ORVILLE DEWEY.
[239]The Same
SHEFFIELD, Aug. 10, 1856.
DEAR FRIEND,—My time and thoughts have been a good deal occupied of late by the illness and death of Mr. Charles Sedgwick. The funeral was on last Tuesday, and Mr. Bellows was present, making the prayer, while I read passages, and said some words proper for the time. They were hearty words, you may be sure; for in some admirable respects Charles Sedgwick has scarcely left his equal in the world. His sunny nature shone into every crack and crevice around him, and the poor man and the stranger and whosoever was in trouble or need felt that he had in him an adviser and friend. The Irish were especially drawn to him, and they made request to bear his body to the grave, that is, to Stockbridge, six miles. And partly they did so. . . . It was a tremendous rain-storm, but the procession was very long.
But I must turn away from this sad affliction to us all,—it will be long before I shall turn my thought from it,—for the world is passing on; it will soon pass by my grave and the graves of us all. I do not wonder that this sweeping tide bears our thoughts much into the coming world,—mine, I sometimes think, too much.
But we have to fight our battle, perform our duties, while one and another drops around us; and one of the things that engages me just now, is to prepare a discourse to be delivered under our Elm Tree on the 21st.
The Elm Tree Association, before which the address just alluded to was made, was a Village Improvement Society, of which my father was [240] one of the founders, and which took its name from an immense tree, one of the finest in Massachusetts, standing near the house of his maternal grandfather. To smooth and adorn the ground around the Great Elm, and make it the scene of a yearly summer festival for the whole town, was the first object of the Society, extending afterwards to planting trees, grading walks, etc., through the whole neighborhood; and it was one of the earlier impulses to that refinement of taste which has made of Sheffield one of the prettiest villages in the country. With its fine avenue of elms, planted nearly forty years ago, its gardens and well-shaven turf, it shows what care and a prevailing love of beauty and order will do for a place where there is very little wealth. It was about this time that my father planted in an angle of the main street the Seven Pines, which now make, as it were, an evergreen chapel to his memory, and with the proceeds of some lectures that he gave in the town, set out a number of deciduous trees around the Academy, many of which are still living, though the building they were intended to shade is gone.
The Elm Tree Association, however, from one cause and another, was short-lived; but "It lived to light a steadier flame" in the Laurel Hill Association, of Stockbridge, which, taking the idea from the Sheffield plan, continues to develop it in a very beautiful and admirable manner. [241] The address at the gathering in 1856 was chiefly occupied with a review of the history of the town, and with the thoughts appropriate to the place of meeting; and at the close the speaker took occasion to explain to his townspeople his ideas upon the national crisis of the day, and the changed aspect that had been given to the slavery question by the fresh determination of the South to maintain the excellence of the system and to force it upon the acceptance of the North in the new States then forming. Against this he made earnest and solemn protest, with a full expression of his opinion as to the innate wrong to the blacks, and the destructive effects on the whites, of slavery; but at the same time he spoke with large and kindly consideration for the Southerners. After doing justice to the care and kindness of many of them for their slaves, he said, in close:—
"I have listened also to what Southern apologists have said in another view,—that this burden of slavery was none of their choosing; that it was entailed upon them; that they cannot immediately emancipate their people; that they are not qualified to take care of themselves; that this state of things must be submitted to for a while, till remedial laws and other remedial means shall bring relief. And so long as they said that, I gave them my sympathy. But when they say, 'Spread this system,—spread it far and wide,' I cannot go another step with them. And it is not I that has changed, but they. When they say, 'Spread it, —spread it over [242] Kansas and Nebraska, spread it over the far West, annex Mexico, annex Cuba, annex Central America, make slavery a national institution, make the compact of the Constitution carry it into all Territories, cover it with the national images, set it up as part of our great republican profession, stamp on our flag and our shield and our scutcheon the emblem of human slavery,' I say,—no—never-God forbid!"
It seems strange now that so temperate and candid a speech should have raised a storm of anger when read in Charleston. But the sore lace was too tender for even the friendliest such, and of all those who had greeted him here so cordially the winter before, but two or three maintained and strengthened their relations with him after this summer. It was one of many trials to which his breadth of view exposed him.