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OLD
NORTHAMPTON

BY

CHARLES DOWNER HAZEN, Ph.D.
Professor of History in Smith College

AN ADDRESS
Delivered liefore the Faculty and Students of Smith College.,
June 7, igO/}.y on the occasion ofthe Two Hundred
and Fiftieth Anniversary of the
Founding of Northampton

CAMBRIDGE
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1904

Copyright, igo4
By Charles Downer Hazen

OLD
NORTHAMPTON

IN sixteen hundred and fifty-four Louis
the Fourteenth, called the Great, was
king of France and of Navarre. The
splendors of Versailles had not yet broken
upon the astonished world, but the king
was already the focal point of the interest of
Europe in war, in diplomacy, and in man
ners. He was also an American monarch
ruling over an indefinite and growing forest
kingdom. French explorers were heroically
plunging into American woods, and travers
ing American waters, purposing the greater
glory of their brilliant king. Yet in that
year Lake Ontario and Lake Erie were but
faintly known, and the Ohio River had not
yet been discovered. A quarter of a century
must still elapse before La Salle should make
his wonderful voyage down the Mississippi,
proving at least that not that way lay the

Old Northampton

road to coveted Cathay, and still another
quarter of a century must go by before New
Orleans should be founded.
In sixteen hundred and fifty-four Germany
was just beginning to recover from the
frightful ravages of the Thirty Years' War,
in which she had lost a third of her popula
tion and had suifered indescribable woe.
In sixteen hundred and fifty-four the Great
Elector was struggling, by craft and energy,
by a scrupulous indifference to scruples, to
weld the poor and scattered fragments of
Prussia into a state that should command
respect, and was largely succeeding. His
capital, Berlin, was an inconsiderable village
of six thousand inhabitants.
In sixteen hundred and fifty-four Queen
Christina, the brilliant and erratic daughter
of Gustavus Adolphus, abdicated her throne
of Sweden and entered upon that strange
life of retirement which furnished amazement
and entertainment to Europe for many years
to come.
In sixteen hundred and fifty-four Oliver
Cromwell was Lord High Protector of Great

Old Northampton

Britain. Originally a Huntingdon farmer,
he had risen with unexampled swiftness and
by sheer force of will and insight to a position
of unquestioned primacy among English-
speaking men. He moved grandly through
the most tortuous and tumultuous period of
English history, audacious, adroit, masterful
"in the world of action," says the most
judicial of English historians, "what Shake
speare was in the world of thought, the
greatest because the most typical English
man of all times."
While this most typical Englishman of
history was endeavoring to govern a turbulent
state in a sea of trouble, other Englishmen,
sharing his beliefs and ambitions, were en
gaged upon a work to be rated no less high
in the long result of time. Cromwell himself
is said to have been at one time on the point
of leaving England for America forever.
He came not, but others came, and the great
dispersion of the English race began, — the
most momentous fact in modern history.
Our national motto has ever been, "Go
West, go West, go further West," a motto

Old Northampton

nearly as old as the settlement of this country.
The colonists were fully conscious of this
impulse in their blood. Hardly had the few
settlements been founded on the eastern
shore than the enterprising adventurers took
the Indian trails, and as early as 1633 the
fame of the Connecticut River — the long,
fresh, rich river, as these pioneers called it —
began to be bruited along Massachusetts
Bay. Whole bodies of men or churches
moved over a hundred miles westward into
the wilderness. New Haven on the Sound,
Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor were
established by people from eastern towns;
finally Springfield, in 1636, the sole frontier
post of Massachusetts in the west. The
colonization of this valley was thus perhaps
the earliest illustration in our history of the
potent western fever. Religious differences
were involved in the settlement of some of
these earlier towns, though the economic
motive was always present. The latter, how
ever, was the sole cause of the settlement
of Northampton. Men came first to these
meadows for the simple reason that they

Old Northampton

believed they could make a better living here
than where they were : which is the very
reason why men have gone to Ohio, Illinois,
and the Pacific slope. We may call the
founding of this town a typically American
act, in a sense in which the founding of
Massachusetts Bay, of Rhode Island and
New Hampshire, was not, for in those cases
motives were in play which have had only a
slight role in our history. The plan for the
settlement originated in Hartford, and it was
at first chiefly Hartford men who came here.
There were with them a few from the other
river towns to the south. These people
bought the land from the Indians for one
hundred fathoms of wampum and ten coats.
A hundred fathoms of wampum were prob
ably worth a hundred and twenty-five dollars.
There is no documentary proof of the
route by which the founders of this town
made their entrance here, but the probability
is that they came by the course which after
ward became the travelled way to the towns
to the south. This roadway entered the
town very nearly where West Street is now

