Plymouth memories of an octogenarian

by William T. Davis

How far a moderator shall go in ruling on the illegality of a proposition contained in the warrant, it is difficult to lay down any rule. There are many moderators unfamiliar with the laws who would necessarily permit the consideration of the article, trusting to the meeting to decide on the arguments in which illegality is alleged whether the proposition shall be rejected. If in such a case an illegal vote is favored a remedy may be found on an application to the court for an injunction.

On the whole the ruling must be left to the judgment of the moderator, who would not hesitate to rule, for instance, out of order an article to see if the town will build a steamboat to run between Plymouth and Boston.

I cannot close this chapter without suggesting that, while the most stringent laws are in force to prevent illegal voting in the elections of officers, a law should be enacted either excluding non voters from the floor at town meetings, or prescribing such a method of voting on appropriations as shall preclude the possibility of illegal voting. If other methods are impracticable it might at least be provided that in voting on appropriations exceeding $5,000, voters shall pass between two tellers appointed by the moderator and standing in front of the platform, who shall count the votes and report to the moderator.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Accounts of the celebrations which have been held in Plymouth within my memory, or described to me by those who witnessed them, are worthy of record. I shall first, however, give a list of Pilgrim celebrations conducted by the Old Colony Club, the town, the Pilgrim Society, the first and third parishes, the Robinson Society and the Fire Department, with the names of orators.

1770, Old Colony Club, Edward Winslow, Jr., of Plymouth.
1772, Old Colony Club, Rev. Chandler Robbins of Plymouth.
1773, Old Colony Club, Rev. Charles Turner of Duxbury.
1774, Town, Rev. Gad Hitchcock of Pembroke.
1775, Town, Rev. Samuel Baldwin of Hanover.
1776, Town, Rev. Sylvanus Conant of Middleboro.
1777, Town, Rev. Samuel West of Dartmouth.
1778, Town, Rev. Timothy Hilliard of Barnstable.
1779, Town, Rev. William Shaw of Marshfield.
1780, Town, Rev. Jonathan Moore of Rochester.
1798, Town, Dr. Zaccheus Bartlett of Plymouth.
1800, Town, Hon. John Davis of Boston.
1801, Town, Rev. John Allyn of Duxbury.
1802, Town, Hon. John Quincy Adams of Quincy.
1803, Town, Rev. John T. Kirkland of Cambridge.
1804, First Parish, Rev. James Kendall of Plymouth.
1804, Town, Hon. Alden Bradford of Boston.
1806, Town, Rev. Abiel Holmes of Cambridge.
1807, Town, Rev. James Freeman of Boston.
1808, Town, Rev. Thaddeus M. Harris of Dorchester.
1809, Town, Rev. Abiel Abbot of Beverly.
1811, Town, Rev. John Eliot of Boston.
1815, Town, Rev. James Flint of Bridgewater.
1816, First Parish, Rev. Ezra Shaw Goodwin of Sandwich.
1817, Town, Rev. Horace Holley of Boston.
1818, Town, Hon. Wendell Davis of Sandwich.
1819, Town, Hon. Francis C. Gray of Boston.
1820, Pilgrim Society, Hon. Daniel Webster of Boston.
1822, Pilgrim Society, Rev. Eliphalet Porter of Roxbury.
1824, Pilgrim Society, Hon. Edward Everett of Cambridge.
1826, Third Parish, Rev. Richard S. Storrs of Braintree.
1827, Third Parish, Rev. Lyman Beecher of Boston.
1828, Third Parish, Rev. Samuel Green of Boston.
1829, Third Parish, Rev. Daniel Huntington of Bridgewater.
1829, Pilgrim Society, Hon. Wm. Sullivan of Boston.
1830, Third Parish, Rev. Benjamin Wisner of Boston.
1831, Third Parish, Rev. John Codman of Dorchester.
1831, First Parish, Rev. John Brazier of Salem.
1832, Third Parish, Rev. Jonathan Bigelow of Rochester.
1832, First Parish, Rev. Converse Francis of Watertown.
1833, First Parish, Rev. Samuel Barrett of Boston.
1834, Pilgrim Society, Rev. George W. Blagden of Boston.
1835, Pilgrim Society, Hon. Peleg Sprague of Boston.
1837, Pilgrim Society, Rev. Robert B. Hall of Plymouth.
1838, Pilgrim Society, Rev. Thomas Robbins of Mattapoisett.
1839, Third Parish, Rev. Robert B. Hall of Plymouth.
1841, Pilgrim Society, Hon. Joseph R. Chandler of Philadelphia.
1845, Pilgrim Society, dinner with speeches.
1846, Third Parish, Rev. Mark Hopkins of Williamstown.
1847, First Parish, Rev. Thomas L. Stone of Salem.
1848, Robinson Society, Rev. Samuel M. Worcester of Salem.
1853, Pilgrim Society, dinner and speeches.
1855, Pilgrim Society, Hon. Wm. H. Seward of Auburn, N. Y.
1859, Pilgrim Society dinner and speeches.
1870, Pilgrim Society, Hon. Robert C. Winthrop of Boston.
1880, Pilgrim Society, dinner and speeches.
1885, Pilgrim Society, dinner and speeches.
1886, Fire Department, dinner and speeches.
1889, Pilgrim Society, Hon. W. P. C. Breckinridge of Lexington, Ky., and a poem by John Boyle O’Reilly of Boston.
1895, Pilgrim Society, Hon. George F. Hoar of Worcester, and a poem by Richard Henry Stoddard of New York.

