN TYLER, SR.]
A sketch of Williamsburg, however, would not be complete without some
details of the famous Convention which met in the city on May 6, 1776.
Edmund Pendleton of Caroline County was elected President, and John
Tazewell of Williamsburg, Secretary. On the day after the Convention
met they fixed on the 13th to go into the Committee of the Whole to
consider the state of the Colony. Colonel Archibald Cary, an alumnus of
William and Mary College, presided over this committee. The question
of independence was introduced at once, and was debated on that and
the next day, and the committee rose and reported the following
resolutions, drawn by Edmund Pendleton, which were _unanimously_ agreed
to by the Convention, 112 members being present:
“Forasmuch as all the endeavors of the United Colonies, by the most
decent representations and petitions to the King and Parliament of
Great Britain, to restore peace and security to America under the
British government, and a reunion with that people upon just and
liberal terms, instead of a redress of grievances, have produced,
from an imperious and vindictive adminstration increased insult,
oppression, and a vigorous attempt to effect our total destruction.
By a late act all these Colonies are declared to be in rebellion,
and out of the protection of the British Crown; our people, when
captivated, compelled to join in the murder and plunder of their
relations and countrymen; and all former rapine and oppression of
Americans declared legal and just. Fleets and armies are raised
and the aid of foreign troops engaged to assist these destructive
purposes. The King’s representative in this Colony hath not only
withheld all the powers of government from operating for our
safety, but, having retired on board an armed ship, is carrying on
a piratical and savage war against us, tempting our slaves by every
artifice to resort to him, and training and employing them against
their masters. In this state of extreme danger we have no alternative
left but an abject submission to the will of those overbearing
tyrants, or a total separation from the Crown and Government of
Great Britain, uniting and exerting the strength of all America for
defence and forming alliances with foreign powers for commerce and
aid in war: Wherefore, appealing to the Searcher of Hearts for the
sincerity of former declarations, expressing a desire to preserve
the connection with that nation, and that we are driven from that
inclination by their wicked councils, and the eternal laws of self
preservation;
“Resolved unanimously, that the delegates appointed to represent
this Colony in General Congress, be instructed to propose to that
respectable body to declare the United Colonies FREE AND INDEPENDENT
STATES, absolved from all allegiance to or dependence upon the Crown
or Parliament of Great Britain, and that they give the assent of this
Colony to such declaration, and to whatever measures may be thought
proper and necessary by the Congress for forming foreign alliances,
and a confederation of the Colonies, at such time, and in the manner,
as to them shall seem best; Provided, that the power of forming
government for, and the regulations of the internal concerns of, each
Colony be left to the respective Colonial Legislatures.
“Resolved unanimously, that a committee be appointed to prepare a
declaration of Rights, and such a plan of government as will be
most likely to maintain peace and order in this Colony, and secure
substantial and equal liberty to the people.”
On June 11, 1776, a committee, at the head of which was Thomas
Jefferson, was appointed by Congress in Philadelphia to prepare a
“Declaration of Independence”; and on July 1st, R. H. Lee’s resolution
of independence was adopted, and on July 4th the immortal Declaration
by Thomas Jefferson. Nor was this all that Virginia did. It having
been determined to procure a Declaration of Rights and a written
constitution for the State, the Convention, on May 15th, appointed
a committee of thirty-one, at the head of which was Archibald Cary,
to do the work. Many projects were submitted, but the Declaration
of Rights and the State constitution prepared by the master-hand of
George Mason, “swallowed up all the rest.” The former document, adopted
June 12, 1776, contained all that was valuable in Magna Charta and
the Bill of Rights of 1689, and much more; for it stands without a
rival as a summary of the rights of man and also of the principles of
free government. The latter document,--the constitution,--adopted on
June 29, 1776, unlike the similar constitutions established by South
Carolina and other colonies, declared the connection with Great Britain
“totally dissolved,” furnishing in this way the first example in this
country of a written constitution of a free and independent State.
Thus, in the language of John Adams of Massachusetts, Virginia “has
the glory with posterity of beginning with the resolutions against the
Stamp Act, and of concluding with the acts of the Convention of May,
1776, the great American Revolution”; and Williamsburg was the scene of
these great proceedings in the annals of the world.
[Illustration: MARY CARY, WASHINGTON’S EARLY LOVE.]
Williamsburg lost its metropolitan honors in 1779, when Richmond became
the capital of Virginia. The effect was disastrous, and its population
decreased from two thousand in 1776 to twelve hundred in 1795. Many of
the houses became tenantless, and the population of the place never
rose above sixteen hundred in after years.
But the old city still retained its college, which, despite many
vicissitudes, continued to maintain its influence in the Union. Indeed,
William and Mary College holds a unique position in the history of
the United States. In its antecedents, it is the oldest of American
colleges; in actual operation, it is second only to Harvard. It is the
only college that received its charter direct from the Crown under the
seal of the Privy Council in England. It was the first college to have
a full faculty of professors. It was the first to abandon the Oxford
curriculum and adopt the “elective system,” which it did in 1779.
It was the first to adopt the “honor system,” which discountenances
the custom prevailing at some colleges even now of spying and
informing on students. It was the first college in America to widen
its curriculum into the scope of a university by establishing chairs
of law and medicine, in addition to the classics and the sciences.
It was the first to establish schools of modern languages, history,
political economy and constitutional and political law. It was the
first to establish, in the Phi Beta Kappa Society, an intercollegiate
fraternity, having for its object purely literary improvement; and it
was the first to award strictly collegiate prizes, as manifested in the
gold medals donated by Lord Botetourt in 1771.
Of the seven Presidents born in Virginia, three--Thomas Jefferson,
James Monroe and John Tyler--were educated at William and Mary. To
these men is to be ascribed the annexation of Louisiana, Florida,
Texas and most of the Western territory, thus trebling the original
area of the Union. Four out of five judges contributed by Virginia
to the Supreme Bench of the United States were educated at William
and Mary. The most illustrious commander of the Federal armies down
to 1861, General Winfield Scott, was a William and Mary man. Of
twenty-seven Senators from Virginia (1789-1861), sixteen, and of the
four Speakers of the House of Representatives from Virginia, three, of
three ministers plenipotentiary to England, two, and of six ministers
to France, four, were alumni; and John James Beckly, first Librarian of
Congress and first Clerk of the House of Representatives, was a William
and Mary man.
Of forty-three members of the Supreme Court of Virginia, down to 1861,
twenty-one, and of thirty-three governors of Virginia, fifteen, were
alumni. Out of a numerical total of seventy-six judges and governors
of Virginia, William and Mary contributed thirty-six; Princeton, two;
Hampden-Sidney, two; University of Virginia, three; Dickinson College,
one; University of Pennsylvania, one; College of South Carolina, one;
Randolph-Macon, one; Yale, one; Washington College, Pennsylvania, one;
European colleges, five, and the rest obtained their education at
private schools.
[Illustration: CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL]
The society of Williamsburg has had its attractions from the earliest
times. The Rev. Hugh Jones, Chaplain of Governor Spotswood and
Professor of Mathematics in the college, thus wrote of the town in 1722:
“At the Capitol, at publick times, may be seen a great number of
handsome, well dress’d, compleat Gentlemen. And at the Governor’s
House upon Birth Nights, and at Balls and Assemblies, I have seen as
fine an Appearance, as good Divertion, and as splendid Entertainments
in Governor Spotswood’s time, as I have seen any where else.
“These buildings here described are justly reputed the best in all
English America, and are exceeded by few of their Kind in England.
“In every part of this Town are excellent Springs of good Water, or
else may be made good Wells; and the Ground falling on both Sides
conveys the Water and Rain by small Channels into the Creeks; but to
make the main Street exactly level, the Assembly gave a considerable
Sum, which was expended in removing Earth in some places, and
building a Bridge over a low Channel; so that it is now a pleasant,
long, dry Walk, broad, and almost level from the College to the
Capitol. Williamsburg is now incorporated and made a Market Town,
and governed by a Mayor and Aldermen; and it is well stocked with
rich Stores, of all Sorts of Goods, and well furnished with the best
Provisions and Liquors.
“Here dwell several good Families, and more reside here in their own
Houses at publick times. They live in the same neat Manner, dress
after the same Modes, and behave themselves exactly as the Gentry in
London; most Families of any note having a Coach, Chariot, Berlin or
Chaise.
“The Number of Artificers is here daily augmented; as are the
convenient Ordinaries or Inns for the Accomdation of Strangers.
“The Servants here, as in other parts of the country, are English,
Scotch, Irish, or Negroes.
“The Town is laid out regularly in Lots or square Portions,
sufficient each for a House and Garden; so that they don’t build
contiguous, whereby may be prevented the spreading Danger of Fire;
and thus also afford a free Passage of Air, which is very grateful in
violent hot Weather.
“Here, as in other Parts, they build with Bricks, but most commonly
with Timber lined with Cieling, and cased with feather-edged Plank,
painted with white Lead and Oil, covered with Shingles of Cedar,
etc., tarred over at first, with a Passage generally through the
Middle of the House for an Air-Draught in Summer.
“Thus their Houses are lasting, dry, and warm in Winter, and cool in
Summer; especially if there be Windows enough to draw the Air.
“Thus they dwell comfortably, genteely, pleasantly, and plentifully
in this delightful, healthful, and (I hope) thriving City of
Williamsburg.”
At the theatre in Williamsburg, built about 1716, the first
professional comedies and tragedies in America were played by Charles
Stagg, who was assisted by actors and musicians from England. He died
in 1735, and, for several years after, the building, which stood on
what is known as the Tucker lot, was used for amateur theatricals, in
which the students of the college figured as the actors. About 1745
the building was surrendered to the city for a city hall. In 1751,
“The New Theatre” near the Capitol was built by a company of comedians
from New York, and in 1752, the Hallam Company, professional players
from the theatre in Goodmanfields, near London, made their appearance
in Williamsburg. This was a great event in the Colonial life. It was
at this time that Lewis Hallam made his début, at the age of twelve,
on the boards. This prince of the theatre, who for a long period had
no rival in America, having on this occasion but a single sentence to
recite, broke down in the middle, and rushed in tears from the stage.
In 1771, the celebrated Miss Hallam visited Williamsburg. She had
“starred” it in Maryland, where all the swains of that Colony had paid
her tribute in poetry and where Peale had painted her portrait. An
extract from a letter of Colonel Hudson Muse, of Virginia, will recall
the glory of her début at “The New Theatre” in Williamsburg.
[Illustration: GEORGE WYTHE.]
“In a few days after I got to Virginia I set out to Williamsburg
where I was detained for eleven days, though I spent the time very
agreeably at the plays every night, and really must join Mr. Ennalls
and Mr. Bassett in thinking Miss Hallam superfine. But must confess
her luster was much sullied by the number of beauties that appeared
at that court. The house was crowded every night, and the gentlemen
who have generally attended that place agree there was treble the
number of fine ladyes that was ever seen in town before.--For my
part I think it would be impossible for a man to have fixed upon a
partner for life, the choice was too general to have fixed on one.”
The public buildings in Williamsburg appear to have been the best in
British America at the time of their erection. Weld, in his _Travels_,
says that “the town in 1795 contained about 1200 people, and the
society in it is thought to be more extensive and more genteel at the
same time than any place of its size in America.” The city was then
the residence of the Rev. James Madison, President of the College,
who was the first to teach political economy at any American college;
of George Wythe, the teacher of both Marshall and Jefferson, and the
first American professor of law; of Charles Bellimi, the first American
professor of modern languages; of John Blair, Associate Justice of the
United States; of Peter Pelham, the musician, to whose solemn strains
on the organ the great Washington had often lent a willing ear as he
sat in the old brick church on Sundays; and of many other persons of
refinement and cultivation.
Williamsburg was the residence in 1841 of John Tyler, when he was
called to the Presidential chair by the death of Harrison.
[Illustration: JOHN TYLER, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.]
In 1861, it shared in all the excitement of the approaching Civil War.
The college contributed all its students and professors to the Southern
army, as the old city contributed all its able-bodied citizens. During
the war its churches and the college were occupied as hospitals by the
armies on both sides. Through the city passed the army of Johnston, on
its withdrawal from Yorktown; and within its streets burst the shells
of the Federals in the bloody battle of Williamsburg in 1862. Then
came the great army of McClellan--and so the scenes of direful war
changed and shifted, the place being sometimes in possession of the
Confederates and sometimes in possession of the Federals.
Peace came at last, and the war-worn city took up again the burden of
its destiny. The college, which had been burned by the Federal troops,
was rebuilt on the old walls, after the old Confederate soldiers
returned to their homes. In 1881, the centennial of the surrender of
Lord Cornwallis awakened new life. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad
ran its cars through the place for the first time, as it transferred
the multitudes to Yorktown, thirteen miles away. In 1888, the college,
which had been closed for several years, assumed new energies under the
patronage of the State Legislature. Then, in 1893, the bicentennial
year of the college charter, Congress, by an appropriation of money,
made amends in some measure for the injuries inflicted by war. Since
that time, the place has greatly improved. The “Ancient Capital” has
its face toward the future, while proudly conscious of the past. It is
often visited by travellers from Europe, and from the North, who never
fail to take away with them kind impressions of the neighborhood, and
who love to repeat in letters to newspapers and other periodicals the
interesting stories of its ancient and modern history.
[Illustration: SEAL OF WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE.]
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The tombstone of his daughter, Lucy Burwell, wife of Hon. Lewis
Burwell, describes him as “the valiant Capt. Robert Higginson, one of
the first commanders that subdued the country of Virginia from the
power of the heathen.”
[6] One of these papers, styled “Nathaniel Bacon, Esq., his Manifesto
concerning the present troubles in Virginia,” has words which ring
out very much like the celebrated language of Patrick Henry--“If this
be treason, make the most of it.” Bacon said: “If virtue be a sin,
if piety be guilt, if all the principles of morality and goodness be
perverted, we must confess that those who are now called ‘Rebels,’ may
be in danger of this high imputation; but if there be, as sure there
is, a just God to appeal to, if to plead the cause of the oppressed, if
sincerely to aim at his Majesty’s honor and the public good without any
reservation or by-interest, if to stand in the gap after so much blood
of our dear brethren bought and sold, if after the loss of a great part
of his Majesty’s Colony deserted and dispeopled, freely with our lives
and estates to endeavor to save the remainder--be treason, God Almighty
judge and let the guilty die.”
[Illustration]
WILMINGTON
“THE FREE TOWN ON THE CAPE FEAR”
BY JOSEPH BLOUNT CHESHIRE
North Carolina might be called the State without a city--_civitas sine
urbe_. It has never had a capital or a metropolis, except arbitrarily
and in name only. It has been a rural State, a State of planters and
farmers. Its eminent lawyers, and even its physicians and merchants,
have often been also its eminent farmers. The first president of the
State Agricultural Society was the Chief Justice of its Supreme Court.
The physical conditions of a country predetermine the lines of its
development. North Carolina’s interminable length of dangerous
coast-line repelled the earliest attempt at English settlement. Sir
Walter Raleigh’s expedition of 1585, coasting along its inhospitable
sands, divined their true character, and marked down upon the first
map that ominous name--_Promontorium Tremendum_--Cape Fear. And in
spite of all improvements in navigation they have remained a menace and
a terror. Hatteras and Cape Lookout and Cape Fear warned off commerce
and settlement.
The eloquent words of the late Mr. George Davis, of Wilmington, applied
to Cape Fear, are descriptive of the general character of the North
Carolina coast:
“Looking then to the Cape for the idea and reason of its name, we
find that it is the southernmost point of Smith’s Island, a naked,
bleak elbow of sand jutting far out into the ocean. Immediately in
its front are the Frying Pan Shoals, pushing out still farther,
twenty miles to sea. Together they stand for warning and for woe;
and together they catch the long majestic roll of the Atlantic as
it sweeps through a thousand miles of grandeur and power from the
Arctic towards the Gulf. It is the play-ground of billows and of
tempests, the kingdom of silence and awe, disturbed by no sound but
the sea-gull’s shriek and the breakers’ roar. Its whole aspect is
suggestive, not of repose and beauty, but of desolation and terror.
Imagination cannot adorn it. Romance cannot hallow it. Local pride
cannot soften it. There it stands to-day, bleak and threatening and
pitiless, as it stood three hundred years ago, when Grenville and
White came near unto death upon its sands. And there it will stand,
bleak and threatening and pitiless, until the earth and the sea shall
give up their dead. And as its nature, so its name, is now, always
has been, and always will be, the ‘Cape of Fear.’”
But the broad sounds and rivers and fertile lands which lay behind
these barriers of sand and storm invited immigration, and soon after
the middle of the seventeenth century settlers began to pour in by
different routes. From Virginia they crowded across into the northern
and eastern sections. The Swiss and the Palatines came into the Neuse,
and by the middle of the eighteenth century the Highland Scotch were
swarming up the Cape Fear, while the Scotch-Irish from Pennsylvania
spread over the country on both sides of the Yadkin, and westward to
the Catawba, where they were mingled with the Germans, who also came
mostly by way of Pennsylvania. Coming into the country by different
routes, separated from each other by the unsettled wilderness, finding
no centre of power or of influence within the Province to draw them
together, each of these sections lived in a measure to itself, and
communicated with the outside world through those routes of travel
by which each had first entered the country. The Albemarle section
traded with Virginia, Cape Fear with Barbadoes and Charleston. The
Scotch-Irish of the Piedmont country were better acquainted with their
brethren in Pennsylvania, and in nearer sympathy with them, than
with the Scotch on the upper Cape Fear and lower Yadkin. The little
settlement of Maryland Churchmen in Rowan kept up communication with
their kinsfolk in St. Mary’s County at the mouth of the Potomac,
and their Lutheran neighbors sent back to Hanover for teachers and
ministers, and had their services in the German tongue until well on in
the nineteenth century.
Not only was there no metropolis--for the first fifty years there
were no towns. The Palatines and Swiss at the confluence of the Neuse
and the Trent laid out the little town of Newbern, and the Moravians,
soon after 1750, began their town of Salem, but nowhere else in the
Province was a town made the basis of the settlement. The Anglo-Saxon
self-reliance and freedom never showed itself more self-reliant and
free than in the unconscious daring which spread over thousands of
square miles of savage wilderness with never a centre of strength or of
succor provided against a time of danger.
[Illustration: RESIDENCE OF JAMES SPRUNT.
FORMERLY THE RESIDENCE OF GOVERNOR DUDLEY.]
Fifty years after the beginning of its permanent settlements, its first
town, Bath, had only a dozen small houses, and its second, Newbern, was
just founded. Edenton dates from 1716; Beaufort from 1723; Brunswick
from 1725, though not incorporated until 1745; and Wilmington from 1730
or 1735. At the end of one hundred years of settlement, North Carolina
had only these six villages, and it is doubtful if the most populous
had as many as six hundred inhabitants, though there was a population
of over fifty thousand in the Province.
Bath, incorporated in 1705, was never more than the inconsiderable
village which it is to-day. The first town to become of any importance
was Edenton, looking southward from a gentle elevation at the head of
a beautiful little bay on the north side of the upper end of Albemarle
Sound. Over against this bay the broad mouths of the Chowan and the
Roanoke brought her the trade of the back country, and down the sound
and across the shifting bars at Ocracoke and New Inlet a little fleet
of schooners and brigs began to carry on trade coastwise and with the
West Indies, and presently across the ocean.
The facetious Colonel William Byrd of Westover visited Edenton in
1728, and tells us that its forty or fifty houses were mostly small
and poor, and that only the better sort had brick chimneys. He says
that the Court-House looked like a tobacco barn, and that it was, as
he supposed, the only “metropolis” in the world which had no house of
worship of any kind, and no religious teacher or minister. This may
have been true as to the corporate limits of the town, but we know
that a church had been built at “Queen Anne’s Creek,” the former name
of the point where Edenton stands, twenty-five years earlier; and
a few years after Colonel Byrd’s visit the church still standing was
begun, and after many years was completed in such fashion that to-day
St. Paul’s Church, Edenton, remains the most admirable example we
have of our Colonial architecture, and a stately and becoming temple
of Christian worship. About the same time the present Court-House was
also built. It fronts upon an open square, sloping gently down to the
margin of the bay, so that the judge, sitting on the bench and looking
through the front windows, enjoys a beautiful view of the waters
across the sound towards Plymouth. This has not always been conducive
to the despatch of business. A very able and learned judge from the
up-country, upon his first holding court in Edenton, is said to have
stopped the eloquent counsel in the midst of his speech, and to have
declared that it would be impossible for him to attend to his argument
until it could be explained to him how two vessels, which he saw out in
the bay, could be sailing in exactly opposite directions on the same
wind.
[Illustration: ST. PAUL’S CHURCH, EDENTON, N. C., FROM THE SOUTHEAST.
BEGUN IN 1736.]
Edenton never became a very large town. The sloops and schooners and
brigs which carried the wheat and corn and pork and lumber to the
Northern or West Indian markets, could very often run up the deep
creeks and inlets almost to the farmers barn, or to the lumberman’s
camp in the swamp; and a few merchants were enough to do the limited
business of a purely agricultural community. But from 1722 to 1743
the Assembly met here, with few exceptions, and the General Court
was held here, so that it was the first settled seat of government.
And even after the growth of the Province to the southward demanded
a more central location for the government, Edenton still grew and
prospered, and became a place of wealth and importance, and the centre
of a society as cultivated and refined as could be found anywhere in
the country. It was a port of entry, though the official title of
the collector was Collector of the Port of Roanoke; and thither, in
1769, came James Iredell, a lad of seventeen, as deputy under his
kinsman, Henry Eustace McCulloh. He afterwards became an Associate
Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and had a county of North
Carolina named in his honor. He was one of the most truly admirable
characters in our history, and his correspondence is our richest mine
of information concerning the social life of his times, as well as the
most instructive view we have had left us of the civil and political
history of the State during its sub-revolutionary period. He has left
us a bright and pleasing picture of the old times in Edenton, when
Samuel Johnston, Joseph Hewes, Charles Johnson and Hugh Williamson were
its leading men, and, with the other notables of that region,--Blounts,
Skinners, Hoskinses and others,--made up a society whose traditions
remain and give to Edenton a distinction which time has not entirely
destroyed. After it had long ceased to be the seat of government it
retained to a considerable extent its prestige in all the northern
section of the State, commercially and socially.
Newbern, laid out by Colonel Thomas Pollock on his own lands about the
time of the coming of De Graffenreid, was not incorporated until 1723.
In 1738, Governor Gabriel Johnston called the Assembly to meet there,
and in 1746 the Assembly designated it as the seat of government. With
a few exceptions the subsequent sessions of the Assembly were held
there during the continuance of the royal authority. Tryon, the first
of the royal governors who wholly abandoned residence in the country,
built his famous “Palace” there, in which he and his wife _sat_ while
receiving their company, with an assumption of royal state which
offended the pride of the Colonial gentry, who did not lack a sense of
their own dignity.
Into the Cape Fear River adventurers from New England had come as early
as 1661, and had begun the raising of cattle on the abundant natural
pasturage of the country. They soon abandoned the enterprise, driven
off, it is said, by the Indians, whose children they had sent to be
sold for slaves in New England.
In 1665, Sir John Yeamans, a wealthy planter of Barbadoes, brought in
a colony from that island, and began a settlement at “Old Town,” eight
miles below the site of Wilmington. This was also abandoned after a few
years, Yeamans going back to Barbadoes, and the settlers going either
north to the Albemarle section, or south to the new city Charleston, at
the confluence of the Ashley and the Cooper Rivers.
[Illustration: HARNETT’S HOUSE, “HILTON,” NEAR WILMINGTON.]
At the end of the proprietary period the whole of what was known as
Clarendon County had only about five hundred white inhabitants. In
spite of its noble river and fertile lowlands it had a bad name. Two
attempts to settle it had failed, as we have seen; and, added to the
terrors of the coast, which its very name, Cape Fear, advertised, the
lower river had been for years the refuge and rendezvous of bands of
pirates. As early as 1684 they are known to have resorted to these
remote and solitary waters, and early in the eighteenth century it was
the headquarters of that nefarious band among whom Stead Bonnet and
Teach, or Black Beard, were leaders, who with unparalleled insolence
lay off the harbor at Charleston and sent a deputation into the city to
hector the very Governor and Council, and to demand and obtain certain
medical supplies which they needed. This insolence, however, proved
their ruin: Governor Johnston and Colonel Rhett attacked Bonnet and his
party in their Cape Fear retreats, and carried off all whom they did
not kill, to be tried and hanged at Charleston; at about the same time
Teach and his crew were attacked and killed or hanged by an expedition
from Virginia under officers of the royal navy, so that the Cape Fear
was permanently freed from these pests.
The settlers from the Albemarle and the Neuse now began to press down
toward the fertile bottoms along the northeast branch of the Cape Fear,
while about the same time a movement from South Carolina brought a
number of its distinguished men into the same region from the opposite
direction. The names Moseley, Lillington, Swann, Porter, Ashe, Harnett,
Rowan and others, first prominent in the Albemarle settlements, became
the leading names in the southern section; while the Moore brothers,
descendants of Sir John Yeamans, and already distinguished in the
Province of South Carolina, led a number of their best families to seek
a new home and to extend the culture of rice into this region.
[Illustration: “ORTON HOUSE.”]
The town of Brunswick, in the new county of New Hanover, was laid out
by Maurice Moore in 1725 or thereabouts, though not incorporated until
1745. It was intended for the county town, and affords even now in its
ruins many evidences of the wealth and culture of its inhabitants. All
about it are remains of Colonial plantations and residences of whose
owners we have in most cases very insufficient knowledge, but who
must have been people of wealth, culture and taste. The most notable
Colonial residence now remaining in North Carolina is the mansion
known as “Orton,” built by Roger Moore before 1734, a mile or so above
Brunswick, though part of the building is of more recent date. The new
Church of St. Philip was solemnly dedicated Tuesday in Whitsun-week,
1768, by the Rev. John Barnett and the Rev. John Wills, with a special
service approved by Governor Tryon, who declared this to be “the King’s
Chapel.” Its dimensions were seventy-five feet by fifty-five; and its
walls, nearly three feet thick, and still standing almost untouched by
time, though for the better part of a century roofless and abandoned,
indicate the dignified character of the original building. The size
and workmanship of the gravestones in the churchyard, no less than the
names and inscriptions thereon, attest the wealth and intelligence of
the worshippers. The King sent over a communion service of massive
silver, which some have supposed to be the service now the property
of Christ Church, Newbern, transferred to Newbern when Governor Tryon
built his “Palace” there, and made Christ Church the “King’s Chapel”
of the Province. St. Philip’s, though dedicated in 1768, had been
begun more than twenty years earlier, and had probably resounded to the
strains of that remarkable “Thanksgiving Hymn” composed by Governor
Arthur Dobbs upon the capture of Quebec by Wolfe in 1759.
[Illustration: THE WALLS OF ST. PHILIP’S CHURCH, BRUNSWICK, SHOWING
PART OF THE CORNER-STONE BROKEN OUT AND RIFLED BY FEDERAL SOLDIERS IN
1865.]
But the glory of old Brunswick was transient, and its life was absorbed
by the new settlement fifteen miles higher up the river. In 1739, the
Assembly passed an act by which it was provided that the county offices
of New Hanover, and the office of the Collector and Officer of the
Port of Brunswick, should thereafter be established at the “village
called Newton,” at the confluence of the two branches of the Cape Fear
River; and this village was incorporated as a town by the name of
Wilmington, in honor of Spencer Compton, Baron Wilmington, the friend
and patron of Governor Gabriel Johnston. Its more favorable situation
attracted the increasing trade which came down the two branches of the
river, and afforded greater security against the severe storms as well
as the privateers which now and then threatened vessels lying in the
roadstead at Brunswick, while its more healthful climate made it a more
desirable place of residence. The wealth and influence of Brunswick for
a while prevailed, and it fought hard to retain its superiority, but it
fought in vain. For some years before the beginning of the Revolution
Wilmington was securely established as the chief town of the Cape Fear
section, and in a manner the heir-apparent to the culture and influence
of Brunswick.
In itself, Wilmington was an inconsiderable place until some time
after the Revolution. But it was the centre of a most cultivated,
high-spirited and intelligent population, and, as it were, the stage
upon which all the eminent men of the country around performed their
parts. It was at once the head and the heart of the Cape Fear section.
Its history is not the history of the dwellers within its corporate
limits alone. The owner of a house and lot in the town could vote for
its member of the Assembly, though he left his house vacant and lived
in the country; and the qualification of its representative was not
residence in the town, but the ownership of town property. So it came
about that many of the most prominent characters in its history, those
who were actors in its most stirring scenes, and who are identified
with its memories and traditions, never resided within its limits.
There were wealthy and intelligent and public-spirited townsmen,--James
Innes, Louis and Moses John de Rosset, William and George Hooper,
Archibald Maclean, Eagles, Quince, Lloyd, Davis, Hogg, Campbell and
others; but the greater number of its most eminent names are those
of men living in the country around,--Ashe, Waddell, Moore, Burgwin,
Harnett, Lillington, Moseley and Swann. One of its notable citizens
was Colonel James Innes, who, having been an officer in the North
Carolina contingent sent to aid Admiral Vernon’s ill-fated expedition
against Carthagena, afterwards commanded the joint forces of Virginia
and North Carolina against the French in 1754. Another distinguished
man of this section, Major Hugh Waddell, commanded the North Carolina
troops sent to Virginia in the second French war.
[Illustration: COMMISSION OF LOUIS DE ROSSET AS CAPTAIN IN THE FRENCH
ARMY, SIGNED BY LOUIS XIV., AND COUNTERSIGNED BY TELLIER.]
It was in the dissensions preceding the Revolution that Wilmington
first assumed the position of leadership in the Province. She had no
single man superior to Iredell or Johnston of Edenton, but there were
in Wilmington, and residing in the country around, a larger number of
men than could be found in any other portion of the Province of like
commanding character and eminent ability.
Wilmington may fairly claim the first place among all the towns of
America for resistance to the Stamp Act. Governor Tryon, in his
despatches, tells us how Colonel Ashe, with the militia of New Hanover
County, came openly to the Governor’s house in Brunswick and compelled
William Houston, the stamp master, who had gone to the Governor for
protection, to go with them to Wilmington, and before the Mayor, Moses
John de Rosset, and the City Council, in the Court-House, to resign
his office and to take an oath that he would not receive the stamps.
He also says that upon the arrival of the sloop of war _Diligence_
at Brunswick with the stamps, they were not landed, as there was no
person to receive them. But he neglects to give the true reason, which
was that the men of New Hanover, under Colonel Waddell, assembled at
Brunswick and notified the commander of the _Diligence_ that they
would not allow the stamps to be landed. A few weeks later, when
Captain Lobb, of the _Viper_, had seized two vessels in the harbor
for the want of proper papers bearing the required stamps, the men of
Wilmington, this time under the lead of Moore, Harnett, Lillington,
Lloyd and Ashe, in defiance of two armed vessels, the _Viper_ and the
_Diligence_, compelled the surrender of the vessels which had been
seized, to the great disgust of the Governor. All these actions were
open and undisguised, the people of the country assembling in arms
under their chosen leaders, and compelling both the civil and the naval
authorities to yield to their demands.
[Illustration: HUGH WADDELL.]
The same prompt and intrepid spirit showed itself throughout the whole
struggle, which was just beginning in 1765. Nine years later this
little community, hardly to be called a town, raised eight hundred
pounds in a very short time in response to the appeal in behalf of
Boston; and sent to that city a ship-load of supplies. Its Committee
of Safety, whose minutes have been preserved from 1774 to 1776, when
its function was superseded by the organization of the State under its
Constitution, kept a very vigilant watch, and enforced most faithfully
the recommendations of the Continental Congress. One day they are
providing powder, preventing the importation of negroes, and compelling
the reshipment of those brought in; and the next day they are ordering
the discontinuance of public balls, and requesting ladies not to allow
them in their private houses, as being contrary “to the spirit of the
8th Article of the Association of the Continental Congress.” Their
courage and address interposed a constant obstacle between Governor
Martin in Fort Johnston and his party friends among the inhabitants;
and when they found that that fortification, in the Governor’s
possession, was a menace to the cause of American independence, they
encouraged and endorsed its destruction. Inspired by their sympathy,
Colonel John Ashe in July, 1775, resigned his office of Colonel under
the Provincial government, accepted an election as Colonel by the
people, marched with the militia to the fort and burned and demolished
it.
[Illustration: WILLIAM HOOPER OF NORTH CAROLINA, SIGNER OF THE
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.]
From 1773, the name of William Hooper becomes prominent in Wilmington.
The son of a Boston clergyman, he had come to Wilmington and begun the
practice of law some years before. At his first appearance in public
affairs he took his place alongside of Samuel Johnston, James Iredell,
Cornelius Harnett and John Ashe, as a leader of public sentiment. In
the proceedings of the Continental Congress during the Revolution and
in the fateful struggle for Federal union which followed, he was second
to none in integrity of character, in brilliancy of talents and in
the utility of his public services rendered to the State and to the
country. About the same time Archibald Maclean removed to Wilmington
from Brunswick, and was a fiery and caustic champion of liberty and of
constitutional government.
Wilmington suffered much during the Revolution. For almost the whole
of the year 1781 it was occupied by the British under the command of
Major Craig, a cruel and implacable enemy, and was the centre of active
enterprises, mostly carried on by means of the worst class of Tories,
extending as far as Chatham and Orange, and marked by circumstances of
rapine and atrocity. The brutal David Fanning, who captured Governor
Burke and all his suite at Hillsboro in August of this year, was one of
Craig’s favorite instruments. The most distinguished inhabitants, and
even women and children, as in the case of Mrs. Hooper, were treated
with inexcusable cruelty. Wilmington has few monuments, but the house
still stands where Cornwallis had his headquarters when passing through
towards Yorktown; and Cornelius Harnett’s house, the Harnett whom
Josiah Quincy called the Samuel Adams of North Carolina, was standing
near by the north boundary of the city only a few years ago.
[Illustration: HEADQUARTERS OF LORD CORNWALLIS, WILMINGTON.]
After those stormy and bitter days Wilmington saw many years of
prosperity and peace. There had been a distinctly literary element here
in Colonial days. The first American drama, _The Prince of Parthia_,
by Thomas Godfrey, was written here in 1759, and was years afterwards
produced on the stage by a company of local amateurs. Its author lies
buried in St. James’s churchyard. When peace had brought again plenty
and prosperity, and when commerce began to change the provincial town
into a bustling mart of trade, social refinement and intellectual
culture revived, and under changed conditions democratic institutions
the Cape Fear section asserted again its old pre-eminence.
[Illustration: COMMISSION OF LOUIS DE ROSSET AS CAPTAIN, GIVEN BY
WILLIAM AND MARY.]
During the war between the States, Wilmington was specially noted as
the centre of the important intercourse between the Confederate States
and foreign countries by means of the “blockade-runners.” A hundred
steamers are said to have been engaged in this traffic between
Wilmington and the West Indies, and for many miles north and south of
the inlets into the Cape Fear, the beach is still marked by the wrecks
of those run ashore to escape the blockading squadron. Some of them,
however, ran almost with the regularity of mail-boats, and one steamer
is said to have made over fifty successful trips. By these vessels
supplies of all kinds and munitions of war were brought in, and large
fortunes made by the owners and commanders of the successful steamers.
The State of North Carolina owned one of the most fortunate and famous
of these, the _Advance_, which eluded capture and continued year after
year to bring in shoes, blankets and clothing for the North Carolina
soldiers in the Confederate army, and cotton-cards for the women at
home, until a few months before Lee’s surrender. Even on her last fatal
voyage she had skilfully slipped between the blockading vessels under
cover of the darkness, and before day dawned she was well below the
horizon on her way to Nassau. But, unhappily, she had been obliged to
take in at Wilmington a quantity of coal mined in Chatham County, and
not suitable for her use, and a thick trail of smoke settling down over
the quiet sea betrayed her. The blockading steamers gave chase and
ran her down by her trail, the inferior quality of her coal making it
impossible for her to attain her proper speed.
Wilmington is still the largest town and the most important port of
entry in the State. Its population, like that of the State at large,
has been but little diluted by foreign immigration. It retains its
traditions of culture, of hospitality, of loyalty to the Anglo-Saxon
heritage of freedom and independence, and is as ready now as ever it
was in the past to resist the aggressions of power.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHARLESTON
BY YATES SNOWDEN
“In Pompeii, the tourist, looking from blank wall to dusty floor,
wonders what there is to see in that little hall, but a native goes
down upon his hands and knees; with a few brisk passes of his hand
the sand is brushed away, and a Numidian lion glares forth from the
tesselated pavement.”--VIRGINIUS DABNEY’S _Don Miff_.
Forty-five years before the English colonization of Virginia, fifty-two
before the Dutch settlement of New York and fifty-eight before the
Puritans landed at Massachusetts Bay, Captain Jean Ribaut, of Dieppe,
commanding the first Huguenot emigration to North America, on the
1st of May, 1562, entered the beautiful harbor of Port Royal, South
Carolina.
In his journal, as translated in one of Hakluyt’s black-letter tracts,
he describes the country as “full of hauens Riuers and Ilands of such
fruitfulness as cannot with tongue be expressed ... the fairest,
fruitfullest, and pleasantest of al the world.”
Internal dissensions weakened the infant Huguenot colonies, and they
were finally utterly destroyed by the Spanish bigot, Menendez. Though
in after years the Huguenot was to be an important element in the
peopling of the colony, the crafty Spaniard forever prevented the
domination of the Fleur-de-Lis on the South Carolina coast, and made
the way clear for the Lion of St. George.
In 1670, one hundred and eighteen years later, the first permanent
settlement of the Province was made by the English under Governor
William Sayle, at Albemarle Point, on the western bank of the Kiawah
(Ashley) River, three miles from the present site of Charleston. This
expedition had also headed for Port Royal, but the Cacique of Kiawah, a
friendly Indian, advised that the land farther up the coast was better
to plant, and the colonists acted more wisely than they knew, for a few
years later, in 1686, the Spaniards utterly destroyed the Scotch colony
established at Port Royal by Lord Cardross.
On August 17, 1669, the frigate _Carolina_, the _Port Royall_ and the
sloop _Albermarle_ were at anchor in the Downs with ninety-three
passengers all aboard and ready for sea. A few days later they sailed
for Kinsale, Ireland, and thence for Barbadoes, which they reached in
October. A West Indian gale wrecked the _Albermarle_ on the Barbadian
coast and another vessel was procured, and on the voyage to Carolina,
their objective point, the _Port Royall_ was wrecked on one of the
Bahamas. The ship _Carolina_, badly battered, eventually reached
Bermuda, where a sloop was engaged to assist the expedition to its
destination. En route from Barbadoes they passed through dreadful
hurricanes, and the Barbadian sloop did not reach Ashley River until a
month after the arrival of the two other vessels. It will be seen that
it was through storm and stress the English made the first settlement
of Carolina, and that of the three ships that left England with the
emigrants, the _Carolina_ was the only one to reach these shores.
Sir John Yeamans, who had taken charge of the expedition when it left
Barbadoes, withdrew from its management when it reached Bermuda,
and inserted the name of Colonel Wm. Sayle as Governor in the blank
commission which he had from the Lords Proprietors. A contemporary
writer describes this, the first Governor of South Carolina, as “of
Bermuda, a Puritan and Non-Conformist, whose religious bigotry,
advanced age and failing health promised badly for the discharge of the
task before him.” Governor Sayle died within the year and the colonists
selected Joseph West as his successor. When the news of Sayle’s death
reached England, the Lords Proprietors again appointed Sir John Yeamans
Governor, in which position he served most unsatisfactorily to the
Proprietors until his death in 1674.
The settlers of Charles Town had not been two years on the western bank
of the Ashley before they recognized the unfitness of its location,
and settlements were soon made on the peninsula called Oyster Point,
two miles away, and in sight of the sea. These settlements increased,
and in 1680 the public offices were removed to the present site of
Charleston.
In spite of religious dissensions between Churchmen and Dissenters
and the opposition to law and order natural to the many adventurers
and _enfans perdus_ who flocked to Carolina as to other colonies,
and despite wars with the Indians in 1712 and 1715, commerce and
population rapidly increased. In 1680, when the new town became the
seat of government, there were as many as sixteen vessels discharging
and loading cargo at one time.
[Illustration: PLAN OF CHARLESTON. FROM A SURVEY OF EDWARD CRISP IN
1704.
A--Granville bastion.
B--Craven ”
C--Carteret ”
D--Colleton ”
E--Ashley ”
F--Blake’s ”
G--Half Moon.
H--Draw-bridge _in the line_.
I--Johnsons _covered half moon_.
K--Draw-bridge _in half moon_.
L--Palisades.
M--Lt.-Col. Rhetts bridge.
N--Kea L. Smiths bridge.
O--Ministers house.
P--English Church.
Q--French ”
R--Independent Church.
S--Ana-Baptist ”
T--Quaker Meeting House.
V--Court of Guard.
W--First rice patch _in Carolina_.
1--Pasquero and Garrets house.
2--Landsacks house.
3--Jno. Crofskeys house.
4--Cheveliers house.
5--Geo. Logan house.
6--Poinsett house.
7--Elicott house.
8--Starling house.
9--M. Boone house.
10--Tradds house.
11--Nat. Law house.
12--Landgrave Smith house.
13--Col. Rhetts house.
14--Ben Skenking house.
15--Sindery house.
]
John Locke, who had written the _Fundamental Constitutions_ for the
colony, was a Socinian, but doubtless by instruction from seven of the
Lords Proprietors,--Lord Shaftesbury, the eighth, was a Deist,--the
philosopher declared that the Church of England was “the only true and
Orthodox and the national religion of the King’s Dominions.”
Not until 1680 are there any authentic records of any church in
Charleston, but there appears to have been a rapid growth in grace
as well as population, for in 1704 there were five places of public
worship, St. Philip’s (Episcopal) Church, the Huguenot Church, the
First Baptist Church, the White Meeting House (Presbyterian and
Congregational), and the Quaker Meeting House.
General Edward McCrady, the State’s latest and ablest historian,
writing of the period of 1715, says of the colony:
“In this small community of less than 6,000 there were Churchmen
from England and Barbadoes, Independents from England, Old and New,
Baptists from Maine, and Huguenots from France and Switzerland,
all zealous of their peculiar religious tenets, and many, if not
most, with tenacity of bigotry and fanaticism. Carolina was a
Church of England Province under its charter, and the Fundamental
Constitutions, while offering the greatest religious freedom,
provided only that God was acknowledged and publicly and solemnly
worshipped, still provided for the establishment and maintenance of
that Church.”
[Illustration: ST. PHILIP’S CHURCH, CHARLESTON.]
In 1706, the Spaniards, who had always been a menace to the infant
colony, made their first and last attack on Charleston, and, one
hundred and ninety-three years later, when it was rumored that
Cervera and his fleet would menace the South Carolina coast and storm
Charleston, the old story of their futile effort was read with intense
interest. It was in Havana that Monsieur Le Feboure, the captain of
a French frigate, planned and organized the memorable attack. His
fleet of four armed sloops stopped at St. Augustine for reinforcements
and supplies, and on August 25th “five separate smokers appeared on
Sullivan’s Island as a signal to the town that that number of ships was
observed on the Coast.” Yellow fever was then raging in Charleston, but
Lieutenant-Colonel Rhett, commanding the militia, ordered a general
alarm by drum-beat, and sent messengers to Governor Sir Nathaniel
Johnson, who was at his plantation, Silk Hope, on Cooper River, and to
the militia companies in the neighboring parishes, calling them to the
relief of the town.
