The Life of Daniel Waldo Lincoln, 1784–1815: Letters from a Wayward Son 2022011271, 2022011272, 9780367550400, 9780367550417, 9781003091691

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Notes
Bibliography
1. The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729-1800
Notes
Bibliography
Archival Sources
Other Printed Matter
2. The Republican Levi Lincoln 1800-1803
Notes
Bibliography
Archival Sources
Other Printed Matter
3. The Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784-1803
Notes
Bibliography
Archival Sources
Other Printed Matter
4. Triumph Then Tragedy in Worcester 1803-1806
Notes
Bibliography
Archival Sources
Other Printed Matter
5. Promises and Portland 1806-1807
Notes
Bibliography
Archival Sources
Other Printed Matter
6. Love and The Embargo 1807-1810
Notes
Bibliography
Archival Sources
Other Printed Matter
7. Brahmins and Boston 1810-1811
Notes
Bibliography
Archival Sources
Other Printed Matter
8. Lawyering and Lassitude 1811-1812
Notes
Bibliography
Archival Material
Other Printed Matter
9. War Zones 1811-1813
Notes
Bibliography
Archival Material
Other Printed Material
10. Providence Slept 1813-1815
Notes
Bibliography
Archival Matter
Other Printed Matter
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Perspectives on Early America

THE LIFE OF DANIEL WALDO LINCOLN, 1784–1815 LETTERS FROM A WAYWARD SON Rebecca M. Dresser

The Life of Daniel Waldo Lincoln, 1784–1815

Placed within a comprehensive contextual historical narrative, The Life of Daniel Waldo Lincoln, 1784–1815 offers a compelling portrait of one brilliant but compromised man’s perspective of his changing times. Daniel Waldo Lincoln, the second son of Levi Lincoln, a prominent Massachusetts Democratic-Republican, was destined to become a man of influence. Born in 1784, equipped with wealth, prestige, a Harvard education, powerful friends, and a distinguished family name, Lincoln ranked high among the inheritors of the Revolution whose purpose was to protect the ideals of the nation’s founders. In over 250 private letters, essays, and poems beginning with his first day at Harvard in 1801 and ending just weeks before his death in 1815, Lincoln brings to readers a portrait of privilege as it careened into disappointment. A young man active in Republican circles, an orator and attorney in Worcester, Portland, Maine, and Boston, Lincoln comments on the politics, honor, religion, the War of 1812, and his struggles with romance and alcohol. Written for private eyes, his letters are an unusually candid eyewitness account of earlynineteenth-century Massachusetts interwoven with his personal agonies. This volume is of great use for students and scholars interested in life, society, and politics in nineteenth-century America. Rebecca M. Dresser holds a PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has been a psychotherapist and an adjunct professor of American history at Hunter College. She also teaches American history to incarcerated women in the Bedford Hills College Program through Marymount Manhattan College.

Perspectives on Early America Series Editors: Craig Friend (North Carolina State University, USA) and Stacey Robertson (SUNY Geneseo)

Quakers and Their Allies in the Abolitionist Cause, 1754–1808 Edited by Maurice Jackson and Susan Kozel Enlightenment Orientalism in the American Mind, 1770–1807 Matthew H. Pangborn Imaginary Friendship in the American Revolution John Adams and Jonathan Sewall Colin Nicolson and Owen Dudley Edwards The Life of Daniel Waldo Lincoln, 1784–1815 Letters from a Wayward Son Rebecca M. Dresser For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Perspectives-on-Early-America/book-series/PEA

The Life of Daniel Waldo Lincoln, 1784–1815 Letters from a Wayward Son Rebecca M. Dresser

First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Rebecca M. Dresser The right of Rebecca M. Dresser to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Names: Dresser, Rebecca M., author. Title: The life of Daniel Waldo Lincoln, 1784–1815 : letters from a wayward son / Rebecca M. Dresser. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, [2023] | Series: Perspectives on early America | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2022011271 (print) | LCCN 2022011272 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367550400 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367550417 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003091691 (ebook) Classification: LCC F69 .D74 2023 (print) | LCC F69 (ebook) | DDC 974.4/03092 [B]--dc23/eng/20220328 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022011271 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022011272 ISBN: 978-0-367-55040-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-55041-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-09169-1 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003091691 Typeset in Sabon by MPS Limited, Dehradun

For my mother Rebecca Sturtevant Bonnell

Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction 1 The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800

viii ix 1 7

2 The Republican Levi Lincoln 1800–1803

25

3 The Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803

35

4 Triumph Then Tragedy in Worcester 1803–1806

57

5 Promises and Portland 1806–1807

70

6 Love and the Embargo 1807–1810

88

7 Brahmins and Boston 1810–1811

113

8 Lawyering and Lassitude 1811–1812

132

9 War Zones 1811–1813

155

10 Providence Slept 1813–1815

176

Conclusion

192

Index

202

Figures

0.1 1.1 1.2 1.3 2.1 3.1 3.2 4.1 5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 8.2 8.3 9.1 10.1 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4

