Essex County, Massachusetts - Chapter 1: Salem Introductory, 1888 (part 1 of 2)

Introductory By Rev. George Batchelor

The writer of this introductory chapter is released from the ordinary duties and responsibilities of the chroniclers whose work he prefaces wfth some general views of the various epochs of the history of Salem. The careful precision as to names, dates and the order of events required of them must here give place to general views, rapid sketches and such characterization of men and times as may be expected of the essayist rather than the historian.

For more than a hundred years after the discovery of America by Columbus, New England was unknown. It was a century of exploration and discovery, and the Catholic Spaniard played a leading part in the process of opening a new world to civilization. His imagination was inflamed by what are now incredible stories of treasure to be discovered, of magical and supernatural manifestations to be noted in nature and human life, and by hopes of attaining to some new and unheard of power over the secret forces of nature, then so unknown, and yet so tempting to the unscientific mind of the sixteenth century. He was animated, also, by zeal to convert or dispossess the infidel, and to commend himself as a loyal son of the church, thus at one happy stroke making his fortune both for this world and the next. In 1565 St. Augustine was founded, and in 1582 Santa Fe was colonized and made a station of the church, and the Spaniard, keeping for the most part within those isothermal lines which, by an unwritten law of nations have so largely controlled the course of empire, was elated by visions of inexhaustible

To the Protestant Englishman during all this time New England was unknown except as an undistinguished part of the western world. With the seventeenth century the French, English and Dutch began to establish colonies in Nova Scotia, Canada, Virginia and New York. Then New England begins to emerge slowly from the vast, unsurveyed bulk of the continent, and to attract the attention of those in whose keeping were the seeds which, for a hundred generations of English and Germanic life, had been preparing to grow into the social, civil and religious institutions of New England. "God sifted a whole nation," said Stoughton, " that he might send choice grain out into this wilderness." He might have said that the civil and religious institutions of the Germanic race were sifted to furnish precedents, aptitudes and the specific religious impulses out of which to produce the Puritan Church and the New England Commonwealth.

Reviewing the events recorded in this volume, and contemplating the rare and great qualities of the founders of Salem as manifested in some of the most heroic and dignified aspects of human life, and in crises of diflSculty and danger; regarding, also, without flinching or apology, the grim and cruel traits and deeds which disfigured their lives and stained their record, one need not be ashamed of his interest and admiration. The founders of Salem were not greater, wiser or better than other men. But the narrowness of their opportunity, together with the great use they made of it, rendered their qualities conspicuous, and the record of them a just cause of pride to all who inherit any share in their labors and rewards. As in some little Swiss canton, where nature has thrust together and pushed high into the air the sublimities of that Alpiue scenery, of which every detail may be surpassed elsewhere, while the general effect has no rival, so in this little township were to be brought together and set to do the drudgery of common life such gifts of culture, courage, wisdom and strength as commonly go to the founding of kingdoms and the conduct of empires. Indeed, in their own way, the way of intelligence and freedom, they were laying the foundations of institutions with influence more powerful and enduring than any empire which has risen or fallen since they lived their strenuous lives of homely toil and great endeavor. The events which were crowded into the first century of what was then their obscure history, spread over a larger surface and connected by more evident ties with the fortunes of civilization, would have attracted universal attention. Now they become an imperishable part of the history of human progress.

In 1614 Capt. John Smith, prince among adventurers and good fellows, coasted, named and praised New England, and going home to England he spent much time in commending the newly-discovered " Paradise " to rich and influential people. Then came the Pilgrims bound for a more genial climate; but driven out of their course by fortunate accident, they settle in Plymouth, and establish their church. But even in their little and well-sifted band there was not perfect agreement in matters of religion, although that was their chief concern, and soon we see John Lyford, of no enviable reputation, with John Oldham and others, because they could not agree to " separate" from the Church of England, pushing out and exploring the coast to the northward to find or found a home. Among them was one Roger Conant, well commended then and afterward for his homely good sense and perfect honesty. They tarry awhile at Nantasket, where Capt. Miles Standish, coasting that way, had built a hut a year or two before, and there, in somewhat dubious case, they are waiting when the Dorchester Company in England, having by this time (1623) forty or fifty ships passing to and fro, bringing over fishermen, salt, etc., and taking home cargoes of fish, beaver skins and such furs and other spoil of the wilderness as may be gathered there, summon Roger Conant to take charge of their station at Cape Ann. A charter has been secured, and hopes are entertained that now, after many misfortunes, some profit may accrue to the adventurers. Conant is to be Governor, Lyford minister to the half a hundred people gathered there, and Oldham is asked to come and trade with the Indians, which office he declines. Misfortunes continue, however. Fire, sickness and quarrels (a fierce one with Miles Standish) break their courage, reduce their profits and finally cause the abandonment of the undertaking.

Conant now has in mind an undertaking of another kind. Finding on the peninsula of Naumkeag a sheltered place where he thinks it possible for colonists to maintain themselves in comfort, he proposes to the Rev. John White, of the Dorchester Company, to establish there a plantation. It has been commonly believed that he proposed to provide here a shelter for such unhappy creatures as might in England be persecuted for their religion. This is now disputed on the ground that he was not a " separatist " in Plymouth, and did not agree with John Endicott when he came, and that he was now probably only looking out for a place where he and others might find life a little less hard to support on the usual terms. It is not impossible, however, that, "churchman" though he was, he had suffered enough for his religion to long for a place where the cursed jangle of theological discord might be forgotten, and other interests be made prominent. White promised him assistance of all needed kinds, and in 1626 Roger Conant, John Woodbury, John Balch and Peter Palfrey (names to be remembered) begin the clearing of the forest and the building of houses. About twentyfive, all told, are gathered there, and Naumkeag (not yet Salem) begins to be. Two years later there were, it may be, thirty or forty persons in the colony. Some had followed Lyford to Virginia, and some had returned to England. Conant, resolute and patient, remained and kept with him those who were inspired by his confidence and shared his hopes, whether religious or commercial. But, as so often happens, he was to sow that others might reap. He was too modest and undemonstrative to figure as a " personage," and to meet the more ambitious views of those in England who were influential in the management of affairs; and so it happened, when the property of the Dorchester Company passed into the hands of the New England Company, that Conant was superseded by Capt. John Endicott,

It was not Roger Conant, mild, tolerant, conciliatory and unambitious, that the feeble colony needed, but John Endicott, the man of the iron hand and determined will, the man to tear the cross from the flag of England and defy the world when his blood was up and his religion was in question. As a business transaction the transfer was justifiable enough. The parties to it on the other side of the water were buying and selling so much property at its commercial value. But on this side of the water it looked like the betrayal of a trust. Having no rights which they could legally defend, the old colonists felt the change to be grievous when, from being masters of the situation, if not the guardians of a refuge sacred to those who were oppressed for conscience' sake, they were suddenly and unexpectedly reduced to a handful of ordinary colonists who were transferred with the soil, and could only take the hard choice to go or conform to the law of the land. They were heard to talk about "slaves" and "slavery," and for some months held aloof from the meetings of the newcomers. But Capt. Endicott occupied a higher social position than they, and he was not a man to be trifled with. In 1629 Governor Endicott receives intelligence as follows: that the company at home has obtained a confirmation of their grant by letters patent from His Majesty, Charles I., and that he is confirmed as Governor, with a council styled " the Councill of Massachusetts Bay." The new-comers had the power. But they saw that it was hard for the others to submit, and were disposed to use their power kindly. The colony was now grown to include, perhaps, three hundred persons, and at last the old settlers determined to make the best of it, and united in one body under Governor Endicott, and then, as we are told, " in remembrance of a, peace settled upon at a conference at a general meeting between them and their neighbors after the expectance of some dangerous jar," they called the place Salem, or Peace. The story is a pretty one, and seems to furnish a natural and probable explanation of the change of name, but it is necessary to say that all such interesting statements are doubted or denied by modern investigators. It is held by some that Conant gladly received Captain Endicott and that their differences of opinion related to such matters as the morality of raising tobacco and other such affairs of minor importance.