On Tuesday morning the allied fleet crossed the bar, and the next
day Le Feboure sent Governor Johnson a demand for the surrender of
the town within an hour. The Governor replied that “it needed not a
quarter of an hour or a minute’s time to give an answer to the demand
... that he valued not any force Le Feboure had; and bid him go about
his business.” In addition to the fortifications ashore Governor
Johnson relied for defence upon three ships, a brigantine, two sloops
and a fire-ship, which he had manned and equipped with Colonel Rhett
as vice-admiral. The Governor’s spirited reply to Le Feboure’s demand
probably unnerved the Spaniards and French, who did not attempt to
attack the town, but ravaged a part of the mainland and one of the
islands of the landlocked harbor, where they met stout resistance from
the militia. On Saturday, Rhett with his improvised fleet drove the
four invading war-ships from the harbor to the open sea, and would
have destroyed them, as he did the ships of Stede Bonnet, the pirate,
twelve years later, but for a threatening storm.
Nothing more having been heard of the allied fleet, the country militia
was discharged. Then the news came that a French war-ship, commanded
by Captain Pacquereau, had appeared in Sewee Bay with two hundred men.
He had come to join Le Feboure, but was unaware of his commander’s
failure. On September 2d, Captain Fenwicke and his militiamen met the
French landing party, killed fourteen and captured fifty prisoners.
Colonel Rhett demanded and received the surrender of Pacquereau’s ship,
with ninety men aboard. Charleston had two hundred and thirty French
and Spanish prisoners, but whether or not they died of yellow fever,
Hewatt, the only historian of the time, does not say, and unfortunately
Charleston could not boast of a newspaper until twenty-six years later.
The failure of this first of three attempts to take Charleston by naval
force proved that “the sinews of war are the sinews of valiant men,”
for its defenders were weakened by yellow fever and had neither full
ranks nor strong fortifications. Doyle, the English historian, says:
“The settlers who held Charlestown against the allied forces of France
and Spain were partners in the glory of Stanhope and Marlborough, heirs
to the glory of Drake and Raleigh.”
[Illustration: A MODERN CHARLESTON RESIDENCE.]
Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts visited Charleston in 1773, with a view
to sounding the leaders of public opinion and seeing if the colony
was ripe for rebellion. He was surprised at the material prosperity,
wealth and hospitality of the people. He says, in his published
diary: “This town makes a beautiful appearance as you come up to it
and in many respects a magnificent one. I can only say in general
that in grandeur, splendor of buildings, decorations, equipages,
numbers, commerce, shipping and indeed everything, it far surpasses
all I ever saw, or ever expect to see in America.” He was entertained
at the elegant residence of Miles Brewton and records a remarkable
conversation which would seem to have forecasted the results of the
war between the States eighty-eight years later. The same house stands
to-day, the finest survival of colonial architecture to be found among
the residences in the city.
He attended a concert of the St. Cecilia Society, where he saw upwards
of two hundred and fifty ladies, and he notes, with evident wonder,
that three members of the permanent band were employed at a salary of
five hundred guineas a year, and another musician was occasionally
employed at fifty guineas a month. His description of the St. Cecilia
concert is brief, but the longest that has ever appeared in print.
This society, one hundred and thirty-five years old, the oldest
“dancing club” on the continent, is in active operation to-day, though
the musical feature has long since disappeared. Now, as in Quincy’s
time, admission to one of its three annual entertainments cannot be
bought for any sum, but gives a gentleman the open sesame to the most
exclusive social circle in the United States. Some, even of those who
are connected with it and others whose qualifications for membership
are indisputable, regard this ancient society as an anachronism, but
Charleston has many anachronisms. The South Carolina law which declares
the marriage tie indissoluble for any cause is perhaps regarded as an
anachronism, not only in Chicago, but in every city and State in the
Union, and the unwritten law which prohibits and has, so far, prevented
the publication of any report of a St. Cecilia ball in the public
prints would doubtless excite derisive laughter from every “Society
Reporter” in this country except those of Charleston. The invitation
list of the St. Cecilia Society is the Almanach de Gotha of Charleston
society. Once the name of a lady is entered upon it, that name is never
taken off unless the lady dies or marries out of the charmed circle, or
out of the city.
Isolated from other English colonies by a wide region of forest, the
Charlestonians, with Spaniards to the south and Indians to the west
of them, and with Cape Hatteras as a menace to commerce with the
North Atlantic seaboard, were compelled from the first to think and
act for themselves. In 1698, they made the first attempt to form a
public library; in 1735, they organized the “Friendly Society,” their
first insurance company; and as early as 1774 a Chamber of Commerce was
established in Charleston. They made in 1764 the second attempt in the
colonies to provide for the care of the insane.
At the opening of the war of the Revolution Charleston was one of the
three leading seaports of the country. Apart from its strategic value
and as a base of supplies, the British government doubtless desired
especially to punish the rebels of one of the most favored colonies,
which by bounties on indigo and otherwise had been most generously
treated by the mother country. There were many Charlestonians who were
loyal to the King and who fought for England during the Revolution,
sundering family ties, and, some of them, self-exiled like Bull and
Moultrie, eventually dying in London. The presence of these loyal
adherents of the King only served to heighten the intensity of those
who were anxious to unite the colonies, and, as a consequence, as far
back as 1765, South Carolina took the first steps toward a continental
union before the measure had been agreed upon by any colony south of
New England. “Massachusetts,” says Bancroft, “sounded the trumpet,
but to South Carolina is it owing that it was attended to. Had it not
been for South Carolina, no congress would then have happened.” The
first independent constitution in any of the colonies was that of South
Carolina, formulated in Charleston in March, 1776, though the Colony
had had a virtually independent government from the 6th of July, 1774.
[Illustration: DEFENCE OF FORT MOULTRIE.
FROM A PAINTING BY J. A. OERTEL.]
“On the 11th of January, 1775,” says Simms, “the first Revolutionary
provincial Congress met and laid the foundation for the more regular
meeting of the convention of March, 1776, by which the first
constitution of South Carolina was formed.”
On June 28, 1776, Charleston was besieged by a British fleet under
Sir Peter Parker, as well as by a land army, under Sir Henry Clinton,
and the first great victory of the Revolution was won by the gallant
General Moultrie. The military student will tell you that Sir Peter
Parker could easily have run his great fleet past the palmetto fort
on Sullivan’s Island, and that he met disaster and defeat by following
a military rule of that day,--never to leave an enemy in a fortified
post behind you. It is interesting to know that the twenty-four
pounder, the largest ball in use at the battle of Fort Moultrie, was
the smallest in use during the siege of Charleston in the war between
the States.
[Illustration: THE ATTACK ON FORT MOULTRIE BY THE BRITISH FLEET, 1776.]
The devoted city was again besieged in 1779 by the British under
General Augustine Provost, and was again successfully defended.
The third siege by the British was successful and the city was
surrendered on the 12th of May, 1780, after a siege of four months and
heavy bombardment. It was held by the British under military rule until
evacuated by them December 14, 1782. General William Moultrie in his
_Memoirs_ thus describes the reoccupation of the city by the American
forces:
“I cannot forget that happy day when we marched into Charlestown with
the American troops; it was a proud day to me, and I felt myself much
elated at seeing the balconies, the doors and windows crowded with
the patriotic fair, the aged citizens and others congratulating us on
our return home, saying, ‘God bless you gentlemen! You are welcome
home gentlemen!’ Both citizens and soldiers shed mutual tears of joy.”
The Duke La Rochefoucault-Liancourt, who visited the United States
in 1796, after the Revolution, when the people had in great measure
recovered from its effects, was as extravagant in his praise of the
people of Charleston as Josiah Quincy had been. The enthusiastic
Frenchman wrote:
“I cannot close this long article on South Carolina without
mentioning with deserved praise the kind reception I experienced
in Charleston. This is a duty which I owe to the inhabitants of
all the parts of America which I have traversed, but especially
to this place. In no town of the United States does a foreigner
experience more benevolence or find more entertaining society than
in Charleston.... They keep a greater number of servants than those
of Philadelphia. From the hour of four in the afternoon, they rarely
think of aught but pleasure and amusement.... Many of the inhabitants
of South Carolina having been in Europe, have in consequence acquired
a greater knowledge of our manners and a stronger partiality to them
than the people of the Northern States. Consequently the European
modes of life are here more prevalent. The women here are more lovely
than in the North. They are interesting and agreeable but not quite
so handsome as those of Philadelphia. They have a greater share
in the commerce of society without retaining for this the loss of
modesty and delicate propriety in their behavior.”
Time does not appear to have changed the character of the people or
their social amenities, for, in 1836, an Englishman, the Honorable
Charles Augustus Murray, writes:
“A gentleman must be very difficult to please if he does not find
Charleston society agreeable; there is something warm, frank and
courteous in the manner of a real Carolinian; he is not studiously,
but naturally polite; and though his character may not be remarkable
for that persevering industry and close attention to minutiæ in
business which are so remarkable in the New England merchants, he is
far from deficient in sagacity, courage or enterprise.”
One characteristic of the Charleston women which still abides with them
is noted by Mr. Murray, who says:
“They are pretty, agreeable and intelligent, and in one respect have
an advantage over most of their Northern sisters--(if the judge is
to be a person accustomed to English society)--I mean as regards
voice; they have not that particular intonation which I have remarked
elsewhere, and which must have struck every stranger who has visited
the other Atlantic cities.”
There was little of the Puritanical element in the thriving capital of
South Carolina. Many of its citizens had frequented, in their college
days, the pit of Drury Lane or Covent Garden, others who had come
as adventurers had found the fortunes they sought, and an important
element of the population was that strain of Huguenot blood from which
Calvinism had not eradicated the _joie de vivre_ inherent in the
Frenchman.
William Dunlap, the first and most painstaking of the historians of
the American stage, states that the first dramatic performance ever
given in America was in Williamsburg, Va., where a theatre was opened
on September 5, 1752, and this date was generally accepted as correct,
and the centennial of the introduction of the drama in America was
celebrated with all the honors at Castle Garden, New York, a hundred
years later.
Later investigators claim that New York was treated to a performance
by professionals in September, 1732, and that Addison’s _Cato_ was
rendered in Philadelphia by a regular company as early as 1749. The
South Carolina _Gazette_ for January 18, 1734, has the following
advertisement:
“On Friday, the 24th instant, in the Court Room, will be attempted a
tragedy called ‘The Orphan or the Unhappy Marriage.’ Tickets will be
delivered out on Tuesday next, at Mr Shepheard’s at 40s each.”
That this was probably a success is proved by its repetition on the
Charleston boards on January 28th, and again February 4th, with the
addition of “A new pantomime entertainment in grotesque characters
called ‘The Adventures of Harlequin and Scaremouch, with the
Burgo-Master Trick’d.’”
No city on the continent had a higher standard of scholarship a few
decades before and after the Revolution of 1776.
Many of its leading citizens had been educated at the English
universities, and brought and established here the literary tastes and
pursuits which had been contracted in those then greatest seats of
learning in the world. South Carolina headed all the colonies in the
list of the London Inns of Court, and up to the time of the Revolution
had forty-five representatives out of the one hundred and fourteen
American students of the “lawless science of the law.”
Among other Carolina youth who were sent to England to complete
their education were Arthur Middleton, Thomas Heyward, Thomas Lynch,
Jr. (three of the signers of the Declaration of Independence), John
and Hugh Rutledge, C. C. Pinckney, Thomas Pinckney, W. H. Drayton,
Christopher Gadsden, Henry Laurens, John Laurens, Gabriel Manigault,
William Wragg and John Foucheraud Grimké. All of these gentlemen,
except one, William Wragg, were military and civil leaders in the
Revolution.
Mr. Wragg, who was loyal to the King, was at first confined to the
limits of his plantation, “The Barony,” as it was then styled, and
finally expatriated by order of the patriot Council of Safety. He
went to England never to return, and up to our own day he was the
only American whose name was commemorated in Westminster Abbey.
Many Charlestonians were wealthy enough to travel through Europe as
gentlemen of leisure, and one of them, Ralph Izard, maintained an
establishment in London and travelled through France, Italy and a part
of Germany.
While the pursuit of culture for its own sake is an evidence of
a highly enlightened civilization, it is unfortunate that the
intellectual coterie of Charleston and the neighboring parishes left
so little, comparatively, to posterity. Perhaps their most notable
productions during the last century were the novels of Richard
Beresford and _The First Comprehensive Theory of Dew_, by William
Charles Wells, both of whom, however, left their native State and lived
and wrote in England. Both Darwin and Tyndall pay hearty tribute to the
ability and scientific discoveries of Wells, whose paper on the theory
of natural selection furnished the groundwork for many scientists of
our day. Other works of South Carolinians of the last century were
the histories of Ramsay and Drayton, the military memoirs of Moultrie
and the political memoirs of Drayton, the _Flora Caroliniana_ of
the botanist Walter, a few brochures of indifferent poems and some
occasional plays, two of which were selected by the _Dublin University
Magazine_ as the subject of ridicule in an article on the “Beginnings
of the American Drama.”
The Augustan Age, if we may apply such a term to the insignificant
South Carolina literature, was early in the thirties, when Hugh S.
Legaré, Stephen Elliott and other kindred spirits founded at Charleston
the _Southern Review_, which, while it continued to exist, “had a more
brilliant reputation than any like publication ever obtained in this
country.”
A little later there was a coterie of specialists in natural history,
such as Bachman, the natural historian, Holbrook, the herpetologist
and ichthyologist, John Lawrence Smith, mineralogist, the two Ravenels,
McCrady, Gibbes, Porcher and others.
Agassiz found very congenial friends here and lent invaluable aid to
the Museum of the College of Charleston, and Audubon published jointly
with Bachman _The Quadrupeds of North America_, the figures by Audubon,
the text by Bachman.
Dr. John Lawrence Smith is probably as well known in Europe as in
America. He was employed by the Turkish government to explore its
mineral resources. He received two decorations from the Sublime Porte,
the order of St. Stanislaus from Russia and the cross of the Legion of
Honor from Napoleon III., and succeeded Sir Charles Lyell as member
of the French Institute. He was also the inventor of the inverted
microscope.
Simms, the novelist and poet, and Paul Hamilton Hayne and Henry
Timrod, the poets, are the three Charlestonians whose names are best
known to the world of letters. Their memory will be cherished more
and more at the home of their birth, as wealth increases, and all the
effects of the fierce struggle for existence which followed war and
reconstruction have disappeared. The enthusiastic reception and rapid
sale of the recently published memorial edition of Timrod’s poems is a
hopeful sign of reawakened interest in the sweetest love poems and most
stirring martial lyrics ever penned by a Southern poet.
No great artist first saw the light in Charleston, but the city boasts
of several of more than mediocre ability. Early in the eighteenth
century Henrietta Johnson executed a number of crayon portraits which
are still treasured by some of the old families. Portrait painting was
indeed almost the only branch of art encouraged for over one hundred
years, the local portrait painter Theus having opened his studio in
Charleston in 1750, and done much excellent work, some of which is
still extant. But if there were no great painters at home, the wealthy
Charlestonians brought back art treasures from Europe, and some of
their stately homes were beautified by works of Allan Ramsay, Zoffany,
Romney, Gainsborough, West, Copley and Gilbert Stuart.
“The pride though of the art lovers of Charleston,” says Dr. G.
E. Manigault, “in the closing years of the last century as well
as the early years of this, was in the miniatures on ivory by
Edward Malbone, who ranks as having been the greatest of American
miniaturists. He ... first opened a studio here in 1800, where he
probably painted more portraits than in any other city. Our own
miniaturist, Charles Fraser, should also be mentioned with him. He
executed over 300 portraits during a long life and while there is not
the same uniform excellence in them all as in those of Malbone, his
master-pieces certainly entitle him to a high rank in his art.”
Washington Allston spent several years in Charleston, where were many
of his relatives, whose descendants still possess several of his
paintings.
“Saint Mémin, limner,” is one of the names to be found in the
Charleston City Directory for 1809; but few of the original crayon
drawings and copper plates of that industrious French gentleman have
escaped the tooth of time. Louis R. Mignot, the son of a French
confectioner, was the only landscape painter from Charleston whose
ability is recognized in Europe. S. G. W. Benjamin considers him one
of the most remarkable artists of our country and says that he was
equally happy in rendering the various aspects of nature, “whether it
was the superb splendor of the tropical scenery of the Rio Bamba in
South America, the sublime maddening rush of iris-circled water at
Niagara, or the fairy-like grace, the exquisite and ethereal loveliness
of new-fallen snow.”
The only living Charlestonian known to the art world is the
artist-author Rufus Fairchild Zogbaum, who was born in August, 1849,
was educated at the Art Students’ League in New York and studied under
Donnat in Paris. He is still in the heyday of his powers, and has no
superior in the United States as a delineator of military and naval
subjects.
The economic and commercial history of the city, while not so eventful
or of so absorbing interest as its military and civil annals, cannot
be entirely overlooked. One crop which is not now cultivated in the
State, but which once enriched the people of the planter city, was
first cultivated by a woman, Eliza Lucas, the accomplished daughter of
Colonel Lucas, Governor of Antigua, one of the Leeward Islands, and
afterward the mother of General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and General
Thomas Pinckney, of South Carolina. With seed sent her by her father,
Miss Lucas, in 1741-42, planted the first indigo in South Carolina. In
1748, Parliament passed an act allowing a bounty of sixpence per pound,
and just before the Revolution the export from Charleston had risen to
1,107,660 pounds.
The cultivation of rice was one of the earliest planting experiments
in the State, and though Ramsay, the historian, attributes its
introduction to Governor Thomas Smith and a small bag of seed procured
from Madagascar in 1694, it is certain that rice had been successfully
grown in South Carolina as early as 1691. In 1770, the surplus over
consumption exported from Charleston had risen to 120,000 barrels,
valued at $1,530,000.
As early as 1770, “patches” of cotton were grown in South Carolina, and
year by year thereafter for two decades indigo cultivation declined,
and was finally entirely abandoned.
“In 1784,” says the Hon. W. A. Courtenay, the city’s most
accomplished and enthusiastic historian, “John Teasdale, a merchant
of Charleston, shipped from this city to J. and J. Teasdale,
Liverpool, eight bags of cotton. When the vessel arrived out the
laughable incident occurred of the cotton being seized on the ground
that it could not be grown in America. Upon satisfactory proof, which
had to be furnished, it was released. This cotton shipment was the
first ever made from the United States to a European port!”
Though slavery is commonly supposed to have rendered those living under
its debasing influence inert and slow to enter upon great commercial
enterprises, it is remarkable that Charleston merchants and planters
planned and successfully constructed the earliest great railroad line
in America. Mr. Courtenay says:
“While the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad was being constructed in
1829, under Stephenson’s direction, and Baltimore was reaching out
to the Ohio River, Charleston was projecting a railroad to the head
of navigation on the Savannah River, which when completed was the
longest railroad in the World.”[7]
In the royal grants of land in Carolina the Crown reserved an interest
in all precious and base metals, and some of the grants reserved for
the King a share of the diamonds and precious stones which avarice
rather than common sense suggested might underlie tide-water South
Carolina. Geologists and lawyers laughed at the idea of precious stones
in marshes and sand dunes, though there had been “black diamonds”
there for thousands of years. It was not until after the war between
the States that Dr. St. Julien Ravenel’s discovery of the commercial
value of the immense phosphate deposits brought wealth and prosperity
to many whose needs were the greatest. The fertilizer business then
established is still in successful operation and Charleston continues
to be the largest phosphate shipping port in the world.
[Illustration: PHILADELPHIA STREET (COON ALLEY).
SCENE IN REAR OF ST. PHILIP’S CHURCH.]
Of the war between the States it is not necessary to write at length.
Whether one regards “the firing of the first gun on Fort Sumter as the
first rash act of a wild and fatal delusion,” or as the beginning of
the greatest war in modern times for constitutional liberty and against
the lust for power and territorial domination, no fair man can deny the
heroism against unnumbered odds displayed by the Confederate soldiers.
It would be interesting to quote the opinion of Lord Wolseley as to
the value of the study of the siege of Charleston in its tactical
features as compared with the siege of Sebastopol and other great
naval attacks. All the world wondered at the marvellous success of the
blockade-runners, and the pages of history may be searched in vain for
greater heroism than that displayed by Glassell, Dixon and others who
first proved to the world the value of the torpedo in naval warfare;
but let two sets of figures suffice:
GENERAL SUMMARY FORT SUMTER, FEBRUARY 1, 1865.
Total number of projectiles fired against it 46,053
Total weight in tons of metal thrown (estimate) 3,500
Total number of days under three great bombardments 117
Total number of days under eight minor bombardments 40
Total number of days under fire, steady and desultory 280
Total number of casualties (52 killed, 267 wounded) 319
[Illustration: THE ATTACK ON CHARLESTON BY THE FEDERAL IRONCLAD FLEET,
APRIL 7, 1863.]
Charleston with a white population of 24,000 furnished twenty-three
companies of infantry, eleven of artillery and eight of cavalry to the
Confederate armies.
The comments of a British officer and of two officers who served in
the Federal army as to the extraordinary defence of Charleston are
submitted;--for one born and reared in sight of Fort Sumter, and as a
child carried away from the city to escape the shells from the “Swamp
Angel” on Morris Island, cannot write of his people _sine ira et
studio_.
Col. H. Wemyss Feilden, colonel and chief paymaster (retired list), H.
B. M. Army says:
“We find a large commercial city, at the commencement of a great
war defended by nearly obsolete works and with several unguarded
approaches, rendered impregnable in a short time by the skill and
genius of the general in command, supported by the indomitable valor,
devotion and tenacity of its defenders, and by the unflinching
spirit of all ages and both sexes in the community.”
Quartermaster-General M. C. Meigs, U. S. A., in an adverse report to
Secretary of War Stanton, in August, 1865, upon the petition of various
merchants and wharf owners of Charleston, asking that their warehouses
and wharves in the possession of the government be restored to them,
says:
“Charleston was a hostile fortress. In its defence the merchants
and property owners appear to have aided by all means within their
power. Its defence ceased only when, after a siege almost unexampled
since the invention of artillery, for duration and persistency, the
approach of a powerful army from the Mississippi Valley rendered any
further resistance entirely hopeless. Then the armed Rebel forces
abandoned the town, destroying such stores as they could. There was
no capitulation, no surrender by which any of the extreme rights of
captors were modified or abated in the giving up of an equivalent.
The place was defended to the last extremity, and the whole town is a
conquest, and as such the property of the conquering Government....
The warehouses and wharves used in the contraband trade, in violation
of the laws and proclamations of the United States, have been
used in aid of the Rebellion.... To put an end to this use, to
obtain possession of them, has cost the United States the lives of
many thousand of patriotic citizens sacrificed in the skirmishes,
assaults, battles and bombardments which have made the bloody record
of this unexampled siege. Shells and torpedoes, by land and by water,
have destroyed our citizens.... To restore this property, which
cost the loyal people so much blood, and so much treasure, to the
original disloyal owners would, it seems to me, give a shock to every
earnest and loyal man. Far better give the property to the families
and heirs of the victims of the massacre of Wagner, or of those who
perished upon the monitors sunk by the agents of the Torpedo Bureau
in Charleston Harbor.”
It only remains to say that President Andrew Johnson did not share the
views of Quartermaster-General Meigs and that the property was restored
to the claimants.
Ex-Governor D. H. Chamberlain, formerly an officer in the Union army,
speaking to a representative young Virginian--a great-grandson of Chief
Justice Marshall--in Charleston a few days ago, said:
“When I walk the streets of this city of 65,000 inhabitants, and more
than half of them colored, and when I see the poverty of its material
resources as compared with the large and flourishing business centres
of the North, and when I remember that the population of this city
in 1861 was not over 41,000, of which not over 24,000 were white,
I marvel at the blind confidence and fatuity of this people in
inaugurating the most tremendous war of modern times; but when I walk
along the sea wall of the ‘Battery’ and see in the distance Fort
Sumter and Fort Moultrie and other fortifications which, though often
attacked, were never carried by storm, I begin to understand the
wonderful spirit of this people. Charlestonians held this stronghold
for four years against the most powerful fleet of war vessels ever
seen up to that time on this hemisphere.”
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM MOULTRIE.
FROM A PAINTING BY COL. J. TRUMBULL.]
Disastrous fires have destroyed many of the historic landmarks of the
town, and the most interesting public building still standing is the
Colonial Exchange, built in 1771, at a cost of £41,470. In its basement
Colonel Isaac Hayne and other patriot prisoners were confined, and here
General Moultrie walled up one hundred thousand pounds of gunpowder,
which remained undiscovered during the three years that the British
held the town. It was the scene of a ball and public reception in honor
of General Washington when he visited Charleston after the Revolution,
and was used as the Post Office from 1783 until the construction of the
new granite Post Office, in Italian Renaissance style, during the last
decade.
Of the first St. Philip’s Church, built on the present site, Edmund
Burke said that it “is spacious, and executed in a very handsome
taste, exceeding everything of that kind which we have in America,”
and another author (the biographer of Whitefield) called it “a grand
church resembling one of the new Churches in London.” That building was
constructed in 1723 and was the leading church in the State until its
destruction in the great fire of 1835. The architectural proportions
and beauty of the present St. Philip’s Church,--with its lofty steeple
reaching to a height of nearly two hundred feet, from which shines at
night a beacon light to mariners far away at sea,--“though perhaps
peculiar to themselves, command the instant admiration of every
beholder, professional or otherwise.”
No visitor to Charleston fails to visit St. Michael’s Church, the
finest piece of colonial ecclesiastical architecture in the South, and
which was first opened for divine service in 1761. The story of its
chime of bells attracts the stranger and makes the bells doubly dear
to all born within the shadow of the lofty tower. They never jangled
out of tune, except on the eventful night of August 31, 1886, when the
steeple was swayed by the earthquake. In 1782, Major Traille, of the
Royal Artillery, took possession of the bells as spoils of war and sent
them back to England, but the next year they were repurchased by a Mr.
Rhyner and sent back to Charleston, where they continued to voice the
people’s joy or woe until the war between the States, when they were
sent to Columbia for safe keeping. When General Sherman burned that
city in 1865, two of the bells were stolen and the rest were so injured
as to be useless. Once again the bells were shipped to England, where
they were recast by the successors of the firm which had made them in
1764, from the same patterns, and again returned to Charleston and
replaced in the belfry on March 21, 1867.
The church has been commemorated in the popular lyric of Mrs.
Stansberry, _How he Saved St. Michael’s_, though as a matter of fact
it was the spire of St. Philip’s that was saved from fire by an heroic
negro. Timrod, during the war between the States, refers to the church
in one of his tenderest poems entitled, _Christmas_, and Simms,
when the steeple was made a target for Federal guns, published his
passionate lines beginning:
“Aye, strike with sacrificial aim,
The temple of the living God,
Hurl iron bolt and seething flame
Through aisles which holiest feet have trod!”
[Illustration: ST. MICHAEL’S CHURCH, CHARLESTON.]
From the “pigeon holes,” the highest point in the tower, patriots of
the Revolution watched the coming and progress of the British fleets
of Parker and Arbuthnot, and almost a century later the war-ships of
Dupont and Dahlgren were sighted from the same aerie long before they
crossed the bar.
Its congregation is so largely composed of the élite of Charleston
society that a local wit had irreverently called the venerable
structure “the Chapel of Ease of the St. Cecilia Society.”
It is claimed that the French Protestant (Huguenot) Church in
Charleston is nearly if not quite coeval in date with the present city.
There is some evidence that the church owes its origin to the colony
of French Protestants sent out to the Province in 1680 by Charles II.
of England. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the consequent
Huguenot emigration to America in 1685 put the church on a solid
foundation, though many of the Huguenots who came to Carolina settled
at Orange Quarter, on the Santee River, at St. John’s, Berkeley, and
possibly in St. James, Goose Creek. In 1687, came Elias Prioleau,
the first recognized and regular pastor of the French Church in
Charleston. Two of his lineal descendants are now in the eldership
of the church. After the fire of 1740, in which the early records of
the church were destroyed, the liturgy of Neufchâtel and Valangin was
adopted and an English translation of it is still in use.
In 1845 the present tasteful Gothic edifice, the fourth upon the same
site, was built, and has been in use ever since, except during the war
between the States.
In 1858, before a baptism of blood and fire had put the courage and
tenacity of Charleston to the supreme test, and twenty-eight years
before the memorable earthquake, James L. Petigru, the head of the
bar of Charleston, and President of the Historical Society of South
Carolina, said in a public speech: “Perhaps the opinion is tinged with
partiality; yet, after making due allowance for such bias, I think I
may say that in the circle of vision from the belfry of St. Michael’s
there has been as much high thought spoken, as much heroic action
taken, as much patient endurance borne as in any equal area of land on
this Continent.”
With such a past, Charleston looks hopefully into the future,
confidently expecting as signal triumphs in the arts of peace as her
sons once achieved against the fleets of France, Spain and England.
[Illustration: SEAL OF CHARLESTON.]
FOOTNOTES:
[7] The crude rules for passenger transportation in “the thirties” read
strangely to the traveller who almost annihilates time and space in the
modern “vestibule train,” at the rate of sixty miles or more an hour.
An early resolution of the South Carolina Railroad Board of Directors
declares that there shall be “in future not over twenty-five passengers
to any car; speed shall not exceed one car and passengers at fifteen
miles per hour; two cars and passengers at twelve miles per hour; three
cars and passengers at ten miles per hour.”
[Illustration]
SAVANNAH
NEVER LAST AND OFTEN FIRST
BY PLEASANT ALEXANDER STOVALL
The city of Savannah is now a centre of railroad and steamship lines.
It has the heaviest commerce of all the Atlantic ports south of
Baltimore. It is the largest naval stores market in the world, and its
cotton and lumber receipts are very considerable. But in spite of its
commercial primacy Savannah preserves a distinct flavor of the olden
time. On the shores of the Savannah River, where the British ships
were burned in the Revolution, a railroad system is cutting slips and
building piers, spending a million dollars in terminal facilities.
The high bluff where the early colonists planted their crane in 1732
to move goods from the ships to the river bank is now walled-in
stone, and the strand is gridironed with steel rails. The powder
magazine near “the Old Fort,” afterwards seized by the patriots of the
Revolution, is the site of flourishing foundries. The filature where
early colonists were taught to spin silk has been dismantled, and long
rows of brick tenements front upon the sandy streets. The tall pines
under which Oglethorpe pitched his tents survived the shock of war,
and succumbed only to the sweeping storms in 1800. To-day this site
is paved with brick and Belgian block, and is the centre of the Bay,
where cotton and wholesale men do congregate. “The publick oven” on
Congress Street stood opposite Tondee’s tavern, where the first liberty
pole was elevated by the patriots, and where a tablet has been placed
in the wall of a thriving grocery store to mark the birth of newer
freedom. “Fort Halifax,” the breastworks of the “Liberty Boys,” is now
covered by the wharves and warehouses of the Ocean Steamship Company,
the busiest spot in all Georgia. Spring Hill redoubt, where Pulaski
died, is lined by the brick walls of the Georgia Central Railway. The
executive mansion of Sir James Wright, the last royal Governor, stood
where the United States has just finished its marble post office,
perhaps the handsomest public building in the country, with the
exception of the Congressional Library.
[Illustration: THE POST OFFICE.]
In spite of all these changes, Savannah has followed the original
lines laid down by Oglethorpe. The lots are still sixty by ninety
feet, flanked front and rear by open streets. The public squares which
marked the city at convenient distances, used by the early settlers
as camp-grounds and corrals in cases of military alarm, are to-day
verdant and fresh with beds of flowers and spraying fountains, and
dotted by historic monuments. “The tint of antiquity” still rests upon
its walls. Now and then the white mulberry, where the silkworm fed
in the eighteenth century, crops out and shows its familiar leaves
along the streets, and the house of General Lachlan McIntosh, where
the Legislature met in 1782, on South Broad Street, still stands,
preserving many of its Colonial lines.
There was a time when Sunbury, the cradle of that splendid secession
of 1776, was a port of entry, and the Altamaha was looked upon as a
rival of the Savannah. Now the forts of Sunbury are overgrown, and the
place is seldom heard of save once a year, when one of “the Critter
companies” of the neighborhood repairs to the historic spot and holds
its annual target contest and barbecue. Frederica was a flourishing
settlement on South Newport River, but after the Spanish War of 1742
sank into decay. Ebenezer, on the Savannah, was the home of the thrifty
Salzburgers, who gave a distinct stamp to the Georgia colony, but
Ebenezer did not long survive the shock of the Revolution, when the
British scandalized these primitive people by quartering their horses
in the old brick church, which stands to-day. Only Savannah, of all
these early settlements, remains, and when one walks through its
beautiful streets and Colonial parks, even now he can easily recall
the conditions of that February morning in 1732, when “the odor of the
jessamine mingled with the balm of the pine,” and the palmetto and
magnolia threw their shade across the sandy bluff.
[Illustration: HOUSE WHERE THE COLONIAL LEGISLATURE ASSEMBLED IN 1782.]
Hon. P. W. Meldrim, Mayor of Savannah, in a tribute to his city in
a recent address, called attention to the fact that the very name
of Savannah’s streets, “State,” “Congress,” “President,” are full
of patriotic suggestions, telling the story of the Revolutionary
struggle. Other avenues bear the historic names of Montgomery, Perry,
and McDonough, while the wards have been labeled Washington, Warren,
Franklin and Greene.
“Every spot is hallowed. Where the Vernon River flows by Beaulieu,
the dashing D’Estaing landed to make his attack with the allied
forces of Savannah. Hard by is Bethesda, ‘House of Mercy,’ where
Jew, Protestant and Roman Catholic united in founding Georgia’s
noblest charity. There it was that Wesley sang his inspired songs and
Whitefield with his eloquence thrilled the world. On the river is
the grove where General Greene lived and died, and Whitney wrought
from his fertile brain the wonderful invention which revolutionized
commerce. Near at hand, almost sunk into oblivion, is the spring made
historic by the daring of Jasper and Newton. There stands Savannah’s
pride, her Academy of Arts and Science. Over there is the home where
Washington was entertained, and across the street are the guns which
he captured at Yorktown. Here, at our very feet, Casimir Pulaski
fell, charging at the head of his legion, while Jasper, rescuing the
colors, yielded up his gallant life.”
[Illustration: HEADQUARTERS OF WASHINGTON DURING A VISIT TO SAVANNAH.]
The real romance of history is the settlement of the colony of Georgia.
Two centuries ago the fertile lands extending from the Savannah to
the Altamaha had attracted the attention of pioneers and public men.
Sir Robert Montgomery had his eye upon this favored tract, as yet
unsettled, and described it as “an amiable land lying along the same
parallel with Palestine.” But it was reserved for the first soldier
and gentleman of his day to found the new colony and perfect a noble
benefaction. Had England exercised the same care over the other
colonies as over Georgia, it is possible that the War of the Revolution
might have been postponed indefinitely. It is worthy of note that
while Virginia and the New England colonies were settled by exiles
who drifted to the barren shores of Jamestown and Plymouth to escape
religious and civil persecution, the Georgia colonists sailed the seas
in the good ship _Ann_ under the fostering care of the mother country,
piloted by statesmen and noblemen, and sought the smiling Savannahs
with all the forms of royal patronage. These people, released from
debtors’ prisons and freed from pecuniary obligations, cleared by a
single act of royal clemency from bankruptcy, departed for Georgia
with ships supplied from the coffers of nobility, while the spiritual
welfare of the people was nurtured by the clergymen of the Established
Church. It was a lofty benefaction, and when these hitherto unfortunate
men felt their fetters fall, and knew that no bailiff awaited them in
Savannah, it was no wonder that, on the morning of the 2d of February,
1733, they gave thanks “for the safe conduct of the colony to its
appointed destination.”
The foundation of the colony was laid along the lines of fraternity.
The Carolinians met them at the threshold, and gave them refreshment
and substantial aid in laying out their city. The principal streets,
Bull, Whitaker, Drayton, St. Julian, and Bryan, were named for
prominent Carolina farmers who crossed the river with their servants
and helped the Georgians start life in the new world. The fact that
Carolina realized that she was building an outpost to protect her
against the Indians and Spanish does not detract from the cheerfulness
of this assistance. The early days of the enterprise were almost
Arcadian. Sir Robert Montgomery, who desired to erect an ideal
commonwealth upon this spot and call it “the Margravate of Azalia,”
could have conceived no more Utopian plan than that upon which the
colony actually commenced to grow. Land was divided into lots for each
freeholder under a strict agrarian law. The tracts were entailed,
preventing the estrangement of his holdings by an improvident man.
There was no chance for the rich to monopolize the country. The
landshark was unknown. Government bounty was prompt and liberal in
encouraging silk culture, and the seal of the colony contains the
altruistic motto, descriptive of the unselfish product of the silkworm,
_Non sibi, sed aliis_. The very land which Hernando De Soto and his
rapacious Spaniards had just ravished in their search for gold was now
claimed by these Christian socialists, who started the first work of
“benevolent assimilation” on this continent.
Eight years after the colony had been founded, a visitor to Savannah
described the progress made in a very clear way. Savannah was then
a mile and a quarter in circumference, situated upon a steep bluff
forty-five feet above the river. The houses were built of wood, Mr.
Oglethorpe’s being no finer than those of forty other freeholders.
Residences were good distances apart. To-day, Savannah is one of the
most closely constructed cities in the United States. Few houses
have gardens, and some of the streets present long rows of tenements
in maddening monotony. The squares designed by Oglethorpe for
market-places and assembly grounds are now good breathing-spots, which
serve in a measure to make up for the lack of private gardens. On one
of these squares stands the monument to General Nathanael Greene, of
Rhode Island, who, according to the historian, shared with Washington
the gratitude of the patriots of the Revolution. There are also shafts
to the memory of Sergeant William Jasper and Count Pulaski, who fell,
martyrs in the siege of Savannah, in 1779. The corner-stones of these
monuments were laid by no less a person than the Marquis de Lafayette.
[Illustration: THE JASPER MONUMENT.]
At the time of Mr. Francis Moore’s report there was a guardhouse along
the river where nineteen or twenty cannon were mounted, and continual
watch was kept by the freeholders. No lawyers were allowed to plead
for hire; no attorneys were licensed to make money; but, as in old
times in England, every man pleaded his own case. Where an orphan was
interested, or one could not speak for himself, there were persons “of
the best substance in town” appointed by the trustees to defend the
helpless, and that without fee or reward.
Silk culture was to be the principal industry of the young colony.
Italians were brought over from Piedmont to feed the worms and wind
the silk. Liberal bounty was given to encourage the Georgians. So
intent were the authorities upon this interest that they neglected the
cultivation of cotton, rice, indigo and more satisfactory crops. The
old filature was designed as a sort of normal school for instruction
in this art. This shed was built of rough boards, thirty-six feet long
and twenty feet wide, and had a loft, upon the flooring of which the
green cocoons were spread. Finally, the trustees, desiring to push this
industry, purchased the silk-balls from the growers and wound them at
their own expense. But all this outlay was for nothing. The Government
spent £1500 in machines, salaries, bounties and filatures, and raised
scarcely one thousand pounds of silk, and yet we are told that England
expected the experiment to realize five hundred thousand pounds and to
give employment to forty thousand people. To secure a high class of
skilful, self-reliant colonists, the trustees had barred out slavery
and rum. But the colony projected upon such lofty planes for some
reason did not prosper. The people clamored for slaves to cultivate
the rice fields, and for the West Indian traffic in sugar and rum to
build up their foreign trade. They fought the restricted land tenures;
in fine, they wanted to become plain, every-day colonists, like the
Carolinians and Virginians. They had been reinforced by the sturdy
Salzburgers, the canny Scots, the pious Moravians, and the thrifty
Hebrews, but still the humanitarian principles of the charter did not
insure them a thriving existence.
If silk culture failed, it is not a little remarkable that in the
ranks of this same people, one hundred years later, an invention was
perfected which gave rise to a new empire and enthroned as king the
best fibre of the field. The filature on St. Julian Street lost its
distinctive character, and became an assembly hall for the town meeting
and the militia muster; but upon the Savannah River, a few miles above
the city, Eli Whitney, the shrewd Connecticut contriver, worked out the
secret saws of the cotton-gin, and made Georgia and the whole South
opulent and powerful. The Piedmontese still spin their silk under their
own trees at home; but ten million bales of cotton annually whiten in
the suns and frosts, and to-day more than one million bales each year
are exported from Savannah alone. So two New England heroes, Nathanael
Greene and Eli Whitney, aided in protecting the people of Georgia from
a foreign foe and in building up their commercial supremacy.
No sketch of colonial Georgia is adequate which omits the name of
Tomochichi. This aged Creek was over ninety years old when he welcomed
Oglethorpe to his demesne. The loyalty of the venerable mico to his
white friends never faltered. He hailed them with all the grace and
amity of Montezuma, and guarded them against attacks from the tribes of
the interior. In his youth a great warrior, Tomochichi in the evening
of his life was noted for his wit, perception and generosity. When
he died, the colonists buried him with military honors in the public
square. Oglethorpe ordered a pyramid of stones to be erected over
his grave as a testimony of gratitude. It was only during the last
year that the Georgia Society of Colonial Dames of America caused a
granite boulder, rough-hewn from a Georgia quarry, to be placed in the
square where his remains are supposed to lie, commemorating his noble
character and heroic virtues.
[Illustration: THE BURIAL PLACE OF TOMOCHICHI.]
Hon. Walter G. Carlton, in speaking of the history of this city,
exclaimed:
“Beyond the clouds of furnace smoke and back of piers of cotton
bales arise the visions of old Savannah. What glories cluster about
her honored name! From out her past appears the noble form of him
who from the brilliant old world light and the gay splendor of the
English Court sought these untried shores, an exile in fair mercy’s
sake, and lent to the struggle of his fellow-men the strength of
that genius which sped his fame through all the fields of Europe;
and with him through the shadows of that far-off time comes a
dusky figure, a Christian who has never heard of God, a gentleman
into whose guiltless life had never come the influence of court or
fashion; brave with a conscience of honest aim; kindly with the
innate tendency of a noble nature; regal in that charity which loves
to give; a hero to whose virtues no tablet speaks; a Georgian in
whose memory no marble shaft lifts up its polished line; forgotten
of those he served; asleep in his nameless grave; but blessed be the
soil which has mingled with Tomochichi’s dust, the first of the great
Savannahians!”
On the original spot where the colonists established a house of worship
stands to-day the beautiful and classic proportions of Christ Church.
Here Wesley preached and Whitefield exhorted,--the most gifted and
erratic characters in the early settlement of Georgia. Wesley came
to the Georgia shores with a fervor amounting almost to religious
mysticism. He thought his mission was to Christianize the Indians.
No priest from Spain ever carried the Cross among the Aztecs and
Incas of Mexico and Peru with more zeal than the sanguine Wesley.
His career in Georgia was checkered and unfruitful. A man of great
ability and undoubted piety, he suspended his missionary work among the
Indians because he could not learn the language and never understood
their temperament. His ministry among the whites was marked by a
severity which made him unpopular. He seems to have been a martinet
in the pulpit,--as Colonel Jones calls him, “a _censor morum_ in the
community.” He became embroiled with his parishioners and left Savannah
between the suns. And yet Bishop Chandler of Georgia probably spoke
the words of truth from the pulpit of Wesley Monumental Church in
Savannah, in November, 1899, when he said that “no grander man ever
walked these historic streets than John Wesley.”
[Illustration: CHRIST CHURCH.]
[Illustration: OAKS AT BETHESDA ORPHANAGE, UNDER WHICH WHITEFIELD
PREACHED.]