Old Northampton

located. The crossing at Mill River was at
or near the site of the present bridge, though
very many years were to pass before there
were bridges anywhere. In what way their
household goods were conveyed hither,
whether on horseback or in ox-carts, is not
known. On what day they arrived, how
many there were in the first company of
settlers, and where they choose their home
lots, are all matters of conjecture. Un
questionably some of them came in 1654.
Two years later there were about twenty-
five families here.
The first home lots, usually consisting of
four acres, were allotted on what are now
King and Pleasant, Market and Hawley,
Bridge and Main streets. These designa
tions, needless to say, did not come into use
for a long while, — indeed, until the nine
teenth century.
The feeling of isolation, the bitter home
lessness, the sense of separation from all that
had thus far been accomplished in this world
for the greater profit and dignity of men,
society, institutions, arts, letters, comforts, the

Old Northampton

influences that elevate and soften and endear
life, these must have been the dominant
sensations with the founders of North
ampton, struggle with however much Puri
tan stoicism they might summon up to
keep the emotion in check. They were on
the lonely and exposed border, — a small,
obscure, poor, and uneducated group of men.
In 1654 there were probably not seventy-five
thousand Englishmen in the New World, and
these were widely scattered. A long, thin
line of settlements, fringing the wild shores
of the Atlantic from Maine to New York,
and some settlements in Maryland and Vir
ginia — that was all. New York, the Jerseys,
were under the Dutch and Swedes. William
Penn had not yet received the charter which
he coveted. Neither Philadelphia nor Balti
more had yet been founded. The Carolinas
and Georgia had as yet no charters and no
settlers. A feeble Spanish colony was cling
ing amid southern fevers to an uncertain life
at St. Augustine. As these founders of our
town unpacked their few goods that night
of their arrival here, the sense of their utter

8 Old Northampton
loneliness must have been crushing indeed.
To the east of them, unbroken solitude for
sixty miles or more. Lancaster, northeast of
Worcester, was the nearest settlement in that
direction, and that was far from the rest of
the settlements, which were close upon the
Bay, and Lancaster had only been founded
the year before. Along the line traversed in
the main by the Boston and Albany Railroad
there was no settlement between Cambridge
and Springfield. Worcester was not yet.
Indeed, for forty years after the settlement
of Northampton a great part of the county
of Worcester was a wilderness. To the
south, Springfield was the nearest village, and
the only one in Massachusetts. To the west
Albany was the nearest, and to the north
there was no sign of civilization until the
shores of the St. Lawrence were reached
and the fleur-de-lis was seen floating upon
its white background from the Plains of
Abraham. Every step in the process of settlement
that has carried us to the Pacific has been,
of course, simply an advance to a new

Old Northampton

frontier. The founders of Northampton
were true frontiersmen in their day. Cour
age they had, "steadfastness in the bold
design." There was no thought of drawing
back, but poverty of every sort, of things
material, intellectual, and social, was the
chief characteristic of their lives. The only
poverty they did not know was that of
opportunity. It takes an effort of the imagination to
picture the life of this town two centuries
ago. There were no roads, no bridges, no
mails, no newspapers to keep up the connec
tion with the human race. A kind of cart
way was early established to Springfield, but
toward Boston or Albany, or the north, no
cart could travel for many years. Our town
representatives went to the legislature on
horseback by the old Bay Path, merely a
bridle-path through the woods. The Indians
had the custom of burning the woods each
year, which kept them free from undergrowth
and made them penetrable in every direction
on foot or horse ; but that was all.
As late as 1799 there were only seven

IO Old Northampton
post-offices in the Commonwealth of Massa
chusetts. It was in 1792 that Northampton
was first made a postal centre, under the
administration of Washington. Previous to
that time the nearest one was Springfield,
and every one who had occasion to visit that
town was expected to bring whatever mail-
matter there might be which was destined
for Northampton or the neighboring towns.
No regular means of conveyance up and
down the valley then existed, and very little
correspondence was carried on by persons
living in the interior towns. Only an occa
sional traveller or an itinerant tradesman
brought news of the outside world.
The first regular stage line was not estab
lished until 1 792, when the town was already
one hundred and forty years old, and this
went only once a week from Springfield to
Hanover, New Hampshire. On Tuesday
one might start north, on Thursday one
might start south. There were no news
papers to increase the gaiety of the town
during all this period, for though "The
Hampshire Gazette " is older than " The