The Daniel Waldo Lincoln Collection Levi Lincoln Harvard Faculty Minutes Class 1772 Levi Lincoln Mansion Formerly the Hancock-Henchman Mansion, Worcester, Massachusetts Thomas Jefferson, Third President of the United States Daniel Waldo Lincoln Admission Record, 1801 1803 Harvard Commencement Program Old South Meeting House as it Appeared in 1763 Map of the District of Maine from the Lates Surveys 1806 by Osgood Carleton W.B. Sewall. Photo by J.T. Locke Captain Edward Preble, USN (1761–1807) Fort Preble, Cape Elizabeth, Portland, Maine Old State House and State Street, Boston 1801 Third Baptist Meeting House in Charles Street Merino Ram View of the Court House in Boston. Erected 1811 and 1812 Elbridge Gerry The Gerry-Mander USS Enterprise takes the HMS Boxer, September 5, 1813 Wanderer from the Sea of Fog Daniel Lincoln Grave, Rural Cemetery, Worcester Massachusetts Levi Lincoln of Massachusetts Maine Governor Enoch Lincoln Signature of Daniel Waldo Lincoln

2 7 12 17 25 35 49 57 70 75 81 88 113 117 125 132 141 142 155 176 192 194 196 198

Acknowledgments

My husband, the playwright and novelist Richard Dresser, is from a remarkable New England family. It is through Richard and his cousin, Jock Herron, that I became acquainted with their great-great-great-great uncle, Daniel Waldo Lincoln. It was Jock who casually mentioned that the family archives held a collection of Daniel’s letters from the early nineteenth century. He thought perhaps I might be interested in seeing them, as indeed I was. Shortly thereafter, he delivered to me Daniel Lincoln’s astonishingly large collection of letters, poems, and legal drafts. Entrusted to me for their safekeeping, I handled them as gingerly as I could. Yet no matter how carefully I opened the volume, residue from the ancient letters left a dusting on my desk. These tiny time travelers connected me to Daniel in a surprisingly intimate way. It has been a humbling and wonderful experience that I owe to Richard and Jock. Besides bringing me into his brilliant family, Richard Dresser sustained me, encouraged me, and championed me during what turned out to be a decade-long process of writing, research, and revision. Our son, Sam Dresser, a high school student when I started this project and now a senior editor at Aeon Magazine, gave his mother sound editorial advice and a reason to strive for his good regard. My sisters, Anne Marble and Peggy Marble, gave me gentle and not-so-gentle nudges along the way. Andrew Robertson provided guidance and direction in this effort’s earliest incarnation as a doctoral dissertation. My professor, advisor, and friend, Carol Berkin, provided me with invaluable guidance, encouragement, and direction at every step and for more years than I want to admit. Professor Jonathan Sassi also provided the advice and suggestions I needed to bring Daniel to life and give his nineteenth-century struggles twenty-first-century relevance. Both Jonathan and Carol stayed with me during the years Daniel’s story rested for too long in my desk drawer. Ronald L.F. Davis, professor emeritus of history at California State University Northridge, was my first great history teacher who showed me how history was not only fascinating but odd, mysterious, heartbreaking, hilarious, and always human. Lynn Schlesinger, Jeanne Blake, Janet Zarish, Rachel Tarses, Marcie Goldstein, Kathy Quinn, Binny Tercek, Susan Falck, Wendy

x Acknowledgments Machlovitz, Sheryl Nomelli, Lynne Reitman, Ilsa Halpern, and Abbe Fabian have been steadfast supporters for many years and provided me necessary distractions beyond the stacks and archives. Lastly, my mother, Rebecca Sturtevant Bonnell, to whom I dedicate this work, has given me the gift of lifelong unconditional love and faith in my abilities for which commensurate thanks is impossible.

Introduction

This is the story of Daniel Waldo Lincoln, born into status and privilege in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1784. Thirty-one years later, in 1815, Daniel Lincoln returned to Worcester and drank himself to death. He left behind no grieving wife or children, only a modest estate of a beloved horse, a steelhilted sword, a silver watch, a trunk containing his dress clothes (pantaloons, military boots, stockings, vest, a greatcoat), and a seven-volume library. The entirety of his estate was estimated to be worth $210.1 The record of Daniel’s life as it appears in the family genealogy is equally unassuming. In an inferior font reserved for women and children who died before adulthood, it consists of a simple listing of his accomplishments: college graduation, professional appointments, and public orations. Included is an excerpt from the Worcester Aegis celebrating him as a scholar, patriot, and gentleman. What follows is a cryptic postcript in Latin: “Vitae summa brevis spem nos inebrare longam,” or loosely translated, “Life is too short to spend it drunk.”2 Whether intended as a warning or a rebuke, that sentence reveals more about Daniel than any of the fulsome accolades that preceded it. Therein lies his story. What was not included in the official inventory of his earthly possessions were the poems, musings, legal briefs, and over 250 private letters Daniel wrote to friends and family over a fourteen–year period beginning in 1801 when he was seventeen-years-old. Someone, likely a brother, a sister, or a parent, devotedly gathered the letters from among his many correspondents, assembled the letters chronologically, and bound them together in a single overstuffed volume with a marbleized cover. The five generations of Lincolns who followed Daniel tucked the collection away with other letters from summer camp and foreign wars, report cards, party invitations, bank statements, and faded valentines. Nestled comfortably with generations of prosaic clutter, Daniel’s letters survived decades of moves and well-meaning housekeepers, staying intact and untouched for over two hundred years. Without the letters enwrapped in the red and gray marbleized cover, all we would ever know of Daniel Lincoln would be wispy traces of his existence – that cursory entry in the family genealogy, an occasional mention in the local newspapers, his Harvard College record, a weathered headstone DOI: 10.4324/9781003091691-1