The story of the ecclesiastical and commercial fortunes of Salem will be told elsewhere in the succeeding narratives. They were inextricably intertwined with each other. Both begin now to assume importance, although many a weary day must pass before either of them will be settled and prosperous. For a time the religious interests which they had at heart compelled them to postpone somewhat the temporal enterprises upon which depended their comfort and success. Whatever we may say of the purposes of Roger Conant, nobody need be in doubt as to the purposes of John Endicott. Religion was with him the first concern. He believed his creed. He had come here to give it room to grow into a new mode of life, and he did not intend to let anything among the powers terrestrial or demonic interfere with his purpose. But, before the temporal plans of the little community could be carried out, some very stern necessities were to try and to strengthen their faith. The winter of 1629 brought them little but trouble and sorrow. The climate, then as now, was rough and unsparing. No proper accommodations could be provided for so many families, their base of supplies was three thousand miles away, they were unused to such hardships and were ignorant of the dangers to be provided against. While, therefore, their friends in England were tkinking of them as happily established in the "Paradise" of New England, and were looking forward to the pleasure of joining them in the spring or summer following, they began to sicken and die of exposure to cold, and the hunger which comes not with absolute famine, but inability to eat the coarse food which they had. Some epidemic disease probably brought on shipboard, had been communicated to them, and the place had become infected and pestilential. When Winthrop came with Saltonstall, Dudley and Johnson, and a company, in seventeen ships, in all, a thousand or more before the season was over, they found a colony of men and women haggard with weakness and want and depressed with sorrow. More than eighty had died in that awful winter, and of those who remained manyhad scarcely strength to stagger to the shore to meet the new-comers and give them tearful welcome. To the gentlemen and ladies who had come to transfer the government of the colony to the soil of New England, and establish here homes even more splendid than those they had left behind them, Salem offered at that time but few inducements. Winthrop therefore pushed along the coast, and soon he, with Dudley, Johnson, Saltonstall and the most of the new colonists, were laying the foundations of Charlestown, Boston and Watertown. The seat of government was transferred to Charlestown, and again the hopes and ambitions of the men of Salem had ended in a bitter disappointment. To Governor Endicott was now measured out that which he had meted to Roger Conant, and probably he was no better pleased than he with the result. But this time there was no rebellion. Endicott was too good a disciplinarian to resist a higher authority, and it happened then, as it has many times since in Salem, that the good things provided for home use were passed over to the common account, and the commonwealth gained by her loss.

We need not waste much time in praising the consummate wisdom of the founders of Massachusetts. They were wise, and they did well, and what they wrote in their charters and constitutions, and established in their customs and laws, show that they were seeking the best things in human institutions and knew the value of them when found.

But it is clear enough now that the Puritans were not the inventors of the system they established in New England, nor of the many complicated devices by aid of which they made their ideas eflfective in the conduct of affairs, social and civil. They selected, indeed, but they did not create out of pre-existent nothingness the institutions which here they cleared from much rubbish of ecclesiasticism and from the burden of the monarchy of England. The beginnings were small. Seen from the outside, they were mean and bare. The homes, labors and successes of the first colonists of Salem would be unworthy of our attention were they associated with the lives of ordinary settlers in a new country. But small though the beginnings were, these men were beginning to store up and to train the energy which was afterward to expand with tremendous force in the opening of the whole world to commerce and civilization, and in

In the New World, free to follow the bent of their minds, they emancipated themselves from many an impediment and returned to the natural tendencies of the Germanic race, to which they belonged, and which, in Europe, has ever since been slowly attaining to that which they arrived at quickly. Of that race they brought the traditions and tendencies, and, almost unchanged, some of its most ancient customs and laws. The town, the town-meeting, the common holding of lands, the pasturage under herdsmen of their goats, swine and neat cattle, the pastor who was not a priest and many curious customs which have seemed to us to be evidences of their independence, skill and ingenuity, or which look like the temporary expedients of necessity, were simply survivals of English and German habits, dating back sometimes a thousand years, or even in some cases as we now know, antedating European civilization itself, and originating as in that immemorial past of our race when its home was in Asia.

Indeed, during the whole of the seventeenth century, the daily life of the people of Salem, if accurately represented to us now, would suggest European rather than American associations. Religion was the most important concern in that little settlement when it held a thousand souls. But, after all, the business of getting a living then, as now, occupied most of the waking hours. For the most part, their life on shore was rural, and their occupations and customs such as may even now be noted in secluded parts of the Old World.

On a summer morning the good man and good wife were up with the sun, attending to their various tasks, for by six o'clock at the latest, and in some years by half an hour after sunrise, the herdsmen of Tarious kinds will be heard blowing their horns as they pass each man's door, gathering all the swine, goats and neat cattle of the town into flocks and herds, to be cared for during the day in the great pastures and other common fields. " The Great Pen " is provided for the cattle, and if, at six o'clock, any townsman shall not have his cows milked and ready for the herdsman, he must follow after as he may, and be responsible for any damage done to or by his stray cattle. At half an hour before sunset the horns of the approaching herdsmen were heard again, and every man was required to care for his own swine and goats at home. Sometimes in town-meeting it was a matter which divided the suffrages of freemen, as it was voted, that in a given season, the swine should or should not be allowed to run at large by night. Such customs are unknown now in America. But they still survive in many of the pastoral regions of Europe, such as the Black Forest and secluded valleys of Switzerland.

up the majority of the population. Their tasks were homely and laborious, and their tastes simple. But although from necessity their life externally was not unlike that of the European peasantry, they were neither stupid nor ignorant. Even those who had belonged to the servant class, and there were many of them, had passed through experiences which had sharpened their wits and greatly enhanced in their eyes the value of liberty. They had come over "under bonds" to serve a specified time in a condition not much better than slavery. Some had regained their freedom on the failure of commercial and industrial enterprises, it being cheaper to let them shift for themselves than to find work for them or to return them to England.

The yeomanry were picked men who had come over, not only because they hoped to better their condition and give their children a better chance than they could have at home, but also because they were interested in great problems of religion and government, and believed that these problems could be worked out to better advantage in a new country where they might be free from tradition and adverse precedent. They were trained in a school of experience which will show results in later generations.

Among these were some who held with tenacity to the social distinctions of the old country. They were those of official and professional standing, such as in England would, if not bearing a title, be permitted to write " gentleman " after their names. In spite of the leveling influence of their experiences and of the theories they held, the old habits were not easily given up, and, unconsciously, even, the relations of master and servant were retained on the Old World footing, and the mutual reserve remained after such relations had ceased. It took two hundred years, under the most democratic of institutions, to abolish the distinctions of aristocracy, and to make a " yeoman " of like character and education seem as good as a "gentleman.'' It was years before the possibility of establishing in Massachusetts an hereditary aristocracy ceased to be either a menace or a temptation.

With the founding of Boston, Salem lost its relative importance, but continued to be a centre of intelligence, and gradually, after long discipline, became one of the most influential towns in the commonwealth. Its liberality and intellectual alertness were shown very early in the treatment accorded to Roger Williams, who was loved and honored in Salem long after he was proscribed by the colonial authorities. Even John Endicott admired and defended him until further resistance to authority would have been rebellion. The enthusiasm, humaneness and free thought of Roger Williams seem to belong rather to our time than to that of the Puritan, who, with all his goodness, was grim and sometimes cruel. The man who, in 1631, could advocate, as he did, the rights of the savage, and in later years make his noble plea for toleration, must have been a rare creature, and those who loved and honored him, as he was loved and honored in Salem, must have been, even then, capable of better things than the circumstances of the hard times in which they lived could offer them. When he goes into exile in 1636 it is pleasant to read that Governor Winthrop, not in office, however, gives him a private hint that he is wanted by the government, and that the safest place for him will be found on the shores of Narragansett Bay.

The Puritan minister was a great personage in the little colony. From the nature of the case, religion being avowedly and actually first among the concerns of the community, he was a man of much official dignity and influence. He could not be elected to office nor long hold it in comfort unless he represented the best thought and feeling of the people and showed a gift for mastery. He was the most highly-educated man in town. He had leisure to correspond with men of like standing abroad. He was the organ of communication with the outside world. He had no competitors. The intellectual appetite of his townsmen was keen, and there were no adequate means of satisfying it in a time when they had no lectures, no concerts, theatres, newspapers, magazines, or many books. He was the peer of the best, and was freely consulted both in public and private by parishioners and magistrates as to questions of conscience and questions of policy. The first ministers were men of such parts and learning that they were largely independent of each other and of their congregations. They seemed to have moved back and forth between the two continents with great freedom, and to have excited great interest, both by their coming and their going. They have been over-praised, and condemned beyond their demerits ; for they were neither so good nor so bad as they have sometimes been represented to be. They would not have been human had they not been tempted to magnify their office unduly, and they must have been more than human to emancipate themselves wholly from the bigotries and superstitions of their times. We shall soon see them doing some cruel work, and our modern blood will find it difficult to keep cool as we helplessly watch the unmerited sufferings of good, even if misguided, men, and we shall helplessly writhe as we hear the hissing whip fall upon the naked backs of women whom pastors and magistrates alike agree to punish in the name of God. But if we are wise, we shall reflect on all the circumstances of the time and make such allowance as is due.