Old Northampton 1 1
London Times," it was not founded until
1786. Surely the people of Northampton
were in a position to appreciate the bless
ings of solitude.
Yet here and under such conditions there
was planted what, after two hundred and fifty
years, Baedeker, the objective, passionless,
disillusioned observer of the modern world,
recognizes as " a lovely, elm-shaded city, the
frontispiece of the book of beauty which
Nature opens wide in the Connecticut
Valley." Much must have been accom
plished during that time.
" The gist of the matter is, not where a
man starts from, but where he comes out,"
says Lowell; and this is as true of a town
as of an individual. The men who founded
Northampton were manual laborers prepared
to wrest their fortune from the soil. No
profession was represented in that little band
that found its way from Hartford hither two
hundred and fifty years ago.
For seventy-five years no physician was to
reside here, and lawyers everywhere through
out the colonies were largely a product of the

12 Old Northampton
eighteenth century. But no sooner was the
necessary work of axe and hammer and saw
fairly under way than these Englishmen —
for most of them had been born in England
— sought to enrich and deepen the local life.
And thus the minister and the schoolmaster
were added to the town.
John Cotton, the Boston divine, used to
say that he loved to sweeten his mouth with
a piece of Calvin before he went to sleep.
The taste for this heroic confection was wide
spread at this time, and was fully shared by
the founders of this town. Their leading
intellectual interest for many decades was
religion. Though only worldly considera
tions led to the settlement of Northampton,
the men who came were most devout. The
first public building erected here was ordered
shortly after their arrival, and was the meet
ing-house. It was twenty-six feet long,
eighteen feet wide, and nine feet high.
Though small, it was better than the houses
that sheltered the people, for it was of sawn
timber, while theirs were of logs. This build
ing stood at the corner of the present Court-

Old Northampton 13
House yard, probably jutting out into King
Street. It had two windows, a chimney,
probably no pulpit nor any other feature
peculiar to houses of worship. The roof was
made of thatch ; for the meadows furnished
excellent reed grass, which these men, born
and bred in England, knew how to weave
into a roof that should protect from rain.
There were no pews, but only benches with
out backs. Yet in this mean and lowly struc
ture the intellectual and spiritual life of the
town began. This was the second meeting
house built west of Lancaster, the first
having been erected in Springfield a few
years before. This building was used for
town meetings ; also for elections. To this
day in republican Switzerland the church is
frequently used as the polling place. It is
felt that the place where men worship God
is not desecrated by service to the State. At
the table where the minister sat on Sunday
or on lecture day sat at other times the
moderator of the town. Worshippers were
not summoned to church by a bell, for for
thirty years there was no bell. A drummer

14 Old Northampton
went through the streets or a trumpet was
sounded from meeting-house hill.
The origin of the New England town is an
open question, but one thing is sure, — that
the men who first settled here were not past
masters in the art of government. The
records of the town show order and system
only slowly emerging from confusion and un
certainty. By homely methods, by the steady
application of common sense, the fabric of a
vigorous and intelligent political life was
built up. These men brought with them
no finished institutions. Experimentation
was the order of the day. Town meetings
were held six or ten or twelve times a year;
for the town had much to do. All land lots
were assigned by vote of the citizens in
town meeting, and for some time no one
might sell his land without the consent of
the town. Legislation had to be enacted
against hogs, bears, wolves, crows, and dogs,
as those denizens of earth and air gave
trouble. In town meeting was chosen the
minister, and there his salary was determined.
In town meeting were elected commissioners

Old Northampton 15

to end small causes. It was the town that
voted that a boat be built at common expense
to serve as a ferry at Hockanum.
People from outside were not permitted to
come here and settle without the consent of
the citizens in town meeting, for one of the
keenest interests of every New England town
was to keep the social body free from con
tamination. As the problems of local politics arose
they were settled by common-sense methods.
Town offices were shunned, and many per
sons elected declined to serve. Consequently
a law was passed by which all who were
chosen to office must serve or pay a fine of
twenty shillings. As town meetings were
held frequently, there were many absentees.
Straightway a system of fines was voted.
Any absentee must pay a fine of twelve-
pence, and if absent from the meeting which
chose the selectmen, he must pay two
shillings sixpence "unless the delinquent
can give some just cause and the Towne so
judge of it." If any man should leave the
meeting before it was over and without