George Whitefield was a preacher of such talent that Chesterfield
said he had never listened to so eloquent a man. Benjamin Franklin
regarded him as a model of logic and power. This good Oxford graduate
was actuated, like Oglethorpe, by the broadest benevolence when he
established an orphan home at Bethesda; but his zeal outran his slender
resources. He incurred heavy debts, mismanaged his laudable enterprise
until his spirit gave way under the discouraging situation. He died
in Newburyport, Massachusetts, while he was soliciting aid for his
cherished project. Whitefield desired to broaden the lines of his
Bethesda work, and to found a college for the Province of Georgia.
Had the colony given its revenues to such a plan as the people of
Massachusetts gave to the support of Harvard, Georgia might have
founded a great educational institution fifty years before Jefferson
started his work at Monticello, and a full century before Governor
Milledge established Franklin College in this State.
After twenty years, Georgia ceased to be a province under the trustees,
and became a colony under the King. As originally projected, the
enterprise was expensive. The great Oglethorpe returned to England and
spent his old age in peace. The trustees surrendered their charter, but
the old country had been good to the people. Ties with the motherland
were hard to break. This accounted for the fact that Georgia, the
youngest of the thirteen, was the last to sever her relations with
England and join in the Revolutionary movement. Her most prominent
men, James Habersham and Noble Jones, through their influence with
the Royalists and the popular Governor, Sir James Wright, held the
people down at least to a show of allegiance to the British Crown.
“It excites small wonder,” writes Col. Charles C. Jones, “that many
of the wealthiest and most influential citizens of Georgia should
have tenaciously clung to the fortunes of the Crown, and sincerely
deprecated all ideas of separation. Of all the American colonies, this
province had subsisted most generously upon royal bounty, and had been
the recipient of favors far beyond those extended to sister States.”
But if the old families were still faithful to England, there was one
spot where Republicanism was aflame. The parish of St. John had been
settled by New England people who had moved first to South Carolina
and then to Dorchester and Sunbury in Georgia. They were Puritans
with no sympathy for the Established Church or for the divine right of
kings. They loved liberty, and hated royalty. They were brave, resolute
and anxious to form a league against English oppression. Led by Dr.
Lyman Hall, a sturdy rice planter and prominent physician of Sunbury,
they responded with alacrity to the call from Boston. He went to the
Continental Congress in Philadelphia, May 13, 1775, and was admitted
to a seat as a delegate, not from the colony, but from the parish of
St. John. Until Georgia was fully represented Dr. Hall declined to vote
upon questions which were to be decided by the colonies. He, however,
participated in the debates, and predicted that the example shown by
his parish would soon be followed. A native of Connecticut, Dr. Hall
was a member of the Midway Congregation, where many patriots worshipped
liberty as a part of their religion. The rebel spirit of St. John, in
advance of the other parishes, received special recognition when the
Legislature afterwards conferred the name “Liberty County” upon this
section, where dwelt the descendants of New England people and the
Puritan independent sect.
[Illustration: GREAT SEAL OF GEORGIA IN COLONIAL DAYS.]
[Illustration: OLD FORT, WHERE POWDER MAGAZINE WAS SEIZED IN 1775.]
Dr. Hall’s prediction that the example of St. John’s would soon be
followed, was rapidly fulfilled. Events moved beyond the control of
the old Royalists. The elder Jones and the knightly Habersham about
this time passed away, and their impetuous young sons had already
made vigorous progress in the gathering struggle for independence.
The first liberty pole was elevated in Savannah, June 5, 1775. The
loyal men were even then celebrating the King’s birthday; but “the
Liberty Boys” spiked the cannon which were ready to be fired on this
royal anniversary, and rolled the dismantled guns to the bottom of
the bluff. About this time the powder magazine in the eastern part
of the city was seized and some of the ammunition shipped to Boston,
where it was used at the battle of Bunker Hill. In June, 1776, Major
Joseph Habersham, acting under the authority of the Council of Safety,
proceeded to the residence of the chief magistrate, General Wright. He
passed the sentinel at the door, and advancing to the Governor placed
his hand upon his shoulder and said, “Sir James, you are my prisoner.”
Georgia now plunged boldly into the Revolution. Her sufferings and
struggles, her prolonged captivity and final issuance from British
occupation in July, 1782, are familiar chapters of Revolutionary
history.
It is entirely creditable to James Edward Oglethorpe that he should
have refused to take control of the British armies against the American
people. The great soldier, who had fought under Prince Eugene of Savoy
and John of Argyle, declined to draw his sword to strike down the
young colonies he had done so much to build up. If England was his
mother, Georgia he considered his offspring. He had founded it and
protected it, and from the ramparts of Frederica had beaten back the
invading Spaniards at “Bloody Marsh.” He had sought no reward. The
highest philanthropy brought him to these shores to share the lot of
the emigrant. The friend of Hannah More, the companion of Pope, the
patron of Sothern, Dr. Johnson wished to write his life, and Edmund
Burke regarded him as the most extraordinary person of whom he had
ever read. There is no specific monument to Oglethorpe in Georgia. Why
should there be? A tablet in Cranham Church in England proclaims his
excellence; but here, in the language of Chas. C. Jones, “The Savannah
repeats to the Altamaha the stories of his virtues and his valor.”
[Illustration: GENERAL OGLETHORPE.]
Savannah during the Revolution recalls a story of blood and suffering.
If her people delayed in severing the bonds which united them to
the mother country, they struck promptly and boldly when the issue
came, and were zealous throughout their long period of captivity in
opposing the forces of his Majesty’s government. After the colonists
had seized the powder from the royal magazine, and had erected the
liberty pole on King George’s birthday, they went actively to work in
fortifying the city against the British troops. In February, 1776,
when the English war-ships and transports sailed up the river, they
were met by the patriots with a galling volley, and their fleet was
afterwards scattered by a fire-ship set adrift from the American shore,
communicating the flames to the British boats and sending their men and
sailors through the marshes in flight. On the 29th of December, 1778,
General Howe, the commander of the Americans, was defeated by Colonel
Campbell. The English and Hessian soldiers marched through a small
path in the swamp, and fell suddenly upon the flank and rear of the
Americans, consisting of but nine hundred men, while Colonel Campbell’s
forces, which had been landed at Tybee Island, numbered three thousand
five hundred. The remainder of General Howe’s army escaped into South
Carolina, and the British took possession of Savannah, which they held
for three years and a half. In October, 1779, a bloody battle was
fought at Savannah, but the British again triumphed over the allied
forces of the French and Americans. Count D’Estaing arrived off Tybee
with thirty-five ships and five thousand men. General Lachlan McIntosh
and Count Casimir Pulaski marched down from Augusta and formed a
junction with D’Estaing. The engagement took place at Spring Hill
redoubt, now the site of the Georgia Railway. Count D’Estaing was shot,
the noble Pulaski was killed, and the gallant Jasper, who endeavored
to plant the American flag upon the redoubt, fell mortally wounded.
Shortly afterwards, the French fleet sailed away, and the American
forces were left to harass the enemy from time to time. This was done
in splendid style by General Anthony Wayne, the Rough Rider of the
Revolution, who dashed into the British with his flying columns and
inflicted damage day by day. Finally, on the 11th of July, 1782, the
English surrendered to General Wayne, who entered the city and rescued
it from its long captivity. A memorial tablet, placed in position
at the old site of Tondee’s tavern, marks the spot where the early
patriots, braving violence abroad, and even derision at home, erected
their liberty pole, while the frowning battlements of a model bastion
commemorate the name of Pulaski.
[Illustration: COUNT CASIMIR PULASKI.]
At the siege of Savannah the city held only about four hundred houses
and less than one thousand people. George Washington, who visited
the city in 1790, writes in his diary that the place was “high and
sandy,” that the town was surrounded with “rich and luxuriant rice
fields,” that the harbor was “filled with square-rigged vessels,” and
that the chief trade was tobacco, indigo, hemp, lumber and cotton.
General Washington was received with every evidence of honor, and
the Chatham Artillery was by him presented with handsome guns. This
memorable organization, second only to the Ancient and Honorables, of
Hartford, fired a salute to George Washington, as they afterwards did
to Presidents Monroe, Arthur, Cleveland and McKinley upon their visits
to this city. The Chathams served in the Civil War and in the late
Spanish-American struggle.
The first steamship ever built in the United States was projected
and owned in this city. It was named the _Savannah_, and in April,
1819, sailed for Liverpool, completing the voyage across the sea in
twenty-two days. Off Cape Clear the _Savannah_ was signalled as a
vessel on fire, and a cutter was sent to Cork for her relief. Thus
Savannah perfected not only the cotton-gin, but steam navigation,
which revolutionized the industry and commerce of the world. Savannah
continued to prosper down to the period of the Civil War, having
completed the Georgia Central Railway, the longest and most important
line in the South and built up large foreign and domestic commerce at
her port.
[Illustration: FORT PULASKI.]
When the troubles leading up to the Civil War opened, Savannah did not
wait for the State of Georgia to secede, but, true to the traditions
of Revolutionary ancestry, seized Fort Pulaski on the 3d of January,
1861. The State convention, which framed a new constitution for
Georgia, assembled in Savannah on the 7th of March, and the flag
of the Confederacy was thrown to the breeze from the United States
Custom-House with a salute of seven guns, one for each State of the
young nation. The moving spirit of secession in Savannah, the “Mad
Anthony Wayne” of the State, was Francis S. Bartow, a young man
who, failing to receive permission from the State authorities to go
to Virginia, summoned his company and went without orders, sending
back in defiance the message to Governor Brown: “I go to illustrate
Georgia.” He was killed with several of his command at the first battle
of Manassas, so that Savannah received the baptism of blood at the
very beginning of the Civil War. In November, 1861, General Robert E.
Lee made his headquarters in Savannah and inspected its defences. He
pronounced Fort Pulaski impregnable, and said its walls, which were
seven and a half feet thick, would withstand the heaviest cannon. The
rifled guns of large calibre, however, had not then been tested, and
their penetrating power was unknown. As a matter of fact, the fort was
breached by Union batteries from Tybee Island in one day. On the 11th
of April, 1862, General Gillmore, who had constructed the fort for
the Government at a cost of $500,000, reduced it at a range of from
two thousand to three thousand five hundred yards. One remarkable fact
about the defence of Fort Pulaski was that the Confederates allowed
the Northern fleet to sail back of the fort through Wall’s Cut, and
interrupt communication with the city. It was through this identical
channel that the British reinforced their troops in 1779, the French
fleet failing to guard the narrow pass. In July, 1863, the Confederate
ironclad ship _Atlanta_, fitted out in Savannah, sailed for Warsaw
Sound to meet the monitors _Weehawken_ and _Nahant_. The _Atlanta_
ran aground, and was shot to pieces by her antagonists. On December
26, 1864, General Sherman’s army captured the city, eighty-six years,
almost to the day, after the British captured it from General Howe.
Savannah then contained about twenty thousand people. To-day it has
over sixty thousand, is the largest and busiest seaport on the South
Atlantic, ships more than a million bales of cotton a year, and handles
more than a million packages of naval stores. At Tybee Roads, where
Oglethorpe first anchored his good ship _Ann_; where the English
fleet halted before attacking the town; where D’Estaing moored his
French frigates and waited for the Americans to join him; where the
colonists captured the powder ship from the English, the first naval
engagement of the Revolution; where the sturdy Southern ironclad met
the invulnerable monitors of the Union, ships of every flag now ride
and rest. Not alone the little “square-rigged vessels” which Washington
saw, but big ocean steamships, of which the _Savannah_ was the pioneer,
now plow their way to foreign and domestic ports. The shipping of
Savannah exceeds that of all the South Atlantic and Gulf ports from
Baltimore to Mobile.
[Illustration: R. M. CHARLTON, POET, JURIST, U. S. SENATOR.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
MOBILE
“THE GULF CITY”
BY PETER J. HAMILTON
Perhaps Mobile is the only American city which has seen five flags wave
as emblems of the peaceful rule of as many civilized powers. She has
been French, English, Spanish, American and Confederate by turn, and
her street names perpetuate her varied story. In the original Creole
limits, we find Dauphin and Royal, of the French era; Government,
St. Joseph, and Conception, of the Spanish; just without, come many
American names like Jackson, Franklin, Monroe, and Congress; and
the Mexican War produced Monterey; while Beauregard, Davis Avenue,
and Charleston Street, among others, point to Confederate times and
feelings. The Latin element is merged in the Teutonic, but it is still
shown by the narrow thoroughfares, in the character of the people,
and in some of their institutions and diversions. Steam, electricity,
sewers, waterworks, shell roads and handsome buildings have caused a
long and romantic history to be half forgotten. Let us recall its chief
events.
The region had a story even back of the European. Not only are Dauphine
Island and the Portersville coast at the mouth of the bay fringed with
banks of oyster-shell, but on the marsh islands of the Mobile delta,
and in the swamps adjoining, one often finds huge piles of clam-shells
and high mounds of earth. These sometimes contain human bones and
ornaments, and point to a large native population before the white man
came.
An Indian race, the Choctaw, gave the name to the river and bay, and
thus to the present city; for _Maubila_, or “paddling” Indians, long
occupied what is now South Alabama, and their language was in later
days the trade jargon from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Their
primitive manner of living was interrupted about three centuries and
a half ago. The West Indies then became Spanish, and the mainland was
explored in all directions for colonization. A map of 1513, attributed
to Columbus, shows many indentations on the north coast of the Mexican
Gulf, then without a name, and the only one of them with a river (Rio
de la Palma) resembles Mobile Bay. From time to time afterwards a
score of other maps, with gradually increasing distinctness, develop
the true outline. On them the principal feature of the north coast
is a pear-shaped bay within the shore-line, into which empty one or
more rivers called Rio del Espiritu Santo, or some variation of that
name. It is first distinct on the map which Governor Garay of Jamaica
sent home, as showing Piñeda’s exploration of Florida in 1519. Some
have thought this the Mississippi River, with a total disregard of the
fact that the delta of that great river projects out into the Gulf,
while this bay is within the coast. We have to wait a century and a
half before there is any account of the exploration of the Mississippi
mouth; and meantime, dozens of maps show the bay or river of the Holy
Spirit. It is, on the map, the most prominent object on the north coast
of the Gulf, corresponding to Panuco (Tampico) on the west. Spanish
ships visited it, and some explorers have left descriptions. Narvaez
possibly wintered in it on his disastrous voyage of 1528, and a French
tradition was that piles of bones on Dauphine Island were remains of
his men. Here, or in Pensacola Bay, De Soto’s admiral, Maldonado,
waited for De Soto, and here he certainly touched later in search of
his lost master.
The famous expedition of De Soto crossed the Mobile River basin at
right angles, but the itinerary is uncertain. The Spaniards did not
care enough to map it intelligently, and the Indians, according to the
proverb, could tell no tales.
It is doubtful, indeed, if De Soto came much within a hundred miles of
the present site of Mobile, although early French tradition makes him
to have crossed somewhere near the later settlement of Mobile Indians,
about Mount Vernon landing.
In 1558 was made the careful exploration by Bazares, who proceeded from
Mexico eastward towards peninsular Florida. Two bays he named Bas Fonde
and Filipina. One was Mobile, and it was probably that called Filipina.
The object was settlement, and the next year Tristan de Luna occupied
the country with fifteen hundred colonists and explored the interior by
Nanipacna and Cosa, up to the gold region of Georgia. But it all ended
only in mutiny and misfortune. There was more gold and less fighting in
Mexico and South America. The Spaniards claimed regions further north
more to keep others from the Gulf than to colonize what is now the
United States.
Soon Hawkins, Drake, and the buccaneers on the Gulf gave Spain enough
to do. The French occupied the St. Lawrence, and even part of Florida.
Raleigh and others led out unsuccessful English colonies. After the
wreck of the Armada had destroyed Spanish prestige, the advance of the
French in Canada, and of the English farther south, was more rapid.
Jamestown and Plymouth were the beginning of colonies which gradually
lined the Atlantic. The French took possession of the Great Lakes, and,
under Marquette, Joliet, and La Salle, explored the Mississippi to its
mouth.
The grand plan gradually took shape in the French mind of colonizing
the mouth of the great river, bringing the native tribes under control,
opening trade with them, discovering mines, and uniting Louisiana,
as La Salle called it, with Canada by a chain of forts at strategic
points. La Salle did not live to accomplish this. He was assassinated
in modern Texas, after missing the mouth of the Mississippi. But a
worthy successor was found after a few years in the elder Lemoyne,
better known as Iberville. In 1699, he was successful in finding the
mouth of the great river, but realized that its swamps offered no site
for a colony. He and his brother, Bienville, explored the tributaries
and the adjacent coasts, and a fort was temporarily thrown up on what
is now the east side of the Back Bay of Biloxi. On Iberville’s return
from France, in 1702, the permanent seat of the colony was placed at 27
Mile Bluff, on Mobile River, amid the friendly and industrious Indians.
The Spaniards, who had themselves lately occupied Pensacola, vigorously
remonstrated at this occupation of Florida, as they had at the building
of Fort Maurepas at Biloxi. But Iberville was acting for Louis XIV.,
and soon had everything of value moved _via_ Massacre (now Dauphine)
Island and Mobile Bay to Fort Louis de la Mobile. A town was laid out
and settled. Conferences with Choctaws and Chickasaws followed, and
alliances were made. The establishment of what was even then popularly
called Mobile was the entrance of a new power into the Gulf country.
Tonty, the old companion of La Salle, came to stay, and colonists from
France were brought to the port at Dauphine Island by every ship. The
shadowy Spanish claim became forgotten west of Pensacola, and the
English traders from the Atlantic colonies found active competitors.
French influence became dominant in all the great Mississippi Valley.
It showed itself in exploration, religion, trade, and war, and was all
directed from Mobile.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE PAGE OF BAPTISMAL RECORD (1704) WITH THE
AUTOGRAPH OF BIENVILLE.]
Exploration and religion went together. The Jesuits had not as strong a
hold as in Canada, and the _Relations_ throw little light on Louisiana.
But the Seminary of Quebec had missionaries like Davion on the
Mississippi and at Mobile, and Jesuits were found among the Creeks and
Choctaws. The Illinois region was already known, and portages there and
eastward became important, where canoes and supplies were carried from
the Lakes to head waters of rivers emptying into the Gulf. Their value
continued until our own century, and has pointed the way for systems of
canals. Le Sueur, who, with his influential family, lived at Mobile,
explored the upper Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers, whence he carried
green earth to France. The Ohio River was occupied to keep back the
English, whose traders penetrated even to the Chickasaws and Arkansas,
near modern Memphis, and Juchereau established a fort and tannery not
far from our Cairo. The Red River was explored in order to bar out the
Spaniards and to seize their mines. St. Denis penetrated Texas, and, as
a prisoner, visited Mexico. Even the Missouri was ascended in the hopes
of finding a way to the Pacific and to the Chinese trading there. Of
course, the Mobile waters were well known, and fringed with industrious
plantations. In 1714, Bienville took advantage of a war between the
Creeks and English colonists to found Fort Toulouse among the Alibamon
Indians, below Wetumpka, a move of great importance, and Fort Tombecbé
high up on the Tombigbee was one good result of the unfortunate 1736
war with the Chickasaws.
Trade was at the bottom of everything. The Spaniards of Pensacola and
Vera Cruz refused all commercial intercourse, and there was little
more success with Havana. There was some smuggling, however, and a
good deal was accomplished through the buccaneers and freebooters who
roved the Gulf. But the Indians needed blankets, guns and ammunition,
beads and gewgaws, and could supply furs, skins and provisions. Much
could have been done in the way of agriculture, but, beyond introducing
figs and raising some vegetables for local use and indigo for export,
the colonists accomplished little. They were not of the right kind.
At first they were from too high a rank in society to do much manual
labor, and after John Law and his Mississippi Bubble exploited the
province they were often jail-birds and prostitutes. Starvation faced
them every now and then; mutiny was not unknown; and quarrels of priest
and commandant, governor and intendant, were going on almost all the
time.
And yet in war and diplomacy they did much. It was mainly with the
Indians, although once Pensacola was captured from the Spanish, and
Dauphine Island suffered from both Spanish and English attacks. The
Choctaws and Creeks were held in alliance by congresses at Mobile; the
Cherokees and Chickasaws were sometimes friendly, and the Mississippi
River was kept open for free intercourse with Canada and the
Illinois. Toulouse, Tombecbé, Biloxi, Natchez, Natchitoches, and,
later, New Orleans and Fort Chartres and other Mississippi outposts,
show the extent of French influence from the capital at Mobile.
[Illustration: PLAN OF MOBILE AND OF FORT LOUIS IN 1711.]
In 1710, the site of this town had been moved from 27 Mile Bluff to
where the river joins the bay. There the new Fort Louis was built, at
first of logs, as shown on the plan of next year, and afterwards of
brick, as Fort Condé. Its foundations still exist below the soil of the
block bounded by Church, Theatre, Royal and St. Emanuel Streets, with
bastions projecting across Royal and Church. Around it was laid out the
town, with Royal, Conti, Dauphin and other streets just as to-day; and
lots were assigned to Bienville, the sailor Chateaugué, the soldier
Blondel, the explorer St. Denis, the engineer La Tour, to the priests
and others. For several years affairs were generally prosperous.
The shoaling of the port on Dauphine Island in 1717 led to the removal
somewhat later of the capital from Mobile, at first to Biloxi, and then
to the daughter-town, New Orleans; and this made a great difference.
But the fort was not abandoned and the place remained important. The
Indian congresses were always held here, probably at the Indian house
of posts and bark, once standing on the site of the German Relief
Hall. There was the annual distribution of presents, too, with talks
and solemn smoking, and Mobile was the centre of French influence for
all Indian affairs. Choctaws and Creeks were always on the streets.
The trade road northwestwardly to Yowanne and other Choctaw towns has
become Spring Hill Avenue, connecting Dauphin Street with the suburban
homes of Spring Hill, and its portage at Three-Mile Creek was long the
boundary of the modern city.
The little town had its society, its church and homes, its public and
private history. There are two executions of peculiar horror which are
said to have occurred on the esplanade of the fort, possibly where now
stands the Court-House. One was when Beaudrot, who under compulsion
had guided to safety the men who killed the cruel governor of Cat
Island, was placed in a coffin and sawn asunder. The other was when
a similar punishment even earlier fell upon the mutineers of Fort
Toulouse who murdered their commandant, Marchand, through an Indian
princess, ancestor of the Creek chief McGillivray, of Washington’s
time. A pleasanter remembrance of Toulouse, perhaps also in Marchand’s
time, was the romance of Madame D’Aubant. Tradition makes her to have
been that wife of Alexis Petrovich, the son of Peter the Great, who
was thought to have died suddenly in Russia. She only feigned death,
however, and escaped to America. At Mobile she met D’Aubant, an old or
new lover, and, when he was stationed at the fort among the Alibamons,
went there with him, taking their little girl. After his death she
returned to Europe.
Mutiny was confined to the outposts, but Mobile had its own troubles.
After Bienville finally left the colony in 1740, French influence over
the Indians declined. Even he had been unable to restore the confidence
and prestige lost through Perier’s harsh treatment of the Natchez. By
the Tennessee valley and a land trail above Fort Toulouse passing not
far from modern Birmingham, the English from Carolina increased their
hold on the Chickasaws, and by Adair’s address had even provoked a
civil war among the Choctaws.
Mobile became unsafe, and Vaudreuil connected the three squares north
with Fort Condé by palisades, having gates at the esplanade, Dauphin
Street, and by the present post office. So reduced was the city that a
grant was made to Madame de Lusser of the south and west parts of the
old town for a plantation, to be cultivated by her slaves.
This was one of many grants, but the others were not so near. The
earliest known was that of a part of Dauphine Island, another of Mon
Louis Island (really a part of the mainland), and the St. Louis tract
between Three-Mile creek and Chickasabogue, above the city. This was
where the Christian Apalaches lived, whom Bienville had colonized on
their flight from Florida, as he did the Tensaws, whom he rescued from
extinction on the Mississippi. These two tribes became civilized, and
were moved to the east side of the Mobile delta, where they gave names
to large rivers. French farmers settled all through the country, as
far up as the Tombigbee, possibly as Bladon Springs, and along Mobile
Bay and Mississippi Sound. French names still abound, and some have
been only translated. Dog River, Deer River, Fowl River, Fish River,
Red Bluff, are translations, and Bayou Chateaugué (or Three-Mile
Creek) still recalls Bienville’s sailor brother, as does Pont Chatooga
on Dauphine Island, and Grand Bay; Isle aux Oies, Bayou Coden (Coq
d’Inde), Bayou la Batré (batterie), Bon Secours and others are French
to this day. Of French families, Grondel, Favre, Lusser, Narbonne,
Chastang, Dubroca, and Rochon were important.
But the French development was now to cease. The Seven Years’ War had
come, with the world for its stage. In that war America and India
saw less fighting than Europe, but their maps were more changed.
The English colonies had hitherto fringed the Atlantic, the French
inhabited the banks of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi, with posts
between; but Wolfe’s victory on the Plains of Abraham caused the
transfer to England of all America east of the Mississippi, except
New Orleans. On October 20, 1763, Colonel Robertson, with a company
of Highlanders, took possession of Mobile. Fort Condé became Fort
Charlotte, named for the young queen of George III., and seventeen
years of British rule began.
[Illustration: THE BAY SHELL ROAD AT LOVERS’ LANE.]
This was not a long time, and yet in it was much change. It has been
only recently made clear how thoroughly British everything became.
Mather, Ancrum, Stuart, McGillivray, McCurtin, in Mobile; Walker,
Carson, McGrew, Sunflower, Lizard, Campbell, and McIntosh up the river,
were well-known merchants or settlers, and some of these families or
sites still survive. Attorney-General Edmund Rush Wegg had a home
on Mobile Bay near Battle’s, and Governor Durnford, to whom when
provincial surveyor we owe the first chart of the bay (1771), lived
near Montrose. The machinery of government was fully developed. The
governor, council and assembly sat at Pensacola, the capital, and
Mobile delegates were leaders there in what Governor Chester calls
the “cantankerous” lower house. Mobile was the largest town in the
vast province of West Florida, which extended from the Mississippi
to the Chattahoochee River, and had her own common law courts. A
British custom-house was in full operation. We learn much from the
military exploration of the Bigbee by Romans’s and Bartram’s botanical
expedition, but most from the papers of General Haldimand, who was long
in West Florida. They are preserved in the British Museum, and have
been copied for the Canadian government. The collection is a mine for
American history in the late sixties and early seventies. He pronounced
Mobile that part of the province best fitted for development.
The British established on the Mississippi two forts that were the
origin of Natchez and Baton Rouge, and also the one where the Iberville
River (Bayou Manchac) left the Mississippi to take off its surplus
waters to Lake Pontchartrain and the Sound. Thence the communication
with Mobile was covered by a chain of islands, of which Dauphine is the
easternmost. This Bayou Lake Sound passage the British endeavored to
clear out and utilize, it being shorter than the ascent from the river
mouth, which also they had a treaty right to use. In this way Mobile
became a depot and starting-point for expeditions up the Mississippi
River to the Illinois and other parts of the great West. Major Loftus
started thence on his disastrous attempt to take possession, and the
famous Major Robert Farmer successfully ascended from Mobile, and
in conjunction with a force from the east occupied Fort Chartres.
Locally the most important feature of British times was the Choctaw
congress of 1765, which began for this part of America the process
of “extinguishing the Indian title.” The French had acted as if the
natives were subjects of their king and all territory was French. The
English theory was that the savages were under a protectorate, but,
while they could not treat with other nations, their lands remained
their own until bought by the Crown. This is the modern doctrine of
civilized nations as to all savage countries, and the United States
have regularly acted on it.
The French had found no trouble with the climate or the marshes of
the Mobile delta, but the British troops were less careful, and for
several years suffered greatly. Summer camps were provided, one year
on historic Dauphine Island, and longer at “Croftown,” on the high
red bluff below Montrose, where the eye commands the full expanse of
the beautiful upper bay, and where the British ships could lie at
anchor within musket-shot of the sandy beach. The troops one year were
practically withdrawn from all Florida on account of the expense of
the establishments; but, as New Orleans was in Spanish hands, prudence
compelled their early restoration. A popular revolution broke out in
New Orleans, followed by a strong Spanish occupation, and the British
at Mobile found it expedient to watch their neighbors closely.
When war began in Europe between these two powers, the American
colonies on the Atlantic were in revolt against Great Britain. West
Florida, under the overcautious General Campbell, was weak in military
force. Louisiana, on the other hand, with Mexico and Cuba at her back,
and ruled by the young, able, and ambitious Galvez, was strong. The
result was what might have been expected.
Galvez reduced the Mississippi forts in the fall of 1779, and the next
spring attacked Mobile by land, after an adventurous voyage. Durnford
was in command, but he had only two hundred and seventy-five men with
which to oppose two thousand. A cannonade, and Campbell’s slowness in
sending aid, compelled a capitulation on March 14th, and the district
became Spanish. Next year, Pensacola also succumbed. The treaty of 1783
confirmed the Floridas to Spain, and gave the English but a few months
to sell their property and leave.
During the intervening years, Mobile was under military rule, but
affairs gradually settled down to a peace basis. Many British abandoned
their houses or farms, and left them as the property of his Catholic
Majesty. The King, after an inquest showing their vacancy, regranted
them, in different sizes, to his own subjects, and even to British
who had taken an oath of allegiance. In this way, the grants still
existing are generally new, and can seldom be traced back to English
owners. Courts were held by alcaldes, and the commandant, as civil
(political) and military governor, also exercised judicial power. Many
proclamations, grants, suits, wills and inventories of this time are
still preserved in the Probate Court. They are in thin books of rough
paper, the size of legal cap, with curious old watermarks showing
through the Spanish text.
The Spaniards renamed many of the streets. St. Joseph survives instead
of St. Charles, and St. Emanuel, Conception, Joachim, St. Anthony
and St. Michael also superseded French names. On the other hand, St.
Francis, St. Louis, Conti, Dauphin and Royal have outlasted the Spanish
changes. The population remained essentially French. Negro slavery
had existed since the importations in the time of John Law, and there
were many negroes and mulattoes, themselves owning land and slaves.
But the commandant, the keeper of the royal hospital, in what is now
Bienville Square, the royal physician, the commissary,--for a long time
Don Miguel Eslava,--officers of the garrison and other officials were
Spanish, and with their families and the priest made up an important
part of the population.
For the first eight or ten years even official papers were often in
French; but after the out-break of the great Revolution, everything
French fell into disfavor. Proclamations posted on the gate of Fort
Charlotte, not far from Royal and Government of our day, expressed
the horror of the Spanish King at the crimes of that great upheaval,
and called his children to a holy war. But Spain had her hands full in
Europe, and the progress of her half-French post at Mobile was checked.
No large public buildings were erected, and most of the private
dwellings were small. They have been almost swept away by fires, but
the type is preserved in old American homes. It was generally of frame,
filled in between with mortar. In front was a wide porch, or gallery,
as it is invariably called, often extending around the house, and a
long hall, going all the way through, opened into rooms on each side.
The chimneys were generally of native brick, and house and surrounding
picket fence were whitewashed. The many shells furnished lime, the clay
by Montrose and west of the city was utilized for brickyards, while on
Dog River, on creeks above the town and on bayous across Tensaw River,
were sawmills. These industries have all continued. In agriculture
cotton was important, but freshets made indigo unprofitable.
[Illustration: MOBILE IN 1765.]
Most of the cotton came from up the rivers, as around Fort St. Stephen,
where are the first shoals of the Tombigbee. But the delimitation, so
long demanded by the new country called the United States was finally
run at 31°, and cut Mobile off from her river system. The treaty was
made in 1795, and four years later Andrew Ellicott, of the joint
commission, erected near the Creole settlement of Chastang’s, twenty
miles from Mobile, the stone which marked the boundary. The result was
a rapid influx of Americans north of the line, and the formation of the
Mississippi Territory.
[Illustration: THE ELLICOTT STONE.]
The hoisting of the American flag at Fort St. Stephen began the
marvellous development and expansion of the United States. Kentucky
and Tennessee became States, and Louisiana was purchased, by which the
Union crossed the Mississippi. Finally, during the War of 1812, General
James Wilkinson took possession of Mobile on April 15, 1813. This was
on the theory, consistently adhered to by our Government, that Mobile
was still a part of Louisiana. Whether the theory would have been
carried out if Spain had been a strong power at the time is a different
question.
So Mobile became American, the seaport of Mississippi Territory, whose
extent was much that of the old British province of West Florida. The
chief difference was that, as its south line was at 31°, there was no
seacoast except about Mobile, and that this was compensated by giving
a greater extent to the north. When the territory was divided in two,
the west half made Mississippi and the east became Alabama, embracing
roughly the basins draining to Mobile Bay.
Most of Wilkinson’s soldiers came _via_ New Orleans, but Mobile was
really Americanized from the up-country. Washington County, that vast
district of the territory on both sides of the Tombigbee, had been
rapidly settled after the Spaniards withdrew. The Methodist, Lorenzo
Dow, repeatedly ministered there on his meteor circuits. St. Stephen’s,
Tensaw and Fort Stoddert became centres of influence. American courts
were regularly held at Wakefield, and American civilization was firmly
established in the first few years of this century. The Government was
strong enough, in 1807, even to capture the popular Aaron Burr, near
the Court-House on his flight from Natchez to the Spanish lines, and to
send him on to Richmond for trial.
This development was largely in anticipation of the occupation of
Mobile, and when that occurred many people moved thither. Some of
the oldest families trace their ancestors to Washington County. St.
Stephen’s was almost as much the first site of American Mobile as 27
Mile Bluff was of the French town; and both are now as deserted as
Nineveh. Even an American rival, the younger town of Blakeley, over on
the Tensaw River, has succumbed and joined its people to the Gulf City.
Much of Mobile’s American growth has been due to immigration from the
upriver counties.
[Illustration: PLACE WHERE AARON BURR WAS CAPTURED.]
For the first few years the great Creek War prevailed, which resulted
in driving the Creeks east of a line running southeast from old Fort
Toulouse. It was begun by the massacre of perhaps five hundred men,
women and children at Fort Mims, in the Tensaw district, terrifying
the whole Southwest. It did not reach Mobile, but a blockhouse was
built near the present cathedral. The war was marked by thrilling
scenes in Washington County and the fork made by the Alabama and
Bigbee; by such incidents as the Canoe Fight on the lower Alabama
River and Austill’s night ride; and by Claiborne’s storming of the
Holy Ground. In it Andrew Jackson won his fame up on the Coosa and
Tallapoosa by such battles as that of the Horse Shoe Bend. When he had
made peace with the brave Creek Weatherford, and sent Pushmataha and
the allied Choctaws home, he floated down to Mobile.
And there was need. The British were preparing to invade the country.
Four vessels under Commodore Percy attacked Fort Bowyer at the mouth
of the bay, but Lawrence with the garrison brilliantly repelled them.
His motto was, “Don’t give up the fort.” The _Hermes_ drifted directly
under his guns and was fired, and then the others withdrew. Indians,
under Woodbine, were on land near by, but had no opportunity to
participate.
Jackson reconnoitred around Mobile. His headquarters are said to have
been at an old Spanish building, standing until a few years since at
the southwest corner of Conti and Conception Streets, opposite the
site of the Indian House of former times; but the troops were encamped
south of the town, near Frascati. A tree under which he dined used to
be pointed out over Three-Mile Creek, and a magnificent Jackson Oak is
still shown at the village on the bay above Daphne, commemorating a
stop on the way to the capture of Pensacola. It was from Mobile that he
issued the two famous proclamations to Louisianians, white and black;
and the first stage of his march westward to win the battle of New
Orleans was at that beautiful spot near Cottage Hill ever since called
the Cantonment.
After their defeat at New Orleans, the British reappeared at Mobile
in overwhelming force. Fort Bowyer now had to surrender, and Dauphine
Island was for months occupied by British troops. But the treaty of
Ghent caused its restoration, and Mobile settled down to its long
American development.
“Peace hath its victories no less renowned than war,” but they have
less of incident. The settlement of Alabama, the immigration from the
Atlantic States to the lands won in the Creek War, developed her Gulf
port. Cotton was king, and it made her queen. Even in 1818, the year
before Alabama became a State, Mobile had established her Bank of
Mobile, and primitive steamboats, such as the _Harriet_ and _Cotton
Plant_, built much on the model of Fulton’s _Clermont_, were already
plying the rivers.
Everything was rude, as in frontier towns, but here could be found all
kinds of people. Bertrand, Comte Clausel, the distinguished opponent
of Wellington in Spain, lived for a number of years after 1816 on the
bay, near present Arlington, the possible site of Bienville’s villa.
Here he wrote his _Exposé Justificatif_, explaining that defection to
Napoleon during the Hundred Days for which the Bourbons condemned him
to death; and here he raised vegetables and carried them to market in
his own wagon. Through Mobile passed those other Napoleonic exiles
who, in 1818, ascended the Bigbee to found the unfortunate Vine and
Olive company, in what was called for them Marengo County. Near Clausel
lived Lakanal, the regicide, the creator of the educational system of
revolutionary France. He was for a short time president of the Orleans
College of Louisiana; but with his wife, Marie Barbe, he also spent
most of his American life raising market vegetables in Garrow’s Bend.
Tradition says that he and his neighbor Clausel brought their political
differences with them, and would not associate. He was violently
opposed to Lafayette. That great Frenchman was enthusiastically
welcomed to Mobile in 1825. Arches were erected on Royal Street, and
he is said to have been entertained at the house on Government Street
opposite the Presbyterian Church. Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar,
included America in his _grand tour_, and in January, 1826, he also was
at Mobile. He does not mention Lakanal at all, nor the Protestant Union
Church, built a few years before where Christ Church stands. But the
Catholic Church on Royal and Conti, with its tin altar service, and the
three thousand people,--French, American, Indian and negro,--interested
him; the compress, which by a vise reduced the bale one third; the
thirty vessels in the harbor waiting for cotton; the volunteer company
celebrating the battle of New Orleans; the wooden houses and brick
public buildings, the plank walks and the gambling-houses, the prison,
with its whipping-post, are all recorded. This marks a great advance
on Hodgson’s unpleasing description of the place in 1820, and, in fact,
Mobile had begun that progress which soon distanced the progress of her
rivals and made her in the thirties a great city.
She was the natural result of the growth of the interior, whose
products in those days, before railroads, could go nowhere except to
Mobile. This growth brought trade, and with it immigration. In 1830,
the cotton exported exceeded one hundred thousand bales; in 1837,
over three hundred thousand, and by 1840 was almost four hundred and
fifty thousand. The population grew to twelve thousand. The results
were apparent everywhere. The United States Bank and the State Bank
had branches, and others were organized. There was paper money galore.
Water and gas were introduced; lands for Bienville Square were bought
by the city; the Presbyterian, Christ and other churches were built;
a public school system, the first in Alabama, was organized, and the
Barton Academy erected; Hitchcock’s Press was operated, and the Cedar
Point Railway and Grant’s Pass show attempts to get nearer to Dauphine
Island and the Sound. A lighter side of the same activity was the
formation, in 1830, by Michael Krafft and his merry companions of the
famous Cowbellion de Rakin Society, the predecessor of the Strikers,
O. O. M., and every other mystic organization in the South. It was the
transfer of their celebrations from New Year’s Eve to Mardi Gras which
has made the carnival season famous. The city grew in all directions;
old Creole homes gave way to modern houses, the Orange Grove Tract was
built up in warehouses, and St. Michael Street, because of its shipping
interests, was called the British Channel. New streets were opened,
Spring Hill became a famous summer resort, and handsome residences soon
adorned both shores of the bay.
Then, alas, came the panic of 1837, in which, however, the Bank of
Mobile is said to have been one of the four banks in the whole country
which did not suspend. Everything else seemed to go to pieces. Even
the city government made an assignment. To add to the distress, in
1839 was the most disastrous of all fires, in its two attacks sweeping
Royal Street and Dauphin and St. Francis up to where the cathedral then
stood unfinished. An epidemic of yellow fever the same summer slew the
inhabitants as the fire destroyed their property. The year 1839 is the
blackest in Mobile’s history, and Percy Walker’s picture of that dire
summer, before the Alabama Legislature, deserves to rank high among
American orations.
The depression lasted several years, and before complete recovery
it became complicated with a commercial problem. Railroads had been
invented, and Mobile with all other ports had to face new problems. M.
J. D. Baldwin preached the necessity of building a Mobile road to the
growing West, but long he was laughed at as a Cassandra. He persevered,
and in 1848 the Mobile & Ohio Railroad was begun towards Cairo,
Illinois. It was a magnificent conception, and right fitting it was
that Baldwin should have driven the last spike of its realization. The
result was that by 1860 the cotton receipts had grown to eight hundred
thousand bales, and the next year were about a million.
In 1852 was a disastrous flood, and next year the worst epidemic of
her history; but the results were only temporary. New banks, like the
Southern and Mechanics (afterwards the Mobile Savings), were organized,
the Battle House, Custom-House and other fine buildings erected, and
Fort Gaines faced older Fort Morgan at the mouth of the bay. Society
had long outgrown the crudeness of earlier days, and Mobile hospitality
and refinement were famous. At her Bar were John A. Campbell (whose
sister, Mrs. Chandler, was the grandmother of the Mrs. Maybrick, now
so famous), Daniel Chandler, George N. Stewart, Robert H. Smith,
Peter Hamilton, D. C. Anderson, Philip Phillips, E. S. Dargan and
other splendid lawyers. In literature there was ample atonement for
the neglect of early days. Among Mobile’s books appeared in 1854 Dr.
Nott’s _Types of Mankind_, and in 1859 came Madame LeVert’s _Souvenirs
of Travel_, and Augusta Evans’s _Beulah_. John Forsyth and Charles C.
Langdon were famous editors of the time, and politics, of course, ran
high. The town was generally Whig, and Mr. Clay’s welcome in 1844 was
as cordial as was that of Jackson in earlier years. At that time, by
the way, Macready held the boards, and drawled a strenuous objection to
the announcement on his playbills that Henry Clay would be present at
one of his performances.
[Illustration: JOHN A. CAMPBELL.]
Mobile theatres, except the last, have generally burned after a few
years. The best was built by Caldwell on Royal Street, near St.
Michael, and the best-known manager was Noah M. Ludlow, who, with
Sol. Smith, operated a Mobile-New Orleans-St. Louis circuit. Ludlow
and Smith played a great part in the history of the theatre in the
Mississippi Valley. Ludlow’s memoirs are an invaluable compilation,
and can almost be claimed as a Mobile book, for he long lived here. J.
H. Hackett, Madame Celeste, Ellen Tree, Edwin Forrest, J. B. Booth,
Macready, H. Placide, Charles Kean, Mrs. Mowatt, Julia Dean, John T.
Raymond and Charlotte Cushman were often on the Mobile stage. The
present theatre was opened in 1860, and the late Speaker Crisp was
often about it when his father conducted it during the war.
[Illustration: RAPHAEL SEMMES IN 1861.]
Fortunately for her, Mobile was not the immediate seat of any part
of that great civil conflict; but she was thoroughly loyal to the
Confederate cause, and furnished most of her best blood to its support.
The Mobile Cadets were tendered by Captain Sands immediately on receipt
of President Davis’s call for volunteers, and from there went out,
among others, the 3d, 8th, 21st and 24th Alabama regiments, the two
companies of State Artillery and Charpentier’s and Watters’s Batteries.
There are unmarked graves of Mobile boys from Pennsylvania to Texas.
The Mobile post office in the interregnum issued its much-prized
stamps,--two-cent black and five-cent blue. Later the streets were
alive with Confederate uniforms, for camps were in the suburbs, and
Government Street was the scene of memorable reviews. Society even in
those war times was often gay. Courts, too, continued open, although
litigation was limited.