The Puritan attempted to crush the imagination, and is, therefore, supposed to have been devoid of it. But the imagination is a faculty nimble of foot and light of wing. It goes where it is not sent, and works where it is most contemned. Often it transforms itself, and, because its lighter moods are not in favor, plods in the disguise of some heavy-footed faculty, and masquerades as a phase of the sober reason, or still more homely common sense. In the Puritan the imagination did not exercise itself in the modern fashion nor after the manner of " ungodly playwrights." It was not stimulated by such visions of wealth and conquest as turned the head of the Catholic Spaniard. It was in him a sober faculty, dealing with the well-attested realities of common life, and what he considered the equally well-attested realities of the supernatural world. Given the facts to work upon, and this creative faculty was capable of producing surprising results. As the sober-visaged, plainly-clad Puritan sat in church listening to the long prayers and still longer sermons and lectures in which his favorite preacher described the city of G^d, his imagination, released from all restraint by his godly purpose, made many an excursion into the realm of those fair possibilities which on the earth were nowhere actual. He saw new and holier churches, societies, commonwealths arising to make the earth a safer home for the chosen children of God. He saw cities arise in the wilderness; fleets sailed over unknown seas, and broad lands, cleared, inhabited and wisely ruled, stretched in peaceful expanse before his comprehensive and creative imagination. These visions were not a waste of his time and energy ; for they were the working plans of the architect and the engineer, who was able to create that which he imagined. He could understand the proud boast of the Roman, who, if he could not play the fiddle, could make a small village into a great city. To describe the Puritan as without imagination is to deny to him that which was a chief characteristic of his laborious life. His stimulus and delight came with and from the exercise of this power, by which the mind clearly sees that which, as yet, has never been. That which distinguished him from those who commonly and consciously use this power was the capital fact that they never used it solely for pleasure. It was an instrument as useful as the more homely tools of the working intellect. That which in the Puritan was active, but disguised, in his posterity two hundred years later was to break out into the full fruit and flower of the 'imagination. Hawthorne was the legitimate product of the ancient stock. All along the line of modern life, when Puritanism had completed its emancipation, there broke a wave of poetry. Bryant, Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell and the rest of that distinguished company only revealed the inherited traits which were in their ancestors, though not then manifest. Even Quakerism now sings in the poetry of Whittier.

That Puritanism was not, in all its parts, so grim as we sometimes imagine was shown by the love the people of Salem bore to Roger Williams. It was made still more apparent that it was not without tenderness of heart and susceptibility to change of thought when the great " Antinomian Controversy " came. In 1637 Anne Hutchinson, a great-hearted woman, nearly overturned both church and state. By her liberal ideas and impassioned eloquence she carried with her Henry Vane, the Governor, and a majority of the people of Boston, the ministers almost unanimously opposing her. She was, as even her enemies admitted, a woman of wonderful power and attractiveness. Her philosophical ideas were not unlike those of modern Transcendentalism, and in many ways she only anticipated the thoughts which two hundred years later Emerson was to make familiar to sympathetic audiences in Lyceum Hall. The dispute was carried into everything, interfering with the course of government, even down to the conduct of town affi^irs. It made it more difficult for John Endicott to carry on the Pequot War. The reaction from Antinomianism brought back into power Winthrop, Endicott and the other old settlers - the " fathers and founders" - who were already, because of their seniority, becoming "distinguished townsmen." Mrs. Hutchinson found little open sympathy in Salem, because Hugh Peter was then at the full tide of his remarkable success, and he, with Governor Endicott, severely punished all who rebelled. They gave Governor Winthrop their hearty support, and helped him back into power, thus re-establishing Puritan rule in Massachusetts. Still, before her tragical death at the hands of the Indians, in 1643, this remarkable woman had made an ineffaceable mark on the institutions of Massachusetts and Ehode Island and greatly strengthened the impulse to grant, as well as claim, liberty of conscience.

From this time on there are two parties in church and state, representing Puritanism and Puritanism ameliorated. They go on in Salem together until the cruel policy of Governor Endicott, together with the absurd notions of demoniacal influence then current, bear their proper fruit in the " Witchcraft Delusion." Then Puritanism begins to relax its arbitrary and merciless tyranny and milder counsels prevail. Meanwhile, we shall see the two in conflict and shall see how a false theory of duty can, in the name of righteousness, drive humane men to the most inhuman deeds.

But the townsmen of Salem during this eventful seventeenth century were not solely given up to religious contention. They had many other interests, some of them very absorbing. Their lives were not stagnant or dull. To have in rapid succession two such ministers as Roger Williams and Hugh Peter, and to trace with intelligent interest as they did their subsequent career, the one founding a colony, the other going to the scaffold to expiate the death of a king, was enough to sharpen the wits of the dullest and give him a lively interest in the affairs of two continents. The great events of the rebellion, the Commonwealth, the restoration of the Stuarts and the Revolution all passed within the limits of a single lifetime, and every change in the fortunes of England was felt in the homes of Salem. Each man felt a responsibility for the issue of the battle over the seas, and when the commonwealth of England fell, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was accounted its lawful heir.

But at home were many and engrossing occupations and interests, some good and some to modern consciences, as much to be condemned as any of their religious excesses. Commerce began its beneficent career, and was for a hundred and fifty years a source of good things innumerable. It kept the intellect alert, gave knowledge of other nations and gradually liberalized the minds of all who were engaged in it. It produced a remarkable breed of men, to whom in time the burdens of ecclesiasticism became insupportable, and the Puritan spirit was at last transformed and a broad catholicity took the place of bigotry. But as yet we see only the beginnings, and we see them marred by many an evil practice. The distillery arose in the colony and began to pour its poisoned stream into all the homes of savagery. The ships which went out laden with New England rum returned sometimes freighted with African slaves, and tender consciences did not seem to be hurt by the transaction. It is recorded that negroes were brought to Salem as early as 1638. The laws of nations were not well defined in those days, and a war with any nation, or a war among unfriendly nations, gave excuse for privateering, which easily slipped into piracy. Pirates who preyed upon their own commerce were punished when caught, but those who only molested unfriendly nations were winked at, and it was not a thing unknown for a pirate to sail into Salem harbor and sell his plunder to the townsmen, who asked no questions so long as they got good bargains. Indeed, it is now quite impossible to tell the true story of those times without doing injustice to them, so greatly has our moral standard in many things been elevated. One can easily see, however, that there were many compensations for the Puritan. His world was not so colorless as it seems to us when we think only of his religion, and imagine that to have been his only absorbing interest.

The internal arrangements of the colony at Salem were for many years matters of constant and grave concern. Things which seem to us trivial were then of great importance. The public lands were at first held by the government, and the towns, as agents of the colony, distributed them among their inhabitants. A law restricting this power of distribution to the towns was passed (as William P. Upham, Esq., informs us) in 1635. The land was granted in small building-lots and planting-fields to those who were admitted to the privileges of the town. There could be no speculation in town lots. Only the occupiers could hold them. The rights of forest, field and shore were common, and to the householders pertained cer- tain privileges of pasturage and other rights peculiar to the proprietors. A man was made a freeman by the General Court, and when he desired to settle, asked to be " admitted an inhabitant," and, if his request was granted, became a member of a corporation consisting of certain named persons and such others as they chose.

Land was given to any one who became an inhabitant. At first there was no difficulty. But the question which arose when the late-comers were numerous, and insisted upon their full share of these privileges, became troublesome. Among the old settlers there were at least three distinctions of social rank attaching to freemen, non-freemen and servants. These were increased by an additional line drawn between the cottagers and commoners, - those who had a share in the original common rights and those who had not been admitted to such rights. The cottagers had great advantages, and for many years clung to their privileges. They even held meetings separate from the town. The contention at times must have been much more exciting than the news of a change of government in England, or the loss of the colonial charter, because it affected the fortunes of every householder in a direct way. It was not until the eighteenth century came in that the dispute was closed. In 1660 the general government passed a law that those who then had cottages or houses built should have rights in common land. About a generation later it was a serious question what rights they should have (then a large number) who were not included under that law. The cottagers were those who held under the law ; the commoners were those who claimed a right, not by virtue of the act of 1660, but by right of habitation. In 1702 the town passed a vote settling this difference and admitting to a right in the commons all houses then built. In 1713 the commoners, which term then included both commoners and cottagers, organized under the province law, and are to this day represented by the " Great Pasture Corporation." These various measures were not agreed upon without great friction and excitement, and even the famous " witchcraft year," which came when the dispute was at its hottest, could only postpone the excitement over a matter which affected the fortunes of every townsman. The commoners at last voted to give up to the town the highways, buryingplaces, the common lands which lay within the town, bridge and the block-houses, with the traininggrounds and various other relinquishments, which brought the affairs of the town on to a modern footing. Hospitality was not a characteristic of those days. People were suspicious and jealous of newcomers and required of them proofs that they would be safe and agreeable neighbors before they admitted them to a share of the common property. For temporary purposes they granted them cottage rights and garden spots, but not every new-comer was welcome.