2 Introduction

Figure 0.1 “The Daniel Waldo Lincoln Collection.” Photograph by Author.

in Worcester’s Rural Cemetery. Instead, we have an extraordinary story of a talented but deeply flawed man whose addiction to alcohol undermined his quest for what mattered to him most: the love and respect of his family and community.3 Daniel Lincoln was born a year after the Revolutionary War officially ended, making him among the first of his generation to be born an American. He died a month after Congress ratified the Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812. During the same years Daniel grew to maturity, the young United States went from a fragile union of colonies cobbled together with uncertain prospects to a recognized promise world presence of exceptional promise and a growing democratic polity and a growing democratic polity. In short, during Daniel’s lifetime the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the élan of the Revolution were translated into what being an American in the early nineteenth century actually meant for those living in it. For the imaginative, the adventurous, and the determined, the national tabula rasa offered opportunities the likes of which their fathers never dared dream.4 But for the more conservative element, those who were reluctant to turn away from their inherited and habitual comforts, who were committed to their gendered and class roles, the future appeared unstable, chaotic, even frightening. As an elite, it would have been easier for Daniel had he been permitted to live comfortably with his inherited privileges, but his father was Levi Lincoln, a Jeffersonian Republican whose politics and prominence complicated Daniel’s life. As Levi Lincoln’s son, he publicly espoused his father’s inclusive political views. Yet privately he balked at the idea of a more expansive democratic riffraff participating in national governance. He openly disdained the avariciousness of the rising middle class. Levi Lincoln had no such conflicts. He rose from being a farmer’s son in colonial Hingham, Massachusetts destined for a blacksmith’s life, to

Introduction 3 become a lawyer, judge, barrister, state representative, state senator, congressman, Thomas Jefferson’s first attorney general, lieutenant governor, and acting governor of Massachusetts. He married well and acquired massive amounts of property (sometimes through questionable means) to become the second-largest landowner in Worcester County. Fortune had an uncanny way of finding Levi Lincoln, or he of finding it. Time and again he deftly shaped himself to be the right man for the right job at the right time. Although his politics were opportunistic, they were not purely so. He committed himself to cracking the elite’s hold on power, especially that of the established clergy, whom he viewed with tremendous contempt. He embraced the principles of a self-governing, independent nation of laws free from ecclesiastical authority. He supported less government and, theoretically at least, more democracy. Fundamentally, he believed it was his mandate to protect the nation from enemies of liberty, those conservative politicians with an affinity for British monarchism: Federalists. Levi became Jefferson’s staunchest ally in Massachusetts, standing as his proxy and absorbing the barbs of his many political enemies even if it meant willfully ignoring the contradiction of espousing liberty for all people while serving and defending a slaveholding president from Virginia, an inconsistency he dodged and never publicly addressed. Levi Lincoln understood that his responsibility to further the growth and protection of the nation did not depend on his public service alone. His paternal responsibilities were synonymous with his patriotism. It was his duty to prepare the next generation to be stewards of republicanism. When Jefferson asked him to join his cabinet, he hesitated because he did not want to abrogate his obligation to provide for his children’s education. Nor did he. At a time when a college education was available to the very few, four of his five sons attended Harvard College. Two of them, Levi Jr. and Enoch, followed him into politics and became governors of Massachusetts and Maine, respectively. His youngest son, William, became a lawyer and historian of Worcester. John, who did not attend Harvard because of an unnamed speech impediment that would have interfered with oratorical training, became a merchant, sheriff, captain of the Worcester Light Infantry, and representative to the General Court. His daughters, Martha and Rebecca, were provided classical educations as well, unusual for the time. Both women married politically active lawyers who also became state representatives. And then there was Daniel. Probably the most gifted of his children, he should have risen to the same heights as his brothers. He was wellpositioned to do so thanks to his intelligence, literary talents, and his father’s influence. But it was not to be. For most of his life, Daniel was sad, isolated, and depressed. Wherever he lived and no matter who he was with, he found himself socially disaffected. Because his years at largely Federalist Harvard coincided with his father’s tenure as Jefferson’s attorney general, the relentless political vitriol aimed at Levi Lincoln from the Boston press left Daniel a social outlier among his student cohort. Finding new friends