Groceries and staples changed hands, much as ever, but at prices
measured in gradually depreciating Confederate money. Two hundred
dollars for a barrel of flour, or finally even for a pair of shoes, and
twelve hundred for a suit of clothes, were not unknown. The wits said
that a basket was as much needed to carry the paper money to market as
to bring back what it bought. After a while co-operative associations,
with agents all through the country to buy supplies, became necessary
in order to get things to the city at all. Coffee and some other
articles almost disappeared, and various substitutes were used. Books
and even money were printed on material that once would have been
discarded, and the rough Confederate writing-paper still remains a
curiosity.
One new occupation came into being. While Semmes of Mobile, in the
privateers _Sumter_ and _Alabama_, and Maffitt in the _Florida_, were
destroying all Northern commerce which they could find on the ocean,
the Federal navy was blockading Southern ports. This was designed
to prevent supplies from getting in and cotton from getting out to
Europe, and thus doubly to cripple the South. Blockade-running by swift
Confederate vessels became common and often successful. The destination
of the runners was generally the neutral port of Nassau, in British
West Indies. Among these grayish-white vessels were the _Alice_,
_Denbigh_, and _Red Gauntlet_. They carried, according to the size,
from six hundred to twelve hundred bales of cotton, and brought back
miscellaneous cargoes, in which drugs and war stores usually figured.
Many of them were captured, and there was no insurance; but others
made a dozen or more successful trips. The _Heroine_, now used as a
bay boat, was one of the small blockade-runners. A Mobile Presbyterian
minister took his wedding trip on the _Swan_, bound for Nassau, but was
captured with his bride and taken North.
Fort Morgan, under General Page, was well equipped, and kept the
blockaders at a respectful distance. Shots were frequently exchanged
between them and the fort, and sometimes, when they ventured to anchor
too near the coast, they were surprised by a ball from a cannon, run
out behind a sandhill during the night.
[Illustration: C. S. S. “FLORIDA” ENTERING MOBILE BAY, SEPT. 4, 1862.
FROM A PAINTING BY R. S. FLOYD.]
The cruiser _Florida_ was one of the ships built in England for the
Confederacy, and turned over to its authorities out at sea. Maffitt
took her to Nassau and Cuba, but, as his small crew was sick with
yellow fever, and he needed further equipment, he made for Mobile.
Personating an English vessel, the _Florida_, in broad daylight
on September 4, 1862, ran by the _Oneida_, _Winona_ and _Cayuga_
into Mobile Bay, amid a hail of shot and shell. She remained four
months, mainly in the deep water off Montrose. The Union fleet was
strengthened, and was on the watch for her to come out. But Maffitt, on
January 16th, before day, ran through the blockaders again, to their
great chagrin, and, although chased, got away to capture prizes off the
coast of Cuba. As it turned out, the only way the Federals were able
to capture the _Florida_ was in the neutral port of Bahia, while her
captain was ashore,--a flagrant breach of international law.
About Mobile a line of land fortifications was early built, at first
too far out to be held by a small force. The entrenchments are still
visible two miles from town, the most prominent being Fort Sidney
Johnson, on the bay beyond Frascati. Afterwards one or more lines were
constructed nearer in, and remains lately could be seen near the head
of St. Joseph Street, on both sides of Government east of Ann Street,
near the Bascombe race track and near the Southern Drain. Slave labor
built them under the supervision of Engineers Pillans and Van Scheliha.
These redoubts were never much used, however. The great battles for
Mobile were fought at the mouth of the bay and near Blakeley.
Obstructions and torpedoes filled the channels between Forts Gaines
and Morgan, except for a short distance immediately under the guns of
Morgan. Within the bay lay the Confederate fleet, consisting of three
gunboats and the powerful ram _Tennessee_. This vessel had been built
during 1863 and 1864 at Selma, and was equipped with five-inch iron
armor at Mobile. As she drew thirteen feet, while the Dog River bar
allowed but eight or nine, wooden caissons were sunk and attached to
her, and when they were pumped out they raised and lifted her also. The
whole Confederate fleet mustered but four hundred and seventy men and
twenty-two guns, while the Federal consisted of fourteen steamers and
four monitors, carrying twenty-seven hundred men and one hundred and
ninety-nine guns.
Farragut started on his perilous passage early in the morning of
August 5th, his vessels lashed in pairs, the monitor _Tecumseh_ in the
lead. Then came the _Brooklyn_ with her mate, and next the flagship
_Hartford_, the Admiral in the rigging. As the stately procession
neared the fort, all engaged on both sides in a murderous cannonade.
Suddenly the _Tecumseh_ lurched, and, in a few seconds, sank, struck
by a torpedo. The _Brooklyn_, despite her torpedo protector, wavered
and backed, confusing the whole column, and giving the gunners in
the fort an opportunity of which they made good use. But Farragut
pushed the _Hartford_ to the front, and restored order, leading the
others, amidst a galling fire, into the bay. A little boat had rowed
out to save the few who did not go down in the _Tecumseh_, and the
Confederates chivalrously refused to fire upon them, despite the Union
flag defiantly run up. The fleet, though much damaged, gradually passed
in.
An engagement followed with the little Confederate squadron, but the
odds were too great. One gunboat was sunk, another captured, a third
finally got away to Mobile, and the ram took shelter, apparently for
repairs, under the guns of the fort. And then, to the astonishment
of friend and foe, the _Tennessee_ boldly made straight up the bay to
ram the Federal fleet. Vessel after vessel rammed and fought her, but
she held her own, unwavering, seeking the flagship _Hartford_, which,
however, was too swift for her to overtake. She engaged the whole
fleet at once in one of the most heroic naval combats of history, and
did not desist until her plates were loosened, port shutters jammed,
smoke-stack carried away, many of the crew wounded, Admiral Buchanan
disabled, and the steering apparatus shot away, leaving her as helpless
as a log. Then, at last, she hauled down her flag. Farragut sent
Buchanan and the wounded to Pensacola, a ship peaceably passing the
fort after arrangements had been made for that purpose under a flag of
truce.
Troops landed on Dauphine Island had already driven the Confederates
into Fort Gaines, and it was invested by land and sea. Farragut had
an interview with Col. Anderson, convinced him that resistance was
useless, and thus induced him to surrender the fort with all its
stores. The Pelham Cadets, Mobile’s home guard of young men, had lately
been sent down, and they were captured with the regular garrison.
General Granger landed at Navy Cove with an overwhelming force, and
after approaches, run gradually closer from day to day, by the 22d
Fort Morgan was completely invested by army and navy. The discipline
of the garrison continued perfect, standing the test of an unbroken
bombardment, whose thunders were heard at Mobile, thirty miles away.
Many shells were thrown into the fort, the citadel fired, and at
last the walls were breached in several places. Further defence was
impossible, and after spending a night in destroying everything capable
of destruction General Page surrendered.
General J. E. Johnston is said to have pronounced Mobile the best
fortified city in the Confederacy. If the fortifications on or near the
Tensaw River could be taken, however, transports, if not vessels of the
fleet, could be sent behind the torpedoes and obstructions to the city
wharves.
[Illustration: HOME OF AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON.]
Therefore Canby, with forty-five thousand troops, including a column
under Steele from Pensacola, undertook to overcome about five thousand
Confederates in Spanish Fort, which was named from the bastion built by
Galvez almost a century before. Randall L. Gibson, since Senator from
Louisiana, was there in command, reporting--like Lidell at Blakeley--by
telegraph to D. H. Maury at Mobile. Gibson handled his fifteen hundred
men admirably from Fort McDermott on the right, Red Fort in the centre,
and along the line to the swamp, which was relied on to protect his
left. The principal gun in his Red Fort was an eight-inch Columbiad,
cast at Selma in 1863, and manned by Louisiana artillery, commanded
by Slocum. This gun did terrible execution, and dismantled a whole
fortification. But, while the sand-bags were still removed for that
shot, Federal gunners dismounted her, and killed several men at their
posts by her side.[8] Spanish Fort held out thirteen days against over
thirty thousand men. The riflemen in the opposing pits even became
friendly, and exchanged yarns and courtesies. The fleet, after three
vessels had been sunk by torpedoes, picked up enough torpedoes to get
within range, and the discovery of a passage through the swamp made it
necessary to abandon the whole fort. Blakeley, with its garrison of
about three thousand, was finally stormed on April 9th, the day Lee
surrendered in Virginia.
Maury felt that he could not hold Mobile with only four thousand five
hundred men, for the Federals could now attack from the river and land
at once; and so he withdrew to Meridian. Blakeley was the last great
battle of the war.
The Federal troops occupied Mobile immediately upon the surrender by
Mayor Slough on April 12th, camping in the suburbs, on Government
Street and elsewhere. One unfortunate result was the terrible explosion
on May 25th, from careless handling of ammunition in a warehouse on
Water and Lipscomb Streets. There were hundreds killed, more than
$700,000 of warehouse property was destroyed, and the whole business
section of the city was injured. Such was the return of peace!
* * * * *
Mobile, since the Civil War, offers a fruitful field for study. The
few flush years, when commerce first revived; Reconstruction, with
slaves over masters; bond issues from 1870 on railroads that were never
built, resulting in bankruptcy in 1879; the panics of 1873 and 1893,
the first of which depressed everything, while the other showed that
Mobile had become sound again; new railroads and commercial growth in
every line, consequent on the Government’s cutting the ship channel,
twenty-three feet deep, through the bars to the lower bay; the growing
rivalry of the Gulf port with Eastern harbors for the Western trade to
Latin America and even Europe; the passing of the once dreaded yellow
fever; the good relations which have existed between the negroes and
whites since they were relieved of outside interference; the Cuban War,
with its American soldiers (some from Mobile) encamped on ground once
occupied by Confederates, and the picturesque embarkation of troops
for Santiago; extensive municipal improvements; impressive public
structures, such as the Y. M. C. A. Building, new hotels, and the
Semmes statue; the advance of literature, also, which has kept Augusta
Evans as Mrs. Wilson, and added Madame Chaudron, Father Ryan, T. C.
De Leon, Amélie Rives, Hannis Taylor, and others:--these things are
important, but are too recent for detailed treatment.
[Illustration: AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON.]
The net result, however, is that Mobile has faced the political
questions growing out of the war, the commercial conditions arising
from the building of railroad systems eastward, the development of
independent cities in what had been her exclusive territory, just
as she has met so many other problems in her long history. What she
could conquer she has overcome, and for what she must lose she has
substituted other industries. Lumber, coal and iron far overbalance
the loss of cotton, and there is no mean array of manufactures, while
her railroad and steamship territory yearly increase. To-day her
population, trade and prospects are greater than anything she has known
before. She has had little of the outside capital which other towns
have enjoyed, and she has had no “booms.” But the great fire of 1890,
the storm of 1893, and even pestilence in 1897 did not daunt her. In
wealth, culture and industry this Latin-American town has carved out
her own place. Her shady streets and drives invite visitors, and her
pleasant homes shelter quiet but energetic people. Born in romance,
baptized in fire, educated in commerce, her past is interesting, her
present prosperous, while her future promises to surpass them both.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[8] This gun, called the Lady Slocum, could long be seen on Government
Street in Mobile, but is now in New Orleans.
[Illustration]
MONTGOMERY
THE CRADLE OF THE CONFEDERACY
BY GEORGE PETRIE
Montgomery is best known to the general reader as the “Cradle of the
Confederacy.” He turns to its history, if he cares to read it at all,
to get a clearer local background for the stirring scenes enacted
there in ’61. And it would have been hard to select for them a more
appropriate setting. For in many ways Montgomery was then a typical
Southern town. Situated in the heart of the cotton region, surrounded
and supported by large plantations, it was the centre of much wealth
and refinement. As the home of Yancey and other men of unusual ability
and divergent politics, it had been the battleground where all phases
of secession were keenly discussed. Moreover, although founded by a New
Englander and originally named New Philadelphia, it had from the first
taken a vigorous part in the economic and political struggles which
gradually separated North and South.
[Illustration: OLD CANNON OF BIENVILLE.]
To reach the origin of Montgomery, one must go back nearly to the
beginning of the century. From the misty traditions that early gathered
like an Indian-summer haze about the red bluffs on which the city now
stands, the first tangible object to emerge is old Moore’s log cabin,
perched insecurely on the high river bank. Here Captain Woodward
visited him, and long afterwards wrote: “Arthur Moore, the first white
man that built a house and lived in it at Montgomery, built it in
the latter part of 1815, or early in 1816. The cabin stood upon the
bluff above what was once called the ravine.... The spot where the
cabin stood had long gone into the river before I left the country.”
Here it stood high and solitary on the crumbling cliff, a picturesque
connecting link between the legendary days of the Indian Town,
Ecunchatty, and the bustling Western scenes so soon to follow.
Barely two years later the territorial government of Alabama was
established, and the prospect of protection under it proved an
inducement to the tide of population then setting strongly toward the
Southwest. Fabulous reports of the fertility of the soil got abroad,
and a steady stream of settlers poured across from the land office at
Milledgeville, Georgia, through the Creek lands into Alabama territory.
Among these pioneers were many men of excellent family from all parts
of the South, and even from far-off New England. One of the earliest
was Andrew Dexter, of Rhode Island, nephew of the well-known Samuel
Dexter, of Massachusetts. In 1817 he bought the land on which the
eastern half of Montgomery now stands, and paid for it later with the
assistance of John Falconer, a fellow pioneer from South Carolina.
Dexter was a man of large ideas and remarkable foresight, and at once
recognized the importance of his purchase as a site for a town. By the
very modern plan of offering free lots, he persuaded several traders
to join his venture, and proceeded to lay off his town. With touching
faith, he reserved a fine site on the crest of the most commanding hill
for the future state capitol. It was a prophetic dream that had to wait
thirty years for its fulfilment. Goat-sheds meanwhile adorned its brow,
and gave it the unpoetic name, “Goat Hill.”
Among the original settlers who came with Dexter was John G. Klinck, a
South Carolinian of sanguine and enthusiastic temperament, who, writing
years afterwards of the town in these early days, says:
“As soon after this as I could have the centre pointed out to me, I
selected my lot, which was a privilege of first choice, and to name
the place, which I called New Philadelphia--and the name was never
changed until 1819. I employed a Mr. Bell to build me a cabin, and in
showing him where, we found on the corner a post oak in the way of
laying the ground sill, when I immediately seized the axe and felled
it, remarking to Bell, ‘This is the first tree: future ages will tell
the tale.’”
Immigration was brisk, and the high and healthy bluffs were tempting
sites for homes. So the next year, 1818, two more towns sprang up in
sight of New Philadelphia. One was a mile or two down stream, and bore
the name “Alabama Town.” The other, immediately adjoining, was called
“East Alabama Town.” Its site is now included in the part of Montgomery
west of Court Street. The jealous rivalry that followed was seasoned
with many pranks played by one town on the other. The redoubtable Mr.
Klinck, on one chilly night, fired his musket with such continued
energy that the neighboring town supposed the Indians were upon them,
fled over the river, and men, women and children spent the night among
the canes and bushes.
The inconvenience of this rivalry soon became apparent, and on December
3, 1819, New Philadelphia and East Alabama Town were united in one town
called Montgomery, a name whose origin Mr. Klinck explains thus:
“All was agreed, and the union took place. Now for the name? What
shall be done? It will never do to call it ‘New Philadelphia,’ nor
‘Yankee Town’: either scent too strong for ‘Georgy.’ I have it:
we will call it Montgomery, after the county. It was settled upon
without a dissenting voice, and to the great satisfaction of all
concerned, the name being equally dear to every American throughout
the land.”
On the other hand, the Montgomery _Republican_ of 1821 states very
positively that the county was named after Lemuel Montgomery, who fell
in the fight against the Creek Indians at Horseshoe, and the town
after Richard Montgomery, who was killed at Quebec. Perhaps the river
bluffs may have suggested to local pride the heights of Quebec, or
possibly the true explanation is suggested in Klinck’s last sentence.
It was a name equally satisfactory to all parties. Like a political
platform, they all accepted it, and then interpreted it to suit their
tastes. The origin of the city in the union of two towns may still
be traced in the fact that the streets west of lower Court Street
run at an angle to those east of it. Alabama Town stayed out of the
consolidation, but the union town had superior resources. First the
business, then the citizens, drifted over, and like the earlier Indian
town it passed into the twilight of history.
With union came strength and bigger notions, and Montgomery, in the
twenties, was a bustling little frontier town, full of enterprise
and ambition. One writer, with fond enthusiasm, speaks of its “dense
population.” The editor of its first newspaper wrote: “Montgomery,
from its high and airy situation ... is considered peculiarly healthy;
indeed, many resort to that section during the Summer months.... For an
infant establishment, it may be called a pleasant, flourishing town.”
In another issue he adds: “Its present population is about six hundred.”
There was a healthy demand for houses, as is shown by the
advertisements in the newspaper. One man offers a gun and a rifle in
exchange for planks and shingles, and another a saddle-horse for bricks
and mortar. A wholesome respect, at least, was shown for learning in
the prompt establishment of schools, and in the advertised arrival of
such sturdy books as Murray’s _Grammar_, Webster’s _Speller_, Watts’s
_Psalms and Hymns_, and (for lighter use) song and dream books. Town
and country struggle amusingly in the ordinance that imposed a tax of
fifty cents for every dog a family kept--_more than one_.
The Court-House stood in the centre of what is at present Court Square,
and from it the houses extended mainly in two lines, one up what is
now Dexter Avenue, toward Goat Hill, the other down Commerce Street
toward the river. Perhaps a trace of the New England “Meeting-house” is
to be found in the multifarious uses to which this building was put.
Here law courts met with suggestive frequency during the week, and the
congregation assembled on Sundays when notified by a special messenger
that a preacher was in town, while celebrations, oratory, and even
dancing, kept it lively at night.
A motley population rises before our eyes as we run through the list
of their amusements. There is the speculator at the horse-races, the
frontiersman at the Indian ball game, the vociferous patriot at the
regular celebration of the Fourth of July and Washington’s Birthday,
and even the spirits of defeated Indians and English seem to gaze
grimly from the background at the hearty observance of Jackson Day.
Yet among all these the most significant fact is the earnestness and
delight with which the drama was cultivated. A company composed of
local amateurs on December 17, 1822, presented Shakespeare’s play,
_Julius Cæsar_, in the upper story of the old building still standing
at the corner of Commerce and Tallapoosa Streets, and if we may believe
the newspaper “it went down to the satisfaction of a numerous and
splendid audience.” Of the actors, one afterwards became Governor of
Alabama, another United States Senator, another a State Supreme Court
Judge, and a fourth, Governor of Georgia.
[Illustration: DEXTER AVENUE DURING A STREET FAIR.]
It was a memorable day in the history of this little town when, on
April 3, 1825, the great Frenchman Lafayette, then on his last visit to
America, stopped here. The reception given him, though not without its
amusing incidents, portrays vividly the eager and open-hearted temper
of the citizens. Escorted by three hundred Alabamians and a number
of Indians, he reached Montgomery on a beautiful spring morning, and
was met by the entire population on what is now Capitol Hill. Captain
Woodward, who was one of his escort, thus quaintly describes the scene:
“On Goat Hill, and near where Captain John Carr fell in the
well, stood Governor Pickens and the largest crowd I ever saw in
Montgomery. Some hundred yards east of the Hill was a sand flat,
where General Lafayette and his attendants quit carriages and horses,
formed a line and marched to the top of the hill. As we started,
the band struck up the old Scottish air, _Hail to the Chief_. As we
approached the Governor, Mr. Hill introduced the General to him. The
Governor tried to welcome him; but, like the best man the books give
account of, when it was announced that he was commander of the whole
American forces, he was scarcely able to utter a word. So it was with
Governor Pickens. As I have remarked before, Governor Pickens had no
superior in the State, but on that occasion he could not even make a
speech. But that did not prevent General Lafayette from discovering
that he was a great man.... The people of Montgomery did their duty.
Col. Arthur Hayne, who was a distinguished officer in the army in the
war of 1813, and who was the politest gentleman I ever saw, was the
principal manager. If the Earl of Chesterfield had happened there, he
would have felt, as I did the first time I saw a carpet on a floor,
and was asked to walk in. I declined, saying, ‘I reckon I have got in
the wrong place.’”
[Illustration: OLD BUILDING IN WHICH LAFAYETTE BALL WAS GIVEN IN 1825.]
He was hospitably entertained at Colonel Edmonson’s, on Commerce
Street, where he received with kindly grace the crowds that pressed
around him. At night a grand ball was given him in the building now
standing on the corner of Commerce and Tallapoosa Streets; and in the
small hours “a large concourse of citizens escorted him through the
darkness down to the landing, and bid him a hearty but mournful adieu
amid torrents of tears.”
Frontier life conduces to early maturity in cities as well as in men,
and Montgomery was no exception to the rule. The hard knocks that
produce self-reliance were not slow in coming. In spite of disastrous
freshets and destructive epidemics, the population increased, and with
its growth came a new and rougher element. An old newspaper suggests
drily: “It requires no stretch of art to put rubbish before a shop
door; to take down a gingerbread-maker’s sign; to take the wheels from
a lady’s carriage and put them on a silversmith’s shop; and make noise
enough to disturb the slumbers of the sick by beating stirrups for
triangles, and blowing conch-shells for French horns.” Drunkenness and
gambling increased, and the same paper soon had occasion to add: “This
is the third, if not the fourth, attempt at homicide in this place
within a few months.” Such things were the first test of the city’s
capacity for self-government, and were met by primitive but rigorous
measures. Indecency of language or conduct was punished by a ducking in
some neighboring pond, followed by a ride on a rail. There is a record
of an outrageous scoundrel who attempted to steal and sell an Indian
family, and was promptly whipped through the streets by the squaws
while the citizens lined up and saw it well done. But the lawlessness
increased until finally it destroyed the peace and threatened the
existence of the town. Then it was that the law-abiding class rose in
mass, and under the leadership of Colonel John H. Thorington put down
the gang and cleaned out their haunts.
If they had at times been too lenient toward lawlessness, and at others
too impatient to wait for legal formalities, a ready explanation may
be found in their absorption in business cares and enterprises. A new
country of unknown resources had to be developed. Other things must
wait. Governor Gilmer, of Georgia, who visited Montgomery in 1833, was
deeply--perhaps too deeply--impressed with this side of their life. He
says:
“I found the fertile lands of Montgomery settled up with active,
intelligent, wealthy citizens, who had been drawn to it from the
old States by the great advantages which it afforded to those who
desired to increase their riches. The rapid accumulation of wealth
whetted the appetite for getting money, until the people could not be
satisfied with any quantity acquired. It was a subject of wondering
cogitation to me, who had for many years been constantly taken up
with the affairs of the government, and the strife of party politics,
to listen to my Montgomery friends talking without ceasing of cotton,
negroes, land and money.”
The hardest problem that the business man of those early times had
to face was the question of transportation. Dry goods, groceries and
manufactured articles had at first been brought from Savannah and
Charleston by wagon or horseback. But the way was long, the roads
wretched,--especially through the Creek territory,--and the Indians
demanded exorbitant tolls at the bridges; so the method was anything
but satisfactory, and other plans were soon tried. Barges and flatboats
were laboriously poled up from Mobile. They bore the promising names,
_Alabama Swan_, _Lady of the Lake_, _Cotton Patch_ and _Ready Money_,
but consumed from fifty to seventy days on the trip. The local paper
records the arrival of an “amphibious animal in the shape of a boat
from East Tennessee.” It came down the Tennessee, was transported
across thirty miles of land to the Coosa, and by that river reached its
destination. After a journey of a thousand miles, it finally arrived
with an amusing assortment of flour, whiskey, apple brandy, cider,
dried fruit, feathers and a five-wheel carriage,--some of which must
have been taken on board near the end of the trip.
Under such circumstances, the arrival of the first steamboat, the
_Harriet_, on October 22, 1821, marked an epoch. Nor did the town fail
to appreciate its importance. The entire population turned out to bid
it welcome. The next day it carried an excursion up the river at the
lively rate of six miles an hour. Steam was too precious to be wasted
in whistling, so a gun was fired to signal its approach.
While the _Swans_ and the _Harriets_ were struggling for supremacy, a
third rival destined to supplant them both made its modest appearance.
The Montgomery Railroad, delayed by the panic of ’37, opened the
first twelve miles of its line for business in 1840. It made no great
display, and when the engine was out of fix horses were substituted
without hesitation or serious loss of time. But it was the beginning of
a system that soon put the city in close communication with the older
Eastern States; and when President Davis came in 1861 over the same
road, he traveled in a private car made in its own shops at Montgomery.
Business was the dominant interest during the first two decades of the
city’s existence, and may have seemed to visitors like Governor Gilmer
to exclude all other thoughts; yet beneath the surface there smouldered
the Southern devotion to politics. The town was scarcely two years old
when the Missouri question gave rise to an ardent discussion of State
rights, which found frequent occasion for renewal in subsequent years;
and at the public dinner prepared in celebration of the Fourth of July,
1826, there were two toasts whose sentiment seems strangely significant
in the light of after events. They were:
“The Union of the States--The golden chain of our liberties;
dissolved into its minute links, the fabric falls into ruin.”
“States Rights--The ark of our safety; every attempt to violate them
should be regarded as highly obnoxious to the holy spirit of the
Constitution.”
Nor was their zest for politics a mere fondness for empty debate or
idle personalities. It was an innate love for public affairs, a desire
to discuss and to take part in whatever touched the public welfare.
Now it was a question of State versus national power in the Creek
region, and they with other Alabamians took such a lively hand in it
that Francis S. Key, the author of _The Star Spangled Banner_, had to
be sent down as special commissioner to smooth matters over. A year
later it was Texas struggling against the absolutism of Santa Anna, and
so keen was the interest felt at Montgomery that a mass-meeting was
held in the theatre, funds were contributed, and a company of forty
men under Captain Ticknor was raised in the immediate neighborhood. In
addition to the princely pay of $8 a month, there was the uncertain
promise of a square mile of land out there. They got just six feet
of it; for they were massacred after surrender at Goliad. In 1840,
their attention was engrossed by the picturesque “Tippecanoe and Tyler
too” campaign. Log cabins, coon-skins, and hard cider were seen on
every hand, and the “Great ball,” which the Whig enthusiasts rolled
through so many cities as a spectacular admonition to “keep the ball
rolling,” passed through the streets inscribed with denunciations of
the Nullifiers.
[Illustration: ALABAMA STATE CAPITOL WHERE PRESIDENT DAVIS WAS
INAUGURATED.]
But, after all, the event which made politics a prominent feature
of life at Montgomery was the removal thither of the State capital.
Tuscaloosa, its location at that time, not being accessible enough, a
constitutional amendment was adopted providing for its removal, and
on January 28, 1846, the Legislature, after a hot contest, selected
Montgomery as the site. Two days later, the Selma stage brought the
news to the city. Next day there was a grand procession, and at night
there were bonfires and a jollification that would have gladdened the
soul of old Andrew Dexter. His desire was to be fulfilled, and the
capitol was to stand on the very lot he had reserved for it on Goat
Hill nearly thirty years before. The new building, erected by the city,
was ready in the fall of ’47; the archives in one hundred and thirteen
boxes were laboriously brought from Tuscaloosa in thirteen wagons, at a
cost of $1325--figures as significant of poor transportation facilities
as they are full of the magical number thirteen--and all was ready
for the Legislature, which met in December. The effect on the city is
vividly described in Garrett’s _Public Men_:
“The novelty of the occasion, together with the greater facilities to
reach the seat of government, brought together an immense concourse
of people.... The hotels were crowded to inconvenience, private
boarding-houses were increased and thronged, and every avenue to
the capitol presented at all hours of the day a stirring multitude.
Candidates for the various offices were as thick as blackbirds in a
fresh plowed field in spring.”
The new building was burned two years later, but was immediately
rebuilt on substantially the same plan.
Immediately on becoming the seat of government, Montgomery of course
became the most important place politically in the State, and during
the stirring years before the Civil War was the scene of many events
which connected its history more and more closely with that of the
country at large, and paved the way for the conspicuous part it was to
play in ’61.
The war with Mexico, like the struggle of Texas, aroused here more than
a passing interest. In spite of the sad fate of Captain Ticknor’s men,
its citizens enlisted again and went to the front under Captain Rush
Elmore and Colonel J. J. Seibels; and during the first few weeks of
its session in the new capitol the Legislature suspended routine work
more than once to join in the enthusiastic receptions accorded such
returning heroes as Generals Quitman and Shields.
From that time until the Confederacy was born in its midst, the little
city, like a mountain lake, bore on its ruffled surface traces of every
storm that passed over the land. No other city reflected more vividly
the heated debates in Congress over the fatal territorial problems
thrust on us by the Mexican War. Nowhere else was the attitude of the
South on these burning questions stated so promptly and so emphatically
as in the once famous Alabama Platform, first presented by Mr.
Yancey, February 14, 1848, to a great political convention assembled
in the capitol. The scene was historic, and is thus described by his
biographer, Mr. DuBose:
“At this stage in the proceedings Mr. Yancey rose. The galleries
were crowded with ladies and their escorts; the floor, lobbies,
and rotunda were packed with men. He drew from his pocket his
own resolutions and read them.... He spoke at length.... A vote
was taken, and Yancey’s resolutions were adopted, without even
one opposing voice, amidst the most enthusiastic cheering on the
floor and in the lobbies, the ladies in the galleries waving their
handkerchiefs in the contagion of joy.”
It was a characteristic example of his keen political foresight and
also of the wonderfully persuasive eloquence that set his hearers on
fire. No orator ever combined more perfectly closeness of reasoning
with the fire of earnestness and an irresistible personal magnetism.
The capitol, old Estelle Hall, every public place in the city, rang
with the mellow tones of his voice; his debates with Hilliard were
attended by throngs never equaled in the State before or since;
and the mention of his name at this day arouses in the memory of
old residents a sense of ecstasy produced by no other. No better
idea of his manner can be given than by quoting once more from his
biography, this time from a letter of General H. D. Clayton, describing
a subsequent impromptu debate with his great friend and opponent,
Hilliard:
“Mr. Hilliard, being loudly called, took his stand, and made the
graceful speech he always does.... Then broke forth the deafening,
enthusiastic cry, ‘Yancey, Yancey.’ He came like a man conscious of
right should always come.... As with modesty becoming a maiden of
sixteen, he requested to be permitted to occupy the stand, ‘To the
stand,’ shouted an hundred voices.... Bowing low he began--Here I
must pause. I should despise my own presumption should I undertake
further description of what followed. First went the _Confederation_
newspaper, once in existence, now a dream, a shadow of things that
were, gone glimmering like a schoolboy’s tale. At every blow some
foe fell, broken in every bone. For just two hours this work of
destruction proceeded amidst deafening shouts from the throats of
what is admitted on all sides to have been at least two-thirds of the
crowded house, called to put Yancey down.”
[Illustration: FIRST PAGE OF THE PERMANENT CONSTITUTION OF THE
CONFEDERATE STATES AS REPORTED BY THE COMMITTEE.
THIS IS IN THE HANDWRITING OF GEN. THOS. R. R. COBB, WHO WAS A MEMBER
OF THE COMMITTEE. TAKEN FROM THE ORIGINAL, WHICH IS IN THE POSSESSION
OF MR. A. L. HULL, ATHENS, GA.]
In the debates and speeches of those days the men and the measures of
the last decade before the war are preserved with a vividness that
seems almost magical. Estelle Hall echoes with fierce discussions of
the great Compromise of 1850. What a vista of history opens before the
mind as the streets resound to the tramp of Colonel Buford’s men on
their vain errand to Kansas! And what a sobering sense of reality it
brings to read his card in the papers! “I wish to raise three hundred
industrious, sober, discreet, reliable men, capable of bearing arms;
not prone to use them wickedly or unnecessarily, but willing to protect
their section in every real emergency.”
But interesting as these incidents are to the student, they were
historically only preliminary to the dramatic events connected with
the secession of the State and the organization of the Confederate
Government. The course of South Carolina and the propositions for
compromise had been watched with the greatest eagerness, and when the
Alabama Convention assembled in the capitol on January 7, 1861, the
excitement was intense. Hotels were crowded, lobbies thronged, the
factions were busy caucusing, and so close did the estimate of votes
run that a delegate who was opposed to secession exclaimed: “Mr. Yancey
can save the Union by the wave of his hand.” When the convention
finally, on January 11th, came to a vote, the scene was a solemn and
impressive one. Mr. Yancey, as chairman of the committee to draw up the
ordinance of secession, rose to close the debate. The majority of the
committee, he said, preferred that the ordinance should state simply
that the State resumed its original sovereignty by its own act, without
adding anything that might seem an apology; but for harmony they had
yielded to the desire of the minority and agreed to a preamble and
certain resolutions. The question was put and the vote stood 61 to 39.
Alabama had declared her independence.
[Illustration: THE PERMANENT CONSTITUTION OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES.
AS REPORTED BY COMMITTEE AND AMENDED BY CONGRESS, IS IN THE POSSESSION
OF THE DAUGHTER OF ALEX. B. CLITHERALL, MRS. A. C. BIRCH, MONTGOMERY,
ALA.]
The scenes that followed are best described in the next day’s newspaper:
“THE RUBICON IS CROSSED.”
“Yesterday will form a memorable epoch in the history of Alabama.
On that day our gallant little State resumed her sovereignty, and
became free and independent. So soon as it was announced that the
ordinance of secession had passed, the rejoicing commenced and the
people seemed wild with excitement. At the moment the beautiful flag
presented by the ladies to the convention was run up on the capitol,
... the cannon reverberated through the city, the various church
bells commenced ringing, and shout after shout might have been heard
along the principal streets.”
At night the capitol and other buildings were “most beautifully
illumined,” and fireworks and speeches gave vent to feelings long pent
up.
But in the excited crowd were sad hearts as well as gay. Many who
heartily believed in the right of secession deemed it inexpedient at
the time. A few caught some vision of the dreadful days to come; and
one house at least amidst the general rejoicing was draped in mourning.
All hesitation was, however, soon swept away by the contagious
excitement of the speedy assembling of the Confederate Congress. South
Carolina had suggested Montgomery as the place of meeting, partly
because of its central location, partly because of the conspicuous
part it had already played. The idea met with favor, and the Alabama
convention gave the proper formal invitation.
The little city, so soon to become the storm centre of the South, was
at that time a town of some twelve thousand inhabitants, but made
the proud boast of being the richest for its size in the country. A
newspaper writer of the day thus describes it:
“The principal streets are wide and well improved, the stores and
other houses for the transaction of business are large, commodious
and handsome.... In regard to the private residences of the
well-to-do portion of the population, too much cannot be said in
their praise. A large number of them present much architectural skill
and beauty, surrounded by capacious grounds, handsomely ornamented
with the rarest shrubbery known to the South.”
[Illustration: THE POLLARD RESIDENCE, BUILT BEFORE THE WAR.]
Another visitor was impressed with the numerous
“residences of gentlemen who own plantations in the hotter and less
healthful parts of the State. Many of these have been educated in the
older States, and with minds enlarged and liberalized by travel, they
form, with their families, a cultivated and attractive society.”
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS ERECTED ON THE CAPITOL
GROUNDS BY THE LADIES’ MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION.]
Here assembled, on February 4, 1861, the delegates from the Southern
States that had seceded, and, amidst scenes still familiar to all
Americans, they proceeded to organize the Confederate Government.
The excitement culminated with the arrival and inauguration of Mr.
Davis. An enormous crowd escorted him from the depot to the Exchange
Hotel, where he was welcomed by Mr. Yancey in an apt little speech
containing the famous words “The man and the hour have met.” The
ceremony of inauguration took place February 18th in front of the
capitol. The enthusiasm was unbounded. One who was present declared
years afterwards: “I never before or since that hour so experienced the
ecstasy of patriotism.” At 10 o’clock in the morning Mr. Davis left
the Exchange in a carriage drawn by six white horses. A vast throng
escorted him up Dexter Avenue to the capitol.
[Illustration: JEFFERSON DAVIS.]
“After he took his seat on the platform in front of the capitol,”
wrote an eye-witness, “and a short prayer had been offered, he read
a very neat little speech, not making many promises, but hoping by
God’s help to be able to fulfill all expectations. He took the oath
amidst the deepest silence; and when he raised his hand and his eyes
to heaven, and said ‘so help me God,’ I think I never saw any scene
so solemn and impressive.”
Years have gone by since those brave days. The scenes that so
stirred not only Montgomery but the entire land have passed into
the pages of history. The eager throng that crowded Capitol Hill,
and hung breathlessly on every word of the brief inaugural address;
the ringing cheers and the roar of cannon that welcomed the news of
Virginia’s secession; the groups of leaders planning earnestly laws
and constitutions and deep schemes of public policy; the soldiers in
gray marching by with high hopes and light step; the sad day when the
Confederate Government packed its archives and took its departure for
Richmond--these memories and a thousand others that cluster about them
will always be kept alive by the tender sentiment that clings to the
Lost Cause.
But Montgomery, true to the spirit of its history, does not look
backward. Business enterprise has adapted itself to new surroundings.
It is to-day a city of the New South. On the site of the old Indian
town, Ecunchatty, stands a great modern factory. The change is typical.
Far over the wide stretches of field and river float the long streamers
of smoke, the banners of the modern army of industry, in striking but
friendly contrast to the white dome on Capitol Hill, the centre of
Montgomery’s past and present political life.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
NEW ORLEANS
“THE CRESCENT CITY”
BY GRACE KING
Sail across the blue waters of the Gulf and make your way up the mighty
current of the Mississippi, like the leisurely traveler of yore,
if you wish to approach New Orleans in the proper way and spirit;
unless--which also furnishes a proper way and spirit--you wind your
way down the mighty current, from some far northern starting-point.
And for guidance provide not yourself with an up-to-date map of the
United States, crisscrossed with railroads, and speckled with illegibly
printed names of swarming towns. The pilot chart of the steamboat is
the true informant here if you are not the fortunate possessor or
borrower of some old print of the last century, one of those happy
combinations of fact and imagination issued by the ancient cartographer
in the effort to compromise old theories with new discoveries; charts
tracked by the foot of the pioneer, not by the wheel of the locomotive,
graded by the paddle of the canoe, not by that of the steamer; charts
that bear record to the history as well as geography of a country and
chronicle its ever-clearer and ever-increasing vastness and importance.
Upon such a map was the name New Orleans first written down. Naught to
the north but Canada and the Great Lakes; to the east, the Atlantic
seaboard with its mere fringe of English settlements fenced in by
impassable mountains; to the west, mountains again, and illimitable
prairies, covered over by bounding buffalo. South, lay the Gulf of
Mexico with Florida on the one side, Mexico on the other. From one of
the Great Lakes at the north, Lake Michigan, to the Gulf of Mexico
at the south, comes through the blank expanse of paper, the huge,
black serpent line of the Mississippi twisting and curving through, a
triumph of the artist, its great valley, pictured from mountain range
to mountain range, teeming with Indian villages, fields of waving corn,
droves of innumerable deer, and illimitable forests. At the head of
navigation lay the little village of Chicagou, about midway the little
stronghold of St. Louis, at the terminus New Orleans; the three names
linking together across the distance two hundred years ago even as
to-day.
[Illustration: TOMB OF AVAR, CITY PARK.]
De Soto first conceived the project of founding a settlement upon the
Mississippi River, his Rio Grande. As he lay stricken with fever upon
its banks within sight of its majestic currents, his mind dwelt upon
the glory of annexing the great stream and its territory to Spain,
the souls of its peoples to the Catholic Church. From his couch, he
urged forward the building of the ships to be sent to Havana for the
necessary supplies; with dying ears he listened to the sound of the
busy axes and hammers, and with dying voice he charged upon his men the
accomplishment of what would turn all the suffering and loss of their
expedition into brilliant success and ensure his fame and theirs to all
time.
But the Spaniards, sinking the body of their commander beneath the
turbid waters of the Mississippi, sank there too his plans and
ambitions, and, turning their backs upon the river, recked not that
Spain should gain or lose it.
Over the burial spot of the Spanish explorer floated, a century and a
half later, the boats of La Salle, the Canadian explorer. As he paddled
his way down the gigantic stream, the like of which he had never
dreamed existed in the world, he was, in thought, making that map of
the country described above. And by the time his boats came into view
of the Gulf, his scheme for affixing the great river and valley to
France lay as clear in his mind as the blue expanse before his eyes.
He would first build strongholds, settle colonies, and mass friendly
Indians at the mouth of each tributary. French traders, _coureurs de
bois_, and missionaries, with a free and secure route before them,
would then ply their canoes backwards and forwards between Lake
Michigan and the Gulf, where French vessels would be lying at anchor
in the sheltered harbor of the commodious city he purposed to build.
The French flag once securely established on the Gulf coast of the
continent meant nothing less than the gradual elbowing of the English
out of the country on the Atlantic side, and the capture of the Mexican
gold mines from Spain whenever opportunity offered.
[Illustration: THE CUSTOM-HOUSE, NEW ORLEANS.]
Like De Soto, La Salle proved only a forerunner in history. The
brilliant scheme he conceived and failed to execute was carried to
success ten years after his death by Iberville. He discovered the
river from the Gulf, and, entering it, explored its course until he
identified it as the river discovered from the Lakes by La Salle.
And he it was who selected the site for the future city upon the
Mississippi, the possession of which meant, to any power that held it,
domination of the Gulf of Mexico and of the great waterway, the life
artery of the American continent. When Iberville selected that site
upon the narrow neck of land lying between the river and an equally
navigable chain of lakes, he wrote the history of his city in advance.
The first year of the eighteenth century saw France indeed mistress of
the Mississippi and of the Gulf of Mexico, but Iberville, like De Soto
and La Salle, was cut off in the prime of life and activity, and his
work was left to another for accomplishment--to Bienville, his young
brother.
One cannot think of New Orleans without Bienville, nor of Bienville
without New Orleans. From the time he came into the country, a mere
stripling, midshipman to Iberville, until he left it, a middle-aged
man, the city upon the Mississippi was the star by which he guided
all his hopes and ambitions, all his colonial ventures. For eighteen
years, during which the seat of government was shifted from Biloxi to
Mobile and from Mobile back again to Biloxi, through changes of king
and ministry, and through all the personal political vicissitudes of
an official dependant of those troublous times, he never ceased to
urge upon the home authorities the founding of the city, all the while
setting aside with unwearied patience the baffling objections against
it in his own council-boards.
His opportunity came at last, in 1718, when Louisiana was made over by
contract to John Law and the Company of the West; then, as Governor,
he had full authority to act with men and money at his disposal. He
himself brought his axemen to the spot, saw the land cleared and laid
off in lots, according to the map prepared by the royal engineers.
A handsome little city it was to be according to this map; with
fair, square sides, straight streets; with a _place d’armes_, parish
church, cemetery, barracks; all complete, even to the naming of the
streets--Chartres, Condé, Royal, Bourbon, Dauphine, Burgundy, Conti,
St. Louis, Toulouse, St. Peter, Orleans, St. Anne. No nicknames were
to be allowed here to chance and illiteracy, no plebeian “Broads,”
“Mains,” “Highs”--a right royal little city it was designed to be from
the first, and one worthy its princely godfather, Law’s patron, the
Duke of Orleans.
Bienville himself piloted the first royal vessel of provisions and
immigrants through the mouth of the river, and made the first landing
at the levee bank, crowded to-day with commerce and shipping. Finally,
in 1723, Bienville removed thither all the government offices and
stores, and made New Orleans the capital of the colony. In a year, the
city was in full tide of progress, and attaining its majority as a city
among the oldest cities of the continent.