Strolling adventurers were promptly arrested and required to give an account of themselves. For a hundred years these internal relations of the community were very important and influential. They have now nearly passed out of the memory of all but the students of antiquity. But they were important then, and in the various attempts made to adjust differences and find out that which was for the common welfare, the community was being compacted and trained to common action in a way which made all its strength available in its great days when it covered the sea with privateers and merchantmen.

But before we take leave of the seventeenth century there are still some grievous things to be noted. The Friend is to us an emblem and suggestion of peace. But in 1657 he was to the people of Salem a creature to be abhorred and, by force if necessary, expelled from the community. It must be remembered that during all this century any, even the most innocent, trespasser was there illegally if he was not permitted by the authorities to make his home there. No matter what his business, if he was forbidden to dwell there, and still persisted in opposition to the proprietors, he was regarded as being as much outside of his rights as a poacher or a burglar. There was not even a sidewalk where he could claim to be on public soil, or on the "King's highway." Every inch of soil belonged to the town and the proprietors. When undesirable persons, therefore, were present and refused to go away when warned, it was easy and altogether too natural for those in authority to begin with threats and then proceed to force, which became at last cruel much beyond the original intention. When Massachusetts decreed that Quakers remaining within her bounds must die, it was hoped and believed that the threat of death would be effectual. When it was discovered that martyrdom had its charms, and that for every Quaker hung there would be five more ready for hanging, the brief madness of the magistrates yielded to the excited protests of all tenderhearted people, and the shameful law was repealed, but not until it had caused such deeds of cruelty in the colony, especially in Boston, as no good man can now contemplate without horror. The only plea to be offered in mitigation is that the magistrates feared overmuch a popular revolution and Avere driven to excess by overplus of official zeal. Still, we must remember that it was a century of perils and of fears. Safety lay in concert of action. The Jesuits, the Anabaptists, the Quakers, if permitted to come and proselyte, might bring in all kinds of political trouble and danger from foreign nations. The Dutch and Indians were near and dangerous, and the whole community lived in such fear of unseen perils as we can scarcely imagine. For all that, we cannot be reconciled to the whipping of women at the cart-tail nor the offering to sell Quakers to be taken as slaves to the Barbadoes.

But the latter clays of the century approach with many fears, some prosperity and great distraction of mind and purpose. John Endicott had moved to Boston and died there in 1665. The race of great merchants had begun with Hollingworth and others. Philip English, the famous Episcopalian, was dazzling the eyes of his neighbors with his enterprise and the magnificent style of his living. His house and offices were full of "bound servants," and he evidently paid little attention to the strait ways of Puritanism. The "founders" who came to old age all died before the century was out. There were among them Major Hathorne and Captain Curwen, the Hon. W. Browne, who, coming over before 1638, lived half a century in Salem, and were regarded as " distinguished townsmen " when they died. There was much wealth accumulating already and life began to go on with considerable stateliness and dignity. Even those who did not for themselves expect to arrive at any station of especial honor still easily lent themselves to the general mode of life and assisted in creating a public sentiment favorable to the production of men of grave manners, weighty ideas and comprehensive plans of public and private advancement. With this outward gravity, and not altogether consistent with it, there were many grotesque and extravagant notions concerning both nature and the supernatural. At a time when men knew so little of the world and its natural products as to expect to find lions in the American wilderness, and when the loadstone was supposed to have some magical power of indicating the place of the precious metals, when devils and demons, both in their own form and as possessing human beings, were supposed to be as common as bats and owls, at any time events might happen which would break the outward calm and throw the community into a fever of curiosity or of apprehension.

At the end of the seventeenth century the town was, in many ways, in an unnatural condition. There had been numerous alarms and the real dangers were many. At any time enemies at home might trouble them, and against an irruption of foreign enemies there was no protection which was trustworthy. The more wealthy the community became the greater the danger that the ships of an enemy might sail into the ill-defended harbor and lay waste the town. Many losses had been incurred and the people were sore with apprehension, restless and ready for a panic of any sort. The occasion came, and Salem won an unpleasant and ill-deserved fame as the scene of the " Witchcraft Delusion." The sad tale will be honestly told in the narrative to follow. It is only necessary to say here that in our time men forget the multitudes who have been burned in Europe as witches and remember the score who went to an unhappy death on the scaffold in Salem, as if there were something peculiar in Salem witchcraft to distinguish it from the common experience in such matters of the rest of the civilized world. When the Zuni Indians came to Salem, a few years since, one of them, speaking in Plummer Hall, told the people that he heard that they put their witches to death. He told them that they did right; the Zunis did the same. It was the only way to deal with them. The Indian had a face like Dante's, and his opinions were only the same as were held by all the civilized world down to the time when in Salem the long delusion of the ages finally gave way to the humaneness of modern feeling. In Northern Europe, as Topeliua testifies, witches were slain by the hundred. This eruption in Saleoi was the last infamous outbreak of Puritan fanaticism, and it cleared the air for all the generations since.

To do anything like justice to the people of those days we must remember that they were at the same time more happy and, in many ways, more cheerful than we are apt to think, and that they also were more hard and insensible to certain forms of human suffering than we are, and that, moreover, great sensibility could be a trait of the character in which were qualities which, to us, seem quite incompaiible with it. We must also remember that many things which to us seem like acts of their free will did not seem so to them. To be obliged to whip an Anabaptist or a Quaker seemed to many a tender-hearted Puritan as necessary and as grievous as to us seem the unavoidable sufferings which come by " act of God." That a certain brutality was cultivated by such theories is certain. The best argument against the whippingpost is that whatever the crimes of the culprit who suffers at one end of the whip, there will always be a brute at the other end of it - probably the worse brute of the two. When Hugh Peter died in England for his political offenses we have a picture of the times which it is now difficult to contemplate without a shudder. As he waited for his turn at the gallows he was compelled to see his friend Cooke cut down and quartered. "How like you this ?" asked the executioner, rubbing his bloody hands. When such things were going on it is hard for us to remember that the sun shone as brightly then as now over the lovely shores and bays of Salem ; that in summer the east wind was fresh and cool as it swept over the sparkling water, where the fisher boats floated and the fisher boys sang their ancient ballads or shouted to each other in careless jollity; that there was a merry sound from the herdsmen's horns as the kine came in fresh from the pastures in June, and that for any one life was easy and careless and happy. But it was so, and many a legend, tradition and reminiscence of those early days show that sailors danced and were jolly, that rustics were as light-hearted at times, and even more content and satisfied than now. Society went on, as society must, with love-making and marriage, the love of children and the association of friends; and what men could not prevent, or thought they could not, that they contrived to shut out and forget. In the days of the witchcraft excitement, however, there was no possibility of shutting out or forgetting the grizzly horror which might look in at any window and claim any victim. Whether one believed in all the possibilities of demoniacal possession or only feared the passion of enemies and the mania of the populace, the danger and the fear were inevitable and oppressive.

But those unhappy days passed. The common sense and good feeling of the community reasserted themselves, and the humaneness which had never been able to justify itself assumed an authority it had never had before. The modern period may be said to begin with the eighteenth century, although many a lapse and " many a backward streaming curve " show that progress then, as now, was not a regular progression from evil to good or from good to better things in public and private life.

The eighteenth century opened with renewed prosperity. Commerce was establishing itself, and with many and wide relations with the foreign world, Salem was becoming what it has always been since that time - remarkable for the number of its inhabitants who were cosmopolitan in their tastes and habits. The influence of a few men fostered a habit which, in time, produced a very peculiar and remarkable race of sailors and traders. Abandoning the ponderous methods of the older merchants, who built huge ships a'ld founded permanent colonies, or occupied posts in foreign lands and carried on operations involving great expense and requiring to be protected by costly convoys and garrisons, the fishermen and traders of Salem learned to skirmish all along the border-lines of the civilized world, and prepared themselves for the brilliant exploits of later years. But it took a hundred years to train the whole population and compact it so that when the time came, whether for privateering or commerce, every varied need could be quickly, naturally and cheaply provided for at home. For these purposes there were needed on the spot men of universal knowledge of the known world, able also .to make a shrewd guess as to what lay out of sight in the undiscovered parts of the world. They needed trusty agents as intelligent, if not as far-seeing, as themselves - men who could obey orders of a comprehensive character, with wit enough to modify them when new conditions arose. With them must go sailors who were bold, trusty, enterprising and intelligent, coming out of families whose interests were identical with those of the merchants and traders. About these there must be a homogeneous and interested population ready and skillful in all the trades and handicrafts needed by the main business of the place. We shall see, by and by, how all these conditions were prepared and what a mark Salem made on the business of the world. For the present we only note the fact that the process was beginning. The fishing-boats and coasters, the trading smacks and larger craft plying between the West Indies and Salem, and the ships which were slowly extending the European commerce of the colony, were training such a hardy, brave and intelligent seafaring population as can now be found in no city or town of any size anywhere in the world.