4 Introduction also proved difficult as he snobbishly scoffed at Republican strivers, ridiculing them for their nouveau riche pretensions and taking umbrage at their crass material values. Cast off from those who knew him and separating himself from those he chose not to know, Daniel was arrogant and aloof. Not incidentally his reputation for drunkenness gradually alienated him from those who knew him until there were but few, mostly family, who would claim him. Daniel pretended that he preferred to be free of bothersome social demands that were not forthcoming anyway, so he could devote more time to his favorite pastime: writing poetry. He identified with the great Romantic poets, other tortured artists who aspired to live a life devoted to nature, far from the sordid world of commercialized manufacturing, vulgar middle-class ambition, and the meanness of competition. As a man of sensibility who valued imagination over reason and emotions over intellect, Daniel’s poetry echoed the aesthetic of Wordsworth, Byron, and Blake. As much as he may have wanted to retreat to a world of solipsism and poetry, he could not neglect his position as his father’s son and heir to the Revolution. As a demonstration to his father of his Republican loyalty and his usefulness as a wordsmith to promote the Jeffersonian agenda, the public Daniel composed rousing speeches for Republican groups and contributed partisan commentary for Republican newspapers. In this way he could target Federalist iniquities, rally the loyal, and be an exemplary son. The private Daniel, however, harbored a more nuanced, darker perspective of the political actors around him. He disdained the avaricious striver. He deplored the independent, capricious women who entered and then left his life. He tired of lawyering for the dissolute, he hated the hypocrisy of the clergy, as he struggled to be the man he felt he was supposed to be but never really was. Had he had the freedom to go his own way, it’s likely he would have settled into the comforts of his class as a gentleman farmer, dabbling in poetry, raising horses and Merino sheep, weighing in on the controversies of his day, but free from the burdens of public life. Frustrated and denied a future of his own choosing, pushed into a life he didn’t want, he found relief in a a bottle of spirits to muffle his depression. Daniel’s friends and family did what they could to halt his downward spiral. They admonished him, distanced themselves from him, and relocated him. Once he was sober again, the contrite Daniel regretted his behavior, feared the loss of familial love, chastised himself, and made many promises to reform. But before too long another disappointment would slacken his grip on his better self, his control evaporated, and his demons would gain the upper hand, dragging him into another alcoholic abyss. With each stumble, Daniel’s reputation slipped lower, his family’s embarrassment deepened, his friends’ regard for him diminished, and his isolation worsened. As the progeny of a man in the public eye, Daniel’s story is not unlike that of other sons of famous men who could not find their way in the confluence of conflicting cultural and psychological pressures that came with a reputable family name. John Adams’s sons Thomas Boylston and Charles Adams both

Introduction 5 struggled with alcoholism. John Quincy Adams’s son, John Adams, died of alcohol poisoning. Another Adams son, George Washington Adams, committed suicide. 5 There were some, of course, who exercised what agency they had and defined themselves in opposition to their fathers without having to resort to self-annihilation. Benjamin Franklin disavowed his loyalist son William, and James Sullivan, the Republican governor of Massachusetts, had a son who was an uncompromising Federalist. Striking out on their own came with a high price tag for both Franklin and Sullivan: paternal rejection and disinheritance. Although Daniel’s family distanced themselves, they never completely abandoned him. It was, after all, in his parents’ home that he found some comfort during his final illness and where he breathed his last. More than two centuries have passed since Daniel Lincoln last dipped his quill pen with its impossibly tiny nib into an inkwell. Etching his words on a piece of foolscap in his best Roundhand calligraphy, Daniel recorded his life and his struggles with vivacity and clarity. As both an actor and observer, he has much to tell us about his times. His letters meld the literary and the political, the public son in conflict with the private man. Thanks to the labor of love that went into assembling and preserving the letters for posterity, and the good luck and caretaking from all the Lincolns that followed, we have the story of a brilliant man swept up in the political and cultural maelstrom of early nineteenth-century America, who blessed with wealth and talent,but afflicted with an addiction he could not master failed to find his way.

Notes 1 Inventory of the Estate of Daniel W. Lincoln, Esq. Worcester County Probate Record Books, Volume 45, Massachusetts State Archives, 670–71. The $210 estate would be about $3,500 in 2020 dollars. 2 Waldo Lincoln, History of the Lincoln Family: An Account of the Descendants of Samuel Lincoln of Hingham, Massachusetts 1637–1920. (Boston: Goodspeed’s Book Shop, Inc., 1920), 162–3. 3 Richard Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 92–6, and Tamara Plakins Thornton, Handwriting in America: A Cultural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 35–41. 4 See Joyce Oldham Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 2000), Joyce Oldham Appleby, Recollections of the Early Republic: Selected Autobiographies (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997); Joseph J. Ellis, After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979); Alan Taylor, William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (New York: Random House, 1995). 5 See Paul C. Nagel, Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983).

Bibliography Appleby, Joyce Oldham. Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000.

6 Introduction Appleby, Joyce Oldham. Recollections of the Early Republic: Selected Autobiographies. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997. Bushman, Richard. The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. Lincoln, Waldo. History of the Lincoln Family: An Account of the Descendants of Samuel Lincoln of Hingham, Massachusetts 1637–1920. Boston: Goodspeed’s Book Shop, Inc., 1920. Nagel, Paul C. Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983. Taylor, Alan. William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic. New York: W.W. Norton, 1979. Thornton, Tamara Plakins. Handwriting in America: A Cultural History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

1

The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800

Figure 1.1 “Levi Lincoln” by James Sullivan Lincoln. Courtesy of the United States Department of Justice.

