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MR. WILSON'S PASTORS.-AN
ADDRESS.-HIS MARRIAGE. - HIS HOME. - TEMPERANCE. - HARRISON CAMPAIGN.-
HIS COURSE IN THE GENERAL COURT.
BY the dismissal of Rev.
E. D. Moore from his pastoral office at Natick, and by his consequent
departure from that town, Mr. Wilson lost the daily counsel and
encouragement of a sincere and valuable friend, who sympathized with him
in his political views, and had confidence in his ultimate success. The
kindest social relations still subsist between these two gentlemen; and
it is doubtless gratifying in a high degree to Mr. Wilson's earliest
living pastor to see his expectations in regard to one of his society in
Natick so fully realized.
The Rev. Samuel Hunt, an
able minister and a steady advocate of human freedom, succeeded Mr. Mr.
Moore in July, 1839, and continued as Mr. Wilson's pastor until 1850. He
also felt a profound regard for the spiritual we1fire of his
distinguished parishioner, and aided him in his researches. He rejoiced
in the noble stand which his friend took against the aggressions of
proslaver power, and labored with the clergy and the churches of his
association to sustain him, He was well aware of Mr. Wilson's
intellectual energy and growth, of his integrity, of his sincere
devotion to the cause of freedom; and he predicted his political
success. He endeavored so to guide him as to make it sure.
Under the faithful ministry of Mr. Hunt, the
mind of Mr. Wilson became seriously impressed with the momentous
relations between himself and his Maker, so that he not only listened
with profound attention to the instructions of the sacred desk, but
sometimes took an active part in religious meetings. He taught for
several years a Bible-class in the sabbath school with great acceptance;
and the members of that class are now, for the most part, intelligent
and progressive members of the church.
On his part, Mr. Wilson encouraged and
supported Mr. Hunt in the arduous labors of his ministry: he sympathized
with him both in joy and sorrow; and the tie that early bound their
hearts together still remains unbroken. On the presentation of a watch
to Mr. Hunt at his retirement from his pastorate at Natick, Mr. Wilson
made the following beautiful and affectionate address: -
"RESPECTED FRIEND, - The relations which
have existed between us for eleven years having now been dissolved, we
have assembled here to-night to express our high appreciation of your
services as a pastor, our profound respect for your character as a man,
and our personal regard for you as a friend. We are here also to pass a
few fleeting moments in your society; to exchange with you a few parting
words; to take you once more by the hand; and, with hearts overflowing
with emotion, to bid you farewell.
Could these friends have controlled events,
the chain that bound us together in the relation of pastor and people
would have remained unbroken: you would have continued with us and of
us. Having passed your days with us in the performance of your duties,
participating in our joys and sharing in our sorrows, when your 'race of
existence was run,' we would have you repose in the bosom of our
mother-earth with the people of your early choice, - in yonder spot,
hallowed and consecrated as the last resting- place of this people and
their children.
"But it has been ordered otherwise. We must acquiesce in an event we
could not avert. You are to leave us to seek other fields of labor, to
form new relations, to gather around you other friends. But, sir,
wherever you may go, be assured that you will bear with you our warmest
wishes that Heaven will shower upon your pathway its choicest blessings.
Wherever in the providence of God you may be summoned to labor, may
friends - true-hearted, Steadfast friends - cluster around you to cheer
you onward in every beneficent effort to advance the cause of religion
and humanity! You
will leave behind you, sir, in retiring from the place you have so long
filled, many evidences of your deep and abiding interest in our present
prosperity and future welfare. The recollection of your many acts of
kindness will be cherished by us with unabated affection until the
hearts upon which these acts are engraved shall cease to beat forever.
Desirous that you should carry with you some
parting token of our friendship, your friends have purchased the watch I
hold in my hand, and have commissioned me to present it to you. In their
behalf I beg you to accept it. Take it, sir; cherish it, not for its
intrinsic worth (for it is of slight value), but as a trifling tribute
to your worth, and memento of the respect, esteem, and affection of its
donors. As a memorial of our friendship, I trust you will not consider
it altogether valueless. It will not beat more accurately the passing
moments than will the pulsations of our hearts ever beat responsive to
the friendship we entertain for you.
We fondly indulge the hope, sir, that in
after-life, amid its pressing cares and duties, it will sometimes remind
you of the friends of those
'Earlier days and calmer hours,
When heart with heart delights to blend.'
