Vermont Part 17

"Pliant as Reeds where Streams of Freedom glide, Firm as the Hills to stem Oppression's tide."

Its publication was continued but two years. "The Vermont Gazette or Freeman's Depository," the second newspaper of the State, was published at Bennington in 1783, and continued for more than half a century. About this time George Hough removed the Spooner press to Windsor, and in company with Alden Spooner began the publication of a weekly newspaper ent.i.tled "The Vermont Journal and Universal Advertiser," which was continued until about 1834. The fourth paper, "The Rutland Herald or Courier," was established in 1792 by Anthony Haswell, and is still continued in weekly and daily issues, being the oldest paper in the State. William Lloyd Garrison edited "The Spirit of the Times," at Bennington, not long before he became the foremost standard-bearer of the anti-slavery cause, with which his name was so intimately a.s.sociated. In 1839 "The Voice of Freedom" was begun at Montpelier, as the organ of the anti-slavery society of the State, and was afterward merged in "The Green Mountain Freeman," published in the interest of the political Abolitionists or Liberty Party. The publication of "The Vermont Precursor," the first paper established at Montpelier, was begun in 1806, and soon after changed its name to "The Vermont Watchman." For more than fifty years this paper was conducted by the Waltons, father and sons, and is still continued. In 1817 they began the publication of "Walton's Vermont Register," which is issued annually, bearing the name of its founder, and is a recognized necessity in every household and office in the State. Eliakim P. Walton, one of the sons, also rendered his State most valuable service in editing the records of the governor and council.

A majority of the newspapers have displayed with justifiable pride the name of the State in their t.i.tles. A number have had but a brief existence, scarcely remembered now but for the names of their founders or their own strange t.i.tles, such as the "Horn of the Green Mountains,"

"The Post Boy," "Tablet of the Times," "Northern Memento," and "The Reformed Drunkard." The Spooners seem to have been intimately connected with early newspapers and printing in the young commonwealth, for at least four of this name were engaged in such business. The famous Matthew Lyon edited for a while "The Farmer's Library," and Rufus W.

Griswold the "Vergennes Vermonter;" D. P. Thompson, the novelist, "The Green Mountain Freeman," and C. G. Eastman, the poet, "The Spirit of the Age," and "The Argus."

The dingy little papers of the olden time, with their month-old news, the brief oracular editorial comments, their advertis.e.m.e.nts of trades and industries now obsolete, their blazoning of lotteries and the sale of liquors, now alike illegal, were welcome visitors in every household; and the weekly round of the post-rider was watched for with an eagerness that can hardly be understood by people to whom come daily and hourly, by mail and telegraph, news of recent events in all quarters of the globe. To those old-time readers of blurred type on gray paper, scanned by the ruddy glare of pine knots or the feeble light of tallow-dips, the tidings of foreign events which had happened months before came fresher than to us what but yesterday first stirred the heart of Europe.

Now, every considerable village in the State has its weekly paper, the larger towns these and daily papers. When Zadock Thompson published his "Vermont Gazetteer" in 1840, there were thirty papers published in the State, where now are, according to Walton's Register for 1891, sixty-one daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals.

For many years liquor-drinking was a universal custom, and a householder suffered greater mortification if he had no strong waters to set before his guest than if the supply of bread and meat was short. The cellar of every farmhouse in the apple-growing region had its generous store of cider, some of which went to the neighboring still to be converted into more potent apple-jack, here known as cider-brandy. This and New England rum were the ordinary tipple of the mult.i.tude, and the prolific source of hilarity, maudlin gabble, and bickerings at bees, June trainings, and town meetings. Drunkenness was disgraceful, but the limit was wide, for a man was not held to be drunk as long as he could keep upon his feet.

When he fell, and clung to the gra.s.s to keep himself from rolling off the heaving earth, he became open to the charge of intoxication, and fit for the adornment of the stocks. Many a goodly farm, that had been uncovered of the forest by years of labor, floated out of its owner's hands in the continual dribble of New England rum and cider-brandy.