Independence Day broke warm and cloudless over Boston Harbor in 1810. The town reverberated with ringing bells and cannon fire echoing from Fort Independence in the Charlestown Navy Yard to the heights of Bunker Hill. Bostonians had been assembling along the city’s serpentine streets since DOI: 10.4324/9781003091691-2

8 The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800 early morning, angling for the best view of the executive procession as it made its way from the State House to the Third Street Baptist Church for the day’s commemorative oration. The commonwealth’s most illustrious citizens, former President John Adams, his cousin Samuel Adams, the first governor of Massachusetts John Hancock, the jurist and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Robert Treat Paine, the current governor Elbridge Gerry, Speaker of House, Perez Morton, Lieutenant Governor, William Gray, and governor’s executive council, filled the front pews of Third Street Church nave.1 Ordinary citizens crowded in behind, eager for a dose of patriotic inspiration and uplift on this, Boston’s most celebrated day. Inside the close and crowded church, the day’s orator, Daniel Waldo Lincoln, age twenty-six, ascended the pulpit steps. Already a veteran public speaker, Daniel knew that he needed to deliver more than the usual July Fourth paean that extolled the virtues of its founders and excoriated British treachery. That was the easy part. Harvard-educated, a lawyer, a poet, a scholar, and as everyone seemed to know, a “victim of intemperance,” Daniel Lincoln had something to prove. Here in the city of Boston, the seedbed of the Revolution, in front of a most distinguished audience, was his chance to show the world that he was still honorable. He was still deserving of their respect as a man of intelligence and principle, a worthy Republican heir-apparent of the Revolution. The oration would be his redemption. It would not be an easy sell. Among the luminaries in attendance that day was Daniel’s father, Levi Lincoln. Levi had served as a state representative, United States congressman, Thomas Jefferson’s first attorney general, lieutenant governor, and acting governor of Massachusetts. In 1810 he was serving the commonwealth as a member of Governor Elbridge Gerry’s executive council and had the distinction of being one of the highest-ranking Jeffersonian Republicans in Massachusetts for over a decade. But at age sixty-one with dimming eyesight and fading public influence, his political future lay with his grown sons who were just beginning to launch their own careers. Levi had done everything he could to prepare them for success, but he had not counted on Daniel’s slide into notoriety. As embarrassed as he might have been, he had not given up on his wayward son. It was because of Levi’s influence with the Bunker-Hill Association, the organizers of the day’s events, that Daniel had been given this opportunity for public vindication. But the patrimony of patronage and protection Levi could provide his son was about to be exhausted. Besides a respected family name, Levi’s father, Enoch Lincoln, had not been able to give his children many advantages. A farmer and glazier in Hingham, Massachusetts, Enoch and his wife, the former Rachel Fearing, lived on the family farm purchased in 1649 by Samuel Lincoln, a weaver and mariner who had arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony over a decade earlier. (Samuel was also the ancester of the family’s most famous

The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800 9 descendant, Abraham Lincoln, the country’s sixteenth president. Five generations and two centuries after Samuel’s arrival, Abraham Lincoln met his cousin Levi Lincoln, Jr. when a campaign tour for Zachary Taylor brought him to Massachusetts in 1848. The two fifth cousins dined together at Levi’s home with several other distinguished gentlemen from the area. By all accounts it was a pleasant evening, but the two cousins never saw each other again.2) As a proud fourth-generation Lincoln, Enoch was a leader in local affairs, supported boycotting British goods in 1774, and served as a selectman and representative to the General Court during the early years of the Revolutionary War. He was a “decided and ardent whig and one of the most influential men of his party. His mind was of vigorous and masculine cast and his conversation always turned upon grave and important subjects. He was uncommonly prudent and circumspect in conduct, scrupulously avoiding error. In manner he was reserved.”3 In other words, he was strict, severe, political, and a forbidding no-nonsense kind of man. By his example, he taught his children that a dutiful, serious, civic-minded life was a good and honroable life. Levi Lincoln, born in 1749, was Enoch and Rachel Lincoln’s third child. Seven more Lincoln children followed. As a responsible citizen and father, but not a particularly wealthy man, Enoch took care to plan for his children’s futures. His five daughters he could marry off and make another man’s responsibility, but the prospects of his five sons depended on his influence and guidance. After their primary schooling when they reached the age of fourteen, the boys were apprenticed in a trade that would give them financial stability and a respected place in the community. They would be carpenters, housewrights, printers, and in the case of Levi, a blacksmith. Although he dutifully acquiesed to his father’s plans initially, it soon became ovbious that Levi was ill-suited for a life pounding iron on an anvil next to a scorching, billowing forge. He despised everything about the business. Whenever he could, the bookish boy escaped into reading and praying for an escape from a life he would never choose for himself.4 Miraculously for Levi, a savior appeared. Ebenezer Gay, the influential pastor of Hingham’s First Parish Church for over fifty years, thought Levi better suited for the ministry than as a maker of nails and horseshoes.5 Gay was one of the founders of what became the Unitarian movement on Boston’s South Shore. A believer in rational thought and an opponent of the excesses of the First Great Awakening, Gay considered himself a moderate Calvinist and propagated the role of reason and free will over covenant Puritanism and predestination, winning for himself a wide and devoted following. He appealed to Enoch to free Levi from his apprenticeship and permit the young man to prepare for admission to the seminary in Cambridge: Harvard College. Hesitant at first because he could not promise his other sons the same opportunity, Enoch eventually succumbed to the persusasive Gay. Liberated from his smithy hell, Levi plunged into six months of intensive study to ready himself for Harvard’s entrance examinations.6 He did his champion proud. In 1768 Levi was admitted to the class of 1772.