From this time on religious matters are less engrossing and less distracting. Education, business and politics claim an increasing share of their attention, and a town is slowly built up of a homogeneous population, prosperous, well educated, capable of taking an intelligent interest in all the affairs of the town and the Commonwealth. But the colonies, provinces now under royal Governors who are inclined to haughty ways and the exercise of irresponsible authority, are still small, isolated and feeble. The settlements are still scattered. Communication is infrequent. Horses are few, and, until the beginning of the seventeenth century, carriages were almost unknown, while turnpikes and stage-coaches were yet to be introduced j)s the novel appliances of a new civilization. Roads everywhere were bad, bridges were few, and the obstruction to public travel, except by a very few main highways, was so great that each separate community was nearly reduced to dependence upon its own resources, excepting such supplies as might come by wnter, the great common highway of commerce. The water-ways were still used for most kinds of transportation, even among neighbors in Salem. For, as the town grew along the water's edge, with the front doors of the houses opening towards the harbor or the various rivers, while the lanes, out-houses and swine pens were behind, where the principal streets now are, it was more easy to convey all bulky articles a long distance by water than to carry them but a little way on land. The settlements spread along the bays and rivers, and even little creeks were useful to the farmer who sought a market for his surplus produce in exchange for needed supplies. With all their increased wealth and comfort, we must still think of them as a "feeble folk," scattered and few, too few to live up to the independent ideas they have now been nourishing for a century. Money was scarce, even when comfort abounded, and stores could be provided at any time in a given place only by transporting them in kind. Virginia could not give a thousand bushels of wheat to Boston by sending a bill of exchange, as we might do to-day if a famine occurred in Asia Minor, but must laboriously collect the grain from her own scattered wheat-fields and transport it from Virginia to Boston.

With the fall of the colonial government and the coming of the royal Governors, new problems of the most perplexing kinds rolled in upon them. From the beginning of the century the American Revolution was preparing itself. It took seventy-five years to breed the ideas, train the men and make it possi- sible to provide the supplies which were at last to come to their highest uses and expression in the republic. During these years attention was more and more called to what were to become national problems* Provincial governors, however bad, served an excellent purpose when they turned the attention of the colonists away from the idiosyncrasies of religionists (good and bad alike), and concentrated the energies of the people in defense of their common rights and privileges. From the time that Sir Edmund Andros said to Mr. Higginson, in Salem, "Either you are subjects or you are rebels" it was certain that rebellion would come. It was already prepared for in the mind of every Salem householder who believed that his tenure was independent of the King. Even then it was claimed by Mr. Higginson that the lands of New England belonged not to the King, but to the people who occupied and paid for them. There might be doubt as to who were the rightful proprietors of the town lots and " common lands " of Salem, but there was no doubt that the King was not one of them. In the "great jjastures" even the "swineherds" would have resisted his claim to the feeding of a pig so long as he was not a " householder " in Salem.

The reaction from the intolerance and over-religiousness of the preceding century was largely brought about by the enforced practice of the toleration which they had feared and abhorred. Being obliged to live in peace with Anabaptists, Episcopalians and Quakers, they learned, if not to like them, at least to do business with them, and at last to respect them as valuable members of the community. Wearied with long strife which had proved to be so profitless, the peace which followed the establishment of public worship after the manner of the Friends and the "Churchmen" must have been a grateful surprise even to those who had predicted dire evils to follow the toleration of Episcopacy or heresy. The minds of men were now somewhat released from the contemplation of insoluble theological problems, and the fears which had hung over the colony for a hundred years began to drift away or to dissolve before the splendor of the rising sun. Religion began to be regarded as the beneficent guide of life to be privately followed and not publicly enjoined upon others.

Many now living remember Dr. Holyoke, whose one hundredth birth-day was celebrated by a dinner at the Essex Cofiee-House, in 1828, which he attended and at which he spoke. He was graduated at Harvard College in 174G, and therefore knew all of the men and women of the last half of the eighteenth century in Salem, and those older men and women also whose memories went back to the lifetime of the conditores themselves. To men now living he may have told the stories related to him by men who heard them from the lips of John Endicott. His own memory must have held some wonderful reminiscences of the hundred years in which the feeble provinces were growing to be a great nation, able twice within his knowledge successfully to meet the mother-country in arms, and on sea and land to prove herself invincible to any foreign foe. As a boy, in 1736, he may have ridden over from Marblehead on a pillion behind his father, or have sailed around Naugus Head in a fishing boat to see the funeral procession of Philip English, and have listened that day to the tales of the grandams and goodies who remembered when he and his wife were arrested as witches. Perhaps he heard some of them slyly remind each other of having had a hand in the sport when the mob stripped and plundered his house. Some of them were in that procession which marched out to the edge of the wilderness at Gallows Hill, or stood near enough to hear the dying groans of Giles Corey. The older men that day would be sure to recall that other funeral when John Endicott was followed to his grave, in 1665, by his old companions, " the founders of the Colony." There would be several there who remembered seeing Robert Wilson's wife tied to the tail of a cart, and whipped from " Mr. Gedney's house to her own door in '61.'' As Dr. Holyoke iu later years recalled these things, and contrasted the hardships and perils of his own century and theirs, he must have remarked the fact that the hard and perilous experiences of his time were memories to be proud of and to rejoice over as their anniversaries came, while the most exciting and perilous experiences of the preceding century left shameful memories and bitter regrets. Being born in Marblehead in 1728, Dr. Holyoke could not remember that in that year Gov. Burnet, finding it impossible in Boston to obtain an appropriation from the General Court for his salary, called a session in Salem, where he found the members still intractable and unwilling to provide supplies for a " royal Governor." He would quite naturally have been one of that crowd of six thousand people who assembled on Salem Common to hour George Whitefield preach, and he certainly heard much of the heated controversy which began at that time and continued until the Congregational Church of New England was divided, three-quarters of a century later. Those' who sympathized with George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards at the time of the " great revival " then formed one party ; those who disapproved of their methods and doctrines formed another, and the lineal descendants or natural inheritors of the ideas and moral sympathies of these two parties are to-day in Salem, respectively called Orthodox and Unitarian Congregationalists. George Whitefield, loved, admired and praised by one party, was by the other distrusted and condemned. But to all he was an object of exceeding interest and curiosity. Holyoke felt the earthquake shock in '55, the year that Lisbon went down. He saw Timothy Pickering as a boy in the streets and saw the children growing up who were to march with him to Winter Hill, when the British were retreating from Lexington, and get for a hard day's march, with none of the fighting which they went for, only curses because they did not get there sooner and capture the whole force. He must have stood at the North Bridge when Colonel Leslie marched that way and was met by the " proprietors of the Nortli Fields," who assured him that the way beyond the bridge was not the " King's Highway," which he claimed it to be, but a private way where passing was " dangerous " for those who were forbidden by the lawful owners. He was a man in middle life when the great events of the Revolution were coming to pass. He might have seen Lafayette in Salem in 1784, and Washington in 1789, and may have owned one of the numerous beds occupied on that memorable occasion by the " Father of his country." No doubt he stood on the wharf when the "Grand Turk" sailed on her famous voyage to India and China, and went down to see her when she came in, the first to bring a cargo direct from Canton to New England. Some writers describe those days as provincial, dull and uninteresting to any but traders and sailors. But the man must have been curiously made who could stand in the distinguished company certain to assemble at such a time and see the treasures of the oriental world begin to pour into that little old Puritan town and not have sensations which would stir his blood and cause his nerves to tingle as scarcely anything would but war. These men, whose ancestors would not willingly associate with Anabaptists, Episcopalians or Quakers, were now ready to trade with Catholics, Buddhists, Mohammedans, Parsees, and idolaters of every hue and creed. Trading with them, they learned to respect them, and sometimes they even formed life-long friendships with men of the most diverse religious opinions. During his own lifetime Dr. Holyoke had seen revolutionary changes of many kinds. He saw ^the little provinces become a powerful nation. He saw religion cast off its gloom and severity, while in social life austerity gave place to animation and a joyous activity. He saw also in their cradles, or playing in the streets, the boys who were to bring literary renown to the old town when her commercial laurels faded. Perhaps the boys are now growing up who, by the fame of their scientific achievements, will take up the succession and make Salem as illustrious in science as she is now for the fame of her children, - Prescott and Hawthorne.