In the calm and quiet of your study, where
the world and its cares are shut out, as the ear shall hear it beat the
fleeting seconds, or the eye see it mark the passing hours, may it
recall to mind reminiscences of the past! - recollections of these
scenes; of this place, where were passed the first years of your
ministry; where were spent so many years of your early manhood, - that
portion of existence when impressions are most indelibly engraved upon
the mind and heart; where your children were born; and where your home
was blessed and made joyous by the grace, love, and piety of the wife of
your bosom, the pure and gentle being, the loved and lost one, who now
sleeps far away amid the scenes of her youth, but whose memory will over
be fondly cherished by this people; for
'None knew her but to love her,
Nor named her but to praise.'"
On the twenty-eighth day of October, 1840,
Mr. Wilson was united in marriage, by the Rev. Mr. Hunt, with Miss
Harriet Malvina Howe of Natick. She was the daughter of Mr. Amasa and
Mrs. Mary (Toombs) Howe, and was descended on her mother's side from Mr.
Daniel Toombs, an early settler of the town of Hopkinton. She was a lady
of good education, refined in sentiment, gentle in manner, and
remarkable for the sweetness of her disposition. By her unostentatious
way of' doing good, she made religion lovely. Her thoughts were noble;
and her influence upon the society in which she moved was like the
fragrance of flowers. She could not but make her home happy; and her
husband had a just appreciation of her excellence. For him, in his toils
and trials, her clear voice was an inspiration. In her he beheld a
pattern of true womanhood, and for her sake he longed to deserve well of
his country. To her sweet influence over him may be in part attributed
that delicate and profound respect which he entertains for woman, that
sincere regard which he manifests for her intellectual and social
elevation. His ideal of' womanly virtue and devotion was realized in her
pure and lovely life of trust and duty.
Three or four years subsequent to his
marriage, Mr. Wilson built on Central Street, in Natick, the neat and
commodious dwelling-house which he has since occupied. It is furnished
with republican simplicity, yet with elegance and taste. To its
hospitalities his friends and neighbors always find a cordial welcome;
and the absence of luxury and parade is more than compensated by smiles
of cheerfulness, and words of good will. On the eleventh day of'
November, 1846, the hearts of the parents were gladdened by the birth of
a son, whom they named Henry Hamilton. He was their only child.
In principle and in practice, Mr. Wilson has
always been opposed to the use of intoxicating liquors as a beverage;
and to his strictly temperate habits may in part be ascribed that robust
health and physical strength which he now so eminently possesses. As
early as 1831 he joined a temperance society in Farmington; and in
public and in private he has ever exerted his influence to dissuade his
fellow-men from the use of stimulating drink.
In a speech in Tremont Temple, Boston,
April, 1867, he said, -
"I shall strive ever and always to promote
and advance that great cause of our common humanity. It is no merit in
me that has made rue a life-long friend of temperance. God in his
providence gave me no taste, no desire, for intoxicating liquors; and
every day of my life, as I grow older and see the measureless evils of
drunkenness, I thank my God that he gave me no desire for that which
degrades and levels down our common humanity.
"From my cradle to this hour I have seen,
felt, realized the curse of intemperance. When my eyes first saw the
light, when I came to recognize any thing, I saw and felt some of the
evils of intemperance; and all my life long to this hour, and now, my
heart has been burdened with anxieties for those of my kith and kin that
I loved dearly. With no desire for the intoxicating cup, with the evils
of intemperance about and around me, and with a life burdened with
anxieties for dear and loved ones, it is no wonder, ladies and
gentlemen, that I have abhorred drunkenness, while I have loved and
pitied its victims."
Aware of his regard for temperance, and
having confidence in his ability as a thinker, his friends in Natick,
advocating what was known as the "Fifteen-gallon Law," presented his
name in 1839 as a candidate for the General Court. He failed by a very
few votes of an election, and continued quietly manufacturing shoes, and
studying the condition of his country. No representative was sent that
year from Natick; and the party in opposition to that law placed Marcus
Morton in the executive chair of the State.
In 1840 occurred the celebrated presidential
campaign, in which William Henry Harrison, ''the hero of the Thames and
the Tippecanoe," was brought forward by the Wings in opposition to Mr.
Van Buren, then president. The experiments of the government upon the
currency had embarrassed the financial operations of the country, and
had seriously affected the industrial interests of the North, and
reduced the wages of the working-people. Hard times came on. The
laboring-classes murmured against the measures of the government, and
keenly criticised the course of the president and his cabinet. Mr.
Wilson, ever on the side of the working-men, felt the pressure, and saw
the ruinous tendency of Mr. Van Buren's financial policy and, although
he had hitherto sympathized with the Democratic party, now came
prominently forward with the Whigs, and espoused the cause of Mr.
Harrison. "Having entered life on the working-man's side," says the
author of "Men of our Times," "and having known by by his experience the
working -man's trials, temptations, and hard struggles, he felt the
sacredness of a poor man's labor, and entered public life with a heart
to take the part of the toiling and the oppressed."