The signboard of the wayside inn swung at such frequent intervals along the main thoroughfares that the traveler must be slow indeed who had time to grow thirsty between these places of entertainment. The old-time landlord was a very different being from his successor, the modern hotel proprietor. Though a person of consideration, and maintaining a certain dignity, he received his guests with genial hospitality, and at once established a friendly relationship with them which he considered gave him a right to their confidence. Ensconced in his cage-like bar, paled from counter to ceiling, the landlord drew from his guests all the information they would give of their own and the world's affairs,--their whence-coming and whither-going,--while he dispensed foreign and domestic strong waters, or made sudden sallies to the fireplace where lay the ever-ready flip-iron, blushing in its bed of embers. Good old Governor Thomas Chittenden was a famous tavern-keeper, and as inquisitive concerning his guests' affairs as other publicans of those days. He used to tell with relish of a rebuff he got from a wayfarer who stopped to irrigate his dusty interior at the governor's bar. "Where might you come from, friend?" the governor asked.

"From down below," was the curt reply.

"And where might you be going?"

"To Canada."

"To Canada? Indeed! And what might take you there?"

"To get my pension."

"A pension? And what might you get a pension for, friend?"

"For what you never can, as I judge."

"Indeed! And what is that?"

"For minding my own business."

Temperance began to have earnest advocates, men who, for the sake of their convictions, suffered unpopularity and persecution. A Quaker miller refused to grind grain for a distillery, and the owners brought a suit against him to compel him to do so. After a long and vexatious suit, the case was decided against him, but he persisted in his refusal, and the distillery was finally abandoned. Some would no longer comply with the old custom of furnishing liquor to their help in haymaking and to their neighbors who came to give a helping hand at bees, and by this infraction of ancient usage made themselves unpopular till a better sentiment prevailed.

There were zealots who cut down acres of thrifty orchard, as if there were no use for apples but cider-making. Through moral suasion and the honest example of good men, a great change was wrought in the sentiment of the people, till at last temperance became popular enough to become a matter of politics. Moral suasion was in the main abandoned, and the old workers dropped out of sight.

Vermont followed the lead of Maine in legislation for the suppression of the liquor traffic, and in 1852 pa.s.sed a prohibitory law. Each succeeding a.s.sembly has legislated to increase the stringency and efficiency of the prohibitory statutes. Yet the fact remains that, after forty years' trial, prohibition does not prohibit, and presents the anomaly of an apparently popular law feebly and perfunctorily enforced.

It is a question whether the frequent and unnoticed violations of this law, and the many abortive prosecutions under it, have not made all laws less sacredly observed, and the crime of perjury appear to the ordinary mind a merely venial sin.

FOOTNOTES:

[99] Conant, _Geography, History, and Civil Gov. of Vermont_.

[100] Conant, _Geography, History, and Civil Gov. of Vermont_.

[101] Thompson's _Vermont_.

[102] Conant, _Geography, History, and Civil Gov. of Vermont_.

[103] _History of Montpelier_, by Daniel P. Thompson. D. P. Thompson is best known as the author of _The Green Mountain Boys_, _The Ranger_, and other tales that picture quite vividly early times in Vermont.

[104] _Governor and Council_, vol. iv.

[105] _Vermont_, by Zadock Thompson, an invaluable history.

CHAPTER XXII.

EMIGRATION.

When the tide of emigration began to flow from New England to the newly opened land of promise in the West, Vermont still offered virgin fields to be won by the enterprising and ambitious young men of the older States. Thousands of acres, capable of bounteous fruitfulness, still lay in the perpetual shadow of the woods, untouched by spade or plough; and the forest growth of centuries was itself a harvest worth the gathering, while wild cataracts still invited masterful hands to tame them to utility.

Some decades elapsed before the young State began to furnish material for the founding and growth of other new commonwealths, except such restless spirits as can never find a congenial place but in the foremost rank of pioneers. Such an one was Matthew Lyon, who, having borne his part in the establishment of the first State of his adoption, early in the century removed to Kentucky, then farther westward to Missouri, in whose territorial government he had become the most prominent figure when death set a period to his enterprise and ambition.

Though there were yet vast tracts in Vermont awaiting the axe and the plough, the fertile lands of the West began to draw from the State a steadily increasing flow of emigration. The tales of illimitable acres unenc.u.mbered by forest, and warmed by a genial climate, were attractive to men tired of warfare with the woods, and the beleaguering of bitter winters. The blood of their pioneering fathers was fresh in their veins, and impelled them to found new homes and new States.

The first migrations were made in wagons drawn by horses or oxen, and beneath whose tent-like covers were bestowed the bare necessities of household stuff and provision for the tedious journey.