1 6 Old Northampton
permission from the moderator he should
pay twelvepence. These meetings were not
yet clothed in the dignity of the Roman
Senate. They were so disorderly that it
was necessary to provide that there should
be not more than one speaker at a time, upon
a penalty of twelvepence for every offence.
The prevalent tumultuous manner of con
ducting business was pronounced "dishon
orable to God and grievous to many persons."
Finally the custom of calling the roll at town
meeting and fining those not present was
adopted in 1690. In these ways the town
attempted to force the cooperation of all in
the civic life.
The first school was established ten years
after the arrival of the settlers, when Mr.
James Cornish was chosen first schoolmaster.
It is interesting to know that the town, em
barking upon its distinguished educational
career, voted this protagonist of culture the
princely salary of thirty dollars a year. He
was to " take the benefit," that is, to receive
tuition from the scholars too. The fact that
he stayed here only two or three years may be

Old Northampton 17
merely a coincidence. In 1687 the salary
was fixed at two hundred dollars, and the
system of scholars' fees abolished.
At the same time was established the first
grammar school which could prepare for
college. It is probable that Timothy Ed
wards, father of Jonathan Edwards, was for
some time a teacher in this school. Thus,
before the first half-century was over North
ampton had a school organization adequate
to the times.
The first schools in New England were
not free. Here, as elsewhere, pupils paid
tuition. Neither were they co-educational.
It was not until 1792, nearly one hundred
and forty years after the founding of the
town, that girls were for the first time ad
mitted to the public schools. This revolu
tionary change to co-education brought with
it another — the employment of women as
teachers as well as men, hitherto the only
ones. Thus by the close of the seventeenth cen
tury the institutional life of the town was
well established. The rude forefathers of

1 8 Old Northampton
the hamlet had planted firmly church and
state and school.
Laborious, sensible, ambitious, the town
produced in the eighteenth century a number
of leaders, altogether disproportionate to its
size, for the population in 1675 was perhaps
five hundred, in 1775 certainly less than two
thousand. Yet the fame of it had gone far
and wide throughout the colonies.
As far as I can see into the dim and in
complete records of the past of this town the
one person whose influence was most pro
found, most sympathetic, and most enduring
upon the local life was Solomon Stoddard,
the second pastor of the church. Of Boston
birth, he was graduated from Harvard at the
age of nineteen, and was the first librarian of
that college. He came here in 1670, sixteen
years after the founding of the town, and here
he lived and labored for nearly sixty years,
dying at the age of eighty-six.
It was the time when the town could take
the impress of a strong and wise personality.
" He grew up with it, moulded and shaped
the religious education of two generations,

Old Northampton 19
and died, revered, honoured, and sincerely
mourned." He was the one educated man in
the community during much of that period.
His was no local reputation. Timothy
Dwight, a former President of Yale, says in
his book of travels, which is one of the
soundest sources of early New England
history, "that he possessed, probably, more
influence than any other clerg5i'man in the
province, during a period of thirty years."
"His light and influence," said the Boston
" Weekly News Letter," " went out through
the whole country and gave a name and
reputation to the town. He was " a wise
& judiceous Casuist," says this paper in the
quaint language of the day, " whose Advice
& Council were much sought & valu'd by
the perplex'd & scrupulous." He was a
theological leader of renown, and Stoddar-
deanism was a school of thought that took
its name from him.
For many years it was his custom to
pay an annual visit to Boston. The people
flocked in crowds to hear him preach, says
a contemporary, and those who were unable

20 Old Northampton
to get into the church built stages around
the walls, so that every window was filled
with the listening multitude.
Here labored for a quarter of a century
Jonathan Edwards, laying deep the sure
foundations of his thought. Two Americans
of the eighteenth century won an interna
tional reputation as thinkers, — Benjamin
Franklin and Jonathan Edwards, — two men
as dissimilar as well could be ; the one an
experimentalist and realist, the poet of com
mon sense, as the French critic Sainte-Beuve
has called him; the other a theologian and
metaphysician, a scholar and idealist. Jona
than Edwards is the only Northamptonian,
as far as I am aware, who has penetrated that
temple of fame, as fame reveals itself to the
British mind, — the Encyclopcedia Britannica.
Let no Northamptonian think the dis
missal of Edwards from his pulpit a blot
upon the fame of this town. When Pro
fessor Allen, his latest and his admiring bi
ographer, says that the dismissal of Edwards
was indeed the salvation of the church in
Northampton, and that the people of North-