Of the last century Timothy Pickering was perhaps the most distinguished man born or living in Salem after 1750. He was conspicuous for the force and dignity of his character, for his many attainments and for his notable public services. Born in 1745, and dying in 1828, a descendant of one of the "founders," graduated at Harvard College, in his later years an officer of the First Church, a Unitarian before Channing had begun to preach, his life was almost an epitome of Puritan history in all its phases. From the time, in 1774, when the Colonial Legislature assembled in Salem and took measures to call a General Provincial Congress in Philadelphia, Pickering was at the centre of events. A mere catalogue of the offices he held in that-half century will suggest the many services he rendered and his eminent fitness for public life. He was adjutant-general and quartermaster of Washington's army ; delegate to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia; Postmaster- General, Secretary of War and Secretary of State under Washington and Adams ; United States Senator ; Representative in Congress ; and president of the Essex Agricultural Society. But, eminent as he was, he was but one in a group of professional and business men of rare ability and great attainments. Many of the educated people of that time, as in the next generation, were familiar, not only with public affairs in their own country, but also were at home in foreign lands, and had much of the culture which is gained by travel after the usual course of education is finished. They were not provincial in any narrow sense. Those merchants who had no academic training acquired a comprehensive knowledge of the world, which gave them great influence as advisers, and a large number of them were eminent outside of their counting-rooms. Such names as those of Benjamin Goodhue, Nathaniel Silsbee, the two brothers Jacob and Benjamin Crowninshield, Benjamin Pickman and William Gray suggest to those who are familiar with the history of the country the great services rendered by merchants in the early days of the republic. Goodhue and Silsbee were United States Senators. One of the Crownlnshields was Secretary of the Navy, and one declined the same position some years before. Mr. Pickman was Representative in Congress after holding many iwsts of honor in Massachusetts, as did the other merchants named. Nathan Reed was well known, not only as member of Congress, but as jurist and inventor. He made a steamboat with paddle-wheels as early hs 1789. B. Lynde Oliver was a learned and famous physician of that time, being well versed in such knowledge as was then current in scientific circles, and an authority in optics. Nathaniel Bowditch everybody has heard of who ever smelled salt-water. He was famous both on sea and shoi'e. His fame was so extensive and stable that even his contemporaries who used his "Navigator" and worked out their problems by use of his tables, often thought of him as being as ancient and famous as^Sir Isaac Newton. After his marine experience was over he lived as a quiet business man in Salem, not especially conspicuous in a place and at a time when first-rate attainments and achievements were expected of many men in many modes of action.

Derby, Joseph Peabody and William Gray. The story of the commercial fortunes of the town will be told elsewhere. They were at their brightest in the period between the two wars with England and were the direct result and continuation of one of the most interesting and exciting episodes in the varied history of Salem. America had no navy when the Revolutionary War began. Exposed along all her line of coast to a descent of the enemy, but one defense was possible. Instant submission must have followed had not the whole merchant service of every kind offered itself with ships and men trained to enterprise and eager for adventure. It was to Salem, Beverly and Marblehead that Washington looked at once for an armed fleet, without awaiting the slow action of a loosely organized Congress or taxing the inadequate resources of scattered and half-appointed ship-yards, and these old sea-porls did not fail him in his necessity. They furnished, ready-made, the first navy of the war. Ship-building of every kind was pushed with all speed. Vessels of all kinds, large and small, were commissioned to sweep the seas and make lawful prize of war whatever could be captured belonging to the enemy. Salem entered into this form of war with great enthusiasm. It suited the adventurous spirit of her boys. Jonathan Haraden was a sea-dog of the approved pattern. Bold, persevering and indomitable, he made himself a terror to the enemy, and, with others of like temper and spirit, soon made Salem a magazine of supplies of every kind, taken from the merchantmen of Great Britain. At one time a famine was averted by the timely arrival of a prize laden with flour and dry goods. More than one hundred and fifty privateers sailed from this port during the Revolution. The extraordinary activity of the marine forces of the town left few to take part in the war on land, although when Colonel Pickering marched after a drum through the aisles of the First Church, calling for volunteers, the full quota of the town fell in behind him and followed him into the street. Privateering had all the charm of piracy without its crime and outlawry. It furnished adventure to match the desires of the most inflamed youthful imagination. The town was full of well-educated young fellows who were eager for excitement. The people were of a homogeneous bi'eed, mostly the descendants of the English yeomanry. Every one knew his neighbor, and each one had a reputation to make or to maintain. Every sailor boy expected some day to be admiral of a fleet or master of a vessel at least. All were intelligent, and sailed with a purpose. The result was the training of a merchant marine of unexampled intelligence, enterprise and experience. When the war was over it was easy to see that the little town of five or six thousand inhabitants was swarming with sailors and jirivateersraen, rough, boisterous, impatient of the plodding ways of business, spoiled for anything but a life of adventure. With the harbor crowded with swift-sailing vessels and the streets filled with idle sailors, with ship-owners not averse to the life of enterprise and adventure made familiar by war, all the conditions were prepared for the sudden enlargement of the mercantile resources of the town which followed. Many volumes would be required to hold the record of the times, the adventures in foreign lands, the hunt for new markets, the unexpected discovery of obscure corners of the world, where salable products of the earth, rare in Europe and America, were common, and to the natives of little value, the conflicts with natives often murderous in disposition and cannibals to boot, the rivalries of fellow merchants, and the dangers from foreign nations, both on sea and shore. These, often told in part, familiar to many, have as yet never been presented to the public in the fullness which the great interest of the subject would justify.

In this place it is possible only to call attention to the features of society at that time which are often overlooked, the dash and excitement of the common life and the brilliant cosmopolitanism of the rich, enterprising and educated men who conducted these enterprises. The sudden quiet which fell upon the town when the foreign commerce departed, the grave demeanor of the elders, who, their business being done, and their sons having gone to conduct other enterprises, quietly settled down to the enjoyment of wealth and leisure, have given the impression that it was always so in Salem. When those who are in middle life now came upon the stage the play was over, the curtain was falling and the lights were going out. But when everything was fresh and all enterprises in full operation, when the store-houses were full, the wharves scenes of busy activity, and the young men of the town were coming and going on their travels and voyages, there was nothing dull or sluggish in the movements of society. Youth was predominant and hopefulness characteristic of the times. The unexampled opportunities for young men drew them from all the neighborhood, and in those days the increase of population was largely of this class. An impression of gravity and severity is given by pictures of the men and women of that time, who, in dress and manner, seem ancient and stiff. At that time it was customary to mark distinction of age and standing by the fashion of the garments. Old men did not affect the sprightliness of youth either in gait or garment. In middle life one's coat was a little longer, his waistcoat a little more voluminous, his shoe buckles a little broader, and there was an air of repose and a stiggestion of solidity which was regarded as not inapi>ropriate to one who might be supposed to have done something and had passed the need of hurrying overmuch. It was a gravity not altogether without the compensations and quiet cheerfulness which come with well-filled pockets, and a heavy balance at the bank. The young men as they prospered were not averse to a little of the dignity which began to indicate that they were men of weight. All social distinctions were still marked by etiquette and dress in a way now quite unknown. Until just before the Revolution names of students were printed in the catalogue of Harvard College in the order of the social rank of their parents. Something is to be said for customs which mark off society into classes according to age and merit, and make it easier to grow old and more desirable to succeed in lawful enterprises, because of the increased respect paid to the aged and the honorable. Old age in some ways began earlier than now. It is difficult for us to realize what an extension of the working capacity of the race has followed the great improvement of optical instruments since the beginning of this century. Timothy Pickering was near-sighted and wore glasses. A soldier has left on record the emotions with which he saw him ride along a line of camp-fires in the evening, his eyes blazing at intervals like balls of fire. He had never seen such a sight before. Many nearsighted people, having no glasses, were accounted queer, because they could not join with others in sports or many occupations, and the middle-aged, who were not rich enough or enterprising enough to provide themselves with the costly and ugly spectacles then made, were early victims of old age and were laid on the shelf prematurely because they could not see.