History and romance carry on the chronicle of its life, for it
is a place whose history has become romance, romance history, in
our literature. The neat little square checker-board prepared by
Bienville’s engineers, has grown out of all regularity of proportion;
unwieldy and awkward enough it is now upon paper, with its streets that
vainly strive to run straight, as they follow the bend of the river,
or “Crescent” as it is called. But the first map still represents
the centre, the heart of the city, the source of its tradition and
sentiment. And to the children of the city--or, we should say, the
descendants of the children of the first-born of the city, there has
been no change in this “mother” spot, save that of harmonious growth
and age;--at least so they think in tender reverence as they saunter
through the old thoroughfares with the high-sounding names.
[Illustration: CHARTRES STREET AND CATHEDRAL.]
The _place d’armes_ has become Jackson Square; the public market, the
French market; the parish church, the Cathedral; the Ursulines Convent,
the Archbishopric; the cemetery is now the old St. Louis--beyond
Rampart Street, instead of outside the Ramparts, as it used to be
called. The _vieu carré_--as the original city is affectionately
called--has suffered its share of the vicissitudes of cities. More
than once, tornadoes and fires have swept whole quarters of it bare of
dwellings. Epidemics of yellow fever--then as now said to be brought in
from Havana--decimated the inhabitants at recurrent intervals; while
the river ever and anon rose up and overflowed its banks, producing a
steady crop of domestic fevers. But the gay-hearted inhabitants--then,
even as now--seemed to draw from their misfortunes only zest for
greater energy of work and greater pleasure in life.
[Illustration: THE URSULINES CONVENT.]
Every ship that arrived brought accessions to the
population--accessions, not immigrants, and therefore reckoned by
quality, not quantity. Gay sprigs of the nobility were sent out to “la
Nouvelle Orleans” to mend their morals; thrifty ones, to mend their
fortunes; ambitious sons of the bourgeoisie came seeking opportunity
for acquiring landed estate; old officers remained when their terms
of service expired; new officers willingly grew into old ones in a
place so near akin in society and elegance to Paris. For Paris was the
arbiter and model of New Orleans, and never had the great city by the
Seine an apter pupil than the little city by the Mississippi.
Social elegance and pleasure reached its standard height under the
administration of the Marquis de Vaudreuil--“le grand Marquis,”
as he was called. His entertainments, banquets, balls, theatrical
performances, his manners, dress, conversation, his etiquette, civil
and military, furnished the code which, in a way, still governs social
practice in the city.
When, in 1763, France, by the Treaty of Paris, signed away all her
possessions east of the Mississippi to England, she yet retained her
grasp on the jugular vein of the North American continent by reserving
the Island of Orleans, as it was denominated--that is, the mouth of
the Mississippi. And now the city, by right and title the sole French
metropolis of North America, made so rapid and so great a stride
forward in wealth, population, and commercial activity, that even its
easy-going, pleasure-loving citizens began to feel the exhilarating
reality of the possibilities of their geographical and political
situation in the country; of their importance, not alone to France,
but to the American continent. But the awakening of the people to
the consciousness of their political virility was no better than an
awakening by the hand of an executioner.
[Illustration: THE JACKSON MONUMENT.]
On a bright day in October, 1764, the men of the city were called
together in the _place d’armes_, to listen to the royal edict that
transferred them, their families, and property; in short, all the
territory and subjects yet possessed by France in America, to Spain.
The consternation of the people, their indignation and excitement,
their public meetings, address to the King, their repudiation of
Spanish authority and Spanish government, the bloody punishment
by O’Reilly, executing six and imprisoning in Havana five of the
conspirators, as he called them, and, finally, the forcing of the
colony under the domination of Spain--all of this can but be enumerated
here, but it forms a chapter in the history of New Orleans, the
omission of which can be justified only by necessity.
The city became Spanish in language, law, manner, dress,--in all
externals, but its heart remained firmly French, as after events
proved. It is ever acknowledged, however, in the history of the city,
that the Spanish rule was a wise and just one; and, as is well said by
all chroniclers, the Spanish found the city a city of wooden one-story
houses, and left it a city of brick mansions.
It was during the Spanish domination that the great conflagration of
1788 took place--when the heart of the _vieu carré_ was left a mere
heap of rubbish and ashes. Bienville himself had not a barer spot
before him when he laid out the first streets in his clearing than
Don Andres Almonester, the Alferez Real had when, in the midst of the
public sorrow and grief over the disaster, he offered to rebuild the
religious and civil official edifices. His tombstone in the Cathedral
gives the list of his claims upon the gratitude of posterity: founder
and donor of the Holy Cathedral Church, founder of the Royal Hospital
of St. Charles (the present Charity Hospital), founder of the hospital
for lepers, of the Church of the Ursulines Convent, of a public school;
of the Casa-Curiel (Court-House)--in virtue of which munificence, Don
Andres lies buried under the altar of the Cathedral, and a prayer is
said for the repose of his soul every day at Vespers.
Following the example of the edifices of Don Andres, private buildings
were constructed on a style grandiose beyond any that the city had
seen before, and the manner of living imitated the manner of building.
And now, under the well-regulated, ponderous monotony of the Spanish
domination, the city might have enjoyed a repose as immutable as that
of her pious benefactor, had it not been for the great stream rolling
past her to the Gulf.
No longer did the Upper Mississippi flow through virgin forests and
savage villages. Out of the independence of the United colonies was
born the “West,”--the great West as it was then and is still called,
teeming with energy and hardihood, with fruitfulness and prosperity.
Before the day of railroads rivers furnished the only outlet to
commerce. The Mississippi, gathering up with the waters of its
tributaries the harvests of their valleys, bore down to New Orleans
a continuous line of flatboats laden to the edge. The cargoes found
ready sale and were soon the main food supply of the city, and the
sturdy flatboatmen returning to their farms were ever better and better
satisfied with their market, and more and more discontented with the
foreign ownership of it. In their parlance, the valley owned the river,
and the river owned the mouth. Spanish obstinacy and American temper,
concessions and evasions, threats and brawls, kept the city for a score
of years filled to the brim with political excitement. Outside the wall
and canal--the Canal Street of to-day--lay a new city, an American
city, populated by flatboatmen and produce traders, against which the
gates of the Spanish city were carefully closed and sentinels set at
nightfall.
But it were as well to attempt to hold back the current of the river
itself as the current of popular determination that flowed down with
it from its great valley. As it came, so, by secret compact, the
Spanish flag went--to be replaced not by the old Fleur-de-Lys, but by
the Tricolor; the new and glorious banner of liberty, equality, and
fraternity. It was easily made at home in a city whose republicanism
under the pruning of Spanish rule had only rooted itself the more
deeply.
[Illustration: CANAL STREET, NEW ORLEANS.]
[Illustration: THE CABILDO, OLD COURT BUILDING, JACKSON SQUARE.]
For a short space, popular joy rioted in wild rejoicings. But it was
only for a moment that the French flag fluttered over the _place
d’armes_, a bare three weeks. Then it descended its staff and the
American flag rose in its place. In the Casa Real, the seat of the
Spanish Cabildo, the ceremony of the cession of Louisiana to the United
States took place, the most important event, judged by results, that
has taken place in the history of the Republic, enlarging the United
States in domain by a territory three and a half times as great as its
original size, raising it in political sovereignty to parity with the
greatest European powers. The Spanish walls were demolished, but the
American domination made slow impression upon the _vieu carré_. It
has never really altered the type. There was, correctly speaking, no
American domination in the _vieu carré_ until the term ceased to be
used, when Louisiana was admitted as a State into the Union.
[Illustration: ST. FRIES CATHEDRAL.]
The memorable discussion in Congress over the admission of Louisiana
need be recalled here only to introduce the next important event in
her history,--the great and glorious victory of the Battle of New
Orleans on the 8th of January, 1815. That victory was the vindication
of Louisiana’s right to Statehood in the Union;--it was New Orleans’s
dower gift to the Nation’s history.
The American quarter, the new town, built by the flatboatmen outside
the wall of the old town, is still called the American quarter by
the old inhabitants. In architecture and physiognomy, in material
prosperity and educational progress, it rightfully and justly
represents the American domination. But for art, poetry, romance,
sentiment, and inspiration the denizens of the new city flee into the
old mother quarter as into a sanctuary, where in the quiet and gloom,
it may be, of the past, they find refuge from the glare and incessant
pursuit of activities of the present. It is the quarter that strangers
love. Upon any one of the fine days of a New Orleans winter, a score
or more of these visitors may be seen, strolling through the aisles of
the Cathedral, or the halls of the old Cabildo, or sitting in the sun
on the benches of Jackson Square watching the leisurely, picturesque
procession of passers-by, as the soft bells of the Cathedral mark the
no less leisurely procession of the hours.
“Orleans, Gentilly,
D’Artaguette, Marigny,
Bourbon! Bourbon!
Gayoso, Galvez, Bouligny,
Casacalvo, Derbigny,
Don Almonester’s bells intone;
For Bienville and for Serigny,
For d’Iberville, for d’Assigny
They make incessant moan.
Orleans, Gentilly
D’Artaguette, Marigny,
Bourbon! Bourbon!”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
VICKSBURG
THE CITY ON THE WALNUT HILLS
BY H. F. SIMRALL
Vicksburg has no colonial traditions. The Walnut Hills on which it
stands, near the northern margin of that portion of Mississippi which
was successively under the sway of France, Great Britain and Spain,
could not be settled and improved until long after the region about
Natchez. The city is, in fact, of modern origin. The county of Warren
was not organized until 1809, and Vicksburg had no real existence until
it became in 1836, second after Warrenton, the county-seat.
To understand the late origin of the town, one should study the
colonial history of Mississippi. By the discovery and exploration of
the Mississippi in 1680-82, France claimed all the territory drained
by the river and its affluents from the source to the mouth, and
also all territory east and west drained by streams that entered the
Gulf of Mexico. The French colony was planted at Biloxi on the Gulf
coast, which was made the capital. Shortly afterwards the capital was
transferred to Mobile and finally located at New Orleans. Settlements
spread slowly along the shores of the Gulf and up the Mississippi
River, penetrating but a short distance inland on account of the
contiguity of hostile Indians.
During the eighteen years of British control that followed the French
and Indian War, an impulse was given to emigration from Great Britain,
and from the older colonies some settlers came who desired to avoid
participation in the Revolutionary War. In 1779-80 Spain drove Great
Britain out of the territory west of the Mississippi, acquired by the
treaty which closed the French and Indian War, and held and controlled
the same for fifteen or more years, with the colonial seat of authority
at Natchez. By the treaty of peace with Great Britain at the close of
the Revolutionary War, the Mississippi River on the west and the 31st
parallel on the south were declared the boundaries of the United States.
[Illustration: MEETING OF GENERALS GRANT AND PEMBERTON AT THE “STONE
HOUSE” INSIDE THE REBEL WORKS ON THE MORNING OF JULY 4, 1863.
(FROM AN ACTUAL SKETCH MADE ON THE SPOT BY ONE OF THE SPECIAL ARTISTS
OF “FRANK LESLIE’S ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER,” NOW IN THE COLLECTION OF
MAJOR GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM.)]
During the Spanish possession and control of the lower Mississippi
River, serious protests and diplomatic representations had been made
to Spain against the onerous exactions and tributes which she imposed
on commerce from the upper valley and imports through New Orleans. To
haul the tobacco, wheat, corn, pork and other bulky products of the
region across the mountains over dirt roads to Baltimore, the nearest
seaport and market, was hardly possible. The Mississippi River was
the quick and easy highway to New Orleans and tide-water. Spain was
under treaty obligation to allow free navigation of the Mississippi,
and to deal liberally at New Orleans with commerce from the upper
valley, but she shamefully set at nought her obligations, until, in
sheer exasperation, the people of Kentucky and Tennessee were on the
point of fitting out a military force with which to open the river to
free navigation and commerce and to drive Spain from New Orleans. The
Federal Government rose to the emergency, and Spain, obliged to choose
between war or cession, concluded in 1795 a treaty of cession, by which
she surrendered the territory in question and agreed to retire within
six months after ratification of the treaty.
Georgia, claiming that her colonial limits by the charter of 1735
extended by parallel lines westward to the Mississippi River, in
1785 organized in southwest Mississippi a county called Bourbon, and
appointed justices of the peace, who, however, never attempted to
exercise their functions. In 1795, the year the treaty was made with
Spain, Georgia sold to four of the speculation land companies enormous
acreages of land in what is now Alabama and Mississippi.
The first relief, permanent and secure, from all the discouragements
to emigration was furnished when the Congress of the United States, in
1798, organized a territorial government for Mississippi and applied to
it all the benefits, advantages and privileges of the Ordinance of 1787
for the government of the territory northwest of the river Ohio, except
the clause of the sixth article, which prohibited slavery. Georgia in
turn promptly yielded up her territorial and political claims to the
United States for pecuniary and other considerations.
From the date of organized authority, population rapidly poured in. The
Bayou, Pearl and the Big Black ceased to be the outer confines of the
new settlers. They spread rapidly over all the lands which the Indians
had ceded. As settlements were carried east of the Walnut Hills a town
at that point became a necessity for trade. A town was laid off on
the plantations of William Vick and John Lane into blocks or squares
by parallel streets north and south, east and west. The building of
a town on the bluff at the southern extremity of the delta and of
easy access to the uplands eastward was a natural response to the
needs of commerce. Its growth and development have kept pace with the
increase of agricultural production of the region tributary to it. The
Vicksburg of to-day is specially adapted to the manufacture of cotton,
lumber and metals into finished goods. Raw material is abundant and
available. Transportation by water and rail to home and foreign markets
is adequate to meet the largest demands. When the Isthmian Canal shall
have been constructed, the ports on the Gulf will be nearer the Orient
than the ports on the Atlantic, and unusual impulse will be given to
manufactures and agriculture.
Large plants for the utilization of cotton seed are in full operation
at Vicksburg; match and furniture factories are actively at work.
Other enterprises are slowly building up, and the natural and economic
advantages of the city for manufactures are becoming more apparent.
The public buildings of Vicksburg--Court-House, Post Office, churches,
schoolhouses, and hotels--are typical and creditable. The Court-House,
situated on one of the highest eminences, towers above the surrounding
buildings and is pleasing to the eye from every point of view. The
tradition is that it was planned and designed by a slave belonging to
the contractor who built it. The United States building is handsome
and commodious. The city abounds in churches. It is provided with an
excellent system of waterworks and electric street-railway service. The
system recently adopted of free education for both races has from time
to time been so enlarged as to its curriculum of studies and improved
as to its methods, that it has superseded private schools, except an
educational establishment for both sexes under the control of the Roman
Catholic Church.
Vicksburg has been the home of several of the State’s ablest men, who
have proved large factors in making history. S. S. Prentiss was an
orator of national reputation and an eminent lawyer. Others worthy of
mention are: Judge W. L. Sharkey, one of the most learned jurists of
the Southwest; Governor John J. Guion; Governor McNutt; Walter Brooks;
United States Senator George Yerger; a great lawyer, Joseph Holt, in
later life Attorney-General of the United States. Jefferson Davis,
President of the Confederate States, Senator in Congress and a gallant
and distinguished soldier, lived the greater part of his life in Warren
County, a few miles south of the city.
We now come to that period in the history of Vicksburg, when, during
the Civil War, for a time the even current of commercial and business
life gave place to a series of events, perhaps the most notable and
far-reaching in influence on the shifting fortunes and results of the
great conflict. The bluffs at Vicksburg are of pre-eminent importance
as a strategic point to the complete control of the great river
which almost divides the continent from south to north, penetrates
the upper valley nearly to the great chain of lakes, and with its
affluents affords about fifteen thousand miles of navigation. No object
contributing to the final issue of the war could have presented itself
to the great leaders on both sides of the conflict as of more urgent
need than the possession and control of the Mississippi. In 1862,
movements were begun against the fortifications which the Confederates
had placed on the Cumberland and Tennessee and the upper Mississippi.
So important and urgent did this appear as a necessary means to a
speedy and successful close of the war that operations were begun very
early to drive the Confederates from the river, and were conducted
both from above and from its mouth. The close of the year 1862 found
the Federal naval and military forces dominating the river from the
north as far south as Vicksburg, and from the south as far north as
Port Hudson. A campaign, supported by the fleet, was undertaken on
the east side of the river. The Federal forces moved from the Yazoo
River along the banks of the Chickasaw Bayou with a view of gaining a
foothold on the bluffs above the city. A battle, stubbornly contested,
was fought, and resulted in the defeat and repulse of the Union forces.
It demonstrated the impracticability of capturing the city by attacking
the army entrenched on the bluffs.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF GENERAL U. S. GRANT.]
The following year a much larger army was convoyed down the river by a
fleet of gunboats, and landed at Milliken’s bend, sixteen or seventeen
miles above the city, on the west bank of the river. A tentative and
unsuccessful effort was made by General Grant to divert the river
across the peninsula by cutting a canal, so as to pass his vessels of
war and transports below out of reach of the batteries on the bluffs.
Meantime a furious and incessant cannonade was kept up between the
gunboats and shore batteries. Finally a large part of his fleet, under
cover of the darkness of night, succeeded in passing the batteries,
with the loss of one vessel and serious damage to others. This movement
on the water, followed by the marching of the army down the west bank,
unmistakably indicated to General Pemberton, Confederate commandant,
the plan and purpose of the campaign. He promptly withdrew the most
of his army from the breastworks, crossed the Big Black River, and so
disposed his men as to retard or arrest altogether the march of General
Grant. General Pemberton’s plan was to form a junction with General
Johnston, who was on his way to take part in the defence of Vicksburg.
General Grant succeeded in interposing his army between Johnston and
Pemberton, gave battle to Johnston at Jackson, and obliged him to fall
back northward to Canton. Heavy and obstinate battles were fought at
Baker’s Creek, Champion Hills and at Big Black. Pemberton, failing
to unite forces with Johnston, deemed it prudent to recross the Big
Black, return and re-occupy his trenches round the city. General Grant
followed and closely invested the Confederate works, placing his army
behind breastworks and in trenches. Two or three gallant assaults made
on the Confederate works were met with determined courage and repulsed
with great loss of life. The control of the river by the gunboats,
above and below, made the reception of reinforcements or supplies from
the west or from any source by water, impossible. The land forces
spread around the fortifications cut off succor from the south and
east, so that it became a mere question of time, before starvation
would compel a surrender without more waste of life in hazardous and
bloody assaults. When Pemberton marched to the Big Black, the supply
of food in the city was low; on his return his army was placed on
short rations. Constant service on the fortifications, inadequate food
supply and midsummer heat developed a great deal of sickness, so that
when the surrender was made on the 4th of July, after a siege of forty
days, provisions were about exhausted, and one third or more of the
garrison were on the sick-list, unfit for military duty. It is perhaps
not out of place to say that in no campaign of the Civil War was there
higher courage or greater devotion to soldierly duty displayed than
here, by both participants. The events of the siege derive their true
significance from the circumstance that they constituted the fatal
blow which broke the Confederate power and hastened the war to its end.
[Illustration: SIEGE OF VICKSBURG.]
The National Cemetery on the bluffs, just north of the corporate
limits of the city, is, taken all in all, perhaps the most
attractive patriotic cemetery in the South. The visitor to the city
always seeks it first. Nature has given to it sublimity; art and
landscape-engineering have imparted all the freshness and loveliness
that flower and shrub and tree can give. Here rest sixteen thousand
soldiers who lost their lives in the service of their country in and
around Vicksburg. Such care and veneration for those who fell under
the national flag while a grateful tribute to valor and heroism serve
at the same time to keep ever fresh and active sentiments of martial
valor and a warmer pride in all that adds glory to the country and
illustrates its military prowess.
Nothing could more strongly and nobly testify to the fact that all
the issues and controversies which culminated in a long and bloody
war have been closed and settled and relegated to the past than the
measures now in process of execution to convert the trenches and
bastions around the city of Vicksburg into a park beautified by all
that landscape-engineering and art can do to make the place attractive.
That which appeals to-day with so much force to the sensibilities of
Americans is not so much the mere transformation of the rugged hills,
as that the place so wonderfully transformed is and will ever be a
perpetual witness that sectional discords and strifes have disappeared
from our national life, and that henceforth the great family of States
and Territories, with their seventy or eighty millions of people, are
members and citizens of a common country, protected by the same flag,
the emblem of sovereignty to all.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
KNOXVILLE
THE METROPOLIS OF EASTERN TENNESSEE
BY JOSHUA W. CALDWELL
The beginnings of Knoxville were Scotch-Irish. Its founder was James
White, a Scotch-Irishman from North Carolina. Its first place of
worship was a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian Church, wherein the faith of
the Covenant was preached without mitigation, to the edification and
uplifting of the community. The dominant element of its population
until after the Civil War was Presbyterian, and it is still strong.
The first effort of the white men to possess themselves of any part of
Tennessee was in 1756, when old Fort Loudon was erected about thirty
miles west of where Knoxville now stands. Fort Loudon did not long
resist the Cherokees. Its short story is one of the most romantic and
one of the most tragic in the early history of the Southwest.
[Illustration: JOHN SEVIER, FIRST GOVERNOR OF TENNESSEE.]
Twelve years later, the first permanent settlement in Tennessee was
made upon the waters of the Watauga in the northeast corner of the
State. This little community became, soon afterwards, the Watauga
Association, a practically independent government, with a written
constitution; indisputably the first of the kind that was formed on
this continent, by men of American birth, and inspired by American
sentiment. Its leaders were James Robertson, afterwards the founder of
Nashville, a typical Scotch-Irish pioneer; John Sevier, afterwards the
first Governor of Tennessee, a man of mixed Anglo-Saxon and Huguenot
descent, and of extraordinary abilities, who became a resident of
Knoxville; and John Carter, presumably descended from the noted
Virginia family of that name, many of whose descendants are citizens of
Knoxville.
About the year 1787, the settlements having extended gradually down
the Holston, we find James White living upon the site of Knoxville and
owning, then or later, much of the land now covered by the city. If
traditionary statements are to be trusted, a part at least of the first
house erected by James White is still standing, its original sturdy and
loopholed logs protected and preserved by a sheathing of boards. The
name first given the settlement was “White’s Fort.”
In 1790, North Carolina having ceded her possessions west of the
Alleghanies to the United States, the “Territory of the United States
South of the River Ohio” was created, and President Washington named
as its Governor his friend William Blount, of North Carolina. In 1791,
Governor Blount decided to make White’s Fort, which was by that time
called Knoxville in honor of General Henry Knox, the capital of the
territory, and the town site was surveyed in part and laid off into
lots by its owner, James White, in that year.
[Illustration: WILLIAM BLOUNT, GOVERNOR OF SOUTHWEST TERRITORY.]
The location is on the north bank of the Holston, four miles south of
the junction of the French Broad and Holston rivers, giving to the
last stream the name to which it is entitled, without regard to many
temporary, ineffective and indefensible changes of river nomenclature
in East Tennessee by legislation. Between two creeks, once clear and
vigorous, but now defiled and depleted by many civilized uses, rises
a plateau of about two hundred and fifty acres, of diversified but
comparatively level surface. Where this elevation slopes to the river
on the southeast, the town made its beginning, and climbed slowly up
the hill until it reached the highest point overlooking the river,
which was crowned with a blockhouse known as the barracks, where a
scanty garrison of regulars was intended to protect the settlers and
to overawe the Cherokees. The barracks boasted at least one great gun,
which was fired morning and evening with punctuality and impressiveness.
The coming of Governor Blount was the beginning of the greatness of
Knoxville. Blount was a notable man. He had been a silent but respected
and not uninfluential member of the convention that framed the Federal
Constitution. He was the friend of Washington, and his lineage was
most ancient and most honorable, reaching back to the time of William
the Conqueror, in whose train, and among the beneficiaries of whose
bounty, was one of his ancestors. The family had been settled long,
in opulent circumstances and in social and political prominence, in
North Carolina. The Governor was a man of education, of fine presence,
of graceful and winning manners and of unfailing, if dignified,
urbanity. He was unquestionably the first gentleman as well as the
chief magistrate of the “Territory of the United States South of the
River Ohio,” although neither honorable lineages nor good manners
were wanting there. In addition to all this his Excellency was most
fortunate in his wife. The praises of the lovely and accomplished Mary
Grainger Blount were in the mouths of all men, and even of many women
in those days. It was a memorable occasion when the Governor brought
his gracious lady from North Carolina to Knoxville, and placed her at
the head of his court, which was conducted with no little circumstance
and dignity.
It is said that he imported, likewise, weather-boarding, wherewith he
encased the logs of a great house which he had constructed as a home
for his wife, and that no sooner had this attractive and expensive
transformation been accomplished, than the front yard was converted
into a flower garden, the first of its kind in the town, and certainly
one of the most admired anywhere.
In July, 1791, Governor Blount made at Knoxville a treaty with the
Cherokees. Nearly fifteen hundred Indians were present, including
forty-one chiefs. The Governor had caused to be erected in a
conspicuous place on a hillside overlooking the river a large
tent, wherein he remained withdrawn until all the expected company
had assembled. Then the doors of the tent were thrown open and
he stood forth, arrayed in splendor, and surrounded by the chief
civil and military notables of the territory. The resplendency of
his Excellency’s dress-sword, laced coat and cocked hat are much
commented on by historians. Second in splendor of raiment and dignity
of deportment to the Governor only, was James Armstrong, known as
“Trooper,” formerly a dragoon in his Britannic Majesty’s service, and
versed in the ways of courts. The _Annalist_ of Tennessee characterizes
him, for this occasion, as “_arbiter elegantiarum_.” The Governor stood
upon a platform, and one by one in due order the Cherokee chiefs were
presented by Mr. Armstrong, while the assembled warriors gazed in awe
upon the imposing ceremony. A treaty was solemnly entered into, and was
speedily broken by both whites and Indians.
In 1794, an act of the territorial Legislature was passed, which after
reciting the founding, in 1791, of a town named Knoxville in honor
of Major-General Henry Knox, “said town consisting of sixty-four
lots, numbered from one to sixty-four consecutively,” enacts in
solemn form, that a town be established on the spot indicated, and
names commissioners for its government. In 1797, fifty-nine more lots
with necessary streets were added. In 1799, the town was authorized
by law to elect its commissioners, but for two years the act seems
to have been ineffective. The commissioners when finally elected
entered promptly upon a course of vigorous municipal legislation and
administration. Among other things a town sergeant was elected, and
required to patrol the streets three nights a week, or oftener at his
option. Slaughter-pens within the town limits, wooden chimneys, hogs
upon the streets, dead or alive, and the firing of guns and pistols
within the corporate limits were declared nuisances, punishable by
fine, fifty cents being the highest lawful fine. Two of the offences
for which this highest fine was prescribed were drunkenness and
Sabbath-breaking. A few years later, presumably under pressure of
popular demand, the hog ordinance was repealed, but the provision
against wooden chimneys seems to have been rigorously enforced.
In 1815, the town was empowered to elect a Mayor, and Thomas Emmerson,
afterwards a Judge of the Supreme Court of the State, became the first
Mayor.
That the name Knoxville had been adopted before November 5, 1791, is
made certain by the fact that on that day appeared the initial number
of the _Knoxville Gazette_, the first newspaper published within the
bounds of Tennessee. Its publisher was one George Roulstone, a native
of New England, whose Yankee enterprise appeared in the fact that while
the paper from the first was called the _Knoxville Gazette_, it was
for some time published at Rogersville, an older town, seventy miles
east of Knoxville. It is supposed that the publisher was prevented by
difficulties of transportation from moving his press to Knoxville.
The _Gazette_ was a three-column paper of four pages. It had not many
advertisements and very little local news, but was filled with accounts
of the French Revolution and of European affairs in general. It gave
much space to questions of ethics, and reprinted many political and
patriotic speeches.
The first and only Legislature of the Territory met at Knoxville in
February, 1794. Among the acts passed was one establishing a college
near Knoxville, to be called Blount College, in honor of the Governor.
This it is believed was the first strictly non-sectarian institution
of higher learning established in the United States. It was afterwards
successively named East Tennessee College, East Tennessee University,
and the University of Tennessee, under which last name it now exists
and flourishes. It is unsurpassed among Southern institutions of
learning for its thoroughness, and in respect of its beautiful
situation is almost unequaled in the whole country.
The treaty made by Governor Blount in 1791 bound the whites to refrain
from encroachments on the Indian lands, and pledged the Indians to
desist from hostilities. The whites did not all act in good faith,
while the Indians, with characteristic treachery, failed from the
outset to regard the treaty. At first the Cherokees contented
themselves with occasional outrages, but in the year 1793 it was known
that the whole nation was in arms. The Indians were emboldened by the
avowedly pacific policy of the Federal Government. Governor Blount had
received specific instructions to act only on the defensive. Arson
and murder were of daily occurrence and went unpunished. It was with
genuine relief, therefore, that the whites received news, late in the
summer of 1793, that the Indians had, in effect, declared war. On the
night of the 24th of September, 1793, a body of more than a thousand
warriors crossed the Tennessee River some twenty-five miles below
Knoxville and marched in the direction of that place. Seven hundred
of this invading force were Creeks and the remainder Cherokees, and,
strangely enough, one hundred of the Creeks were mounted. It was
the intention to reach and to attack Knoxville at daylight, but they
found difficulty in crossing the river, and were further delayed by a
consultation among the leaders upon an interesting question. This was
whether they should kill all the people of Knoxville, or only the men.
The discussion of this nice question of casuistry proved so attractive,
or provoked so many differences, that daylight seems to have found it
still unsettled.
[Illustration: UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE.]
At sunrise on the 25th the Indians heard the morning gun at the
barracks at Knoxville and concluded that it was an alarm signal.
Halting near Cavet’s blockhouse, eight miles from the village, they
entertained themselves by decoying and butchering the inmates. Their
coming had been made known on the 24th to the people of Knoxville, who
prepared with courage and energy to resist them. The total fighting
strength of the whites was forty men. It was determined to waylay
the Indians, and after firing upon them to retreat to the barracks.
Accordingly, leaving two old men with the women and children, the
remaining thirty-eight spent the night concealed on a wooded ridge west
of the town, fearlessly awaiting a foe outnumbering them more than
twenty to one. Early on the morning of the 25th, however, a messenger
brought the news that the Indians had lost heart after the affair at
Cavet’s and were in full retreat.
In this little band of defenders was the Rev. Samuel Carrick, a
Presbyterian minister, afterwards the first President of Blount
College, of whose conduct on this occasion there is a pleasing and
honorable tradition. It is said that when news of the invasion came he
was preparing to bury his wife, who had just died, but, putting aside
his grief, and leaving her beloved remains to be buried by the women of
the neighborhood, he seized his rifle and hastened to take his post at
the front.
A month later the Tennessee militia, led by Sevier, were in the heart
of the Indian country, and the battle of Etowah, on the 17th of
October, 1793, ended the campaign and cowed the savages.
From this time until the Civil War, Knoxville was outside the current
of important public events. From 1792 to 1796, it was the capital of
the “Territory South of the River Ohio”; from 1796 to 1811, except for
a little while in 1807, it was the capital of Tennessee. About this
time the capital of the State became peripatetic, on account of the
westward trend of population. As late as 1834, we find a member of the
Constitutional Convention of that year introducing a resolution for the
ascertainment of the “centre of gravity” of the State, with a view to
the permanent location of the capital upon it. It will be interesting
to know that the official to whom the question was referred reported
the centre of gravity to be identical with the geographical centre.
The capital was finally fixed at Nashville, which is not on the centre
of gravity, but is otherwise fully entitled to the honor. Meanwhile,
in 1817, the capital returned for a brief stay at Knoxville, and then
finally departed westward.
The Constitutional Convention of 1796 met at Knoxville in January of
that year with William Blount as President, and promulgated the first
Constitution of Tennessee. John Sevier was the first Governor and took
up his abode at Knoxville. He began to build a large brick house, but
hospitality and every form of liberality exhausted his means and he
removed to the country before the first story of the house had been
constructed. The house was completed by another owner and was designed
to overlook the town from a distance. It now stands with its back and
one side to intersecting modern streets, and its front to the side
yard. Sevier was for eleven years Governor, and then was elected to
Congress. He died in 1815 while on a journey to the Creek nation as
Commissioner of the United States. His remains reposed in Alabama until
1889, when they were disinterred, brought to Knoxville, and deposited
in the Court-House yard, where their final resting-place is marked by a
graceful shaft of native white marble. Sevier, always the popular hero
of Tennessee, is the most brilliant figure in the pioneer history of
the Southwest.
Blount was one of the first Senators from Tennessee. His impeachment
as Senator upon charges which to this day no man fully understands and
which to the Western people seem to have imported no turpitude, did not
affect his standing in Tennessee. He is buried in Knoxville in the old
First Presbyterian churchyard.
[Illustration: HUGH L. WHITE.]
Within a few feet of his grave is the tomb of Hugh Lawson White, son
of James White, “the founder,” and known as the “American Cato.” He
was a Judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, many years a member of
the United States Senate, and for a time its President. He was long
the intimate friend of Andrew Jackson, but was alienated by Jackson’s
imperious methods, and became a candidate for the Presidency of the
United States against Jackson’s political heir, Martin Van Buren. He
was defeated, but carried his own and two other Southern States. He was
one of the strongest, purest and most patriotic of American statesmen,
and was a conspicuous figure in the Senate even in the days of Webster,
Calhoun, Clay and Benton. For fifteen years (from 1812 to 1827) he was
President of the Bank of Tennessee, located at Knoxville, which was
almost the only bank in the South that weathered the financial storms
which followed the War of 1812.
On the western limit of the town stands an old weather-boarded log
house, wherein tradition declares that George Farragut, the father of
the Admiral, once lived. The county records show that George Farragut
owned the ground on which the house is situated. The great Admiral
certainly was born in Knox county at Low’s Ferry near Campbell’s
Station, where, on the 15th of May, 1900, Admiral Dewey unveiled a
monument, which was erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution
to his illustrious predecessor. Old deeds to George Farragut sometimes
call him “Fairregret,” but he signs himself Farragut.
[Illustration: ADMIRAL FARRAGUT.]
Sam Houston was reared near Knoxville, and there are many stories of
his handsome presence, winning manners, great abilities and abounding
debts.
Full of interest to strangers is a frame dwelling in East Knoxville,
standing flush with the sidewalk, and entered by high steps that
encroach upon the pavement. This was the home of William G. Brownlow,
known as the “Fighting Parson,” one of the most remarkable men in
the history of Tennessee. He was a Methodist minister, an editor
with a gift of invective that has never been surpassed, an ardent
and fearless Unionist, the Reconstruction Governor of Tennessee, and
finally United States Senator. Brownlow was a man of the Andrew Jackson
type. The Southwest, and especially Tennessee, gave to public life
in the first half of this century a class of men with distinctive
physical, intellectual and moral qualities. Physically, they were tall,
angular, rawboned; intellectually they were alert, positive and often
narrow; they were honest and sincerely patriotic, but vindictive and
unrelenting, the truest of friends, the most aggressive and dangerous
of foes. Jackson, Brownlow and Isham G. Harris were men of this kind;
Harris seemingly the last of them.
[Illustration: WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW, THE “FIGHTING PARSON.”]
In theological and political controversy, in both of which he
delighted, Brownlow neither sought nor gave quarter, and his fame as
a polemic went through the Southwest long before the Civil War. Soon
after Tennessee seceded he was imprisoned, and then released and sent
North, where he made many characteristic speeches, and wrote a book
into which he gathered all the bitterness of his hatred of secession
and of the secessionists. When the Federal authority was re-established
in Tennessee, it was supported, and its local policy mainly directed,
by the loyalists of East Tennessee, among whom Brownlow was most
prominent in State affairs, and in national affairs Horace Maynard and
Andrew Johnson. The intensity and resolution of Brownlow’s nature were
such that he sometimes followed the logic of his hatred of secession
to extreme ends, so that by the Southern element in the State he was
hated as the Irish Catholics hated Cromwell. But his conduct, after
all, was in keeping with the spirit of the times, and not a little of
the censure that fell upon him was unjust. In private affairs, while
always forcible and positive, he was a kindly, just and generous man,
of pure life and of correct principles.
Horace Maynard, a native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Amherst,
came to Knoxville in 1837 and became Professor of Mathematics
in the University. Later, he was for twelve years a member of
Congress, then Attorney-General of the State, Minister to Turkey and
Postmaster-General. His eminent abilities and his pure character
entitle him to special mention and to the highest commendation. His
son, Commander Washburn Maynard, distinguished himself in the late
Spanish War.
Another noteworthy citizen of Knoxville was Thomas A. R. Nelson, whose
speech in Congress against secession was praised by the London _Times_
in the highest terms. Mr. Nelson was of the counsel for Andrew Johnson
in the impeachment trial, and was afterwards a Judge of the Supreme
Court of the State. He was one of the best lawyers and one of the most
eloquent and accomplished public speakers the State has produced.
When the Civil War broke out, East Tennessee, not being a slaveholding
section, and being the Whig stronghold, was overwhelmingly for the
Union. The Union leaders were Johnson, Maynard, Brownlow and many
others of almost equal ability. Knoxville was the capital of East
Tennessee. It had grown principally by the increase of the original
population, and the kinships of its people, especially of the more
prominent families, were exceptionally extensive and intricate. A
majority of these well-to-do people went with the South, but a large
minority was loyal, and the common people, as a rule, held to the Union.
The first encounter of hostile forces at Knoxville was on the 20th
of June, 1863, when Colonel Saunders with a force of fifteen hundred
Federal soldiers on a raid through East Tennessee, halted in front of
the town. A brief artillery duel ensued, in the course of which Captain
Pleasant McClung of Knoxville, a conspicuously gallant Confederate
officer, was killed. After an hour’s firing Saunders resumed his march
without entering Knoxville.
Toward the end of August, 1863, the Confederates evacuated the city,
never to re-enter it, and on the 2d of September, General Burnside
entered and occupied it. The next event of importance was the siege.
It will be remembered that after his retreat from Gettysburg, General
Lee detached Longstreet’s corps from his army and sent it south to
aid General Bragg. Longstreet remained with Bragg until November
4th, when he set out to rejoin Lee, marching overland through East
Tennessee and western Virginia. This movement was a serious menace to
General Burnside, who had at Knoxville and in its vicinity about twelve
thousand men to oppose to Longstreet’s twenty thousand. Longstreet’s
approach to Knoxville, however, was so deliberate as to allow Burnside
time to concentrate his forces and to fortify himself hastily but
effectively. On the 20th of November, the town was invested, but not
thoroughly. The Confederate General was not aware apparently that
the Holston and French Broad rivers came together four miles above
Knoxville, and contented himself with blockading the Holston above the
junction, leaving open the French Broad, by means of which supplies
were constantly conveyed to the besieged.
On the 29th of November, at daylight, the Confederates assaulted Fort
Saunders, on the west of the town, an almost impregnable point in
its outer defences. The attacking force consisted of three brigades
of McLaw’s division. The attack was delivered upon the northwest
angle of the fort, probably its strongest point. It was necessary for
the storming party, after climbing a high hill, to pass a difficult
abattis, and to make its way through a labyrinth of telegraph wires
stretched between the stumps of the original forest trees which had
been felled. Having overcome these obstacles, a deep ditch was reached,
beyond which rose the parapet of the fort to the height of more
than twenty feet. When the broken, disordered and bleeding mass of
Confederates reached the verge of the ditch there was no hesitation.
In the face of a deadly musket fire and of a continuous discharge of
hand grenades, they hurled themselves into the ditch and scrambled upon
hands and knees up the steep and slippery embankment. Three times
they succeeded in planting their battle-flags upon the parapet, and
once they entered the fort, but only to be killed or captured after a
desperate struggle. The assault failed. Three hundred Confederates were
captured, and from five to seven hundred dead and wounded lay before
the abattis, among the broken wires and in the ditch.
This attack upon Fort Saunders was one of the most gallant and
desperate encounters of the whole war, and if it had occurred upon a
more conspicuous field would have been ranked with Pickett’s charge at
Gettysburg.
General Longstreet now concluded to molest Burnside no more, and
leisurely retired to Virginia. Grant sent twenty thousand men to
reinforce Burnside, but Longstreet had already withdrawn.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF FORT SAUNDERS.]
Immediately after the war Knoxville began to increase rapidly in
population. The loyalty of East Tennessee won much favor for it at the
North, and many desirable additions to the population of Knoxville came
from that section.
It is probable that no city in the South contains so large a proportion
of citizens of Northern and Western birth. Of foreign-born citizens
there are comparatively few, the tides of immigration having flowed
always north of Mason and Dixon’s line. Knoxville is therefore a
thoroughly American city, of forty thousand population, free from
sectional sentiment, progressive, but withal conservative, and proud of
its deserved reputation as a center of education and of culture.
Its free schools, handsomely and commodiously housed, are most
liberally supported, while the State University is the pride of the
intelligent people of Tennessee. The State Deaf and Dumb School and a
branch of the Asylum for the Insane are located there, and Knoxville
College for the education of negroes is one of the best of its kind.
Knoxville contributed a handsome building to the “White City” of the
Nashville Centennial, and afterwards the women of the city secured the
removal of the building to Knoxville, where, at a point of vantage, it
was re-erected and dedicated to the cause of woman’s advancement and to
all the Muses.
Knoxville is an old town as things go in America, yet much of it is
new. Its population has increased tenfold within thirty-five years. It
is therefore, in the main, modern in construction. In proportion to
population it has by far the largest wholesale trade among the Southern
cities. It enjoys a high degree of prosperity. It is the industrial,
commercial and educational center of East Tennessee, and its future is
full of promise.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
NASHVILLE
“THE ADVANCE-GUARD OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.”
BY GATES P. THRUSTON
The beautiful site upon which the city of Nashville stands must have
been famous in prehistoric times. Its natural salt spring near the
bank of the Cumberland River was a noted resort of the Indian and
buffalo. Some years ago, the huge bones of a mastodon were exhumed
from the alluvial deposit upon its margin. Near the flowing spring was
an ancient cemetery of the long-vanished Stone Grave race, the mound
builders, of Tennessee, and upon the opposite bank of the river and
in the adjacent valleys have been found not less than ten thousand
rude stone cists containing their mortuary remains. These interesting
memorials have yielded a vast store of archæological treasures,
illustrating their arts and industries and telling a pathetic story of
aboriginal life in the valley of the Cumberland.
A race of Village Indians, probably akin to the Pueblo Builders or
Village Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, once made their home in
Middle Tennessee and the adjacent territory. These industrious pottery
makers and mound builders must have dwelt for several centuries in this
lovely Garden of Eden.
In an evil hour, unhappily, some destroyer came, perhaps the ancestors
of the savage and vindictive Mohawk or Iroquois Indians of the north,
and devastated their towns and homes and scattered or exterminated the
humble and less warlike Villagers. The first white hunters and pioneers
discovered in the shadowy forest only their strange and mysterious
mounds, and the ancient lines of earthworks that had formed their forts.
For perhaps a hundred years or more before the advent of the white man,
the beautiful valley of the Cumberland seems to have been a wilderness
uninhabited save by the wild animals of the forest.
As early as 1714, M. Charleville, a French trader, came, and tarried
for a time near the salt spring, known thereafter as the French
Lick. In 1775, Timothy De Monbreun, a native of France, visited the
spring, and later settled near the site of Nashville. Occasionally
adventurous hunters and trappers passed down the valley. In 1778, a
man of singular courage and gigantic stature named Spencer came with a
party from Kentucky in search of homes and fortune, and settled near
Bledsoe’s Lick, north of the Cumberland. They planted a small field
of corn. Spencer’s companions soon became discouraged and returned to
Kentucky, but this self-reliant hunter, undismayed by the solitude of
the wilderness and the fear of the crafty Cherokee, refused to leave
his new home in the lonely forest, and passed the long winter there,
with only a great hollow sycamore tree as a shelter.