After leave-takings as sad as funerals, the emigrants sorrowfully yet hopefully set forth. Slowly the beloved landmarks of the mountains sank as the miles lengthened behind them, and slowly unfolded before them level lands and sluggish streams. The earlier stages of the journey were relieved by trivial incidents, and the new experience of gypsy-like nightly encampment by the wayside; but as day after day and week after week pa.s.sed, the new and unfamiliar scenes, still stranger and less homelike, grew wearisome to the tired men and jaded, homesick women and children, and incident became a monotonous round of discomfort.

In 1825 a swifter and easier path was opened to the West when, two years after the Champlain Ca.n.a.l had connected the waters of Lake Champlain and the Hudson, the Erie Ca.n.a.l was completed. The new thoroughfare was thronged with emigrants, of whom Vermont furnished her full share of families, and of enterprising young men seeking to better their fortunes in the land of plenty known there in common speech as "The 'Hio," or in that farther region of prairies whose western bound was the golden sunset, and where they whose plough had turned no virgin soil till the axe had first cleared its path should behold the miracle of fertile plains that had never been shadowed by forest. When the long journey was accomplished, a quarter of the continent lay between them and the old home; and though they lived out the allotted days of man, the separation of kindred and friends was often as final as that of death.

Mails were weeks in making the pa.s.sage that is now accomplished in a few days; and the gra.s.s might be green on the graves of kindred and friends in the old or the new home before tidings of their death brought a new and sudden grief from the distant prairie, or from the New England hillside, where its pain had already grown dull with accustomed loss.

The course of emigration tended westward nearly within the parallels of lat.i.tude that bound New England, and but few pioneers of Vermont birth diverged much below the southward limit of a region whose climate, kindred, emigrants, and familiar inst.i.tutions, transplanted from the East, most attracted them.

The fertile lands of Ohio were chosen by many, while more were drawn to Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, in all of whom Vermonters took their place as founders of homes and free commonwealths, and gave each some worthy characteristic of that from which they came.

When gold was discovered in California, many Vermonters flocked thither in quest of fortune, and many remained there to become life-long citizens of the State in whose marvelous growth they were a part.

From their inauguration, the great railroad systems of the West have made another and continuous drain upon the best population of the East; and in every department of the enormous business men of Vermont birth and training are found conspicuously honored for their ability and integrity.

The rapidly growing cities, the immense sheep and cattle ranches, and all the new enterprises of the whole West, have drawn great numbers of ambitious young Vermonters to every State and Territory of the wonderful region. Indeed, there is not a State in the Union in which some Vermonters have not made their home; but however far they may have wandered from the land of their birth, they cherish the mountaineer's love of home, and a just pride in the goodly heritage of their birthright.

Wherever in their alien environment they have congregated to any considerable number, they are a.s.sociated as Sons of Vermont. Chicago boasts the largest society, as its State does the greatest number of citizens, of Vermont birth.[106] St. Louis has a large a.s.sociation of the kind, as have other Western cities. Even so near their old home as Boston,[107] Worcester, Providence, and Brooklyn, the Sons of Vermont gather annually to refresh fond memories, and celebrate the virtues of their beloved State.

To fill the place left by this constant drain on its population, the State has for the most part received a foreign element, which, though it keeps her numbers good, poorly compensates for her loss.

Invasions of Vermont from Canada did not cease with the War of the Revolution, nor with the later war with Great Britain. On the contrary, an insidious and continuous invasion began with the establishment of commercial and friendly relations between the State and the Province.

Early in the century, a few French Canadians, seeking the small fortune of better wages, came over the border, and along the grand waterway which their n.o.ble countryman had discovered and given his name, and over which so many armies of their people had pa.s.sed, sometimes in the stealth of maraud, sometimes in all the glorious pomp of war. At first the few new-comers were tenants of the farmers, for whom they worked by the day or month at fair wages, for the men were expert axemen, familiar with all the labors of land-clearing, and as handy as Yankees with scythe and sickle; while their weather-browned wives and grown-up daughters could reap and bind as well as they, and did not hold themselves above any outdoor work.

After a while some acquired small holdings of a few acres, or less than one, and built thereon log houses, that with eaves of notched shingles and whitewashed outer walls, with the pungent odor of onions and pitch-pine fires, looked and smelled as if they had been transplanted from Canada with their owners.