Old Northampton 21
ampton had the highest interests of them
selves and their children at stake in their
contest with their pastor, we are justified in
refusing to apologize for the action of the
town, save for the manner of it — not for the
central fact.
But leaving all this aside, the life of this
town was enriched forever by the influence
of that personality. I know of no better
description of Edwards' life in Northampton
than that given by Dr. Rose. " The reader of
the scanty records of his life here receives,"
says he, "the impression of something mys
terious, indistinct, elusive. It was a lofty
and rapt existence, apart, unearthly. ... It
was a life of amazing industry, but all its
interests were intellectual and professional.
It was the life of a scholar, — meditative,
solitary in a manner, self-centred, without
many books, ascetic, remote, untravelled,
mystical. His two companions were the in
tuition and the spirit. What can one make
of a life like that, with its twelve or thirteen
hours a day of intense study, its heavenly
preoccupations and profound reveries ? "

22 Old Northampton
One is reminded by this career of Emerson's
stirring paean to the scholar's life : " Neither
years nor books have yet availed to extirpate
a prejudice rooted in me, that a scholar is
the favorite of Heaven and Earth, the ex
cellency of his country, the happiest of men.
His duties lead him directly into the holy
ground where other men's aspirations only
point. His successes are occasions of the
purest joy to all men. Eyes is he to the blind ;
feet is he to the lame. His failures, if he is
worthy, are inlets to higher advantages."
Here lived Joseph Hawley, lawyer and
leader of men. In those critical years that
succeeded the passage of the Stamp Act,
every action of the English government was
canvassed and scrutinized. The matter was
delicate and dangerous. A discussion, able
and thorough, lasted ten years before the
colonists reached the decision to withdraw
from the British Empire. In this intellectual
contest, which preceded the military contest,
and without which the latter never could
have been, Hawley was a power. In the
Legislature, in the Provincial Congresses,

Old Northampton 23
his utterance was clear and bold and weighty.
He was the leading public man of western
Massachusetts. Some of the great phrases of the Revolu
tion, which carried nerve and flame to many
a soldier and civilian in those days of stress,
were his. The first time that the phrase
"The Parliament of Great Britain has no
right to legislate for us " was ever publicly
uttered in these colonies, was when it fell
from the lips of Hawley, in the State House
in Boston.
Years later, in 1774, when every other
leader was refusing to admit that war was
the only way out of our difficulty with Great
Britain, but was insisting that in concilia
tion lay the panacea, he sent this blunt and
prophetic assertion: " Fight we must finally,
unless Britain retreats. Our salvation de
pends upon a persevering union. Every
grievance of any one colony must be held as
a grievance to the whole, and some plan be
settled for a continuation of Congresses, even
though Congresses will soon be declared by
Parliament to be high treason."

24 Old Northampton
It was of Hawley that this story is told :
During the Revolution he was deeply de
spondent about the issue. Caleb Strong,
returning from the legislature, talked with
him and heard him say, " We shall both be
hung." " No, Major Hawley," said Strong,
"probably not more than forty will be hung
— we shall escape." "Sir," said Hawley,
aroused, " I would have you understand that
I shall be one of the first three to hang,"
Here lived Seth Pomeroy, most human
and attractive of them all, untutored leader
of men, straightforward, spontaneous, with
grit and fight in every drop of blood that
coursed through his active veins, blacksmith,
gunsmith, famous warrior against the Indians
and the French, major in the expedition
against Louisburg, member of Provincial
Congresses, his very presence anywhere worth
a battalion of soldiers, known throughout the
colony, a tower of strength.
At the very beginning of the trouble with
Great Britain it was truly said of him that he
was "very high in liberty." Stirring indeed
is what we know of his story. Worn out