The story of the founding of Nashville is full of heroic incidents.
It reads like a romance. About ten years had elapsed since the
stout-hearted pioneers of Virginia and the Carolinas had pushed their
way westward through the blue ridges of the Alleghanies, and planted
an independent colony upon the banks of the Watauga River. Its master
spirits, John Sevier, James Robertson and Isaac and Evan Shelby would
have been men of mark in any community.
From this parent hive, already grown into a strong and prosperous
settlement, a new colony of two hundred and more hardy riflemen and
pioneers, in the fall of 1779, set out upon a far journey to the west,
under the leadership of James Robertson.
Allured by the wonderful stories of the beauty and fertility of the
Cumberland Valley, they determined to seek there new homes. It was an
heroic venture, unsurpassed in the history of the march of western
civilization. No military force blazed a way for them. High mountain
ranges, deep and unknown rivers, hundreds of miles of dense forest, lay
before them. The dread of the crafty savage, upon whose hunting-grounds
they were encroaching, did not deter them.
Bidding farewell to their friends at Watauga they struck out upon the
wilderness trail of Daniel Boone for the Far West. They passed through
the gap in the Cumberland Mountains, across the headwaters of the
Cumberland River, and still westward across the rivers and valleys of
Central and Southern Kentucky, until, after weary weeks of marching,
through storm and snow and ice, they finally reached the old French
Lick on Christmas Day, 1779.
[Illustration: JAMES ROBERTSON.]
The wives and families of this advance-guard of the frontier, unable to
endure the hardships of the march, were sent in boats and canoes down
the Holston and Tennessee rivers. Captain John Donelson was in command,
a man of rare courage and judgment. His handsome young daughter,
Rachel, one of the voyagers, afterwards became mistress of the White
House as the wife of President Jackson.
They left Fort Patrick Henry on the Holston River, December 27, 1779.
The distance by water around the long, winding circuit of the Holston,
the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Cumberland up to the Cumberland
Bluffs was more than a thousand miles. Captain Donelson’s interesting
journal, kept during the four-months’ journey and still preserved
among the treasures of the Tennessee Historical Society, recounts in
plain and modest words a story of heroism, of thrilling adventures,
of singular pathos, scarcely equaled in the annals of our American
frontier. It was a midwinter journey. The voyagers were attacked by
the savage Chickamauga Indians. Their frail boats were swept through
unknown rapids and floods. They had to force their way up the Ohio and
Cumberland rivers. Many of the party perished, some were shot down by
the Indians, others were wounded and ill; but with thankful hearts the
survivors finally reached their anxious friends at the “Big Salt Lick”
on the Cumberland, April 24, 1780. It was a joyful meeting, a reunion
of happy families, long remembered in the settlement.
[Illustration: THE FIRST RESIDENCE OF ANDREW JACKSON.]
The commanding bluff on the south side of the river seemed an ideal
home for the new colony, united, hopeful and enthusiastic. The rich
valley and the winding river added beauty to the landscape. Ranges of
noble and picturesque hills, not far distant, surrounded the site. The
land was fertile. Springs of pure water abounded, and here in the far
western wilderness was planted the new germ of civilization, which
in after years was to grow and blossom into rich fruition. In honor
of General Nash, of North Carolina, a distinguished officer of the
Revolution, the village was christened Nashborough.
And now the cheery sound of the woodman’s axe rang out in the forest.
Cabins were built. The land was cleared and crops were planted. Log
forts were erected, planned after the good model of the fort at Watauga
that had saved the precious lives of the little parent colony from the
assaults of the Cherokees.
A regiment of riflemen was formed, with James Robertson as Colonel and
John Donelson as Lieutenant-Colonel. An independent civil government
was organized and established. This isolated little settlement was
rightly called by James Robertson “The advance-guard of western
civilization.” It was six or seven hundred miles from the nearest
established government. It was over three hundred miles from the
Watauga, and nearly as far from the Kentucky settlements, yet law,
order and justice prevailed.
The carefully drawn articles of the compact under which the local
civil government was organized, indicate the high character of its
citizens. They bore the impress of the true Anglo-Saxon spirit,--the
love of order and equity. They required strict obedience to the will
of the majority. Invoking the blessing of Divine Providence, the
compact set up in the wilderness a temple of justice that secured ample
legal protection to the citizen and the stranger, until the lawful
jurisdiction of the parent State of North Carolina could be extended
over the new territory.
[Illustration: FORT RIDLEY, AN OLD NASHVILLE BLOCKHOUSE.]
James Robertson, the well-recognized leader of the settlement, was not
blessed with the genius and natural gifts of John Sevier, the soldier
and statesman of the eastern section, but he was a born ruler and
organizer, a man full of resources, of lofty personal character and
purposes. Well might he be called the founder and father of Nashville.
His life is an epitome of the early history of Middle Tennessee.
Dr. Ramsey, the historian of Tennessee, tells us that when the treaty
was made with the Indians at Watauga, giving the whites the right to
possess the rich hunting-grounds of Middle Tennessee and Kentucky,
the aged Indian chief Oconostota took Daniel Boone by the hand, and
remarked with significant earnestness: “Brother, we have given you a
fine land, but I believe you will have much trouble in settling it.”
How prophetic were these words! The brave little colony upon the bluffs
at Nashborough, with settlements stretching for many miles along the
valley of the Cumberland, was destined to pass through years of peril
and anxiety. The young warriors of the Cherokees and Creeks were not
willing to confirm the surrender of their favorite hunting-grounds
to the insatiate and land-hungry paleface. Their footprints were
soon discovered in the forest. The settlers were ambushed near their
homes, and were shot down by unseen foes as they drank at the springs.
Horses and cattle were stampeded and stolen. The strongest forts were
attacked. At times the dangers and discouragements were so great that
it seemed as if this vanguard settlement, with all its hopes and
promises, must be abandoned. A number of the settlers yielded to their
fears, and returned with their families to Kentucky or to their old
homes in the East. In those dark days the exalted character of James
Robertson stood out in noble relief. He resolutely stemmed the tide of
apprehension. He would not discuss a retreat. He was the very life and
mainstay of the settlement. “These rich and beautiful lands,” Robertson
said, “were not designed to be given up to savages and wild beasts.
The God of Creation and Providence has nobler purposes in view.” “Each
one should do what seems to him his duty. As for myself, my station is
here, and here I shall stay if every man of you deserts.”
Solitary and alone, and apparently unmindful of danger, Robertson made
long journeys through the forest to confer with the Cherokee chiefs in
the interest of peace. When the ammunition at the forts was exhausted,
and an attack was threatened, he set out in midwinter upon a lonely
trail through the wilderness for the Kentucky settlements, and never
rested until he had returned to Freeland Station with an ample supply.
His return was none too soon. That very night, at the dead hour of
midnight, a band of savage Chickasaws attacked Freeland Station. The
moon was shining brightly, but they crept up noiselessly through the
shadows to the very gates of the fort. They finally unlocked its bars
and were pushing through the opening, when the quick ear of Robertson,
who was sleeping near by, caught the sound of danger. He shouted a cry
of alarm. A shot from his rifle rang out on the still night air. His
comrades within the fort grasped their guns and fired from every cabin
door. It was a sharp contest, but the Indians were finally routed and
driven from the fort.
In the early spring they attacked the station at Nashborough in almost
overwhelming numbers. They forced their way nearly to the gates of the
old fort, located near the present corner of Market and Church streets,
intercepting the retreat of many of the settlers. There was a desperate
struggle for possession of the fort. At an opportune moment, the
pack of powerful watch-dogs and hounds in the fort was turned loose,
attacked the Indians fiercely, and greatly aided in repelling the
onslaught. Both sides lost heavily, but the fort and settlement were
saved.
For long and anxious years the settlements upon the Cumberland River
were in constant warfare and danger. There was no period of peace or
repose, yet year by year the restless march of the western pioneers and
“movers” continued. The colony grew in strength and numbers, and at the
end of the first decade of its history, several thousand thrifty and
prosperous settlers occupied the fertile territory along the valley.
[Illustration: ANDREW JACKSON.]
The village of Nashborough had become the ambitious town of Nashville.
North Carolina had taken the settlements under her motherly protection.
A court-house and prison had been erected. Davidson Academy, that
later grew into Nashville University, had been chartered and endowed.
In 1788, Andrew Jackson, a young lawyer unknown to fame, came to
the town bearing a commission from the Governor of North Carolina as
attorney of the Mero District. Colonel James Robertson was appointed a
Brigadier-General. Tennessee was organized into a State and admitted
into the Union in 1796.
From its infancy as a village, Nashville has been something of a
historic center. It has been the home of a number of men of national
reputation. Under the leadership of Generals Jackson and Coffee, the
gallant Tennessee troops who helped to win the famous victory at New
Orleans assembled at Nashville.
One of the happy events in the early life of the city, still treasured
in our local histories, was the visit of General Lafayette in 1825. He
was received and entertained with joyful demonstrations of affection,
and it is said that he long remembered and often recalled with pleasure
the cordiality of his reception.
Nashville has been the arena of many hotly contested political battles.
The eloquence of Sargeant Prentiss, of Henry Clay, of Meredith P.
Gentry, of Haskell and the old-time orators is still remembered.
The city was the home of Felix Grundy, of Thomas H. Benton, later
the famous Missouri Senator, of General Sam Houston, the hero of
San Jacinto, and of John Bell. The historic and hospitable mansion
of President Andrew Jackson at the Hermitage, a few miles east
of Nashville, in those early days, as now was the Mecca of many
pilgrimages. Visitors are always charmed with the beauty of the
surrounding country. A picturesque avenue lined with overshadowing
cedars leads to the house. Its stately pillars and broad porch remind
us of an old Virginia homestead.
[Illustration: THE HERMITAGE MANSION, RESIDENCE OF ANDREW JACKSON.]
Here the hero and his beloved wife, Rachel Donelson, lived many happy
years, and entertained their friends and neighbors with generous
hospitality. Here Aaron Burr was a welcome visitor, before he was
suspected of treasonable purposes, and Lafayette, James Monroe and
Martin Van Buren were honored guests. In a field adjoining the mansion,
two hundred or more friends and neighbors were entertained at a dinner
given in honor of the election of James K. Polk as President.
Like the home of Washington at Mt. Vernon, the residence at the
Hermitage was a veritable museum of souvenirs, arranged and treasured
by Mrs. Jackson and her adopted daughter. The walls were adorned with
family and historic portraits, the work of noted artists.
Near by, in a corner of the garden of the Hermitage, the remains of
President Jackson and his dear wife lie side by side, under a modest
but beautiful marble tomb, prepared by him for their reception. In his
later years the old General rarely exhibited the sterner side of his
nature. He was mild and courtly in manner. His kindness was proverbial
among his neighbors. He became deeply interested in religion. To please
his devoted wife, he had a modest chapel erected near their home, and
they were faithful attendants at all religious meetings held there.
[Illustration: JAMES K. POLK.]
By an act of the Legislature of Tennessee, the Ladies’ Hermitage
Association, a society of patriotic ladies of Nashville, has charge
of the Hermitage, its mansion and surroundings, and through their
untiring devotion the historic old home and its many treasures are well
preserved and cared for.
The residence of President James K. Polk still stands upon an elevated
site in the center of the city of Nashville. It was a stately dwelling
in its day, worthy to be the home of a President. His remains were
deposited in a tomb of noble proportions erected in front of the
mansion, but some years ago, by an act of the Legislature, they were
removed to the grounds of the State Capitol.
The revered widow of President Polk survived him many years, and the
old home and her gracious welcome added a charm to the social life of
the city and attracted visitors from near and far.
It was not until the year 1843 that Nashville became the seat of
government of the State of Tennessee. The city presented to the State
the splendid grounds upon which its beautiful capitol building stands.
The famed Acropolis at Athens did not afford a nobler site for its
temples. The traveler can see it from afar, and from the broad porticos
of the State House one can survey the winding Cumberland and the varied
beauties of the surrounding hills.
[Illustration: TOMB OF JAMES K. POLK, NASHVILLE.]
Nashville continued to grow in importance and prosperity year by year,
until the shadows of the great conflict between the States clouded its
happy life. The hearts of the people were mainly in sympathy with the
Southern cause. True to the history of the Volunteer State, its young
men enlisted in the army, and its devoted women nursed the wounded in
the hospitals.
Unhappily, Fort Donelson soon fell; the Federal gunboats steamed up
the river; General Buell and his troops appeared on the north bank of
the Cumberland, and in February, 1862, the proud city was forced to
surrender to the Union army.
Nashville became a vast military camp. Federal brigades and divisions
marched through its streets and camped in the beautiful woodland parks
about the city. A cordon of elaborate forts and earthworks was built
along the chain of suburban hills to the south and west. An imposing
fortress soon encircled the stately Capitol building, in the very heart
of the city, and towered threateningly above the homes of its people.
Its battlements and sharp angles, the very porticos of the Capitol,
bristled with cannon. It became the central citadel of Federal defence.
The fierce cannonade that announced the bloody battle at Murfreesboro,
thirty miles away, could almost be heard by the anxious mothers and
friends within the walls at Nashville.
General N. B. Forrest, with his cavalry force, came and threatened
the city for a time, but made no serious attack. Later, General Hood
marched up from the south with a splendid army, reviving the hopes of
the Confederates in Nashville; but the fatal disaster at Franklin, and
the overwhelming defeat of the Confederates by General Thomas on the
hills south of the city, shattered all hope, and left the Union forces
in possession of the coveted prize until the close of the war.
[Illustration: THE STATE HOUSE.]
Ah! those were days that tore the heart-strings. East Tennessee had
cast its affections and strength with the North, and remained loyal to
the Union. Each section of the State had followed its convictions as
to the right, and Tennessee may well be proud of her sons who fought
on either side. Nashville was the home of gallant Frank Cheatham, of
General William H. Jackson, General William B. Bate, General Rains,
General Maney and a host of other Confederates who won honor and
distinction in the Southern cause. Buell, Rosecrans, Thomas, Sherman,
Grant, distinguished generals on the Federal side, had all held command
there.
Happily, peace came at last, and the long-beleaguered city breathed
more freely. The remains of the Confederates who fell in the battles
about Nashville were lovingly gathered into the beautiful grounds of
the “Confederate Circle” at Mt. Olivet. The Federals sleep peacefully
in the National Cemetery not far away, under the kindly care of the
government.
Soon the wheels of industry began to revolve. New life and prosperity
came. The heart of Cornelius Vanderbilt was warmed toward the desolated
South, and a noble institution of learning was endowed in his name.
The Trustees of George Peabody came to the rescue also, and founded
the Peabody Normal College. The Jubilee Singers of Nashville sang Fisk
University into life, and endowed a useful institution dedicated to the
education of the colored race recently freed from slavery.
[Illustration: THE PARTHENON, NASHVILLE, TENN.]
A new Nashville has adjusted itself to the changed order of things
in the South, and is assuming the appearance and proportions of a
metropolis. Its borders have extended to the picturesque hills that
circle the city. Its fame as an educational center perhaps more than
rivals its importance in commerce and manufactures. More than five
thousand students from other sections of the country are included
in its scholastic population, and within the city limits there are
not less than eighty schools and colleges--schools of theology, law,
medicine, pharmacy, music and art. They are the glory of Nashville.
The throng of teachers and students help to give it the charm of a
literary and intellectual atmosphere. Right justly may it be called
the “Athens of the South.” Vanderbilt University and Peabody Normal
College, with their beautiful parks and clusters of fine buildings,
are institutions of which any city might be proud.
In 1880, Nashville celebrated its Centennial in honor of the founding
of the city. It was an inspiring occasion, but the Centennial of the
State of Tennessee, celebrated at the capital in 1896-’97, crowned the
city with laurels that will long be remembered with honorable pride.
It was a revelation,--a noble memorial of a century of statehood. The
dream of James Robertson, the father and founder of Nashville, was more
than realized. In a little more than a century of progress, the camp of
the brave little colony on the bank of the Cumberland had grown into a
splendid Southern city.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
LOUISVILLE
THE GATEWAY CITY TO THE SOUTH
BY LUCIEN V. RULE
Beautiful of situation is Louisville, the metropolis of Kentucky, and
the Gateway City to the South. Builded along the Ohio at the Falls,
the river stretches away to the northeast in a sheet of water nearly a
mile wide and six miles in extent with a scarcely perceptible current,
making one of the finest harbors in the whole course of this “Rhine of
America.” Circling hills surround the city, and the parks upon them
are unsurpassed in this section of the country. The avenues are broad
and well shaded, and while the residences are, as a rule, handsomely
modern, many splendid specimens of Colonial architecture are to be
seen. The homesteads in the suburbs are delightful, dreamy retreats,
and the river valley is as fertile as that of the Jordan.
As the visitor approaches over any one of the railroads leading into
Louisville and looks upon the charming scene just outlined, he may
recall the historic associations connected with it. Here, in the
long ago, Daniel Boone loved to linger and hunt. It was here that
George Rogers Clark, the famous Indian fighter and leader of western
civilization, first won renown. Here John Fitch studied the problem
of steamboat navigation, anticipating Robert Fulton many years, and
so far succeeded that Fulton acknowledged him the original inventor
of steam craft. Here the fathers of ornithology in the new world,
Alexander Wilson and John J. Audubon, resided and labored, the latter
first awaking to a realization of his marvellous genius in the Kentucky
wilds. In this vicinity Zachary Taylor spent his childhood, learned
the art of war, and returned at intervals of peace to reside, after
achieving notable triumphs for the Republic on the hard-fought fields
of Mexico and elsewhere. It was here that George Keats, favorite
brother of the poet, John Keats, came to live, bringing with him
from old England an atmosphere of classic culture and refinement
which influenced the development of intellectual Louisville. It was
here, also, that Henry Clay often came to confer with his political
colleagues, and to charm the people with his superb oratory. Here
George D. Prentice, whose witty, trenchant paragraphs on the editorial
page of _The Louisville Journal_ made it the most widely quoted
American paper in foreign realms, wielded his wonderful influence
as the champion of the great Pacificator of Ashland. Near this city
General Robert Anderson, the fearless hero of Fort Sumter in 1861, was
reared, and hither he returned after its surrender and received the
welcome plaudits of all parties for his memorable loyalty to the Stars
and Stripes. In this city many of the ablest Federal commanders first
came into national notice during the Civil War; and here resides now
Henry Watterson, whose patriotic pen and eloquent lips in recent years
have dispelled the last feeling of prejudice between the once estranged
sections of the Union, and who, speaking for his fellow citizens,
cordially received the Grand Army of the Republic into the South on
their first visit since they left its soil as conquerors.
[Illustration: GEO. D. PRENTICE.
FROM AN OLD PAINTING OWNED BY THE POLYTECHNIC SOCIETY OF KENTUCKY.]
In the evolution of nations struggle is unavoidable, but higher
results ensue: and it is the peculiar pride of the State of Kentucky
that though Lincoln and Davis, the two leaders of the Federal and
Confederate governments while the fate of the Union was being decided
on the bloody field, were her sons, nevertheless her conservatism, wise
counsel and gentle forbearance--beginning in the speeches of Henry
Clay long previous to the late unpleasantness, and continuing in the
admirable efforts of Henry Watterson afterward--indicated the path to
peace and prosperity. The motto of the Republic is “Many in one”; that
of Kentucky, “United we stand, divided we fall”; and it has been the
mission of our State to emphasize the vital political truth that many
commonwealths with widely diverse institutions may safely unite in
the formation of one strong central government; that a multiplicity of
peoples with entirely different interests and pursuits may still be
one in sympathy, purpose and hope. Situated midway between the North
and the South, not only is her climate a delightful mingling of both
extremes, but the temper of her inhabitants is a dignified reserve
and a spontaneous fervor of feeling happily proportioned. Able, on
the one hand, to appreciate the spirit of progress which makes the
North impatient of those conditions and tendencies which the South has
wisely altered with caution; and, on the other hand, apprehending the
principle of personal independence which causes the South to suspect
Northern counsel as impelled by a desire to interfere with individual
liberty, she has long occupied a position similar to that of Tennyson’s
sweet little heroine, Annie, who, sitting between Enoch and Philip,
with a hand of each in her own, would weep,
“And pray them not to quarrel for her sake.”
Scarcely less sublime than Columbus pacing the deck of his ship at
sea and looking wistfully westward in search of the new world he so
faithfully sought, seems Daniel Boone, in 1769, venturing forth from
the quiet valleys of the Yadkin in response to the promptings of
his restless spirit, unconsciously going to prepare the way for the
millions that were subsequently to follow him, and as if by magic
to transform into fertile fields the pathless forests beyond the
Alleghanies which he was the first to penetrate and explore.
[Illustration: DANIEL BOONE.
FROM A PAINTING IN THE POSSESSION OF COL. R. T. DURRETT, LOUISVILLE,
KY.]
Dauntless, noble souls they were who created our commonwealth; and
Byron, fascinated with the refreshing fame of Daniel Boone, which
extended throughout Europe as well as America, celebrated him and his
fellow Kentuckians in a number of fine stanzas in the eighth canto of
_Don Juan_. Henry James, in his life of Hawthorne, laments the lack of
historic inspiration for prose and verse in this country; yet Byron,
sadly turning from the shams and hypocrisies of the Old World, which he
scathingly satirized in his great production, burst into a beautiful
strain of hope as he contemplated the uncorrupted heroes of the new
world beyond the Atlantic. The description begins half humorously with
the sixty-first stanza:
“Of all men saving Sylla the man-slayer,
Who passes for in life and death most lucky,
Of the great names which in our faces stare,
The General Boon, backwoodsman of Kentucky,
Was happiest among mortals anywhere;
For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he
Enjoyed the lonely, vigorous, harmless days
Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.”
The reader cannot help smiling at the poet’s mistake in leaving off
the final letter of Boone’s name and calling him “General,” when all
Kentuckians, even including the illustrious pioneer, are “Colonels”;
but the spirit of a master interpreter of Nature is in the stanzas that
follow.
[Illustration: GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
FROM A PAINTING IN THE POSSESSION OF COL. R. T. DURRETT, LOUISVILLE,
KY.]
It was not until 1778 that LouisVille, as it was then called, was
founded, George Rogers Clarke being a resident of Harrodsburg, Ky.,
during the years 1776 and 1777. The incidents connected with the
settlement he established at the Falls are memorable in the annals
of the West. The British leaders were seeking to strike an effectual
blow at all the American frontier fortresses, and with this end in
view were enlisting the sympathies and co-operation of the Indian
tribes. Detroit, Vincennes, Kaskaskia and similar British stations
were well fortified, and plans were speedily forming for a descent on
the unprepared and unsuspecting pioneers in the Ohio Valley. Clark
instinctively discerned this scheme and secretly but courageously
determined to thwart it. He accordingly went to Williamsburg, Va.,
in November, 1777. The news of Burgoyne’s surrender had inspired the
Virginia authorities with patriotic enthusiasm, and Governor Henry
sanctioned Clark’s proposal to raise a sufficient force to proceed
against the British in the Northwest. Orders were issued and Clark was
put in command of the expedition. Six thousand dollars in colonial
currency were voted him, and with the rank of Colonel he set out for
Pittsburg. After much discouragement he secured three companies of
volunteers and a number of adventurers and continued his journey down
the river to the Falls. The fort that he built on his arrival furnished
a nucleus around which the village subsequently sprang up.
Thirteen families remained at the Falls while Clark and his men went
on against Kaskaskia. The campaign was a brilliant success. One post
after another fell into the hands of the fearless Kentuckians, and
the whole of the Northwest Territory was opened to emigration. It is
said that when Clark and his followers appeared before the astonished
garrisons during these operations, the red-coats almost imagined a
force had dropped from the skies, so inaccessible had they deemed
their strongholds to be, and so suddenly had their conquerors come upon
them. It was not strange, therefore, that the eloquent John Randolph of
Roanoke spoke of Clark in after years as the “American Hannibal, who,
by the reduction of those military posts in the wilderness, obtained
the Lakes for the northern boundary of our Union at the peace in 1783.”
If the visitor desires to see the location of the first settlement at
the Falls let him stand upon the Fourteenth Street Bridge and look down
the river. To the right is the main current of the Ohio as it plunges
roaring over the Falls, and to the left is the island on which Colonel
Clark and his men built a fort when they arrived in the spring of
1778. This was called “Corn Island,” from the fact that a crop of corn
was planted by the risky pioneers around the fortress, and carefully
cultivated, notwithstanding they were hourly exposed to Indian attacks.
Either in the autumn of 1778 or the spring of 1779 (history is not
certain which), the garrison on Corn Island went ashore and laid the
foundation of the future city of Louisville. Huts, blockhouses and
stockades were erected, and the Indians saw that the intruders had
come to stay. During the year 1779, Colonel Clark directed his energies
against the British post Vincennes, and easily captured it.
[Illustration: BLOCKHOUSE AND LOG CABINS ON CORN ISLAND, 1778.
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF LOUISVILLE, KY.
_From an old print in the possession of Col. R. T. Durrett, Louisville,
Ky._]
In May, 1780, the Virginia Legislature passed an “Act for Establishing
the Town of Louisville at the Falls of Ohio.” The population of the
place had increased to six hundred; but the increase of strength
rendered the pioneers careless, and as a consequence the Indians on
several occasions surprised and captured parties beyond the protection
of the fort and escaped with them across the river, or into the
wilderness to the south, almost before an alarm could be given. Colonel
Clark, in order to ward off the attacks of the red men, constructed
a unique sort of gunboat supplied with four-pound cannon. It was the
first actual vessel of war ever seen on the Ohio, and though some
chroniclers are disposed to make light of its actual utility as a means
of defence, it kept the insidious savages from crossing the river in
its vicinity.
This period in the history of Kentucky (1780-1800) was admirably
portrayed by the facile pen of Washington Irving after his literary
tour of the West in 1834, when he visited Louisville and took notes
for future sketches. An eccentric though shrewd character of the
day, William P. Duval, whose career as a pioneer lawyer, and whose
adventures as an Indian commissioner under Monroe gave him fame
scarcely second to that of George Rogers Clark, inspired those two
narratives in _Crayon Papers_, called “The Early Experiences of Ralph
Ringwood,” and “The Conspiracy of Neamathla.” Mr. Irving’s humor is at
its best in the first of these and his picture of primitive people is
unsurpassed. James K. Paulding likewise wrote of Governor Duval in a
novel called _Nimrod Wildfire_.
[Illustration: RESIDENCE OF GEORGE ROGERS CLARK ON THE INDIANA SHORE,
OPPOSITE LOUISVILLE.
FROM AN OLD PRINT IN THE POSSESSION OF COL. R. T. DURRETT, LOUISVILLE,
KY.]
With the old-style method of travel by keel-boat and barges
(1780-1810), going down the river was easy enough, but ascending stream
was indeed difficult. A mile an hour was the maximum rate of progress,
and if the wind and tide chanced to be unfavorable, many days were lost
in waiting. Then, again, the craft was likely to strike a snag or run
aground, and the strength and patience of the crew would be completely
exhausted ere another start could be effected. Sometimes the men became
so exasperated that they would leave the boat or barge _en masse_ and
return afoot whence they had started. It required three and often four
months to come up to Louisville from New Orleans. Nor was this all.
Bands of desperadoes infested the forest on either shore, and would
hold up a boat or barge,--prototypes of the notorious train robbers of
later days. The records of river navigation are filled with thrilling
incidents and studies of unique character.
But notwithstanding these difficulties European tourists ventured
into the wilds in search of novelty or on business speculations. One
of these came to the Falls city as early as 1806, and afterwards, in
writing his impressions of the place, said: “I had thought Cincinnati
one of the most beautiful towns I had seen in America, but Louisville,
which is almost as large, equals it in beauty and in the opinion of
many exceeds it.”
Robert Fulton and Daniel French went into the steamboat-building
business at Pittsburg, after the trip of the _Orleans_ in 1811; and
a few years later better facilities were afforded for travel on the
Ohio. The Eastern visitor to Louisville should by all means come from
Cincinnati, or even Pittsburg, by boat in order to study the historic
scenes and associations of the “Rhine of America.” Distinct epochs in
American literature have arisen from the inspiration and suggestion
given by this celebrated stream and life along its course to the
various writers who travelled its waters.
First and foremost among these was John J. Audubon who came in 1809,
previous to the opening of navigation by steamboat. Reports of the
happy wilds of Kentucky had reached him in his Pennsylvania home
subsequent to his return from Paris, where he had been sojourning as
an art student. His passion for ornithology drove him to the West, and
the hour he left Pittsburg marked the beginning of a new era in his
wonderful career as a naturalist. The Ohio charmed him, and, locating
at Louisville, he collected specimens of every bird that could be
found in forest or field. In 1810, Alexander Wilson, the distinguished
Scotch-American ornithologist, traversed the Ohio and Mississippi
valleys on a mission similar to Audubon’s. Stopping for a season at the
Falls city he chanced to become acquainted with Audubon, and in the
course of conversation the two exchanged ideas and were astonished to
discover that they were pursuing the same line of work. This meeting
was memorable, for it awakened Audubon to a full realization of his
genius and helped Wilson unspeakably. Indeed, so far-reaching were its
results that in order to appreciate them one has first to familiarize
himself with some of the subtlest tendencies and movements of the
nineteenth century.
[Illustration: THE CITY HALL.]
When steamboat navigation began on the Ohio (1812-16) the rush of
emigration commenced anew. Thirty-nine English families sent Henry
Bradshaw Fearon over in 1816 to make a careful study of places and
people in the Ohio Valley. He was an intelligent, practical observer,
and his descriptions of the inhabitants and social conditions of
Louisville are strikingly suggestive of Dickens. There is a vein
of sarcasm in his observations, due to the fact that he has little
sympathy with the commercial ambition that seemed to possess the people
to the exclusion of higher pursuits. Every one seemed self-absorbed
and bent on money-making; even the best hotels were conducted on the
crowding policy. The people had unparalleled appetites, according to
Mr. Fearon, for his description of a tavern meal in Louisville is
similar to Dickens’s report of the fast-eating Americans he met while
among us.
The tide of emigration from England swelled enormously in the decades
succeeding 1820-40, and swindlers reaped so rich a harvest by selling
imaginary land bargains in imaginary towns of the Ohio Valley that
an investigation became necessary. A leading purpose with Charles
Dickens in coming to America on his first tour in 1842 was to examine
into and expose these frauds, which he did with fearless sarcasm and
irresistible irony. The whole plot of _Martin Chuzzlewit_ hinges on
real-estate speculations at Cairo, Ill., at the mouth of the Ohio,
the original of the city of “Eden,” which Scadder, the real-estate
agent, so eulogistically described to Martin that the credulous young
Englishman forthwith invested all his funds in the hope of reaping
an ample fortune by the day he set foot in the place. Pittsburg,
Cincinnati and Louisville are realistically, and in some respects
ridiculously, portrayed in chapters xxi.-xxiii., and if the reader will
compare these with Dickens’s _American Notes_, the actual scenes and
experiences that suggested the story may be found.
As an offset to the severity of this inimitable satire, the reader
should peruse the article “English Writers on America” in Washington
Irving’s _Sketch Book_, which was called forth by exaggerated stories
propagated by the pens of early British travellers in this country
after their return home. Dickens came to Louisville in 1842, and when
he had gone up to his room at the Galt House, Major Throckmorton,
the proprietor, who was as high-spirited as he was polite, appeared
at the novelist’s door and said, “Sir, I am proud to extend you the
hospitality of the house; and shall be delighted to serve you to the
best of my ability.” “Boz,” in spite of his alertness, was not aware of
the vast difference there is between the social standing of an American
hotel proprietor and that of an English innkeeper. Glancing at the
Major he replied, “All right, sir; all right; if I want anything I’ll
ring for you.” Throckmorton’s eyes flashed with anger as he exclaimed,
“What do you mean by such impudence to me? You don’t know whom you are
talking to; I’ll throw you out of the window.” The Major was a powerful
man and would doubtless have made good his threat had not Dickens
speedily apologized for his mistake.
Among the Englishmen induced to emigrate to Kentucky by Mr. Fearon’s
book in 1818, was George Keats, brother of the poet, John Keats. The
circumstances of his coming and his career after arriving form one of
the interesting chapters in the early history of the State.
[Illustration: ON THE TOBACCO BREAKS.]
George returned to England in the autumn of 1819, leaving his wife in
Louisville. Securing the remainder of the family estate which fell
to him, he invested in the lumber trade at the Falls city and made a
fortune. His mills were located on First Street, between Washington
Street and the river, and in 1835 he built an elegant residence on what
is now Walnut Street, between Third and Fourth. The square on which
this mansion still stands was then the aristocratic section of the
city, and while the house was in course of construction people would
stroll along and speak admiringly of it as “The Englishman’s Palace.”
With the exception of the roof, which was altered, and the present
portico, which was added by a subsequent purchaser, the residence
is in no wise changed since George Keats occupied it. Lavish was
the hospitality dispensed by the poet’s brother, and he will always
rank among the noblest citizens Louisville has ever had. Though the
happiness of helping John was not, as he had hoped, permitted him, his
house became the center of a circle of warm admirers of the author of
_Endymion_, and for a long time the culture of the city and State found
in him a leader both liberal and inspiring. James Freeman Clarke was
for seven or eight years pastor of the Unitarian Church in Louisville,
and George Keats was a member of his congregation. The two became
intimate friends, and Mr. Clarke afterward wrote entertainingly of him.
He served in the city council and aided in the establishment of the
Louisville school system.
The correspondence between George and John includes some of the poet’s
finest letters. These descended to one of George’s daughters. About the
year 1873 her son, John Gilmer Speed, the well-known writer, now of New
York, chanced to be looking over these priceless papers and noticed
that they had not been published in Lord Houghton’s life of Keats. He
accordingly collected them, and from one of the volumes we select a few
brief sentences pertinent to the purpose of the present sketch.
One letter from John tells George to take financial reverses as coolly
as possible, considering he had done his best. Another, declining an
invitation to come to Kentucky, says, “You will perceive that it is
quite out of my interest to come to America. What could I do there?
How could I employ myself, out of the reach of libraries?” And thus
he counsels George: “Be careful of those Americans. I could almost
advise you to come, whenever you have the sum of five hundred pounds,
to England. Those Americans will, I am afraid, still fleece you.” In
a letter to George’s wife in January, 1820, he speaks of his wish to
cross the sea with his brother: “I could almost promise you that if
I had the means I would accompany George back to America, and pay
you a visit of a few months.” Had he made the trip and beheld with
his own eyes the loveliness of the Ohio Valley, and met the kindly
people of Kentucky, he would not have been so inclined to disparage
Louisville society: “I was surprised to hear of the state of society
at Louisville: it seems you are just as ridiculous there as we are
here--threepenny parties, halfpenny dances. The best thing I have heard
of is your shooting, for it seems you follow the gun.”
[Illustration: THE KEATS HOUSE (THE ELKS BUILDING).]
A terrible tragedy occurred at the Keats mansion, back in the forties,
about which there is a pathetic tradition. Isabella, the beautiful
young daughter of George Keats, according to tradition, killed herself
in a fit of despondency at the unhappy termination of a love-affair. A
circumstance said to have taken place in 1890 seemed to substantiate
the tradition. An elderly, refined-looking and quiet stranger appeared
repeatedly at the Keats house and requested to be left alone in the
library, where the girl was shot. At first he offered no explanation of
his unusual request, but when finally leaving he said to the lady who
had admitted him, “I parted from her in there, and have returned from
California to visit the scene once more.” The rumor was soon circulated
that the mysterious stranger was the lover whose unfaithfulness had
robbed the unhappy girl of the desire to live.
The descendants of George Keats still living in Louisville deny the
pathetic story throughout. They affirm that the girl was heartwhole
and free from any morbid tendencies. Their version of the tragedy is
substantially as follows: Isabella’s brother Clarence had been out
hunting in the vicinity of the city, and, returning home, carelessly
left his gun on a sofa in the darkened library. Isabella shortly
afterward went into the room to lie down, and, not seeing the loaded
weapon, struck the trigger in such a way with her foot that the
contents were discharged, mortally wounding her.
[Illustration: THE COURT-HOUSE.]
Edward Eggleston’s inimitable Hoosier Tales portray the next period
in the history of the Ohio Valley (1840-60), immortalizing those
pedagogues of the Ichabod Crane type who came swarming from New England
when the tide of emigration first set westward. Mr. Eggleston spent
his childhood on the river between Cincinnati and Louisville, and his
pictures of primitive social life in Kentucky and southern Indiana
are in the style of Irving’s sketch already mentioned. Zachary Taylor
went to school, not far from the Falls fort, to one of these Yankee
teachers, a native of Connecticut by the name of Ayers, who was a
sagacious fellow, able to watch the Indians and urchins simultaneously.
The South and West owe these wandering educators a debt of gratitude
that can hardly be overestimated.
It was from the Falls city that Aaron Burr planned to make his
treasonable descent upon the South in November, 1805, and there is
still current in the State much interesting tradition concerning him.
The court-house in Louisville contains the noble statue of Henry Clay
by Joel T. Hart. At the Polytechnic Society on Fourth Avenue are Hart’s
other pieces of statuary; and on Third Avenue, at the residence of
Mrs. Elizabeth Menefee, are many of those superb portraits painted
by Matthew H. Jouett, Gilbert Stuart’s favorite pupil, and a master
American artist. His genius and that of Hart developed beyond the
confines of classic civilization, and though subsequently aided and
directed by the best instruction of conventional schools retained an
individuality and conformity to nature all their own.
Just across the court-house square, and within a stone’s throw of the
imposing figure of the sage of Ashland is the site of the old Pope
residence where Worden Pope and his sons entertained James Monroe and
Andrew Jackson during their tour through the South in 1819. The Popes
held a high position of political influence in the State, and at a
conference called on this occasion the name of Andrew Jackson was first
proposed to the Southern people as Monroe’s successor.
The home of Zachary Taylor, five miles from the city, is well worth
visiting. Near it is the house in which Jefferson Davis was married to
his first wife, the daughter of General Taylor.
On August 6, 1855, occurred the terrible political riot precipitated by
the Know-nothings. A mob with a cannon at their head went murdering and
burning through the streets of Louisville. The day is known in history
as “Bloody Monday.”
Louisville was decidedly Union in its sympathies during the Civil
War, though many of its inhabitants inclined to support the Southern
cause. George D. Prentice, though just and kindly to the South, was
always loyal to the national government, and his paper, the _Journal_,
was notably influential on that side. The Falls city as a recruiting
station at the beginning of the struggle between the States was fully
as important in the West as was Washington in the East. It was the
basis of numerous military movements that turned the tide of fortune
against the Confederates, and in this city some of the most eminent
Federal commanders were at different times located.
[Illustration: A SCENE AT THE WHARF.]
At the home of Col. Reuben T. Durrett on East Chestnut Street are
relics innumerable, and the scholarly host, who knows every fact
of the city’s history, is ever ready to show them to the visitor.
Louisville is not only a lively commercial center, but is also the
home of culture and art. The brain and beauty of which she boasts can
be found throughout the Blue Grass region, and the hospitality she
dispenses is characteristic of the whole commonwealth. Mary Anderson
de Navarro first won fame in this city, her girlhood home, and has
never ceased to love it. Henry Watterson and his able young lieutenant,
Harrison Robertson, still keep the _Courier-Journal_ to the front;
and James Lane Allen, though not a native nor a resident of the Falls
city, portrays the traits of her people upon his inimitable pages when
he writes of all Kentuckians. Madison Cawein, the Keats of America,
is here; and Charles J. O’Malley, who voices the sentiment of every
Kentuckian when he sings:
“My own Kentucky, sweet is fame,
And other suns sink down in flame;
And other skies bend over blue;
And other lands have hearts as true;
And other mornings break as clear;
And God keeps love-watch everywhere--
But O, my mother, on thy breast
Alone my head may find full rest,--
My heart to thy heart as of yore,--
Asleep within thy arms once more,
O my Kentucky!”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
LITTLE ROCK
“THE CITY OF ROSES”
BY GEORGE B. ROSE
There are spots marked out by nature for the sites of cities, where
they must spring up as soon as civilization is established and remain
as long as it endures. Such a spot is Little Rock.
The southeastern half of Arkansas is low and flat, composed chiefly
of alluvial plains; the northwestern half rugged and broken, rising
toward the western border into the mountains, some three thousand feet
in elevation, which gradually drop away toward the east till they
disappear altogether. At the point, almost the exact center of the
State, where the last foothills form the south bank of the principal
river, it was inevitable that a city should be built and that that
city should become the State’s capital. Indeed, so manifest was the
destiny of the position that it was made the seat of government before
it had become a town, and when it was far beyond the limits of actual
settlement.
Nor would it be easy to find a more desirable spot not beside the sea.
The foundation is a rock bluff of slight elevation, but sufficient
to lift the city above the danger of overflow. On this there rests a
bed of gravelly clay, covered with a thin vegetable mould, and rising
to the south and west in a succession of gently swelling eminences,
presenting innumerable building sites of the most attractive character,
and draining in every direction; equally free from steep acclivities
and unwholesome flatness, and clothed by nature with a magnificent
forest of wide-spreading oaks and lofty pines. Far out into the river
there projects a rocky peninsula, against whose adamantine sides the
stream has dashed its ineffectual fury for countless ages; and this, in
contrast to the bold precipice upon the other bank, which was called
the Big Rock, gave to the place its name.
This promontory is now used as the abutment of one of the three bridges
that span the river, and its beauty has been destroyed; but in the old
days, when it was clothed with trees and ferns clinging to its rocky
sides and reflected in the waters below, it was a charming sight, and
must have been hailed with joy by the early travelers after their weary
journey from the distant sea through the monotony of the low-lying
wilderness.
[Illustration: THE “LITTLE ROCK,” TO WHICH THE CITY OWES ITS NAME.]
The original inhabitants of the region were the Quapaw or Arkansas
Indians, a race much superior to the surrounding savages, and who
dwelt not in scattered wigwams but in walled villages, and seem always
to have lived in amity with the whites. Father Pierre François de
Charlevoix, an early French missionary, says of them, “The Arkansas
are reckoned to be the tallest and best-shaped of all the savages on
this continent,” and he speaks at length of their kindness to the
French, and their fidelity to their engagements. So Du Pratz, an early
_voyageur_, says: “I am so prepossessed in favor of this country that I
persuade myself that the beauty of the climate has a great influence on
the character of the inhabitants, who are at the same time very gentle
and very brave.”
[Illustration: LITTLE ROCK LEVEE.]
In the days when Little Rock was a part of the favorite hunting-ground
of the Quapaws it must have been a lovely spot. Then the tall trees
grew untouched upon its rolling hills, and its numerous little streams,
now converted into sewers, flowed murmuring beneath overhanging ferns
to mingle with the river.
When it was first visited by white men no one knows. During 1541 and
1542 De Soto marched back and forth through the region, seeking for
gold with a Spaniard’s hunger; but the accounts of his wanderings are
uncertain and confused, and the blood of the unhappy natives which once
marked out his pathway has long since mingled with the dust.
Then for almost two hundred years the solitude of the wilderness
remained unbroken. At rare intervals the French _voyageurs_ went up and
down the Mississippi, establishing forts and trading-posts; but the
great river so engrossed their attention that they left its tributaries
unexplored. At length, in 1722, a French officer, Bernard de la Harpe,
ascended the Arkansas, and on April 9th reached the picturesque heights
of Big Rock, where the army post is now located. Standing upon the
brink of its lofty precipice he watched the river winding far away in
the distance between the mountains of the West, and dreamed of the
mighty empire that France should build up where lay the untrodden
beauty of the woods. The whole site of Little Rock was spread out
beneath him, clothed in verdure, and he mentions the slate bluffs which
it presents to the stream.