10 The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800 As intent as he may have been about pursuing the ministry when he enrolled, great events taking place three miles away in Boston soon reshuffled Levi’s priorities. Ever since 1765 when Parliament issued the illfated Stamp Act (Britain’s effort to pay off debts incurred during the French and Indian War) Bostonians had become increasingly testy and oppositional to their colonial governors. They refused to pay the tax, threatened the stamp collector, hanged the governor in effigy, then ransacked his house. Thirsty from rioting, the rabble-rousers then proceeded to loot his wine cellar. Bowing to pressure from American boycotts and English merchants who felt the financial pinch, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766 but quickly replaced it with another: the Townshend Acts. The Townshend Acts imposed additional taxes on prosaic items such as glass, paper, and tea. But Bostonians were not about to be appeased and obediently fall in line to pay their taxes. Instead, they viewed the increased pressure as not only gravely provocative and unwarranted, but an interference in their public affairs. The arrival of four regiments (about four thousand soldiers) whose job was to bring the prickly populace under control coincided with Levi’s matriculation at Harvard.7 The beefed-up military presence failed to produce the desired effect for the crown. In fact, 4,000 more soldiers filling the streets of Boston only worsened the tensions. In June 1769 Governor Francis Bernard relocated Massachusetts’s legislative body, the General Court, to Harvard so that he might conduct legislative affairs with less interference from the “licentious and unrestrained mob” in Boston. Despite a cacophony of objections from Harvard and legislators alike, the General Court remained at the college until 1772, the entirety of Levi’s academic career. Suddenly, the fine young men who came to Cambridge to study the classics, rhetoric, and ballroom dancing, found themselves sharing their campus with the power elite of colonial Massachusetts on the verge of a great rebellion. The comingling of excitable young men with a despised authoritarian presence did little to promise serenity on campus.8 It was during this time that Levi observed first-hand the legal brilliance of John Adams. As a newly elected representative to the General Court, Adams engaged in a heated debate over the legality of the Court’s move to Cambridge.9 Perhaps Levi attended the debates. Or perhaps he was in the courtroom when Adams presented his famous defense of the British soldiers who were involved in a fatal skirmish in 1770 that became known as the Boston Massacre. However it was that their paths crossed, the two men became acquainted. Whether he intended to or not, Adams redirected Levi’s life. Thanks to Adams’s peerless example, Levi decided he would study law instead of the gospels. His future lay in the courtroom rather than the pulpit. There is no existing record of how Levi felt about his Harvard experience, but it could not have been easy for him. At age nineteen he was older than others in his class who could be as young as twelve or thirteen when they matriculated. (Interestingly, Levi’s birthdate at his matriculation is

The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800 11 listed in the Harvard Records as May 26, 1753, when in fact, his birthday was May 15, 1749. Did he deliberately shave off four years to be more in keeping with the rest of the incoming freshmen?) Maturity may have been an advantage though, because throughout his entire four years at Harvard, Levi maintained a spotless disciplinary record.10 Secondly, and most importantly, Harvard ranked its students not according to academic achievement but by their family’s wealth and social standing. As was customary in British society, family standing was everything. Ranking at Harvard followed the English university model in place for centuries whereby class placement was determined upon a student’s admission and remained inflexible for the entirety of a his college career, no matter what his other merits. Placement affected everything, from when a student could enter a room, where he sat in chapel and recitations, to where he could sit in commons. Of the fifty men in the class of 1772, Harvard faculty placed Levi in the social basement at forty-eighth. Ranking by family status was abandoned the following year when a more liberal president, Samuel Locke, took the helm and switched to placing students alphabetically.11 Locke’s innovation came too late for Levi. He had already lived through four years of being the last in line that he could do nothing to alter. His determination to rise, no matter the cost or the cause, would drive him for the rest of his life.12 Immediately after his graduation, Levi commenced his law studies in Newburyport, Massachusetts with Daniel Farnham, an established affluent attorney and fellow Harvard alumnus. Typically a three-year stint, Levi studied with Farnham for only one year. It’s likely that adverse political views between Levi and Farnham were to blame for his early departure. Farnham supported the the Stamp Act protests but drew the line at open rebellion, publicly blasting those who resisted British authorities as “law breakers and rebels.”13 Farnham believed that honor and loyalty as well as English identity trumped political differences, but the growing din of Newburyport’s patriot majority muffled his lonely Loyalist voice. After his death in 1776, which some claim was hastened by the personal attacks he suffered from those who delighted in burning Farnham lookalikes in effigy, the town drily noted his passing by boasting of “not a Tory within its borders.”14 Farnham would certainly have considered the Lincoln men troublemakers. In 1773, Levi’s brother Amos was among the Sons of Liberty who dressed up as Indians and threw thousands of pounds of tea into Boston Harbor, in an incident famously known as the Boston Tea Party.15 (Amos later became Paul Revere’s son-in-law twice over when he married Revere’s daughter Deborah and after her death, her sister Elizabeth. Another Lincoln brother, Jedediah, married another Revere daughter, Mary, in 1797, cementing even further the Lincoln-Revere family connection.) In any event, with the help of John Adams who recommended him, Levi removed to Northampton to study with the kind of radical rebel Farnham detested: Joseph Hawley.16

12 The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800

Figure 1.2 “Harvard College Faculty Minutes Class 1772.” Courtesy Harvard University Archives.