Old Northampton 25

with the toil of the Second Provincial Con
gress and with his military duties, — he was
then sixty-nine years old, — about the middle
of June, 1775, he came back to Northampton
for a period of rest. Only twenty-four hours
elapsed after reaching Northampton when a
messenger arrived from General Putnam
announcing the contemplated movement
of the British upon Charlestown Heights.
"Aware that this would be the signal for
hostilities," says a recent English historian,
"he took his horse from the team and was
quickly on his way to Boston. Twice chang
ing horses on the route, all through the hours
of the night he urged his onward way, and at
noon on the day of the battle of Bunker's Hill
he reached Cambridge. There he borrowed
a mount from the Commander-in-Chief, but
the cannon fire that raked Charlestown Neck
was so hot that he did not conceive himself
justified in risking an animal not his own
property. His person, however, belonged to
himself: so he walked across the Isthmus and
up to the rail fence, where he was received
with cheers and provided with a musket."

26 Old Northampton
Toward the close of the day, continues
this writer, " the brow of Bunker's Hill was
a place of great slaughter. It was there that
Putnam, in language that came perilously
near a breach of the rule against swearing in
the Military Regulations of Massachusetts,
adjured the colonists to make a stand and
give them one shot more. Pomeroy, with
out a sword, but with a broken musket in
his hand which did as well, took upon him
self to see that his younger countrymen
marched steadily past the point of danger.
Warren never left the redoubt, for he fell
where he had fought, and he was buried where
he had fallen : a bright figure, passing out of
an early chapter of the great story as un
expectedly and irrevocably as Mercutio from
the play. Pomeroy lamented that on a day
when Warren — ardent, hopeful, and elo
quent — had fallen, he himself, ' old and use
less,' escaped unhurt. He had not long to
wait. Having resigned his post of Brigadier-
General, for which he no longer felt himself
fit, Pomeroy became a regimental officer,
and, with his seventy years upon him, went

Old Northampton 27
campaigning in the Jerseys. A course of
bivouacs brought him a pleurisy, and he died
for America just as certainly as if, like his
young friend, he had been shot through the
head at Bunker's Hill."
The most conspicuous and notable public
life that stands upon Northampton's roll of
honor is that of Caleb Strong. A direct
descendant of Elder John Strong, one of the
most prominent figures in the settlement of
Northampton, a graduate of Harvard College,
a lawyer of high standing, Caleb Strong was
the recipient of a remarkable degree of pub
lic confidence and honor. Eleven years he
was Governor of this Commonwealth, a longer
period than that allotted to any other gov
ernor in the history of the State, save to John
Hancock, to whom eleven terms were like
wise given.
When independence was declared and
Massachusetts was obliged to give herself
a constitution in place of the charter no
longer adequate to her situation, Caleb
Strong was one of the committee of four
that drew up that instrument which remained

28 Old Northampton
for forty years the fundamental law of the
State. The other three were John Adams,
Samuel Adams, and James Bowdoin. For
nine years he was State Senator, for seven
he was United States Senator. The~ highest
dignity he ever held was that of member of
the Philadelphia Convention that framed the
Constitution of the United States. In that
plain brick building in Philadelphia already
immortalized as the place from which the
Declaration of Independence was published
to the world, sat the member from North
ampton, with Washington, Hamilton, Frank
lin, Madison, Elbridge Gerry, Rufus King,
Roger Sherman, Oliver Ellsworth, Robert
Morris, Gouverneur Morris, James Wilson,
Edmund Randolph, John Rutledge, the
Pinckneys, and others, the fifty-five picked
men whom this country had chosen to save
it from its dire distress.
Lord Chatham praised the Continental
Congress as an assembly of wise men be
yond Greek or Roman fame. The Con
stitutional Convention was far wiser and
remains the most august assembly that this

Old Northampton 29
continent has ever seen. Nor was Strong
an unimportant member of it. The records
show his frequent participation in debate.
Indeed, it seems that save for him no con
stitution would have been framed, the Con
vention would have been broken up, and the
distress of this troubled country would have
become deeper and more hopeless. The
situation, briefly stated, was this : The Con
vention met in the middle of May. The
middle of July came and nothing had been
accomplished, save the engendering of bitter
ness. The large states were pitted against
the small. The former wished population
to be the standard in every branch of gov
ernment ; the latter wished equality of states
in every branch, that thus they might be
safe against the possible aggressions of the
great. The difference was clean-cut, funda
mental, and vital. Finally Connecticut sug
gested the well-known compromise of state
equality in the Senate and inequality accord
ing to population in the House. But it
seemed impossible to get a majority for
the compromise. It was seen that five