Then again the curtain is drawn over the scene. Doubtless from time to
time French _voyageurs_ ascended the river to barter with the Indians
for their furs, but they left no mark. In 1803, the country passed to
the United States as a part of the Louisiana purchase, and the hardy
Anglo-Saxon pioneer began to penetrate the wilderness, his Bible in
one hand and in the other his long, death-dealing rifle. As early as
1814 three or four squatters were dwelling at Little Rock or in its
vicinity, subsisting chiefly by the chase; and even then the importance
of the site was so conspicuous that strong men dwelling in St. Louis
and other places began to struggle for possession of the title with a
pertinacity rarely equalled.
At this period it escaped a great danger. An effort was made to
christen it Arkopolis, and deeds were executed with that designation;
but better counsels prevailed, and it retained its old name, “The
Little Rock,” the article then being an inseparable portion of the
title.
[Illustration: NEW STATE HOUSE.]
It was still a mere spot in the forest marked by a few log huts when,
on October 24, 1820, it was made the capital of the territory. On
the 4th of July of that year the Rev. Cephas Washburn had preached
the first sermon ever heard there, and in the rude cabin there were
gathered to listen to him only fourteen men,--no women,--probably
all the inhabitants of the place. Yet no one doubted that they were
standing upon the site of a future city, or questioned the wisdom
of the Legislature when it established the capital in the remote
wilderness, far from the Mississippi in whose neighborhood the scanty
population of the territory was chiefly gathered.
The town grew slowly. It was far from the centers of population, and
the means of travel were slight and precarious. It was made a post
office town on April 10, 1820, but the inhabitants in 1830 numbered
only four hundred and fifty, and it was not incorporated until Nov. 7,
1831.
[Illustration: OLD STATE HOUSE.]
In 1860, the population was only about five thousand. Between 1833
and 1846 the State House was built, a handsome edifice for the time
and place; but generally the buildings were constructed of wood, not
infrequently of logs, and were wholly unpretentious. Yet it is probable
that there has never been in the city so much ability, certainly never
so many striking personalities, as in those early days. It was a time
when the nation was in its lusty youth, when the spirit of adventure
and the love of independence were strong in the breasts of men. It
was an age of great orators, when men felt strongly and expressed
themselves in words that burned. It was an age when the romantic
movement in literature was at its best, and when the sad smallness of
the realistic school had not cast its blight on every lofty enthusiasm.
It was a time of buoyancy, of expansion,--when the love of change and
adventure, the weariness of the conventionalities of civilized life,
the attractions of a future of unknown possibilities, were drawing many
of the ablest and most ambitious of the nation’s youth to the distant
West. Their hopes were often chimerical; but of their abilities and
their energy there can be no doubt. They sought the West, conscious
of their strength, burning with ambition, each dreaming that he would
be the master-spirit of the new empire that was springing from the
wilderness. When they found that instead of being unquestioned leaders
among ignorant frontiersmen they were pitted against foemen worthy
of their steel, and equally determined to rule the destinies of the
infant commonwealth, the rivalries were fierce, the animosities bitter,
the struggle intense. Politics ran high, and conflicting ambitions led
to a degree of personal virulence in writing and in speech surpassing
anything that we have to-day. When these young men first met, fire
flashed as when flint and steel are struck together, and in the
territorial days their quarrels were too often solved by the duel.
After the admission of the State in 1836 affairs became more tranquil.
The strong men gradually learned to dwell together in peace; but their
rivalries, though less bloody, were not less strenuous.
[Illustration: THE HOUSE WHERE THE ARKANSAS LEGISLATURE WAS HELD IN
1835.]
[Illustration: ALBERT PIKE.]
All parts of the country contributed their quota. From Massachusetts
there came perhaps the two ablest men, Chester Ashley and Albert Pike,
men who would have been remarkable in any age or place. Connecticut
sent Samuel H. Hempstead; Virginia, Henry W. Conway and Solon Borland;
Kentucky, the State’s most accomplished orators, Robert Crittenden and
Frederick W. Trapnall, besides William and Ebenezer Cummins and George
C. Watkins; North Carolina, Archibald Yell; Tennessee, Absalom Fowler
and Ambrose H. Sevier; and there were many others from various sections
worthy to enter the same arena.
[Illustration: ROBERT CRITTENDEN.]
And not at home alone were the great abilities of these men
acknowledged. Arkansas’ first two senators were Ashley and Sevier,
and the former was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the
Senate, while the latter was the chairman of its Committee on Foreign
Relations, the only time when the chairmanship of both those great
committees has been lodged in the hands of a single State,--and that a
State whose population consisted of a few frontiersmen almost lost in
the primeval forest.
[Illustration: THE OLD FOWLER MANSION.
NOW THE RESIDENCE OF JOHN M. GRACIE.]
And when the Mexican War was over and the time came to reap the fruits
of victory, it was Mr. Sevier who, together with Mr. Justice Clifford,
negotiated the treaty of peace.
[Illustration: THE CRITTENDEN RESIDENCE.
THE FIRST BRICK HOUSE BUILT IN LITTLE ROCK. NOW THE HOME OF GOVERNOR
JAMES P. EAGLE.]
The leaders of the infant commonwealth were all lawyers. In the early
days of the Republic the position of lawyers was much more commanding
than it is at present. Their social influence has waned before the
aristocracy of wealth; and their political power has largely passed to
the “boss” and the machine, whose authority rests on a more material
basis than eloquence and reason. And never was there a city so
dominated by its bar as Little Rock in the olden times. Everything
circled around the great lawyers. Even the wealth of the community
was mostly in their hands. The houses of the citizens were generally
of wood, and usually stood upon the street; but scattered about there
arose the stately mansions of the leaders of the bar,--of Ashley,
Pike, Trapnall, Fowler, Crittenden, Hempstead and others, encircled
by extensive grounds and shaded by patriarchal trees, dominating the
surrounding dwellings almost like feudal châteaux. In these mansions
were concentrated the social and intellectual life of the community,
and its history was the story of their daily struggles for pre-eminence.
[Illustration: THE OLD PIKE MANSION.
NOW THE RESIDENCE OF COLONEL JOHN G. FLETCHER.]
So Little Rock grew and flourished, men dwelling in peace beneath their
vines and fig trees, until the year 1861 brought up the momentous
question of disunion and war. Arkansas was strongly attached to the
Union. In its mountainous regions there were no slaves, and three
fourths of the people were white. The convention called to determine
the course the State should take adjourned without action, declining
to enter the confederacy that had been formed at Montgomery, Ala.
But when they reassembled the war was already flagrant, and with only
a single dissenting vote they cast in their lot with their brethren
of the South. The result was hailed by the people of Little Rock with
unlimited enthusiasm. Confidence in the success of Southern arms was
universal. No grim spectre of invasion and despair haunted their
dreams. But the awakening was rude. The Northern armies poured across
the border in overwhelming numbers, and soon the people had to fight
for their altars and their firesides. Rarely have a people sprung so
universally to arms, or defended their homes with such tenacity. Out of
a voting population of 61,198, fully fifty thousand were in the ranks.
But they fought in vain. On Sept. 10, 1863, Little Rock was captured by
the Northern forces under General Steele. They did the place no harm,
save that upon one of its highest eminences they constructed a powerful
fort, and to hold it in security leveled the forest to a great distance
in every direction, destroying many a monarch of the wood which it will
require centuries to replace.
[Illustration: CUSTOM-HOUSE AND POST OFFICE.]
Since the Civil War the history of Little Rock has been one of
continuous development. Even the period of Reconstruction, that
strange saturnalia that constitutes one of the darkest spots in the
annals of the Anglo-Saxon race, did not retard its growth. It is now
a city of some forty thousand inhabitants, and its future has never
been so bright. The mildness of its climate and the profusion of its
flowers have won for it the name of “The City of Roses.” The charm
of its society, where Southern hospitality is so happily blended
with Northern thrift and neatness, have made it a favorite place for
visitors from every State. Its inhabitants are fond of art and of
foreign travel, and few cities of its size send to Europe a larger or
more regular contingent, or can show to the visitor more statues and
pictures brought home from abroad. A breadth of view unique in the
South, which has led it to welcome immigration from the North, has
saved it from stagnation, and in all departments of business there
are almost as many men from the North as from the South. The Indian
Territory, which for years has stood as a Chinese wall upon the State’s
western border, cutting it off from all participation in the great
movement of transcontinental traffic, and retarding its progress to an
extent that is almost inconceivable, is now opening, and railroads are
penetrating the new field. Commerce is flourishing, factories springing
up, and everywhere the schoolmaster is abroad in the land. The decrees
of the future are inscrutable, but, so far as mortal eye can discern,
the twentieth century will be for Little Rock one of constant growth
and advancement, material and intellectual, and the wisdom of the men
who planted the State’s capital upon this rock when it stood alone in
the pathless wilderness will be more than justified.
[Illustration: LITTLE ROCK UNIVERSITY.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
ST. AUGUSTINE
THE OLDEST TOWN IN THE UNITED STATES
BY GEORGE R. FAIRBANKS
Far down on the Atlantic coast lies the old city of St. Augustine.
Unlike most of our early towns, which have either been abandoned,
like Jamestown, or rebuilt and modernized until their ancient form
and fashion are no longer recognizable, St. Augustine has preserved
its antiquity. Its newness is placed alongside, but does not overlie
and hide, its ancient character. Its old self is still there, always
to be felt and seen, and ever about the old city there cling historic
associations which throw around it a charm that few can fail to feel.
The aroma of its life is in its past: and when we recall the fact
that it is more than forty years older than Jamestown; that it was a
comparatively old town when the Puritans landed at Plymouth; that
here, for the first time, isolated within the shadows of the primeval
forest, the civilization of the old world made its abiding-place, where
all was new and wild and strange; that this now so insignificant place
was the key to a possible empire; that on its occupation or destruction
rested French or Spanish domination; that it was a vice-provincial
court, boasted of its Addantados, men of the first mark and note, of
its Royal Exchequer, its public functionaries, its brave men-at-arms;
that its proud name, _La siempre fiel ciudad de San Agustin_ (“the
ever-faithful city of St. Augustine”), was conferred by its monarch;
that here the cross was first planted; that from the Papal chair itself
rescripts were addressed to its governors; that the first great efforts
at Christianizing the fierce native tribes proceeded from this spot;
that the martyrs’ blood was first here shed; that around these walls
the clash of arms and the battle-cry have been heard, we may well feel
a greater interest in this ancient city than is possessed by mere brick
and mortar, rapid growth or unwonted prosperity.
[Illustration: THE OLD CITY GATE.]
The first European who visited this spot, so far as we know, was that
sturdy cavalier, Juan Ponce de Leon, who in 1513 came to Florida in
search of the fountain of youth, but, failing to find it, gave to
Florida its name and perpetuated his own by the romantic quest upon
which he came.
More than fifty years afterwards, St. Augustine was visited by Menendez
with a Spanish fleet, and a permanent settlement was made. Admiral
Coligny, a distinguished leader of the Huguenot party in France,
harassed by the religious animosities which prevailed between the Roman
Catholics and Protestants, conceived the idea of planting a colony
of his co-religionists in America, both for their protection and to
extend the possessions of France into the new world. For this purpose
a small fleet was equipped in the year 1562, and sent out under the
command of Captain Jean Ribaut. The expedition came upon the coast of
Florida, near St. Augustine, the harbor of which they named the River
of Dolphins, because of the many porpoises they saw there. They then
entered the mouth of the River St. John’s, planted a column of stone,
and passed on to the coast of South Carolina, where they built a
small fort called Charlesfort. Leaving there a small garrison, Ribaut
returned to France, intending soon to return with a larger force.
[Illustration: PEDRO MENENDEZ DE AVILES, FOUNDER OF ST. AUGUSTINE.]
Circumstances prevented his return, and it was not until 1564 that
Laudonniere, with three vessels and a larger number of Huguenots, came
prepared to make a permanent settlement of the country. He also came
first to the River of Dolphins, and thence to the St. John’s, called
by them the River May, and after some delay in further explorations
of the coast decided to plant his settlement on the St. John’s, where
he constructed a fort which he named Fort Caroline, on the south bank
of the river, a few miles from its mouth. The colony, however, failed
to obtain from the soil or the sea sufficient food, and were about
abandoning the country in the following year, when Ribaut arrived
with a larger and better class of people, to reinforce Laudonniere’s
settlement.
In the meantime, the Spanish sovereign had learned of these Huguenot
expeditions, and of their encroachment upon a territory which he
claimed for Spain by right of discovery, and at once set on foot an
expedition under the command of Pedro Menendez to drive out of Florida
the French Huguenots, whose faith he regarded with detestation.
Both the French and Spanish fleets came upon the coast of Florida about
the same time. Ribaut passed St. Augustine and anchored off St. John’s
bar. Menendez followed and exchanged a few shots with Ribaut’s vessels,
and retired to the harbor of St. Augustine, where he landed his forces,
occupying an Indian village called Selooe, which seems to have stood
about half a mile north of the fort, upon a tidal creek.
[Illustration: OLD FORGE.]
Ribaut, learning of the landing of Menendez’s forces, determined to
attack the Spanish vessels, which lay outside because of the low water
on the bar, and thus cut off the Spanish force from molesting the
French at Fort Caroline. He had hardly put to sea before he encountered
a terrible storm, by which his vessels were driven down the coast and
cast ashore.
Menendez, being apprised of Ribaut’s movements, and satisfied that
the French vessels would be either driven afar or wrecked on the
coast, determined to take the initiative, march across the country
and surprise Fort Caroline in its weakened condition, during Ribaut’s
absence. Guided by natives familiar with the country, he traversed the
forty miles of low, flat woods, and reaching his destination in the
early morning made a sudden attack upon the French fort and easily
captured it. Moved by a morbid hatred of the French Protestants, as
intruders on the Spanish territory, and still more as enemies to his
faith and hence entitled to neither mercy nor compassion, most of them
were slaughtered in the onset, and Menendez caused his prisoners to be
hung on the neighboring trees, with an inscription that he did this to
them “not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans.” Some twenty or more escaped
with Laudonniere to two vessels at the mouth of the river and thence to
France.
All of Ribaut’s vessels having been wrecked along the coast between
St. Augustine and Canaveral, although most of the people escaped with
their lives, they had no means of regaining Fort Caroline or of leaving
the coast for any point of refuge. Wrecked and wretched, they moved
northward along the coast, and at Matanzas, an inlet twenty miles
below St. Augustine, they were met by Menendez, who had returned from
Fort Caroline, and was informed of their shipwreck and condition by
natives living along the coast. Ribaut asked safe conduct, but Menendez
refused all overtures for terms of surrender, requiring unconditional
submission to his will or clemency. The result was that, as fast as
the French were brought across the inlet in small parties, he directed
that they should all be killed. This sad tragedy is commemorated by the
name, still borne by the inlet, Matanzas, the place of slaughter.
The French Huguenots thus disposed of, Menendez proceeded to lay out
and build his proposed city. A castle and religious house were
first constructed, the castle as a protection against the Indians, or
the French, should others come. The castle or fort was built of the
trunks of trees, in an octagonal shape, near the present fort, and the
dwellings were located in the southern portion of the peninsula on
which the present city stands. The shoalness of the water on the bar
was a protection against an attack by sea, and the bay on one side, and
the Maria Sanchez Creek and St. Sebastian River on the other made the
town secure against an attack by land.
[Illustration: OLD SPANISH FORT ON MATANZAS RIVER.]
Menendez, having secured the safety of his settlement, returned
to Spain, little dreaming of the retribution soon to fall upon
his fortified posts on the St. John’s from the hand of Dominic de
Gourgues, who, with a force of some two hundred and fifty men, left
France in 1568, with the purpose of avenging the massacre of his
countrymen. Arriving on the coast in April, he passed the mouth of
the St. John’s and brought his three vessels into Cumberland Sound.
Here, communicating with the Indians, whom he found very hostile to
the Spaniards, he gathered a large force of Indian allies, attacked
the Spanish forts at the mouth of the St. John’s River, captured them
after but little resistance, and then marched against Fort Caroline,
changed to San Matteo. Although the fort was well garrisoned, the
Spanish commander, believing that he was surrounded by a superior
force, fled, and De Gourgues captured the fort, meeting with little
resistance. In retaliation for the massacre of the Huguenots, he hung
his prisoners to the same trees, with the inscription, burned upon
a plank, that he did this “not as to Spaniards, but as to traitors,
thieves, and murderers.”
No further attempt was made by the French to colonize the southern
Atlantic coast, and thus ended the sad beginnings of what, under
other circumstances, might have proved the establishment of French
colonization along our whole Atlantic coast.
The annals of St. Augustine during the remainder of the life of
Menendez present only the usual vicissitudes of new settlements,
the alternation of want and supply and occasional disaffections and
annoyances by unruly soldiers or hostile Indians.
Unluckily for the little city, Sir Francis Drake, in 1586, returning
from the coasts of South America, discovered, in passing, the Spanish
lookout on Anastasia Island, at the entrance of the harbor. Having sent
some boats in, a town across the bay was discovered. During the night,
a fifer came out to the fleet playing the Prince of Orange march, and
informed Sir Francis that the Spaniards had abandoned their fort. This
report proved to be true, and Sir Francis found that in their haste
they had left behind some ten thousand dollars in the treasury chest.
Being fired upon by some of the inhabitants, he burned the town.
An engraved plan of Drake’s descent upon St. Augustine, published in
England upon his return, represents an octagonal fort between two
streams, and at the distance of half a mile another stream, and beyond
that the town, with a lookout and church and monastery. The plan shows
three squares lengthwise, and four in breadth, with gardens on the west
side. The relative position of the town with reference to the entrance
to the harbor is correctly shown, and there seems no sufficient ground
to doubt the identity of the present city with the original location.
The province was then under the government of Don Pedro Menendez, a
nephew of the Adelantado, who, after the departure of the English
fleet under Drake, began, with some assistance from Havana, to rebuild
the town.
[Illustration: THE OLDEST HOUSE IN ST. AUGUSTINE.]
A body of Franciscan missionaries came to Florida in 1592, and
established missions among the Indians at various points along the
coast and in the interior. For a time considerable apparent success
attended these efforts; but a few years later a concerted attack
was made by the Indians upon the missionaries, several of whom were
massacred at their posts. Hostilities became active in 1638 between the
Appalachian Indians and the Spanish settlements upon the coast. The
Indians were soon subdued, large numbers were brought to St. Augustine,
and as a punishment for their out-break they were forced to labor--it
is said for sixty years--upon the public works and the fortifications,
in quarrying and transporting the coquina stone from Anastasia Island.
About this period the English settlements in Carolina were established,
which was considered an encroachment upon the territory claimed by
the Spanish Crown by virtue of discovery and occupation. Unfriendly
feelings speedily grew up between the English and Spanish colonies,
embittered by difference of religious faith and an inherited rancor on
both sides.
In 1648, St. Augustine is described as having more than three hundred
householders, and containing a flourishing monastery of the Order of
St. Francis, with fifty brothers in residence, all zealous for the
conversion of the Indians. The parish Church was built of wood.
But the poor little city was destined not to rest in peace. In 1665,
one hundred years from its foundation, it was visited by Captain Davis,
an English buccaneer and free-booter, of a class then numerous in those
seas. He landed his forces near the city, marched directly upon the
town, looted and plundered it without meeting, it is said, with any
resistance from the Spanish garrison in the fort, which numbered some
two hundred men-at-arms. The easy capture of the town by this casual
free-booter indicated the necessity for stronger fortifications and
better means of resistance.
The Castle of San Marco had been commenced and partly constructed
by the labor of the Appalachian Indians, no doubt very slowly and
unwillingly rendered. Don Juan Marquez de Cabrera, having been
appointed Governor in 1681, at once applied himself to the completion
of the castle and other fortifications.
The English settlements in Carolina continued to create much
dissatisfaction. The Spanish Crown claimed the whole Atlantic coast as
their province of Florida, and it is so designated on ancient maps,
even including Delaware and Pennsylvania, then being settled by Penn
and his colonists. An attack was made in 1681 on a Scotch and English
settlement at Port Royal by three armed galleys sent out from St.
Augustine. Many of the English colonists lost their lives, and much
property was destroyed, which later led to bitter retaliation.
Menendez, by his contract with the Spanish Crown, had been authorized
to take to Florida five hundred negro slaves, but did not avail
himself of the privilege, and it was not until 1687 that one Captain
de Aila brought the first Spanish negro slave into Florida. Later
the inhabitants of Carolina complained that the authorities at St.
Augustine seduced and harbored their runaway slaves, which was not
denied, but justified by the claim that they did it for the good of the
souls of the negroes.
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE OLD SPANISH FORT AT MATANZAS INLET.]
Hostilities having broken out between England and Spain, and a
bitter feeling already existing between the English in Carolina and
the Spaniards in Florida, Governor Moore, of South Carolina, led an
expedition into Florida in 1702, and with a considerable force made an
attack upon St. Augustine by sea and by land. He easily captured the
town, and the inhabitants retired to the fort, where they were besieged
for over a month. For want of heavier guns, Moore was unable to capture
the fort, and had to retire; not, however, till he had committed the
useless barbarity of burning the town. Upon the departure of the
English forces, the inhabitants gladly set to work to repair or rebuild
their ruined homes.
About this period the building of a sea wall was begun, to protect the
town from the encroachment of the sea, and leisurely proceeded for many
years. Portions of this ancient wall may yet be seen within the present
wall, which was built by the United States after the change of flags.
In 1704, Governor Moore again appeared before the old city, and
partially destroyed its habitations, but was unable to make any
impression on the stalwart castle. Bad feelings were reciprocally held
for many years by the English in Carolina and the Spaniards in Florida.
In the meantime, another English settlement having been made in Georgia
by General Oglethorpe, the English drew nearer to Florida and occupied
a country still claimed by the Spanish Crown. The Spanish Governor
notified Oglethorpe to depart, and gave indications of a forcible
attempt to dispossess the new colony. Oglethorpe determined to be
beforehand with the Spaniards, and organized an expedition made up from
his own colony and Carolina, and proceeded to invest St. Augustine
by sea and by land. The town was now, however, better fortified, and
the Castle had been greatly strengthened. Oglethorpe’s batteries on
Anastasia Island were too light to make an impression upon the walls
of San Marco, the soft rock imbedding his balls without injury. The
siege lasted thirty-eight days, but, being unable to reduce the Castle,
Oglethorpe at last gave up the attempt, and withdrew his forces. The
marks of his cannonade may still be seen on the eastern walls of the
fort.
The repeated outbreaks of the Indians and the inroads of the English
had discouraged all attempts at cultivation in the vicinity, and the
city remained little more than a garrison town, until, by the Treaty of
1762, Florida was ceded to the English Crown. The Spanish inhabitants
nearly all left with the garrison for Cuba. The English flag was raised
upon the Castle of San Marco, and an English Governor, an English
garrison and English colonists came in to occupy the city and the
province. Judicious measures were at once taken to advance the interest
and growth of the city and the two Floridas. Bounties were offered
for the production of indigo and naval stores, and a considerable
commerce at once grew up. Roads were opened, and settlements made in
the interior and on the coast. During the twenty years of English
occupation extensive barracks were erected in the city, which was much
built up and improved; and, could it have remained under the English
flag, Florida would have been as well populated and as prosperous as
the other colonies of England in America. The acknowledgment of the
independence of her other colonies, which had organized a confederacy
against her rule, rendered Florida of little consequence as a small
and isolated colony, and, in 1783, England ceded Florida back to Spain.
As a consequence of this recession and change of government, the
English inhabitants nearly all left for Carolina and Georgia or the
British West India Islands. St. Augustine fell back into its old
condition of a garrison town; the works of improvement begun by the
English were abandoned, and the old city renewed its sleepy existence.
There was indeed some attempt by land grants to induce immigration, but
with no great result.
So things went until 1812, when, fearing that England intended to
acquire Florida, which would be a menace to the interests of the United
States, President Monroe, under a resolution of Congress, ordered
troops into Florida. St. Augustine was threatened, but not conquered or
reduced. The country was raided, plantations were devastated, and much
injury done before the United States troops were recalled. Finally,
Spain was worried into an agreement to sell Florida to the United
States for a pecuniary compensation.
In the year 1821, the Spanish flag, planted at St. Augustine in 1565,
was hauled down finally, and the Stars and Stripes waved over the
Castle of San Marco, which by a senseless order was renamed Fort
Marion, which name it now bears. The Spanish inhabitants generally
remained, and their descendants still constitute the larger portion of
the resident population of the ancient city. Under American rule people
from the adjoining States came in and began to establish settlements,
but the Indian tribes still held possession of the largest portion of
the territory.
In 1835, the Seminole Indian War broke out; for seven years hostilities
were maintained, and it was not until 1842 that peace was restored. St.
Augustine suffered with the rest of the territory, and little progress
was made in population or prosperity. It still remained the leading
town, though that did not mean much, and when the war was over other
towns, notably Jacksonville, grew into importance. Some invalids, not
many, came for a winter’s sojourn, but there was little change until
the Civil War. At an early day Commodore Dupont came into the harbor
with his armed vessels, and the town was quietly surrendered, supplied
with a garrison, and went into an enforced apathy from which it never
emerged until the war was over.
[Illustration: HOTEL PONCE DE LEON.]
After 1865, a new era sprang up for St. Augustine; railroad
communication was opened to Tocoi, on the St. John’s, and, later on,
to Jacksonville. Winter visitors began to come in large numbers, and
hotels on a large scale were built. Finally, Mr. H. M. Flagler became
interested in the old city, and built the famous and most beautiful
Ponce de Leon, the Alcazar, and the Cordova, with many other handsome
buildings. He purchased and improved the railroad, filled in the
marshes of the St. Sebastian, and erected a new city alongside of the
old. The population has been doubled, and its attractions have greatly
increased. A railway system has been established, taking in the whole
east coast of Florida as far down as Miami, with connecting lines of
steamers to Key West, Havana and Nassau. Few towns can now boast of
more attractive residences, and none of such magnificent hotels for
the solace of the traveler. After a varied existence of over three
centuries, the ancient city has put on a new life of elegance and
prosperity.
Dear old city! how many sweet associations it has for the many
thousands who have visited it in these past years! How many walks on
the sea wall; how many boat rides on its placid waters; how many
excursions into its meandering creeks, and strolls along the beach of
Anastasia Island; how many cozy corners in the loggia of the Ponce de
Leon, and the corridors of the Alcazar, come at the call of memory!
The gray and time-worn old Castle of San Marco, with its gloomy portals
and dark chambers, seems in a moment to carry the visitor back three
centuries to another people and another age. People may come, and
people may go, but the old Castle will remain for centuries, a memorial
to the long-past age of the Spanish monarchy in America.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
INDEX
A
Academy, the French, 170
Acropolis, the, 165
Act of Secession, 165
Adair, address of, 340
Adams, John, 87;
and the national capital, 125;
quoted, 88, 128, 148, 204
Adams, J. Q., 93, 140
Adams, Louisa J., 93
Adams, Mrs. John, 128, 135
Adams, Samuel, and the Stamp Act, 196
Addison’s _Cato_, 269
_Advance_, the, 246
_Advertiser_, the Edgefield, xxviii, note
Agassiz, 273
Alabama, settlement of, 356;
_see also_ Mobile and Montgomery;
Sevier buried in, 463
Alabama Convention, 402
Alabama Platform, 399
_Alabama Swan_, the, 392
“Alabama Town,” 382, 384
_Albemarle_, the, 250, 251
Alexandria and the national capital, 116
Alferez Real, the, 424
Algonquins, 101, 102
Alibamons, 335, 340
_Alice_, the, 366
Allan, John, 174
Allen, James Lane, 534
Allen, Rev. Bennett, 80
Allston, Washington, 275
Almonester, Don Andres, 424, 425
_America_, the, 22
_American Notes_, Dickens’s, 521
Anacostan, 101
Anacostia, 101, 146
Anacostian River, 105
Anastasia, 570, 575
Andersen, Hans, quoted, 68
Anderson, Colonel, 371
Anderson, D. C., 362
Anderson, Gen. Robt., 505
Anderson, Mary, 534
_Ann_, the, 300, 324
_Annalist_, the, 455
Annapolis, 12, 75, 79;
Sara Andrew Shafer on, 47-73;
settlement, 47-53;
the first church, 53-56;
the first school, 57;
the State House, 58;
the Revolution, 59;
historic homes, 61-66;
U. S. Naval Academy, 68-73
Annapolis Convention, the, 201
Anne Arundel, 52, 53
Anstill’s night ride, 355
Antietam, battle of, 94
Antigua, 276
Apalaches, 341
Appalachian Indians, 570, 571
Arbuthnot, 290
Arizona, 478
_Ark_, the, 1, 50
Arkansas, 335;
_see_ Little Rock
Arkansas Indians, 539, 540
Arlington, 148
Armstrong, James, 455
Arnold, Benedict, in Richmond, 161
Arthur, President, 320
Asbury, Bishop, quoted, 82
Ashe, Col. John, 238, 240-242
“Ashland,” 505, 531
Ashley, Chester, 548, 549, 552
Ashley River, 251, 252
Athens, 494
Atlanta, Ga., xvi
_Atlanta_, the, 324
Audubon, John J., 273, 504, 518
Augusta, Ga., xxv
Avar, tomb of, 413
B
Bacon, Nathaniel, 164, 191, 192
Bahamas, the, 251
Bainbridge, Peter, 83
Baker’s Creek, battle at, 443
Baldwin, M. J. D., 360
Baltimore, xix, xxix, 79, 108, 130, 325, 436;
St. George L. Sioussat on, 1-45;
early towns, 5;
the Act of 1709, 7;
union with Jonas town, 8;
1709-1754, 10;
growth of foreign trade, 12;
the French and Indian War, 14-18;
before the Revolution, 18-21;
in the Revolution, 21-28;
Kennedy’s description of old, 28-32;
growth before the War of 1812, 32-36;
in the War of 1812, 36-38;
internal improvements, 38;
divided during Civil War, 39-41;
higher life of, 41-45
Baltimore, Lords, 1-3, 21, 51, 52
_Baltimore_, the, 11
Baltimore & Ohio R. R., 39
Bancroft, George, 70;
quoted, 199, 264
Barbadoes, 229, 251
Barbe, Marie, 358
Barnett, Rev. John, 233
Barton Academy, 359
Bartow, Francis S., 322
Bartram’s Botanical Expedition, 344
Bas Fonde, 330
Bassett, 213
Bate, Gen. Wm. B., 498
Bath, N. C., 223, 224
Báthori, S., 154
Battle Monument, 18
Bayliss, Mrs., 141
Bazares, exploration of, 330
Beall, Joseph, 83
Beall, Samuel, 83
Beatty, Thomas, 83
Beaudrat, execution of, 339
Beaufort, N. C., 223
Beckly, J. J., 208
Bell, John, 491
Bell House, 169
Bellimi, Charles, 214
Belvidere, 35
Benjamin, S. G. W., 275
Benton, T. H., 464, 490
Beresford, Richard, 271
Berkeley, Sir Wm., 164, 191, 192
Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, 358
Bertrand, 357, 358
Bethesda, Ga., 311
Bethlehem, 26
_Beulah_, Augusta Evans’s, 362
Bienville, 332, 333, 335, 338, 340-342, 357, 416, 418, 424
Big Black, battle at, 443, 444
Big Rock, 541
“Big Salt Lick,” 483
Bigbee, 344
Bill of Rights, 204
Biloxi, 332, 338, 417, 434
Black Beard, 230
Bladensburg, battle of, 132
Blair, John, 214
Blair, Wm., 83
Blakeley, 354, 369
Bland, Richard, 199
Bledsoe’s Lick, 479
Bloody Marsh, 316
Blount, Gov. Wm., 451, 453-455, 458, 462, 463
Blount, Mary Grainger, 454
Blount College, 458, 461
Bolling, Jane, 159
Bonnet, Stead, 230, 231, 258
Boone, Daniel, 480, 486, 504, 508, 509
Booth, J. B., 363
Bordley, 16
Bordley House, 63
Borland, Solon, 548
Boston, 21, 240, 315
Botetourt, Lord, 207
Boucher, Rev. Jonathan, 19
Bourbon County organized, 437
Bourbons, the, 357
“Boz,” _see_ Dickens
Braddock, General, 14, 78, 79, 115
Bragg, General, 470
Bray, Rev. Dr., 54
Brewton, Miles, 260
Brice Mansion, 62
British, attack Washington, 131-136;
at Wilmington, N. C., 242;
besiege Charleston, 264, 266;
attack Fort Bowyer, 355;
in the Southwest, 510-512
_Brooklyn_, the, 370
Brooks, Walter, 440
Brown, Governor, of Georgia, 323
Brownlow, Wm. G., 466-469
Brunswick, N. C., 223, 232-234, 239, 242
Buchanan, Admiral, 371
Buchanan, Dr. George, 40
Buell, General, 496, 498
Buford, Colonel, quoted, 402
Bunker Hill, battle of, 315
Burgoyne’s surrender, 511
Burke, Edmund, 316;
quoted, 286
Burnside at Knoxville, 470, 472
Burr, Aaron, at Richmond, 174;
capture of, 353;
at Nashville, 492;
at Louisville, 530
Burwell, Hon. Lewis, 190
Burwell, Lucy, 190
Bush River, 5, 6
Byrd, Col. Wm., 155, 157
Byrd, Col. William Evelyn, founds Richmond, 156-158;
visits Edenton, 224
Byrd, Evelyn, 158
Byron quoted, 509
C
Cabildo, the Spanish, 428, 431
Cabot discovers North America, 151
Cairo, Ill., 335, 361, 521
Calamata, 154
Caldwell, Joshua W., on Knoxville, 449-475
Calhoun, John C., 140, 464
Calvert, Cecilius, 21
Calvert, Charles, 78;
quoted, 2
Calvert, Frederick, 78, 79
Calverts, the, 48-50
Campbell, Colonel, defeats Gen. Robert Howe, 317
Campbell, General, in West Florida, 346, 347
Campbell, John A., 362
Canada, 331, 334
Canal, the Isthmian, 438
Canby captures Blakeley, 372, 374
Canoe Fight, the, 355
Cantonment, the, 356
Cape Clear, 320
Cape Fear, 220
Cape Hatteras, 220, 262
Cape Lookout, 220
Capitol, at Richmond, 162-170
Capitol the national, 121-124;
north wing completed, 126;
burned by the British, 134;
rebuilt, 137;
dome raised, 142
Cardross, Lord, 250
Carlton, Hon. Walter G., quoted, 307
_Carolina_, the, 250, 251
Carr, Capt. John, 388
Carr, Dabney, 199
Carrick, Rev. Samuel, 461
Carroll, Charles, 7, 8, 18, 40, 60, 66
Carroll, Daniel, 7, 8, 88, 122
Carrolls, the, 77, 79
Carrollton, 66, 79
Carter, John, 451
Cary, Archibald, 201, 204
Castle Garden, centennial celebrated at, 269
Cat Island, 339
Cathedral, the New Orleans, 425, 429, 431
_Cato_, Addison’s, first rendered in Philadelphia, 269
Catoctin, 76, 79
Cavet’s blockhouse, 460
Cawein, Madison, 534
_Cayuga_, the, 368
Cedar Point R’y, 359
Celeste, Madame, 363
Census of 1890, xv
Cervera, 256
Chamberlain, Gov. D. H., quoted, 284
Champion Hills, battle at, 443
Chandler, Bishop, quoted, 310
Chandler, Daniel, 362
Chandler, Mrs., 362
Charles I., 48, 199
Charles II., 290
Charleston, xvi, xix _et seq._;
Yates Snowden on, 249-292;
first permanent settlement, 250-252;
Spanish attack on, 256-259;
in 1773, 259;
the St. Cecilia Society, 260;
in the Revolution, 262-267;
after the Revolution, 267-271;
the Augustan Age, 272;
economic and commercial history of, 276-279;
in the Civil War, 279-286;
churches of, 286-291
Charleston & Hamburg R’y Co., xxii
Charleville, M., 478
Charlton, R. M., 323
Charpentier’s Battery, 364
Chase, Samuel, 40, 88
Chase House, 63
Chastellux quoted, 162
Chateaugué, 338
Chatham Artillery, 320
Chaudron, Madame, 377
Cheatham, Frank, 498
Chellum Castle Manor, 120
Cherokees, and Mobile, 336;