The Hawleys were “River Gods,” a moniker bestowed on wealthy families who had exercised financial and political influence along the Connecticut River Valley since the mid-seventeenth century. Respected not only for his rectitude and honesty and highly regarded as a member of the state legislature, Hawley also had an impressive pedigree as a grandson of the Calvinist divine Solomon Stoddard and cousin of the theologian Jonathan Edwards. When Hawley was only twelve years old, his father committed suicide following one of Jonathan Edwards’s particularly

The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800 13 enthusiastic hellfire sermons. Hawley blamed Edwards for the tragedy and was instrumental in driving Edwards from his Northampton pulpit in 1751. Sadly, the melancholy that racked the father also infected the son. Hawley’s friends and professional acquaintances became familiar with his cycles of mania or “fits of enthusiasm” that would be followed by periods of mournful regret and depression, a cycle recognized today as bi-polar disorder. His mental illness became so debilitating that he was forced to withdraw completely from public life in 1776.17 In his early career, however, Hawley’s law practice consisted mostly of debt cases and land claims but contrary to expectations of one of his class, he frequently represented the small farmer defendant against the landowner plaintiff. In 1765 when several local farmers resisted additional taxes imposed by the Stamp Act and refused to pay their debts, Hawley represented them. His defense failed, the farmers were fined, and Hawley was suspended from the bar. The experience, however, did not diminish his passion for their cause but galvanized him. By the time Levi arrived to study with him, Hawley had become an ardent Patriot.18 During the years Levi was his apprentice and the country moved toward independence, Hawley was serving in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and was chairman of the Northampton Committee of Correspondence. In a 1774 letter to John Adams that famously became known as “Broken Hints,” Hawley outlined the reasons why the Continental Congress should begin a push for separation from Great Britain.19 Once the war began, he became a one-man recruiting parade, marching through rural towns waving a flag, calling on patriotic young men to fall in behind him and fight for their independence. Hawley succeeded in raising five companies of 700 men.20 In April 1775, after he had studied with Hawley for a year, news of the Lexington alarm arrived in Northampton. Levi immediately departed for Hingham to join his hometown militia during the siege of Boston, but he arrived too late to get in on any real action. He stayed in Boston a little over a week before returning to Northampton.21 This nine-day excursion would mark the entirety of Levis’ military service, the brevity of which would cause him some embarrassment later in his political career. Nevertheless, even nine short days was enough to earn him valuable political capital as a minute man. Although he could have joined the army and marched with Benedict Arnold to assault the British at Quebec as Hawley was calling on all young men to do, Levi had other plans for himself. Instead of putting on a uniform, the prescient twenty-six-year-old saw an opportunity of a lifetime in nearby Worcester. Worcester’s wealthiest families whose devotion to the crown had kept them in power for generations were now under attack by the growing rabble from the countryside. Fearing for their safety, local Loyalists such as John Chandler and Timothy Paine had abandoned their properties for safer confines in England or Nova Scotia. Their departure left Worcester with a leadership vacuum that Levi meant to fill.22

14 The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800 In 1775 Worcester was chiefly a farming community and home to 1,500 people. A paper mill, blacksmith, painter, carpenter, tailor, and shoemaker took care of the needs of its residents.23 But the town needed lawyers badly. Two weeks after his arrival in Worcester, his bags barely unpacked, Levi was appointed Clerk of the Common Court. Other positions quickly followed. He was elected to the town’s Committee of Correspondence in 1776, the de-facto governing body during the war years. That same year he was appointed judge of probate, a post he held until 1781. In 1779 he served as Worcester’s representative to the state’s constitutional convention.24 He also started a private law practice that handled minor property disputes. But it was his involvement in three cases of much broader consequence that elevated his profile throughout the commonwealth. The first occurred in 1778 when the court directed him to defend Bathsheba Spooner, the daughter of a local Loyalist, Timothy Ruggles. Pregnant by a man not her husband and desperate, Spooner enlisted her seventeen-year-old lover and two British deserters to murder her spouse and throw his body down a well. The insanity defense Levi mounted failed partly because of the overwhelming resentment the jury felt for her father whom they viewed as villainous. The judge sentenced her to be hanged. Spooner repeatedly appealed to the court for a stay of execution until her baby was born. The court refused to believe she was pregnant because they were unable to detect any movement or “quickening” of the baby. All four perpetrators were hanged in front of a frenzied crowd of 5,000 people. An autopsy revealed that Spooner had indeed been expecting, making it five, not four, who died that day.25 A second case placed Levi at the center of the fight over slavery in Massachusetts. Although the institution had faded by 1781, the Quock Walker case hurried its demise.26 Levi represented John and Seth Caldwell who were being sued by Nathaniel Jennison for enticing Jennison’s enslaved servant, Quock Walker, to run away. Walker had been promised his freedom when he turned twenty-five by his first owner who had died before Walker reached the age of emancipation. Walker then became the property of Jennison. When Jennison refused to manumit Walker as promised, Walker escaped to the Caldwell brothers. Jennison recovered Walker and again refused to free him. Levi argued that Walker’s rights were protected under the 1781 Massachusetts Constitution that declared, “all men are created free and equal.” In his argument Levi wrote, “Is not the law of nature the law of God – Is not the law of God then against slavery?” The final disposition of Supreme Judicial Court Justice William Cushing sided with Lincoln. The decision did not officially end slavery in Massachusetts (that wouldn’t happen until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865) but withdrew legal protection of the right to own slaves, thereby setting it on the path of ultimate extinction.27 The third case occurred after independence was won. In 1786 a group of credit-crunched farmers led by Daniel Shays gathered at the Worcester courthouse demanding relief from taxes and debts they could not remit.