Up to that period, no political campaign in
this country had so aroused the enthusiasm of the people. Mass-meetings
were held in churches, halls, and groves; log-cabins were erected, and
sometimes mounted on wheels, and drawn from town to town; banners with
mottoes were unfolded, and immense processions of all ranks and classes
bearing torchlights were formed. The ablest speakers took the stand; and
eloquence and patriotic songs set forth the virtues and exploits of "the
hero of North Bend" before the people.
"Tippecanoe and Tyler too" rang as a war-cry
through the Union. Mr. Wilson shared in the enthusiasm. He studied well
the course of legislation as presented in "The Washington Globe," and
made his first campaign-speech in the Methodist meeting-house at Natick
in opposition to Mr. Amasa Walker, who was an advocate of a specie
currency and of the general policy of the national administration. The
ability of Mr. Wilson as a public speaker was at once acknowledged. He
was invited to discuss the questions of the day in many other places;
and, during the campaign, made more than sixty speeches in the
neighboring towns and cities. In Charlestown, Cambridge, Roxbury,
Lowell, Lynn, Taunton, and other towns and cities, he addressed large
and enthusiastic audiences with telling effect; so that the general
exclamation was, "How came this Natick shoemaker to know so much more
than we do on national questions?"
The answer might have been, "This Natick
shoemaker was studying 'The Federalist' and the proceedings of Congress
while you were asleep.
In some instances, attempts were made to
interrupt him in his speaking; but holding himself steadily to the point
in question, and to his good nature, of which the fund seemed
inexhaustible, he manfully maintained his ground, and carried his
audiences with him. He spoke extemporaneously, but never without careful
preparation. He read the best models of American eloquence, - such as
Adams, Everett, Otis, Channing, Webster; and, after committing parts of
his speeches to memory, he would sometimes retire to Deacon Coolidge's
old oak-grove, and there rehearse them to himself alone. He is
remembered by those who heard him in this campaign as a young mail lithe
and agile form, of an intellectual cast of countenance, clear
complexion, earnest, searching voice, and sparkling eyes. He usually
bent over the desk in speaking, as if to come as closely in contact with
his audience as he could. His object seemed to be to reveal the thought
of his hearer to himself; and herein lies one secret of a speaker's
power. He also defended his positions by a very frequent appeal to
facts; and one who well remembers him at that time avers, "He had a very
winning way in presenting them."
At the close of the campaign, he had the
pleasure of seeing Mr. Harrison, for whom he had spoken so many times,
elected to the presidential chair by a large majority, two hundred and
thirty-four to Mr. Van Buren's sixty electoral votes, - while he himself
was chosen a representative from the town of Natick to the General Court
of Massachusetts. The legislative hall is now his academy; the
constitution is his text-book, and liberty his teacher.
When he entered the House of
Representatives, he observed that an honest farmer, twenty years his
senior, had drawn one of the most eligible seats in the hall; and he at
once offered him three dollars for an exchange. The farmer gladly took
the money; for one seat to him who never spoke was just as good as
another. But, some time afterwards, he referred to the circumstance as
revealing the pride of the young member. "No," said one who better knew
his spirit: it reveals his foresight. He gave you three dollars for your
seat in order that he might be in the best position to hear the
arguments of other members, and also to present his own with most
effect. This style of doing things, if carried on, will give him
influence here." It was carried on. He entered upon his legislative
career with the determination of bestowing his whole time and attention
upon the business coming before him. With sleepless vigilance he watched
every transaction, listened to every speaker, and followed every
question. He was a working-man; he entered the legislative hall to work;
he did not fail to work; and workers win.
It is noticeable that his first legislative
speech was in favor of the working-man. It was delivered Jan. 25, 1841,
on a bill to exempt laborers' wages from attachment in certain cases. He
said the honest poor of the State would deprecate the passage of such a
law: it would protect dishonesty. The class of men who lived upon the
earnings of others were daily increasing. There were many men, too, who
judged of morality by law alone. Such a law would impair the credit of
the poor man. He hoped this bill would be considered on its merits
alone, with no intermixture of party-spirit, he sympathized with the
poor men with whom he had been reared, and with whom he now was. He
moved to strike out the enacting clause.