Governor Blount’s treaty with, 453 _ff._;
war with, 458-461, 479;
and Nashville, 486
Chesapeake Bay, 1, 152, 522;
explored by Capt. John Smith, 48
Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, 39
Chesapeake & Ohio R. R., 216
Cheshire, Bishop J. B., on Wilmington, N. C., 219-247
Chester, Governor, 344
Chesterfield quoted, 310
Chicago, xvi
Chicagou, 413
Chickamaugas, 482
Chickasabogue, 341
Chickasaws, 332, 335, 336, 340, 488
Chimborazo Park, 181
Chiskiack, 188, 190
Choctaws, 332, 334, 336, 339, 340, 355;
name Mobile Bay, 328;
Congress of 1765, 345
Christ Church, Newbern, 233
Christmas, Timrod’s, 288
Cincinnati, 517, 521
Civil War, _see_ individual towns
Clark, George Rogers, in the Southwest, 504, 509-513, 516
Clark, Joseph, 122
Clarke, James Freeman, and George Keats, 525
Clausel, Comte, 357, 358
Clay, Henry, 140, 464, 490;
the Hart statues of, 168, 531;
at Mobile, 363;
at Louisville, 505
Clayton, H. D., quoted, 400
Clerissault, M., 164
_Clermont_, Fulton’s, 357
Cleveland, President, 320
Clifford, Justice, 550
Cockburn, Admiral, 67, 134
Codorus Creek suggested for site of national capital, 111, 112
Coffee, General, 490
Coligny, Admiral, 559
Collen, Williamson, 122
Colonial Dames, Georgia Society of, 307
Colonial Exchange, Charleston, 286
Columbia, S. C., xxii
Columbus, Christopher, 507;
map attributed to, 329
Compton, Spencer, 235
Conewago, 10
Confederate Literary Memorial Society, 180
Confederate States Congress, 165
_Confederation_, the, 400
Congress, the Continental, 106, 160, 203, 240-242, 313;
and the national capital, 109-116;
makes appropriation to William and Mary College, 216;
of 1765, 345;
organizes territorial government of Mississippi, 437
Congressional Library, 44
Conogocheague, 108, 116
Constitution, of Virginia, 204;
of United States quoted, 113
Conventicle Act of 1642 in Virginia, 51
Conventions: Southern commercial conventions, xxiv.-xxvi.;
the Virginia Convention of 1775, 160;
Williamsburg, 201, 204;
Annapolis, 201;
of 1787, 201, 453;
Alabama, 402;
Tennessee, 462
Conway, Henry W., 548
Copley, Sir Lionel, 52
Copley, the artist, 274
Copus’s Harbor, 10
“Corn Island,” 512, 513
Cornwallis, surrender of, 106, 165, 187, 216;
at Wilmington, N. C., 243
Cosa, 330
Cossacks, the, 136
Cotton production in the South, xvii, 277
_Cotton Patch_, 392
_Cotton Plant_, the, 357
_Courier-Journal_, Louisville, 534
Courtenay, Hon. W. A., quoted, 277
Cowpens, battle of, 26, 84
“Crackers,” the, xvi
Craig, Major, 242, 243
Cranham Church, 316
Crawford, F. Marion, 166
Crawford’s statue of Washington, 166, 168
_Crayon Papers_, the, 516
Creeks, 334-336, 339, 355, 381, 383, 463;
war with the, 354, 357;
attack Knoxville, 459-461, 486
Cresap, Capt. Michael, 84
Crisp, Speaker, 363
Crittenden, 548, 552
“Croftown,” 346
Cromwell, 199, 468
Cuba, 346;
war in, 376
Cummins, E., 548
Cummins, W., 548
Cushman, Charlotte, 363
Custis, “Jacky,” 19
D
Dabney, Virginius, quoted, 249
Dahlgren attacks Charleston, 290
Dargan, E. S., 362
Darnell, John, 83
Darwin, Charles, 272
“Daughters of the American Revolution,” 465
D’Aubant, Madame, 340
Dauphine Island, 328, 330, 332, 334, 336, 338, 341, 345, 346, 356, 359,
371
Davidson Academy, 489
Davion on the Mississippi, 334
Davis, Capt., 571
Davis, George, quoted, 220
Davis, Jefferson, 180, 364, 440, 506, 532;
monument to, 178;
at Montgomery, 394;
inauguration of, 408
de Aila, Capt., 572
Dean, Julia, 363
Dearborn Island, 136
de Beaurepaire, 170
_De Bow’s Review_, xix
de Cabrera, 571
de Charlevoix, Father, quoted, 540
Declaration of Independence, 87, 147, 201, 203, 204, 270
Declaration of Rights of 1776, 204
_Defense_, the, 22
de Gourgues, Dominic, 566
De Graffenreid, 228
De Kalb, Baron, 60
de la Harpe, Bernard, 541
de Lauzun, Duc, 24
Delaware River and the national capital, 111, 112
de Leon, Juan Ponce, 559
De Leon, T. C., 377
de Luna, Tristan, 330
de Lusser, Madame, 341
De Monbreun, Timothy, 479
de Navarro, Mary Anderson, 534
_Denbigh_, the, 366
de Rosset, Louis, 236
de Rosset, Moses John, 236, 238
Desmoulins, Camille, 93
De Soto, Hernando, 302, 330, 413, 415, 416, 541
d’Estaing, 298, 318, 325
Detroit, British at, 510
de Vaudreuil, Marquis, 422
Dew, Wells’s theory of, 271
Dewey, Admiral George, 465
Dexter, Andrew, 381, 382, 397
Dexter, Samuel, 381
D’Hughes, 85
Dickens, Charles, quoted, 111, 138, 159;
at Louisville, 520-522
Dickinson College, 208
Dickson, Thomas, 83
Dieppe, 249
Digges, Dudley, 120
_Diligence_, the, 239, 240
_Discovery_, the, 151
District of Columbia, _see_ Washington
Ditty, Mrs., 141
Dixon and the torpedo, 280
Dobbs, Gov. Arthur, 234
Donelson, Capt. John, and the settlement of Nashville, 482 _ff._
Donelson, Rachel, 482
_Don Juan_, Byron’s, quoted, 509
_Don Miff_, Dabney’s, quoted, 249
Dorchester, Ga., 312
Douglass, Major H. Kyd, 95
_Dove_, the, 1, 50
Dow, Lorenzo, 353
Doyle quoted, 259
Drake, Sir F., 259, 331, 567
Draper, Sir Wm., 14
Drayton, quoted, 151
Drayton, W. H., 271, 272
Drummond, Governor, execution of, 192
_Dublin University Magazine_, 272
Du Bois, Father John, 93
Du Bose quoted, 399
Dulany, Daniel, 66; note, 79
Dulany, murder of, 82
Dulanys, home of the, 73
Dunlap, Wm., 269
Dunmore, Lord, 161
Dupont attacks Charleston, 290;
St. Augustine surrenders to, 578
Du Pratz quoted, 540
Durnford, Governor, 343, 347
Durrett, Col. Reuben T., 532
Duval, Wm. P., 516
E
Early, Gen. Jubal A., attacks Washington, 141
“East Alabama Town,” 383
East Knoxville, 466
Ebenezer, Ga., 297
Ecunchatty, 381, 410
Edenton, N. C., 238;
Bishop J. B. Cheshire on, 223-228
Edict of Nantes, Revocation of, 290
Edmonson, Colonel, 389
Ege, Jacob, 159
Eggleston, Edward, at Louisville, 530
Ellicott, Andrew, 352;
and the planning of Washington, 119
Elliott, Stephen, 272
Elmore, Capt. Rush, 398
Emmerson, Thos. 457
_Endymion_, Keats’s, 525
England and treaty of 1763, _see_ British
English, explorations of the, 331;
in the Ohio Valley, 335;
possession of Mobile, 342-347;
_see_ also British
Ennalls, Mr., 213
_Enquirer_, the Richmond, xxvii
Eslava, Don Miguel, 348
Estelle Hall, 399, 402
Etowah, battle of, 461
Eugene, Prince, of Savoy, 315
Eutaw, Colonel Howard at, 26
Evans, Augusta, 362;
_see also_ Wilson
Everhart, Sergeant Laurence, 84
_Exposé Justificatif_, Bertrand’s, 357
F
Fairbanks, G. R., on St. Augustine, 557-581
“Fairregret,” _see_ Farragut
Falconer, John, 381
Fanning, David, 243
Farmer, Major Robert, occupies
Fort Chartres, 345
Farragut, Admiral, xxx, 465;
at Mobile, 369-371
Farragut, George, 465
Fearon, H. B., 520, 524
Feilden, Col. H. W., quoted, 282
Fell, 27
Fell, Edward, 8-10
Fell, Wm., 10
Fell’s Point, 10, 24, 41
“Fighting Parson,” _see_ Brownlow
Filipina, 330
Fisk University, 500
Fitch, John, 504
Fite, Jacob, 24
Flagler, H. M., 580
Fleet, Henry, quoted, 102
Fleming, John, 7
_Flora Caroliniana_, 272
Florida, 341;
annexed, 207;
Spain in, 330, 347;
French occupy, 331, 332;
English troops in, 346;
_see also_ St. Augustine
_Florida_, the, 366-368
Foley’s statue of Stonewall Jackson, 170
Forrest, Edwin, 363
Forrest, Gen. N. B., 496
Forsyth, John, 363
Forts: Biloxi, 338;
Bowyer, 355, 356;
Caroline, 561-567;
Charles, 155, 560;
Charlotte, 342, 351;
Chartres, 338, 345;
Condé, 338, 341, 342;
Donelson, 496;
Gaines, 362, 369, 371;
Halifax, 294;
Johnston, 241;
Loudon, 449;
Louis de la Mobile, 332;
Marion, 578;
McDermott, 374;
McHenry, 22, 37, 92;
Maurepas, 332;
Mifflin, 26;
Mims, 354;
Morgan, 362, 366, 369, 372;
Moultrie, xxx, 266;
Natchez, 338;
Natchitoches, 338;
New Orleans, 338;
Patrick Henry, 482;
Pulaski, 322-324;
Red, 374;
Ridley, 485;
St. Stephen, 350, 352, 353;
Saunders, 471, 472;
Severn, 67;
Sidney Johnson, 368;
Spanish, 372, 374;
Stoddert, 353;
Sumter, xix, xxx, 280, 282, 505;
Tombecbé, 335, 338;
Toulouse, 335, 338-340, 354;
White’s, 451
Fottrell, Edward, 16
Fountain Inn, 24
Fowler, Abraham, 548, 552
France, 173;
acquires the St. Lawrence and Florida, 331;
in the Mississippi Valley, 334, 414, 416, 433;
and Mobile, 345, 348;
and treaty of 1763, 422;
re-acquires New Orleans, 428
Franklin, battle of, 497
Franklin, Benjamin, at Frederick, Md., 78;
quoted, 310
Franklin College, 311
Franklin Library, 158
Frascati, 368
Fraser, Charles, 275
Frederica, Ga., 297, 316
Frederick, Prince of Wales, 78
Frederick Town, xxix;
Sara Andrew Shafer on, 75-99;
settlement, 75-78;
French and Indian War, 78;
resistance to the Stamp Act, 82;
Revolution, 84;
Thos. Johnson, 86-89;
Francis Scott Key, 90-92;
visit of Lafayette, 93;
Civil War, 94;
Barbara Frietchie legend, 96-98
Freeland Station, Indians attack, 487
French, Daniel, 517
French, the, _see_ France
French and Indian War, 14, 78, 196, 342, 434
French Lick, the, 479, 481
French Revolution, 477
Fritchie, Barbara, 96-98
Fritchie, John, 97
Fulton, Robert, 357, 504, 517
_Fundamental Constitutions_, Locke’s, 254
G
Gadsden, Christopher, 271
Gait House, Dickens at the, 522
Galvez, rules Louisiana, 346;
attacks Mobile, 347, 372
Garay, Governor, 329
Gardner, Capt. Samuel, 15
Garrett’s _Public Men_ quoted, 397
Gates, Sir Thomas, 151
_Gazette_, Maryland, 42;
Philadelphia, 83;
Virginia, 156;
South Carolina, 269;
Knoxville, 457
Gentry, Meredith P., 490
George I., 195
George III., 78, 342
Georgetown, Va., 117, 124, 128, 148;
and national capital, 114
Georgia, gold region of, 331;
organizes Bourbon County in Mississippi, 437;
_see also_ Savannah
Georgia Central R’y, 294, 322
German Relief Hall, Mobile, 339
Germantown and the national capital, 108, 113
Gettysburg, 470, 472
Ghent, treaty of, 356
Gibbes, 273
Gibson, Randall L., defends Spanish Fort, 372, 374
Gillmore, Gen., reduces Fort Pulaski, 324
Gilman, Daniel C., 42
Gilmer, Governor, quoted, 391
Gist, Gen. Mordecai, 26
Glasgow, Yorktown trade with, 187
Glassell and the torpedo, 280
Godfrey, Thomas, 244
_God Speed_, the, 151
Goliad, the surrender at, 395
Goodhue, 109
Goose Creek and the national capital, 104, 105
G. A. R. at Louisville, 506
Granger, General, 372
Grant, Gen. U. S., xxix, xxx, 472, 498;
and the defence of Washington, 142;
besieges Vicksburg, 435, 442-446
Great Britain, _see_ British and England
Greene, Gen. N., in Georgia, 298, 303, 306;
quoted, 26
Grimké, John F., 271
Grundy, Felix, 490
Guilford, Col. Howard at, 26
Guion, Gov. John J., 440
H
Habersham, James, 312, 314, 315
Hackett, J. H., 363
Hadfield, George, 125
Hakluyt, 249
Haldimand, General, papers of, 344
Hall, Dr. Lyman, and St. John’s Parish, Ga., 313, 314
Hallam, Lewis, 212
Hallam, Miss, 212
Hallett, Stephen L., and the national capital, 121, 122, 125
Hamburg, Germany, xxviii
Hamburg, S. C., xxviii
Hamilton, A., and the national capital, 113, 114
Hamilton, Peter, 362
Hamilton, Peter J., on Mobile, 327-378
Hampden-Sidney College, 208
Hampton, Va., 187
Harnett, C., 240, 242, 244
“Harop,” 190
_Harriet_, the, 357, 393
Harris, Isham G., 466
Harrison, President Wm. H., 214
Harrodsburg, Ky., 510
Hart, Joel T., statues of Henry Clay, 168, 531
_Hartford_, the, 370, 371
Harvard College, 206, 311
Harvey, Sir John, 187
Harvey-town, 4
Havana, 256, 424
Hawkins, 331
Hawthorne, 509
Hayne, Col. Arthur, 389
Hayne, Col. Isaac, 286
Hayne, Paul Hamilton, 273
Hayne, Robt. Y., xxiii
Hempstead, Samuel H., 548, 550
Henfrey, 182
Henry, Patrick, 87, 168, 191;
at Williamsburg, 196, 197;
and George Rogers Clark, 511;
quoted, 161
Henry, W. W., on Richmond, 151-183
Hermitage, the, 491-493
_Heroine_, the, 366
Herrington, 4
Hewatt, 258
Hewes, Joseph, 228
Heyward, Thos., 270
Higginson, Capt. R., 190
Hilliard and Yancey, 399
Hitchcock’s Press, 359
Hoban, James, plans the White House, 122, 125, 126, 137
Hodgson describes Mobile in 1820, 359
Holbrook, 273
Hollywood, 180
Holmes, O. W., at Frederick, 94
Holt, Atty.-Gen. Joseph, 440
Hood, General, 497
Hood, Zachariah, 83
Hooper, George, 236
Hooper, Wm., 236, 241, 242
Hoosier Tales, Eggleston’s, 530
Hope, James Barron, 168
Horse Shoe Bend, battle of, 355, 384
Houdon, his statue of Washington, 165, 166;
his bust of Lafayette, 173
Houghton’s _Life of Keats_, 525
Houston, Sam, 465, 490
Houston, Wm., 238
_How he Saved St. Michael’s_, 288
Howard, Col. J. E., 26, 27, 35;
quoted, 37
Howard’s Park, 36
Howe, Gen. Robt., at Savannah, 317, 318, 324
Hugh, Andrew, 83
Huguenots, in America, 249, 250, 559 _ff._;
at Charleston, 269, 290
Humphreys Creek, 6
Hunter, Father, 80
Hunter, Senator R. M. T., 168
I
Iberville, 332, 416
Illinois, 334
Indigo, cultivation of, in the South, xvii, 277, 576
Ingle, Edward, xxv
Innes, James, 236
Iredell, James, 227, 238, 242
Iroquois, the, 76, 478
Irving, Washington, visits Louisville, 514-516, 522, 530
Italians brought to Georgia, 304
J
Jackson, Andrew, xxx, 466, 489, 490;
at Mobile, 355, 356, 363;
at New Orleans, 423;
and Hugh L. White, 464;
residence of, 483, 491;
his old age, 492;
at Louisville, 531
Jackson, Gen. Wm. H., 498
Jackson, Rachel Donelson, 482, 491, 492
Jackson, Stonewall, xxix, 94, 95, 98;
Foley’s statue of, 170
Jackson, Thomas J., _see_ Stonewall Jackson
Jacksonville, Florida, 578
Jamaica, 329
James, Henry, quoted, 509
James River, 151, 152, 154, 156, 159
Jamestown, Va., 300, 331;
settlement of, 152, 154, 155, 185, 186;
in Bacon’s Rebellion, 191, 192, 194;
compared with St. Augustine, 557
Jasper, Sergeant, 298, 299, 303, 318
Jefferson, Thomas, 88, 122, 130, 168, 311;
and the site of the national capital, 113-115;
and the Declaration of Independence, 201, 203, 204;
at William and Mary College, 207, 214;
quoted, 4, 164-166
Jennings, Edmund, 72
Jesuits in the Mississippi Valley, 334
John of Argyle, 315
Johns Hopkins Hospital, 42, 43
Johns Hopkins University, 42, 43
Johnson, Andrew, 284;
impeachment of, 467-469
Johnson, Charles, 228
Johnson, Dr., 316
Johnson, Gov. Sir Nathaniel, 257
Johnson, Thomas, 59, 85-89, 93
Johnston, Gen. J. E., 188, 216, 372;
at Vicksburg, 443
Johnston, Gov. Gabriel, 228, 231, 235, 238
Johnston, Samuel, 228, 242
Joliet, 331
Jonas town, 8, 41
Jones, Charles, 83
Jones, Col. C. C., quoted, 309, 312, 316
Jones, Commodore Thos. Ap-Catesby, 70
Jones, Rev. Hugh, quoted, 208-211
Jones’s Falls, 7, 18
Jones’s Point, 116
Joppa, 6
Jouett, Matthew H., 531
_Journal_, Louisville, 505, 532
Jubilee Singers, the, 500
Juchereau, 335
K
Kaskaskia, G. R. Clark attacks, 511
Kean, Charles, 363
Keats, George, at Louisville, 504, 524-530
Keats, Isabella, 528-530
Keats, John, and George Keats, 504, 524
Kennedy, Hon. John P., quoted, 28-32
Kentucky, xxi, xxii;
_see_ Louisville
Key, Francis Scott, 37, 91, 395
Key, John Ross, 84
Kiawah, the Cacique of, 250
King, Grace, on New Orleans, 411-431
King William’s School, 56
Kinsale, 251
Klinck, John G., quoted, 382-384
Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 158
Knox, Gen. Henry, Knoxville named for, 451, 455
Knoxville, J. W. Caldwell on, 449-475;
genesis of, 449-451;
Gov. Blount, 451-454;
Indian treaty of 1791, 454;
legislative act of 1794, 455;
the first mayor, 457;
Blount College founded, 458;
Indian war of 1793, 458-461;
Constitutional Convention of 1796, 462;
Hugh L. White, 463-465;
George Farragut, 465;
Sam Houston, 465;
Fighting Parson Brownlow, 466-468;
Horace Maynard, 468;
Thos. A. R. Nelson, 468;
the Civil War, 469-472;
since the war, 472-475
Krafft, Michael, 360
L
Ladies Hermitage Association, 493
_Lady of the Lake_, 392
Lafayette, General, in Baltimore, 24;
at Frederick, 93;
at Washington, 147;
at Richmond, 173;
at Savannah, 303;
at Mobile, 358;
at Montgomery, 388;
at Nashville, 490, 492
Lakanal, 357, 358
Lamartine, 135
Lane, John, 438
Langdon, C. C., 363
La Rochefoucault quoted, 267
La Salle, 331, 332, 334, 414-416
La Tour, 338
Laudonniere, 561 _ff._
Law, John, and the Mississippi Bubble, 336, 348, 417, 418
Lawrence at Fort Bowyer, 355
Le Clerc, M., 16
Lee, Gen. R. E., xxix, 175, 323, 476;
at Frederick, 94;
Mercie’s statue of, 178;
residence of, 180;
surrender of, 246
Lee, R. H., 87, 88;
and the national capital, 115;
his resolution of independence, 204
Leeward Islands, 276
Le Feboure, M., plans attack on Charleston, 256, 257
Legaré, Hugh S., xxvii, 272
Lemoyne, 332
L’Enfant, Major, 104, 119
Le Sueur, explorations of, 334
Le Vert’s _Souvenirs of Travel_, 362
Lidell at Blakeley, 374
Lincoln, Abraham, 41, 506;
at Frederick, 94
Little Rock, George B. Rose on, 537-556;
physiography of the region, 537-539;
original inhabitants, 539-541;
early visits of white men, 541;
made capital of the Territory, 544;
growth, 544-547;
leaders of, 548-552;
Civil War, 552;
later history, 553
Liverpool & Manchester R. R., 278
Lloyd house, 63
Lobb, Captain, 239
Locke, John, 254
Loftus, Major, 345
London, Yorktown trade with, 187
Long Island, battle of, 26
Longstreet, General, besieges Knoxville, 470-472
Louis XIV., 332
Louisiana, 207, 346, 417;
naming of, 331;
cession of, 352, 428, 542;
acquires Statehood, 430;
_see also_ New Orleans
Louisiana artillery, 374
Louisville, Lucien V. Rule on, 503-535;
the site, 503;
distinguished citizens, 504-506;
historic significance, 506-509;
founding of, 509-514;
Irving’s description, 514-516;
visitors to, 517-520;
immigration, 520;
Charles Dickens at, 521;
George Keats, 522-530;
Civil War, 532
Louisville, Cincinnati & Charleston R. R. Co., xxi
Lucas, Colonel, 276
Lucas, Eliza, 276
Luckett, William, 83
Ludlow, Noah M., 363
Lyell, Sir Charles, 273
Lynch, Thos., Jr., 270
Lyon, David, 83
M
Maclean, Archibald, 236, 242
Macon, Ga., xxv
Macready at Mobile, 363
Madison, Dolly, 131
Madison, James, and L’Enfant, 120;
at Washington, 131, 134;
quoted, 109, 165
Madison, Rev. James, 214
Maffitt, Captain, 366, 368
Magna Charta, 204
Maison Quarrée, 164, 165
Malbone, Edward, 275
Maldonado, 330
Manassas, first battle of, 323
Maney, General, 498
Manigault, Gabriel, 271, 274
Marchand, 340
Marlborough, 259
Marquette, 331
Marshall, John, 165, 168, 214;
house of, 171-173;
at trial of Aaron Burr, 174
Marshall, Mary Willis Ambler, 172
Martian, Nicholas, 187
Martin, Governor, 241
Martin, Luther, 40
_Martin Chuzzlewit_, 521
Maryland, 101-103;
and the national capital, 108;
_see also_ Annapolis, Baltimore, Frederick
Maryland Historical Society, 11, 26, 44
Mason, George, 204
Massachusetts Bay, Puritan landing at, 249
Massacre Island, 332
_Maubila_, 328
Maury, D. H., defends Mobile, 374
Maury, M. F., 181
Maybrick, Mrs., 362
Maynard, Horace, 467-469
Maynard, Washburn, 468
Mayo, Capt. Isaac, 70
Mayo, Major, 156
McClellan, General, xxix, 188, 216
McClung, Capt. P., 469
McCrady, Gen. E., quoted, 254, 273
McCulloh, H. E., 227
McDuffie, Governor, xxi, xxii
McGillivray, 340
McIntosh, Gen. Lachlan, 296, 318
McKinley, President, 320
McLaw, 471
McMahon, Hon. John V. L., 44
McNutt, Governor, 440
Meigs, M. C., quoted, 283
Meldrim, Hon. P. W., quoted, 298
_Memoirs_, Moultrie’s, 266
Memphis, 335
Menefee, Mrs. E., 531
Menendez, 559-567, 572
Menendez, Don Pedro, 568
Mercie’s statue of Lee, 178
_Mercury_, the Charleston, xxvii
_Merrimac_, the, 187
Mexico, 146, 331, 346;
St. Denis visits, 335;
war with, 398, 504, 549;
gold mines of, 415
“Middle Plantation,” 190
Middleton, Arthur, 270
Mignot, Louis R., 275
Milledge, Governor, 311
Miller, Wm. K., xxviii
Milliken’s Bend, 442
_Minden_, the, 37
Minge, James, 191
Mississippi, territorial government of, organized, 437;
_see also_ Vicksburg
Mississippi Bubble, Law’s, 336
Mississippi River, 329;
French and the, 334;
De Soto and the, 413, 414;
and the treaty of 1763, 422;
and the great West, 426
Moale, John, 6-8, 11
Mobile, xxx, 417, 434;
Peter J. Hamilton on, 327-378;
historic background, 327-332;
early settlements, 332-338;
character of early, 339, 340;
the English drive out the French, 342-346;
the Spanish era, 347-352;
becomes American, 352-354;
in the War of 1812, 354-356;
American development, 356-364;
in the Civil War, 364-375;
in recent times, 375-378
Mobile & Ohio R. R., 361
Mohawks, 478
Mon Louis Island, 341
Monacans, 102
Monahoacs, 102
Monnokasi, 77
Monocacy, 76;
battle at, 141
Monockessy, 77
Monroe, President, 165, 180, 320, 492, 516;
at William and Mary College, 207;
at Louisville, 531;
orders troops into Florida, 577
Montezuma, 306
Montgomery, xix, 553;
George Petrie on, 379-410;
origin of, 380-384;
the early settlement
described, 384-386;
visit of Lafayette, 388-390;
social and economic history, 390-395;
State capital moved to, 396;
the war with Mexico, 398;
influence of Yancey, 399-405;
capital of the Confederacy, 407;
inauguration of President Davis, 408;
after-days, 409
Montgomery, Lemuel, 383
Montgomery, Richard, 384
Montgomery, Sir Robt., quoted, 299, 301
Montgomery R. R., 393
Monticello, 311
Montrose, 343, 346, 350, 368
Monumental Church, Richmond, 170
Moore, Arthur, 380
Moore, Francis, 303
Moore, Governor, 574
Moore, Maurice, 232
Moore, Roger, 233
Moore, Tom, quoted, 104, 131, 146
Moravians in Georgia, 305
More, Hannah, 316
Morris Island, 282
Moss, Major, 174
Moultrie, Gen. W., quoted, 266, 286
Mound-builders, the, 478
Mount Clare, 18
Mount Olivet, 498
Mount Vernon, 125, 330, 492
Mowatt, Mrs., 363
Murfreesboro, battle of, 496
Murphy’s Circulating Library, 33
Murray, Hon. C. A., quoted, 268
Muse, Col. H., quoted, 212
N
Nacochtank, 101
_Nahant_, the, 324
Nanipacna, 330
Napoleon I., 357
Napoleon III., 273
Narvaez, 329
Nash, General, 484
Nashborough, 484
Nashville, xxx, 450, 462, 474;
Gates P. Thruston on, 477-501;
prehistoric times, 477-479;
founding of, 479-483;
naming of, 484;
the founder, 485;
Indian attacks, 486-489;
Nashborough becomes Nashville, 489;
visit of Lafayette, 490;
Andrew Jackson in, 491-494;
the home of James K. Polk, 494;
becomes capital of Tennessee, 494;
Civil War, 495-498;
recent history, 498-501
Natchez, 353;
settlement of, 433
Natchez Indians, 340
“Nat Turner Insurrection,” 170
Naval Academy, U. S., 68-72
Nelson, Thos. A. R., 468
Neufchâtel, liturgy of, 291
Newbern, N. C., 223, 228, 233
Newburyport, Mass., 311
Newport, Capt., at Jamestown, 154
Newport News, 188
Newport, U. S. Naval Academy removed to, 70
New Mexico, 478
New Orleans, xvi, xix, xxx, xxxii, 338, 342, 346, 352, 358, 434, 436,
517;
Grace King on, 411-431;
background of, 411-413;
De Soto’s explorations, 413;
La Salle’s scheme, 414-416;
Iberville’s Success, 416;
Bienville’s work, 416-418;
growth of, 418-422;
Spain acquires, 423-427;
French re-acquire, 428;
ceded to United States, 428;
battle of New Orleans, 430;
the city to-day, 430
New Philadelphia, 380
Newton, N. C., 235
New York, xvi, xx, 269;
Dutch settlement of, 249;
and the national capital, 108
Nicholson, Capt. James, 22
Nicholson, Gov. Francis, 194
“None Such,” 155
North America, discovery of, 151
North Carolina, 449, 489;
cedes Western lands, 451;
_see also_ Wilmington
North Point, British attack on, 37
Northwest Territory, 511
Nott’s _Types of Mankind_, 362
O
Oconostota, quoted, 486
Ogle, Governor, 62
Oglethorpe, Gen. James E., at Savannah, 294, 296, 302, 306, 307, 310,
315, 324, 575
Ohio River, French occupy, 335
Ohio Valley, 510 _ff._
Oliver, the stamp distributor, 197
O’Malley, Charles J., quoted, 534
_Oneida_, the, 368
Opechancanough, 190
Ordinance of 1787, 437
Orleans College, 358
Orleans, Duke of, 418
_Orleans_, the, 517
O’Reilly and New Orleans, 424
Orton House, 232
Oyster Point, settlements on, 252
P
Paca homestead, the, 62
Pacquereau, Captain, 258
Page, General, 366, 372
Panuco, 329
Paris, 170;
Treaty of, 422
Parker, Sir Peter, besieges Charleston, 264, 290
Parliament, Act of 1748, 276
“Patawomeke,” 102
Paulding, James K., 516
Peabody, George, 500
Peabody Institute, 44
Peabody Normal College, 500
Peach Bottom, and site for national capital, 108
_Peggy Stewart_, burning of the, 63, 65
Pelham Cadets, 371
Pelham, Peter, 214
Pemberton, General, at Vicksburg, 435, 443, 444
Pendleton, Edmund, and the Williamsburg Convention, 201, 202
Penn, Wm., 21, 124, 572
Pensacola, 333, 336, 344, 347, 371
Percy, Commodore, attacks Fort Bowyer, 355
Perier, 340
Peter the Great, 340
Peterborough, Lord, 158
Petigru, James L., quoted, 291
Petrovich, Alexis, 340
Petrie, George, on Montgomery, xix, 379-410
Phi Beta Kappa Society organized, 207
Philadelphia, xvi, 21, 87, 269;
and the Continental Congress, 106, 203;
and the Convention of 1787, 201;
and the national capital, 108, 114, 126;
compared with Charleston in 1796, 267
_Philip and Charles_, the, 11
Philippines, 196
Phillips, Philip, 362
Pickens, Governor, 388
Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg, 472
Piedmontese, the, in Ga., 306
Pierce, Franklin, 140
Pike, Albert, 547, 548, 552
Pilgrims at Plymouth, 154, 557
Pillans, Engineer, 369
Pinckney, C. C., 270, 276
Pinckney, Thos., 270, 276
Pinkney, Wm., 40
Piñeda in Florida, 329
Pittsburg, 511, 517, 518, 521
Placide, H., 363
Plains of Abraham, 342
Plymouth, 154, 300, 331, 558
Pocahontas, 101, 153, 159
Poe, David, 25
Poe, E. A., xxvii, 25, 174
Poe, Mrs. David, 25
Polk, James K., 70, 140, 492;
at Nashville, 492, 494;
tomb of, 495
Polytechnic Society, Louisville, 531
Pompeii, 249
Pont Chatooga, 342
Pope, Alexander, 316
Pope, F., vision of, 104, 105, 147
Pope, Warden, 531
Porcher, 273
Port Bill, the, 21
Port Hudson, 441
Port Royal, S. C., 249, 250, 572
_Port Royall_, the, 250, 251
_Postboy_, the New York, 83
Potomac and the national capital, 110, 111, 114, 116
Pott, Dr. John, 190
Powhatan, 101, 146, 152, 155
Pratt, Enoch, 44
Prentice, George D., 505, 532
Prentiss, S. S., 440, 490
Presbyterians in Knoxville, 449
Price, Thomas, 83
Princeton College, 208
Prioleau, 290
Privateers, Baltimore, 38
Provost, Gen. A., besieges Charleston, 266
Pueblo Builders, 478
Pulaski, 25, 294, 299, 303, 318-320
Purchas, Rev. Samuel, 153
Puritans, 249, 312
Purviance, 22
Pushmataha, 355
Q
Quapaws, 539, 540
Quebec, 334, 384
Queen Anne, 61, 158
Quincy, Josiah, 244, 267;
quoted, 259
Quitman, General, 398
R
Rains, General, 498
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 152, 219, 259, 331
Ramsay, Allan, 274
Ramsey, Doctor, quoted, 486
Randall house, 63
Randolph, Edmund, 201
Randolph, John, 165, 180, 512
Randolph, Peyton, 199
Randolph, Richard, 159
Randolph, Wm., 159
Randolph-Macon College, 208
Ravenel, Dr. St. Julien, discovers commercial value of phosphate
deposits in South Carolina, 279
Ravenels, the, 273
Raymond, John T., 363
_Ready Money_, 392
_Red Gauntlet_, the, 366
Reeves, Lieutenant, 28
_Republican_, the Montgomery, 383
Revolution, American, Southern cities in, _see_ individual cities
Rhett, Lieutenant-Colonel, defends Charleston, 231, 256
Rhyner, Mr., 288
Ribaut, Captain Jean, 249, 560-564
Rice, cultivation of, in the South, xvii, 277
Richmond, xxvi, xxvii, xxix, 206, 409;
Wm. Wirt Henry on, 151-183;
site discovered by Captain John Smith, 154;
founded by Col. W. E. Byrd, 156;
Act of Virginia legislature in 1742, 158;
St. John’s Church, 159;
incorporated in 1782, 162;
the Capitol, 164-170;
The Marshall house, 171-173;
the Swan tavern, 174;
the Valentine Museum, 175;
The Civil War, 176-178
Ridgely, Charles, 15
Ridout, John, house of, 64
Rives, Amélie, 377
Roanoke Island, colony on, 152
Robertson, Colonel, takes possession of Mobile, 342
Robertson, Harrison, 534
Robertson, James, 450, 490, 501;
at Nashville, 479, 481-485, 487
Robespierre, 93
Robin, the Abbé, 16
Rogers, Randolph, 168
Romans’s expedition, 344
Rome, 104-106
Rose, George B., on Little Rock, 537-556
Rose, Rev. Robert, 159
Rosecrans, General, 498
Rose Hill, 86
Ross, General, 134, 136
Ross, Rev. Doctor, 95
Roulstone, George, 457
Rule, Lucien V., on Louisville, 503-535
Russell’s _Magazine_, xxvii
Russia, 340
Rutledge, Hugh, 270
Rutledge, John, 270
Ryan, Father, 377
S
St. Anne’s Church, Annapolis, 53, 54
St. Augustine, xvi, xxix, 256;
G. R. Fairbanks on, 557-581;
settled and laid out by Menendez, 559-566;
burned by Drake, 567-570;
rebuilt, 570;
captured by Captain Davis, 571;
captured by Governor Moore, 574;
invested by Oglethorpe, 575;
ceded to England, 576;
restored to Spain, 577;
United States acquires, 577;
in Civil War, 578;
recent improvements, 580
St. Cecilia Society, Charleston, 260, 290
St. Charles Royal Hospital, 425
St. Denis, explorations of, 335, 338
St. Francis, order of, 571
St. James’s Church, Wilmington, N. C., 244
St. John’s Church, Richmond, 159-161
St. John’s College, Annapolis, 55, 56
St. John’s Parish, Ga., 312
St. Lawrence, French occupy the, 331
St. Louis, 413, 542
St. Mary’s, Md., 1, 53
St. Mary’s Church, Annapolis, 66
St. Mary’s County, Md., 5
St. Mémin, 275
St. Michael’s Church, Charleston, 287, 288, 291
St. Paul’s Church, Baltimore, 11
St. Paul’s Church, Edenton, 225, 226
St. Philip’s Church, Brunswick, N. C., 233
St. Philip’s Church, Charleston, 254, 255, 286-288
St. Stanislaus, order of, 273
Salem, N. C., 222
Salzburgers, the, in Ga., 79, 297, 305
San Domingo, revolution in, 32
San Jacinto, battle of, 491
San Marco, Castle of, 571, 575, 576, 581
Sands, Captain, 364
Santa Anna, 395
_Santee_, the, 72
Saunders, Colonel, 469
Savannah, xxx;
Pleasant A. Stovall on, 293-325;
early settlements, 293-298;
Oglethorpe’s colony, 300-306;
Tomochichi, 306-308;
Wesley, 308-310;
Whitefield, 310;
the Revolution, 311-320;
the Civil War, 322-324
_Savannah_, the, 320, 325
Saxe-Weimar, Duke of, 358
Sayle, Gov. Wm., 250 _ff._
Schley, Thomas, 77
Schultz, Henry, xxviii
Scotch-Irish, in Tennessee, 449, 450
Scott, Gen. Winfield, 118;
at William and Mary College, 208
Sebastopol, siege of, 280
Secession, Act of, 165
Seibels, Col. J. J., 398
Selooe, 562
Seminole War, 578
Semmes, Raphael, 364, 366
Seven Years’ War, the, 342
Sevier, Ambrose H., 548-550
Sevier, John, 450, 479, 485;
and the battle of Etowah, 461;
made governor of Tennessee, 462
Shafer, Sara Andrew, on Annapolis, 47-73;
on Frederick Town, 75-99
Shaftesbury, the eighth Lord, 254
Sharkey, Judge W. L., 440
Sharpe, Governor, quoted, 12, 14, 16, 21
Shelby, Evan, 480
Shelby, Isaac, 479
Shepherd, Alexander R., and the city of Washington, 144
Sherman, Gen. W. T., xxx, 498;
at Charleston, 288;
captures Savannah, 324
Shields, General, 398
Shockoe’s Creek, 156
Silk culture in Ga., 304
Silk Hope plantation, 257
Silsbee, N., 141
Simms, Wm. Gilmore, xxvii, 273;
quoted, 264, 288
Simrall, H. F., on Vicksburg, 433-447
Sioussat, St. George L., on Baltimore, 1-45
Sixth Massachusetts Regiment in Baltimore, 40
_Sketch Book_, Irving’s, 522
Slavery, negro, introduced into Florida, 572
Slocum, at Red Fort, 374
Slough, Mayor, surrenders Mobile to Federal forces, 375
Smallwood, General, 26
Smith, Capt. John, 48, 102, 152-155
Smith, Capt. Samuel, 26
Smith, Dr. John Lawrence, 273
Smith, Gov. Thomas, 277
Smith, Joseph, 83
Smith, Robert H., 362
Smith, Sol., 363
Snowden, Yates, on Charleston, xx, 249-292
Somers, Sir George, 151
South America, Spanish in, 331
South Carolina, _see_ Charleston
South Carolina College, 208
South Carolina Railroad Co., xx
South Mountain, battle of, 94
_Southern Literary Messenger_, xxvii
_Southern Review_, xxvii, 272
Southwest Territory, 451, 454
_Souvenirs of Travels_, Le Vert’s, 362
Spain, and War of 1742, 297;
in the West Indies, 328;
claims of, in United States, 334;
acquires
Florida, 347;
acquires New Orleans, 423-427;
in the Mississippi Valley, 433, 436;
_see also_ Mobile, New Orleans, St. Augustine
Spanish, destroy Port Royal Colony, 250;
attack Charleston, 256-258;
in Georgia, 302;
at Mobile, 329, 330, 331, 336;
at Pensacola, 332;
at New Orleans, 346, 423-427;
Burr’s flight to the, 353;
_see also_ Spain
Sparks, Jared, quoted, 34
Speed, John Gilmer, 525
Spencer, settles in Kentucky, 479
Spotswood, Governor, 196, 210
Spring Hill Redoubt, 294, 318
Stagg, Charles, 211
Stamp Act, 82, 83, 196, 199, 206, 238
Stanhope, 259
Stansberry, Mrs., 288
Stanton, E. M., 283
_Statesman_, the London, quoted, 136
Steele, in attack on Spanish Fort, 372
Steele, General, captures Little Rock, 553
Stephenson, George, 278
Stevenson, Dr. Henry, 12, 18
Stevenson, Dr. John, 12, 14
“Stevenson’s Folly,” 18
Stewart, Anthony, 63
Stewart, Doctor, 88
Stewart, George N., 362
Stewart, Peggy, house of, 64
Stiles, President Ezra, quoted, 201
Stone, Governor, 52, 59, 109
Stovall, P. A., on Savannah, 293-325
Strawbridge, Robert, establishes Methodism in Md., 82
Stuart, David, 122
Stuart, Gilbert, 274, 531
Sullivan’s Island, 256
_Sumter_, the, 366
Sunbury, Ga., 296, 312, 313
_Susan Constant_, the, 151
Susquehanna, the, and the national capital, 111
Susquehannoghs, the, 56, 76
“Swamp Angel,” the, 282
_Swan_, the, 366
Swan Tavern, Richmond, 174
T
Tampico, 329
Taney, R. B., 60; at Frederick, 92
Tarleton, Colonel, 84
Taylor, Hannis, 377
Taylor, Zachary, 504, 530, 532
Tazewell, John, 201
Teach, 230, 231
Teasdale, John, 277
_Tecumseh_, the, 370
Tennessee, _see_ Knoxville and Nashville
Tennessee Historical Society, 482
_Tennessee_, the, 369, 371
Tennessee, University of, 458, 459, 474
Tennyson, quoted, 507
Tensaws, the, 341
_Terra Mariæ_, 51, 75
Texas, xxvi, 207, 332, 335, 395
Thackeray, W. M., 78;
quoted, 182
Theus, 274
Thomas, Gen., xxx, 497, 498
Thompson, John R., 168, 180
Thorington, Col. John H., 391
Thornton, Dr. Wm., and the Capitol at Washington, 121
Throckmorton, Major, and Charles Dickens, 522
Thruston, Gates P., on Nashville, 477-501
Ticknor, Captain, 395, 398
_Times_, the London, quoted, 468
Timrod, Henry, xxvii, 273, 274, 288
“Tippecanoe and Tyler too” campaign, 395
Tobacco, cultivation of, in the South, xvii
Toleration Act of 1649 in Va., 51, 52
Tolstoy, xxx
Tomochichi, 306-308
Tondee’s tavern, 319
Tonty, 334
Tories sentenced at Frederick, 85
Torpedo, the, in naval warfare, 280
Townsend, George Alfred, quoted, 1
Tragabigzanda, 154
Traille, Major, 287
Trapnall, Frederick W., 548, 552
“Traveller,” 178
Treaty, of Ghent, 356;
of Paris in 1763, 422;
of 1783, 347;
of 1791 with the Cherokees, 454, 458;
of 1795 with Spain, 437
Tree, Ellen, 363
Trent, W. P., Introduction xv-xxxiii
Trenton, Congress at, 108
Tripoli, war with, 71
Troop, Capt. Robert, 105
_True Relation_, Smith’s, quoted, 154
Tryon, Governor, 228, 233, 238
Tuscaloosa, Alabama capital removed from, 396, 397
Tuscarora, 76
Twining, Thomas, quoted, 124
Tyler, John, Sr., 200, 201
Tyler, Lyon G., on Williamsburg, 185-217
Tyler, President John, 140, 180, 214;
at William and Mary College, 207
Tybee Island, 317, 318, 323, 324
Tyndall, 272
_Types of Mankind_, Dr. Nott’s 362
U
Ursulines Convent, New Orleans, 420, 421, 425
University of Maryland, 33
University of Pennsylvania, 208
University of Virginia, 208
V
Valangin, liturgy of, 291
Valentine, E. V., 175, 176
Valentine, Mann S., 275
Valentine Museum, 175
Valley Forge, 85
Van Buren, Martin, 464, 492
Vanderbilt, Cornelius, endows Vanderbilt University, 498
Vanderbilt University, 500
Vanderlip, Frank A., on Washington, 101-150
Van Scheliha, 369
Vaudreuil, 341
Vick, Wm., 438
Vicksburg, xxx;
H. F. Simrall on, 433-447;
late origin of, 433-438;
description of, 438-440;
siege of, 440-447
Vincennes, G. R. Clark captures, 510, 514
Vine and Olive Company, the, 357
Vining, Thomas, 111, 112
_Viper_, the, 239, 240
Virginia, and the national capital, 108, 116;
gives bust of Lafayette to France, 173;
English colonization of, 249;
legislature of, and Louisville, 514;
_see also_ Richmond and Williamsburg.
W
Waddell, Hugh, 238, 239
Wagner, massacre of, 284
Wakefield, Ala., 353
Walker, Percy, 361
Wallace, Gen. Lew, defends Washington, 141
Walnut Hills, Vicksburg, 433, 438
Walter’s _Flora Caroliniana_, 272
War of 1812, Southern cities in, _see_ individual cities
War, the Civil, _see_ individual cities
War Office, U. S., 126
Warrenton, Mississippi, 433
Washburn, Rev. Cephas, 544
Washington, City of, xxix;
F. A. Vanderlip on, 101-150;
prediction of, 103-106;
selection of site, 106-115;
Washington’s influence, 115-119;
Act of 1790, 116;
planning of, 119;
naming of, 120;
the Capitol, 121;
the White House, 125;
seat of government removed to, 126;
agitation for removal of capital, 130;
War of 1812, 131-136;
rebuilding, 137;
ante-bellum days, 138-141;
the Civil War, 141;
the reforms of Shepherd, 142-146
Washington, George, 85, 87, 101, 150, 168, 303, 340, 492;
in Baltimore, 24;
at Annapolis, 59, 72;
at Frederick, 96;
in French and Indian War, 78-80, 85;
quoted, 80, 148;
nominated to command of Continental armies, 87;
and the genesis of Washington City, 103-119;
lays corner-stone of Capitol, 122;
retirement of, 125;
Houdon’s statue of, 165;
Crawford’s statue of, 166, 167;
in Richmond, 173;
at Yorktown, 187;
at Williamsburg, 196, 214;
in Charleston, 286;
in Savannah, 299, 320, 325;
and William Blount, 452, 453
Washington, Wm. A., 84
Washington College, Pa., 208
Washington Monument, the, 36, 44
Watauga, settlement of, 450, 479, 480, 484, 486
Watters’s Battery, 364
Watterson, Henry, 506, 534
Watkins, George C., 548
Wayne, Gen. Anthony, at Savannah, 318
Weatherford, 355
Webster, Daniel, xxiii, 140, 141, 464;
quoted, 117
_Weehawken_, the, 324
Wegg, Atty.-Gen. E. R., 343
Weld’s _Travels_, 214
Wellington, xxx, 132;
in Spain, 357
Wells, W. C., _Theory of Dew_, 272
Wesley, John, in Georgia, 298, 308-310
Wesley Monumental Church, Savannah, 310
West, Benjamin, 274
West, Joseph, 252
West Florida, 344, 346, 352
Westminster Abbey, 271
Whetstone Point, Md., 6, 11,
22
White and the national capital, 115
White House, the, 125, 126, 482;
of the Confederacy, 178, 179
White, Hugh L., 463-465
White, James, founds Knoxville, 449, 451, 452
Whitefield, George, in Georgia, 287, 298, 308, 310, 311
“White’s Fort,” 451
Whitney and the cotton-gin, 298, 306
Whittier, 98
Wilkinson, Gen. James, takes Mobile, 352, 353
William III., 54, 57
William and Mary College, 194, 199, 201, 206-208, 214-216;
_see also_ Williamsburg
William of Orange, 61
Williamsburg, xxix, 162, 296;
Lyon G. Tyler on, 185-217;
its site, 185-188;
settlement of, 190;
Bacon’s Rebellion, 191;
capital removed to, 194;
before the Revolution, 196-201;
the Convention of 1776, 201-204;
capital removed to Richmond, 206;
William and Mary College, 206-208;
social life in, 208-213;
the Civil War, 215;
since the war, 216
Williamson, Hugh, 228
Wills, Rev. John, 233
Wilmington, N. C., xxx;
Bishop J. B. Cheshire on, 219-247;
physical background, 219-222;
neighboring towns, 223-234;
founding of, 234;
early history, 235-238;
resists Stamp Act, 238-240;
in the Revolution, 240-244;
in the Civil War, 244-247
Wilson, Alexander, 504, 518
Wilson, Augusta Evans, 376, 377
Winder, General, at Bladensburg, 132
_Winona_, the, 368
Wirt, Wm., quoted, 174
Wise, Henry A., 168
Wolseley, Lord, on the siege of Charleston, 280
Woodbine, 355
Woodward, Captain, quoted, 380, 388
Wragg, Wm., 271
Wright, General, 315
Wright, Gov. Sir J., 294, 312
Wright’s Ferry and the national capital, 108
Wythe, George, 160, 213, 214
Y
Yale College, 208
Yancey at Montgomery, 379, 399-404, 408
Yarborough, John W., xxviii
Yeamans, Sir John, 229, 231, 251
Yell, Archibald, 548
Yerger, Senator George, 440
York, Pa., 10, 11
Yorktown, xix, 24, 165, 186, 188, 244, 299
Z
Zogbaum, Rufus Fairchild, 276
[Illustration]
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Hyphenation,
italicization, and spelling of proper names have been standardized.
In the original, the caption of the Frontispiece was on the following
page. Here it is placed directly under the illustration.
In this version, the illustrations are placed differently on the page
than in the original.
Page number references in the index are as published in the original
publication and have not been checked for accuracy in this eBook.
Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following
changes:
Page ix: “PROVINCIAL FORCES 6” “PROVINCIAL FORCES 9”
Page 67: “Royal, Republican,” “Royal, Republicans,”
Page 107: “City was indentified with” “City was identified with”
Page 122: “which the Commisioners” “which the Commissioners”
Page 138: “with woful languor” “with woeful languor”
Page 220: “Immmediately in its front” “Immediately in its front”
Page 273: “and icthyologist” “and ichthyologist”
Page 275: “300 portraits dur a” “300 portraits during a”
Page 300: “But it w reserved” “But it was reserved”
Page 386: “the vocifferous patriot” “the vociferous patriot”
Page 397: “was ready in in the fall” “was ready in the fall”
Page 530: “contents was discharged” “contents were discharged”
Page 558: “siempre fiel cuidad” “siempre fiel ciudad”
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