30 Old Northampton
states would favor and that probably five
would oppose ; that thus there would be no
decision. Massachusetts was a large state. Her in
terests were with Pennsylvania, Virginia,
South Carolina, and Georgia, and she had
constantly been voting with the large states.
Now Elbridge Gerry of Boston, and Caleb
Strong of Northampton, decided that the
interests of the nation were paramount to
those of the large states. They voted against
their two colleagues, King and Gorham. The
vote of Massachusetts, thus divided, was lost,
and the Connecticut compromise was adopted
by a vote of five states to four, for the voting
was by states. Elbridge Gerry and Caleb
Strong thus directly brought to a happy issue
the most vexed and threatening question that
the Convention ever had to settle.
It is pleasant to reflect that the wisdom, the
conciliatory spirit of a Northamptonian, was
a national benefaction in the most critical
moment this country had ever experienced
up to that time.
It is an ungracious task to sketch only

Old Northampton 31
three or four of the notable lives that have
had Northampton for their stage, to the
exclusion of the many, many others that
have contributed to the rich inheritance of
the town. Northampton has sent more men
to the United States Senate than any other
town in Massachusetts save Boston. In
scholarship, in literature, in war, in philan
thropy, in public spirit, Northampton has
achieved a large measure of distinction.
In local history, which must forever con
stitute the true, authentic source of legitimate
local pride, the work of Judd and Trumbull
will remain a monument of patient and
critical research.
Not only have great men lived here, but
interesting occurrences have added a lustre
to the annals of the town. Here Bancroft
conceived the idea of writing the history of
the United States while yet he was a teacher
on Round Hill. Here Motley, the historian
of the Dutch Republic, studied as a lad.
Here Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate
vied with each other in legal debate, — a
contest of Olympians. Here Ralph Waldo

32 Old Northampton
Emerson preached as a young man in the
Unitarian Church, and here he later lectured.
Here Henry Clay, at the height of his fame,
spent a Sunday in 1833, attending the First
Church in the morning and the Unitarian in
the evening. Thus the Great Compromiser
showed once more the ruling principle of his
life, and thus the candidate for office revealed
that large and wise tolerance of the politician
for divergent schools of thought. Hither
came Kossuth in 1852, the great Hungarian
patriot and orator. Governor of the short
lived Republic of Hungary, and here he
delivered one of those speeches which, by the
beauty and swiftness of their diction and
their eloquence, amazed the English-speaking
world. The most interesting visitor of all was
Lafayette, who came in 1825. Lafayette's
final visit to the United States was in many
ways remarkable. He had given so gener
ously of his youth and blood as to seem an
American by adoption. Returning to France,
he had played a conspicuous and a lofty role
as a leader in the great revolution of that

Old Northampton 33
country. " The splendor of his later reputa
tion in the Old World heightened his repu
tation in the New. Now, after an absence
of forty years, he returned a venerated hero
of two great revolutions. A guest like this
no nation was ever likely to entertain a
second time. The heart of the whole Amer
ican people went out to him in salutation."
It is interesting to remember that the Mar
quis de Lafayette has traversed the length
of Elm Street, that he has stood upon Round
Hill, that he has held a reception on Main
Street, that he has been escorted to the Con
necticut River, as he resumed his way to
Boston. It is a privilege to share the life of this
renowned and ancient town. Its charm does
not lie only or chiefly in its neighborhood,
its stately river, its rich intervales, as the
early writers called our meadows, in the
mountains that stand like sentinels over it,
but in the historic riches of its past, in the
long and worthy record that has slowly
unrolled here. The men who have lived
here, and their deeds, are the precious treas-
3

34 Old Northampton
ures of the community, and it is the part of
wisdom to keep fresh and vivid memories so
inspiriting. It was said of William the Silent that his
character and life alone sufficed to keep the
people of Holland firm and proud for a
century and a half. Surely in the long and
worthy annals of this town is to be found a
similar potency.
We pay instinctive reverence to the past.
Yet the present and the past war not with
each other. The present is but an instant
caught upon the wing. Its whole tone and
color and import flash forth only when seen
upon the calm and spacious background of
all that has gone before. The wondrous
interplay of personality for two hundred and
fifty years is what explains this town, this
college, this day. But this is the very heart
of mystery, the book of seven seals, the real
and baffling essence of the matter, which
none can analyze or portray, yet which all
perhaps can feel.

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