Inured as he had been to hard and
unremitting labor, and with sympathies alive to human suffering, it was
natural that Mr. Wilson should be opposed to the whole system of
domestic servitude. His mind revolted at the wrongs the bondman bore in
a boasted land of liberty: he keenly felt the cruelty of that code of
laws that held him subject, and without redress, to the caprice of an
insolent and hard-hearted master. The instincts of a noble nature, the
teachings of the gospel, the training he himself had undergone, the
philanthropic spirit of the age, the opinions of the founders of the
Constitution, all conspired to lead him to abominate the traffic in
human blood, and the tyranny of subjecting innocent men and women to
servile labor. The more he thought upon it, the more iniquitous appeared
the system: it despoiled the slave of his just rights; it demoralized
the master; it impoverished his country. At the same time, he saw that
the slave-power, ever intolerant and exacting, had long held ascendency
in Congress; had by the craftiest plans extended its territory so as to
maintain that ascendency; and, while menacing the North, had
contaminated the source of political power, and brought the free States,
to a great extent, into subserviency to its schemes of aggression.
Such, it is believed, were Mr. Wilson's
views and sentiments at this period; and, if he did not enter the
abolition ranks, it was not because he was opposed to their leading
principles, but because he hoped to exert a stronger influence towards
the ultimate redemption of the slave by acting with the progressive men
in the Whig part. In the legislature his voice was ever heard, his vote
was ever cast, on behalf of the rights of those in bondage. In the House
of Representatives, in 1841, he advocated the repeal of the law, which
has been termed the last of the slave code in this State, forbidding the
intermarriage of blacks and whites; and, in the next session, made
another strong speech in opposition to the law, maintaining that it was
founded on inequality and caste. He declared "that the bill was not
inspired by political, but by humane motives and, though it might be
defeated then, it would ultimately be enacted. It was only a question of
time." This obnoxious law was repealed at the next session of the
legislature. In November, 1842, Mr. Wilson was a candidate for the State
Senate; but the Whig party was that year defeated in his county, as it
was in the State. There being no election of governor by the people, the
legislature, in January, 1848, elected Marcus Morton for a second term.
In 1844 Mr. Wilson obtained a senatorial seat, and took all part in the
deliberations of that body, ever ranging himself upon the side of'
progress and reform. He made an elaborate report on military affairs,
and carried it through the Senate.
He was again a member of the same body in
1845, where he again labored successfully for the improvement of the
military system of the State, and also to improve the condition of the
colored people. He strenuously advocated the right of negroes to seats
in the railroad-car, from which they had in several cases been
insolently ejected; and also their right to admission to our public
schools, from which prejudice had excluded them.
A bill reported to the Senate, providing
that any child unlawfully excluded from the public schools should be
entitled to recover damages, had been rejected. Moving the next day a
reconsideration of this vote, Mr. Wilson made all speech in behalf of
the bill, in which he said that he considered it the most important one
which had come up that session.. "It concerned," said he, "the rights
and feelings of a large but humble portion of our people, whose
interests should be watched over and cared for by the legislature; whose
imperative duty it was, when complaints were made of the invasion or the
rights of the poorest and the humblest, to provide a remedy that should
be full and ample to secure and guard all his rights." He said the
common-school system, the pride and glory of Massachusetts, was based
upon the principle of perfect equality, and that the distinction set up
at Nantucket aimed a blow at its very existence. The colored people
said, and rightly, that their feelings were trifled with, and their
rights disregarded. Denouncing the spirit that excluded colored children
from the full and equal benefits of common schools, he said, "It is the
same which has drenched the world with blood for six thousand years,
made a slave- holder in South Carolina, and a slave-pirate on the coast
of Africa." He said that those whose rights he wished to guard and
secure had but little influence or power; while those who opposed them
had both, and were only too willing to use them for their own
aggrandizement. It was more popular to keep along with the current of
prejudice, than, by resisting it, to be denounced as a "radical or
abolitionist." "In retiring from the legislature," he said, "I am
sustained by the consciousness that I have never uttered a word or given
a vote against the rights of any human being. I had far rather have the
warm and generous thanks of one poor orphan-boy down on the Island of
Nantucket, that I may never see, nor even know, than to have the
approbation of every man in the Commonwealth, whether in this chamber or
out of it, who would deny to any child the full and equal benefits of
our public schools."
Such sentiments are creditable to the
senator's heart. They had their effect on the Senate. Mr. Wilson's
motion was adopted by a large majority: the bill was committed to the
judiciary committee, which reported a similar bill that became the law
of the State. Thus slowly, through the influence of the friends of
freedom, Massachusetts came to see and to acknowledge the rights of a
long abused and shamefully-neglected race of people. Between the lofty
and the lowly there was need of a mediator, who by his intellect could
reach the one, and by his band of toil the other; and such was Henry
Wilson. "Then on!
for this we live, -
To smite the oppressor with the words of power;
To bid the tyrant give
Back to his brother Heaven's allotted hour." |