The intellectual excitements of the last part of the eighteenth century were many and strong. Intercourse with the whole world brought freight of many kinds besides that which paid duty at the customhouse. Puritanism had lost its hold upon the leading classes and English Unitarianism was coming in to make Salem a " i^eculiar place." But this, though influential, was as yet a silent force, working persuasively, but not noisily. French Democracy, working in some ways to the same end, was a disturbing force of which more account was taken. France had been the friend of America in her well-nigh hopeless struggle. Lafayette was loved there next to Washington, and it was natural that French ideas should be popular. But in the admixture of French ideas with Puritanism it is easy to see there were difficulties not easily overcome. " Infidelity " was a word of ominous meaning, and the atrocities of the French Revolution made it hard to keep one's balance when attempting to take from the French philosophers the good there undoubtedly was in their theories, and to avoid the evil which was only too apparent. Dr. Bentley was a Democrat and a sturdy fighter. He did not hesitate to avow his liberal opinions as to church and state and to take the consequences, and the consequences were sometimes unpleasant. He stood almost alone because of his opinions, a Roger Williams of later date, not doomed to banishment because the times had changed. Even so early as 1787 he was a leader in the ways which were by many accounted destructive. The story of the theological contests of the time belong in the ecclesiastical history of Salem, and will be told in its proper place. But the struggle was not wholly, perhaps not at this time mainly, theological. The questions in dispute were by all parties supposed to relate to the very foundations of social institutions and civil government. The new world of modern life was in process of discovery. New ideas were pouring into minds both trained and untrained in a tumultuous profusion which was bewildering. Everybody knew that the old familiar forms into which society had been shaped by Puritanism were shifting and changing. To some the changes were welcome ; to some they were alarming. Few were indifferent to them, and no one knew what would come next, nor exactly what was desirable. The descendants of the Puritans, then as now, were conservative in action and slow to change the outward habit of their lives. The intellectual tumult, however, was none the less because veiled by the decent garb and weighty manners of the " respectable citizen." The peculiarities of Salem life cannot be understood by those Avho do not take into account the stress and tension of the minds of the men and women of tho-e days, and the great activity of intellectual faculties exercised on numerous questions which had no relation to business and no concern with the traditional religious beliefs. It is not possible to account for the outburst of literary expression in the generation following this on the supposition that the best society of the last days of the eighteenth century was a " purseproud " aristocracy, of which the most conspicuous members were those who, by patient and unscrupulous dealings in New England rum, negroes, tobacco and salt codfish, had amassed wealth and were enjoying it in an atmosphere of dignified and exclusive dullness. The evil and the stupid elements of a commercial town were there, and no doubt in their full proportion. But there was that other something, the intellectual unrest and voiceless activity which came to expression a little later in sons and daughters trained to think, accustomed from childhood to familiar intercourse with the masters of thought and literature, and able themselves to contribute to the world's slowly accumulating treasure of immortal books. The literature of a generation springs out of nothing but a previous generation prepared to nourish thoughtful sons and daughters. In the generation to come upon the stage as the great merchants pass away we shall see how the brilliant literary history of Salem was prepared for in these busy and laborious days after the Revolution. There was, in general society, at that time great formality and exclusiveness, due in part to the perilous strength of thought, out of which may come new dispensations of peace, or, with unfavt rable conditions, contentions and disaster. Many of the more "aristocratic " families had maintained their loyalty to the royal government, and were perhaps all the more attached to their King because at a distance from their "old home" they idealized him. They had found Salem too hot for "tories," and at the beginning of the war had gone to England or the British provinces. Among the " patriots " who remained the lines were strictly drawn between Federalists on the one side and Republicans on the other. The principles which were approved on either side were illustrated in many ways, and social life took its tone largely from the color of the political party to which a family belonged. The one would give society something of the stateliness of aristocratic society abroad, while the other would abandon ?.\\ formal etiquette and return to the unconventional ways " of nature." To the Federalist, Thomas Jefferson riding unattended on horseback to take the oath of office as President of the United States was simply demeaning himself and degrading his office. To the Republicans he seemed to be setting an example of glorious republican simplicity. The two social ideals created social distinctions and produced rivalries which seem now incredible and foolish. But we must remember that nothing is of small value when it illustrates a principle, and that by outward signs a community is educated to loyalty or dislike for a theory of social order upon which the safely or prosperity of all may depend- The men of these times were at the head of the streams out of which were flowing the main currents of the national life. They knew it and they felt their responsibility.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century Salem was still a small town. The century was well on its way before fifteen thousand people gathered there. But it was the home of a vigorous race, - the product and flowering of the Puritan stock, enriched by culture, made wise by many experiences of adversity and polished by travel and a wide experience with men of many creeds and customs. In a letter written at the time, Haskett Derby is described as " a fine, majestic-looking man." " He says little, yet does not appear absent ; has traveled much, and in his manners has an easy, unassuming politeness that is not the acquirement of a day." Such a description may be taken as almost typical of the society of that time in its best aspects. There was no doubt pride, pretension and folly, such as always come and go with rapid changes of fortune. There was no doubt a class whose arrogance was not justified by any service rendered to the public by themselves or their ancestors. Others were unworthy heirs of great names, and unfit custodians of family renown. There were the purseproud who were ignoraut, and the exclusive who, in order to be so, were obliged to forget their ancestry and exclude their kindred. But after making all the allowances which could be suggested by envy, by the ill-natured rivalry of other towns, or by jealous rivals at home, granting all that reason and the democratic sentiment of America claims for the rank and file of citizenship, still it remains true, and after making all deductions, fair and unfair, only the more conspicuously true, that in those days the little town of Salem was the home to a remarkable degree of intellect, culture and high-bred character ; that it was not merely the dwelling-place of traders and speculators, but was an exceptional centre of attraction for a large number of men of comprehensive ideas, broad culture and a certain largeness of life not common then or now. In the chapters which follow on commerce and on literature the story of the achievements of the men of Salem will show in what ways the energy which had been stored up and the knowledge which had been accumulating were put to use both in enriching the world and making it wiser, - two processes not always carried on together. Aside from this history of activity on the sea and the gathering up of literary power there is little to tell of these times before the War of 1812. What there is to be noted shows that a settled prosperity has begun. The common is laid out, two banks are incorporated, the turnpike was opened, making rapid travel possible, two new banks were incorporated, two military companies held their first parade, a ship came in from a voyage round the world and another made the first voyage for trade at the Fiji Islands, Nathaniel Hawthorne was born, the Athenajum was incorporated, and Messrs. Judson, Newell, Nott, Hall and Rice were, in the Tabernacle Church, consecrated the first missionaries to India. This latter event, to many the most notable of the century, was one of the remarkable modern illustrations of the earnestness of the Puritan spirit in matters of religion, and it was a direct result of the meeting of two phases of the Puritan character. The spirit of enterprise opened the heathen world to commerce and the pious zeal of the church which had maintained the Puritan creed sent the gospel to complete the work of civilization. The two purposes which united at the founding of Salem made the third century of its lile illustrious with the double triumphs of commerce and religion. The record of the Christian missionaries of New England shines with all the traits of heroism. In all the years which have followed since the sailing of the first missionaries in the brig "Caravan" in 1812, the Orthodox people of Salem have retained their interest in their work, and have been able with both money and advice to assist in generous measure.

It would be a mistake to suppose that the large amount of liberal " leaven " in the ecclesiastical lii'e of Salem was the result of any easy-going optimism on the part of the people, or that the changes which have passed over the Puritan spirit indicate any wholesale lapse of the people from the standards of their fathers. The change was the result of a battle fiercely but fairly fought, and it has left all parties in possession of an inheritance directly derived from their forefathers. The strife which followed the division of the Congregational body of Salem was j^robably the last one of its kind in Puritan history, and it would be an instructive exhibition if one could put the symbols of ecclesiastical discipline in chronological order, marking the two hundred years, with the gallows at one end and a "union Thanksgiving service " at the other. Tolerance in all matters of religion has become common-place in Salem. But all parties who date their ecclesiastical ancestry from the beginning are equally proud of their lathers and all claim, whatever their modern differences, to illustrate in important particulars the principles of the founders. Even the Episcopalians and the Quakers now live in peace with the descendants of those who persecuted them, and claim their share of the common inheritance, while not a few of the children of the persecutors have accepted the tenets of the men and women who suffered as disturbers of the peace and rebels against the church of God. Of no portion of her population is Salem more proud than of her " Friends." It is hard for her to forgive herself that in her borders they suffered violence. Their love of peace and their zeal for human liberty have conquered. Left to themselves, they have proved themselves to be not disturbers, but keepers of the peace, and as others adopt their rule of conduct their protest dies away and they are no longer to be distinguished from their friendly neighbors.