On the 24th of January, 1820, the Pilgrim Society was incorporated and a committee of arrangements consisting of Nathan Hayward, Wm. Davis, Jr., and Nathaniel Spooner was chosen for the celebration of the next anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims. It was determined to make the first demonstration of the Society a memorable one. It is creditable to the foresight of the society that they selected Mr. Webster for orator. He was only thirty-eight years of age, and had not so far as was generally known, reached the maturity of his powers. Before coming from Portsmouth to Boston in 1816, he had served two terms in the lower house of Congress, and was then practicing successfully at the Suffolk bar. He had, however, leaped into fame by his argument in the United States Supreme Court in 1818 in the Dartmouth College case. In 1769 a corporation called the “Trustees of Dartmouth College” was chartered to have perpetual existence, and power to hold and dispose of the lands for the use of the college, and the right to fill vacancies in their own body. In 1816 the New Hampshire legislature changed the corporate name to “The trustees of Dartmouth University,” and made the twelve trustees, together with nine others to be appointed by the Governor and council, a new corporation with the property of the old corporation, with power to establish new colleges and an institution under the control of twenty-five overseers. After a transfer of the property had been made the old trustees brought an action of trover to recover it on the ground of the unconstitutionality of the act. The act of the legislature was declared constitutional by the Superior Court of New Hampshire, and by a writ of error the case was carried to the United States Supreme Court in 1818, where, in 1819, the decision of the New Hampshire Court was reversed, and the act of the legislature declared unconstitutional. Mr. Webster’s argument had never before been equalled, and has never since been surpassed.

At the time of the celebration, whoever, within an easy distance from Boston, could secure accommodations in Plymouth availed himself of the opportunity. I have letters addressed to my grandfather, written in August, asking him to engage lodgings of some sort. There were three hotels in Plymouth, all of them crowded with guests, and every spare bed in town was secured. On the day of the celebration, by stage, by private carriage, and public hack, visitors came on a two days’ trip in the dead of winter, fortunate if able to obtain a whole or a part of a bed, while the drivers slept in their carriages. But fortunately the day of the celebration was as mild as Indian summer. I was told many years ago by a man who remembered it, that he sat through a part of the day by an open window in his shirt sleeves. There has been preserved by the Pilgrim Society a parchment containing the autographs of all who attended the dinner, so that the array of distinguished men who listened to Mr. Webster is not left to the imagination. Among the visitors were, Rev. John T. Kirkland, President of Harvard, Professors Edward Everett, Geo. Ticknor and Levi Hedge, Rev. Abiel Abbot, Rev. Abiel Holmes, Rev. John G. Palfrey, Rev. John Pierce, Rev. Converse Francis, Rev. James Flint, Rev. Alexander Young, Rev. Charles Lowell, Rev. Francis Parkman, Rev. Wm. P. Lunt, Judge John Davis, Isaac P. Davis, Thomas H. Perkins, Francis C. Gray, Levi Lincoln, Stephen Salisbury, Timothy Bigelow, Laban W. Wheaton, Martin Brimmer, Benjamin Rotch, Amos Lawrence, Thomas Bulfinch, Theron Metcalf, Nahum Mitchell, Wm. S. Otis, George A. Trumbull, Augustus Peabody, Henderson Inches, Francis Baylies, Willard Phillips, Henry Grinnell, Samuel A. Eliot, Isaiah Thomas, Dudley A. Tyng, Isaac McClellan, Amos Binney and others of no less distinction. No such an assembly had ever before gathered in New England as that which filled the church of the First Parish on that memorable day. The scene was worthy of the best efforts of the painter’s art. The galleries reserved for the ladies, seemed with the mingling of colors in dress and hats and fans like banks of summer flowers mellowing the sombre garb worn by the society and their guests on the floor below. Mr. Webster wearing small clothes and buckles and shoes, and over all a silk gown, stood on a raised platform in front of the high oak pulpit and began his oration with words to which his audience was in the spirit to heartily respond, “Let us rejoice that we behold this day.”

Perhaps that part of the oration which gave to it its chief distinction, was that denunciatory of the slave trade. A law was passed by Congress in 1808 abolishing the trade, but it had slumbered on the statute books until Mr. Webster twelve years later, breathed into it the breath of life. In a town, which was in early days within the Plymouth colony, the trade was still carried on, and by this fact the scathing words of the oration were inspired. “I hear the sound of the hammer. I see the smoke of the furnace where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of those who by stealth and at midnight labor in this work of hell, foul and dark as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England.”

There was another passage, never more needed than today to be impressed on the public mind, relating to military achievements. “Great actions and striking occurrences having excited a temporary admiration often pass away and are forgotten. * * Such is frequently the fortune of the most brilliant military achievements. Of the ten thousand battles which have been fought; of all the fields fertilized with carnage; of the banners which have been bathed in blood; of the warriors who have hoped that they had risen from the field of conquest to a glory as bright and as durable as the stars, how few that continue to interest mankind. The victory of yesterday is reversed by the defeat of today; the star of military glory rising like a meteor, like a meteor has fallen; disgrace and disaster hang on the heels of conquest and renown; victor and vanquished presently pass away to oblivion, and the world goes on in its course with the loss only of so many lives, and so much treasure.”