O the colonists the maintenance of their unity seemed essential to their cordial resistance to English attempts at oppression. And why, said they, should we not insist upon this union? We have come to the outside of the world for the privilege of living by ourselves: why should we open our asylum to those in whom we can repose no confidence? The world cannot call this persecution. We have been banished to the wilderness: is it an injustice to exclude our oppressors, and those whom we dread as their allies, from the place which is to shelter us from their intolerance? Is it a great cruelty to expel from our abode the enemies of our peace, or even the doubtful friend? Will any man complain at being driven from among banished men, with whom he has no fellowship? of being refused admittance to a gloomy place of exile? The wide continent of America invited colonization; they claimed their own narrow domains for “the brethren.” Their religion was their life: they welcomed none but its adherents; they could not tolerate the scoffer, the infidel, or the dissenter; and the presence of the whole people was required in their congregation. Such was the system inflexibly established and regarded as the only adequate guarantee of the rising liberties of Massachusetts.
JAMES PARTON.
WRITER OF BIOGRAPHY.
HERE can be no higher public service than that of the man who gives to his fellows, and particularly to the rising generation, good biographies of noble men. If this be true, then James Parton must be ranked among those who have done most for Americans, for the series of books which began many years ago with a life of Horace Greeley and which ended, only two months before the author’s death with the biography of Andrew Jackson, has made the heroes of American history real live men for thousands of readers, has stirred the patriotism and aroused the ambition of many a boyish student, and has won for himself the respect and esteem which belong to literary achievements.
The ancestry of James Parton was French; his family having emigrated to England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
He was born in Canterbury, England, in 1822, and could just remember walking across the fields, in black clothes, at his father’s funeral. The solemn memory which thus took a strong hold upon his mind, was, perhaps, partly responsible for his dislike for ecclesiastical forms and particularly for the practice of formal “mourning.” His mother brought her little family to New York a year after her husband’s death, and James was educated in the schools of that city and at White Plains, New York. At the latter place he was in a boarding school where so much attention was paid to religion that nearly every boy who passed through it was a member of the church. He seems to have found something repellent in the manner of presenting Christianity, and although he became a teacher in the school and later held for some years a similar position in Philadelphia, he sympathized less and less with it until he came avowedly to give up all belief in supernatural religion. He was a very successful teacher and took great delight in his work and would probably have devoted his life to the schoolroom, had he not found himself unable to continue the custom of opening the sessions of school with prayer and on this account been compelled to give up his position. Returning to New York he became associated with N. P. Willis in conducting the “Home Journal” and thus began his career as a literary man. While so employed he remarked one day to a New York publisher, that a most interesting book could be made of the career of Horace Greeley, then at the summit of his power and fame as an editor.