The founding of the Andover Theological School and the oath imposed upon its professors, with its list of things to be opposed, are part of the ecclesiastical history of Salem, and show some of the influences at work in shaping her religious and social life. John Norris, of Salem, gave ten thousand dollars of the original endowment. The school was intended to offset the "latitudinarianism " of Harvard College. The heresies mentioned were those which in Salem were, or had been, regarded with more or less sympathy and toleration. It is a list which could never have been made in a western town. The professors were sworn to opposition, "not only to Atheists and infidels, but to Jews, Papists, Mohammedans, Arians, Pelagians, Antinomians, Arminians, Socinians, Sabellians. Unitarians and Universalists." Now every one of these words stood for that which had been a belief held by men of Salem or their friends and business correspondents at some time in their troubled history.

The war with England in 1812 was a disaster to Salem which her merchants dreaded and would have avoided. Their ships were abroad on all seas, and they protested against the peril and loss which they saw to be inevitable. But the war being declared, they turned their attention with characteristic vigor to the prosecution of it to a victorious conclusion. As in the Revolution, an efficient navy being wanted and not being available, an extemporaneous navy was speedily organized, and, as usual, the privateering fleet of Salem was greatly out of proportion to her small population. Ships and seamen were abundant, and the boys were natural sailors and sea-fighters. Of the enemy much spoil was taken and many prisoners. But of the forty privateers, twenty-six fell into the hands of the British, and their crews lay in prison at Barbadoes and elsewhere. Dartmoor was filled with them, and until within a few years the survivors of captivity in that gloomy place recited the stories of their sufferings and release to admiring listeners.

As commerce culminated and passed away, the intellectual vigor which had been evolved or educated by its enterprise and wide experience of the world began to manifest itself in other ways. The life of professional men in the town was attractive and their work lucrative, according to the modest standard of the time. Ministers, lawyers and doctors, of learning and ability abounded. Scholars were numerous and well equipped. The men of native mental power, who had not been highly educated, sent their boys to Harvard College, and young men of wealth, education and the habit of foreign travel were in many families where culture was accounted at least as good as wealth. At that time all classes lived the year round in Salem. They might have outlying farms, and were in the habit of traveling much abroad, but the principal interests of the rich and educated families were at home. The influence of this concentration of interest, and the maintenance of a permanent domestic life in one place was favorable to the cultivation of the whole community. Men of exceptional gifts were not isolated from their townsmen. Those who were conspicuous for their wisdom were held in honor at home, and served the community like other citizens. For illustration every institution of the town might furnish an example, - Timothy Pickering was president of the Essex Agricultural Society ; Nathaniel Bowditch was president of the Essex Fire and Marine Insurance Company ; Daniel A. White was president of the Athenseum and of the Essex Institute; Leverett Saltonstall held similar offices ; Colonel Francis Peabody founded the Lyceum ; and in the school committee for 1821 we find the names of Tim. Pickering, Joseph Story, Nat. Silsbee, Gid. Barstow, Leverett Saltonstall, John Pickering and others. In the list we have one who had been a cabinet officer under two Presidents, a member of Congress, an United States Senator, a justice of the Supreme Court, with others almost equally eminent, together with two physicians of fine attainments, and business men of prominence. Not one of the whole list is insignificant. John Pickering made the first Greek lexicon with definitions in English, and not Latin, while among the teachers with whom the committee had to deal with then or a little later were such men as the author of " Worcester's Dictionary " and Henry K. Oliver. Eufus Choate was practicing law ; Nathaniel

Hawthorne was just going to college at Brunswick ; the sculptor and poet, W. W. Story, was not quite old enough to enter school ; Jones Very, the poet, was a shy and modest lad of eight years; Samuel Johnson, the eminent historian of the "Oriental Eeligions," was getting the first impressions of the East which were to turn his attention to its literature, and make him the first American scholar in that department of learning; and many boys were fitting themselves in the public schools to become what they have been ever since - most important factors in the evolution of American society. Education was a " hobby " at this time, and money was at rapid rate being turned into brains and brain culture. Between 1815 and 1832 seventy-nine Sab m boys were graduated at Harvard College alone. In 1828 seventeen boys entered Harvard College, and seven the same year went to other colleges. In those days young men, their travels being over, returned to live at home, and a proportion of the men to be met on Essex Street, unusually large for a town of its size, were college bred. The intense mental energy directed by the fathers into the channels of commerce could not be limited to them, and their sons, inheriting their ability with a wider range of experience and a greater knowledge of the world of books, became lawyers, judges, theologians, physicians, men of science and men of letters, and exponents in all New England and the Northern States of the intellectual and "gentle" life." It was a period of wonderful intellectual stimulus and fertility. Within a radius of twenty miles from the custom-house, from which the "Scarlet Letter "was dated, the stock being homogeneous and the conditions similar, there were produced in the early part of the century in Boston, Cambridge, Salem and other towns. Story, the two Danas, Sparks, Everett, Ticknor, Prescott, Norton, Ripley, Emerson, Parker, Hawthorne, Rantoul, Holmes, Whittier, Motley, Lowell and many another of equal or lesser light, and they drew into their fellowship such men as Channing, Bancroft, Longfellow, Agassiz, Choate and Webster. The common family life out of which they came was, to a great extent, the common life of an ordinary social circle in Salem. Henry R. Cleveland, son of a ship-master, was one of the "five of clubs," and brought his companions, Sumner, Longfellow, Hillard and Felton, to enjoy the gay and witty society to be found about his home. Many a visitor from Cambridge and Boston sought the company of the accomplished men and beautiful women who constituted a genuine " society," and many of the daughters of Salem were taken away to grace the homes of other cities.

Certain writers have much to say about the '' provincialism " of Salem in the first half of this century. It is not necessary to deny any charge they may make, for no doubt it was provincial. But it was less so than any sea-port town of England at the same time, and was behind few English towns in the knowledge the people had of English literature of the better sort. Dr. Kirwan's philosophical library, made a prize of war in the Irish Channel, became the basis of the present Athenaeum Library, a rare collection of good books both new and old. But it is safe to say that there was in that library no book so abstruse, so philosophical, or printed in language so uncommon as to be unfit for the use of numerous men and women in Salem. Rummage the closets of any old gambrelroofed house to-day, and along with crackle-ware teapots and old silver porringers you will find some rare volume of "Seneca," the "Spectator," the "Dial," the common reading of Hawthorne and his playmates of seventy years ago or later.

Salem became a city about the time when its most famous days were over. With the transference of its trade to the larger cities and more accessible markets its local prominence was greatly reduced. The building of railroads and the multiplication of modern inventions reduced, instead of increasing, its relative importance. Great efforts were made, and hopes were entertained, that the port of Salem might again become the centre of a great inland trade. Stephen C. Phillips lost his life in a burning steamer on the St. Lawrence River, while making an effort to open new provinces to the enterprise of Salem. His sons were prominent in the movement which resulted in the provision made by the city for an abundant supply of pure water. When the city charter was procured, most of the wealth won by enterprise in all quarters of the globe was still held by citizens at home, or so invested as to swell the general resources of the city. But the inviting fields for enterprise opened in the Western States have caused the transference of a large part of it to other places, and with it have gone many of those who have inherited it. Some of them are to be found in most of the large cities of the Eastern States and in Europe. The sons of Salem are officers of many western railways, and the money won in oriental trade now facilitates the transport of the grain which feeds the millions of Europe.

The old Salem is gone. The men, the commerce, the Puritan spirit, the high-bred courtesy, the stately ways, the great men and women with strong local attachments, - these are gone. Nothing remains of the most i<tirring epoch in the life of the town but names, places, and a decreasing number of the families who trace their ancestry back of the nineteenth century, in Salem.

A new Salem has taken the place of the old. A city stands where the old town won its renown, - a city with railroads, horse-cars, electric lights and cotton-mills, and a large foreign population. The mansions built by merchants of English descent and training are inhabited by operatives in the mills or laborers, who have no interest in the old ways or the former inhabitants. The Irish brogue and the French language are heard now where pure English was once the rule. The old wharves are rotting ; the ancient warehouses are silently falling to decay, and the beautiful shores of streams and harbors, which once delighted the eyes of their owners, are becoming an offense to the poor who dwell along their borders. The custom-house, always too large for any reasonable expectations of prosperity, is much too vast for the diminishing commerce in dutiable goods. The old Salem is dead and gone. Most of it does not even exist as a relic of a fast-fading antiquity.