The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800 15 Taxes had increased under Governor James Bowdoin and the farmers were desperate to avoid incarceration in Worcester’s notorious disease-infested jail. They held that it was not they, but the banker’s lawyers, “banditti, blood suckers, pickpockets, windbags …” who were to blame for their strife, one of whom was Levi Lincoln.28 Although Levi may have been sympathetic to the cash-strapped farmers, Shays’s rebels targeted Levi as an enemy and set out to ransack his home. Word of their plans reached Levi before the farmers did, giving him time to gather up his family and slip out the back door.29 Soon afterward, Levi’s cousin of Revolutionary War fame, General Benjamin Lincoln, rode out from Boston with over 4,000 men and put down the disturbance. Although Daniel Shays fled to Vermont and escaped trial, others who were involved in the insurrection were not so fortunate. They faced charges of treason, a capital offense.30 The court appointed James Sullivan and Levi Lincoln to defend Henry Gale, one of Shays’s lieutenants who had been apprehended and held in a Boston jail. Gale, like Shays, was a Revolutionary War veteran who, after his arrest, regretted his involvement in the whole affair.31 Levi was a curious choice to be defense counsel given his position as an officer of the court, a defender of creditors, despised by the farmers, and a personal target of their outrage, but perhaps it didn’t matter because the fix was already in. Governor Bowdoin had predetermined the outcome and he meant to make an example of Gale and hang him for his crimes.32 Fortunately for Gale, fate intervened. By the time the trial commenced, Bowdoin had been booted out of office, largely because of his harsh treatment of the rebels and rural voters’ simmering resentment of his draconian tax policies. The new governor, John Hancock, a friend to both Levi and James Sullivan, avoided such a political shellacking by appealing to lingering pro-Shays sentiments.33 But he would not be so quick to forgive everything. Not until Gale was standing on the gallows, noose around his neck, prayers delivered, sins confessed, and ready to be launched into the next world, did the sheriff pull from his pocket a temporary reprieve signed by Hancock. A few weeks later, Hancock fully pardoned Gale who quickly distanced himself from the episode and joined Daniel Shays in Vermont.34 The anti-government sentiments that drove Daniel Shays colored Worcester County’s response to the 1787 United States Constitution as well. Massachusetts’s ratification debate in 1788 was particularly thorny as many of those who opposed ratification were also Shaysites who viewed the document as hostile to people like themselves. They were suspicious of too much power in a national government that looked to them like an incubator for oligarchy and tyranny. They were uncomfortable about the absence of a Bill of Rights. Of the fifty delegates Worcester sent to the ratification convention, forty-three voted against it.35 As he did during Shays’s Rebellion, Levi supported John Hancock and others of the Boston power elite who agreed to ratify the document following a compromise agreement that included introducing a Bill of Rights when the first Congress convened.36

16 The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800 Success in Levi’s private life mirrored his professional one. In 1781 he married Martha Waldo of Lancaster, a niece of Stephen Salisbury, Worcester’s most prosperous merchant.37 Her father, Daniel Waldo, rumored to have had Loyalist sympathies during the war, was a hardware merchant in Boston until 1776 when his unpopular political leanings pushed him to relocate to Lancaster. After his marriage, Levi set up his in-laws in a house adjacent to his own property.38 Daniel Waldo, with his son Daniel Waldo, Jr., opened a hardware store in Worcester. The elder Waldo became wealthy enough that he could indulge his “aristocratic” habits and ride around town in a fancy one-horse chaise, impressing some and offending others. In 1804, the two Daniel Waldos along with some other wealthy Worcester men established the First Worcester Bank with themselves as the first and second presidents.39 In 1782 now with a wife and son, Levi Lincoln, Jr., Levi bought 150 acres of prime farmland from Governor John Hancock. The property included a mansion built in 1741, a charming former hotel built for circuit riding lawyers and judges. The two-story Georgian house, uncommonly large for late eighteenth-century Worcester County, was conveniently located on the Boston Post Road, equidistant from Boston that lay forty-seven miles to the east and Springfield fifty miles to the west.40 The Lincoln mansion soon began to fill with more children – nine more over the next fifteen years, seven surviving to adulthood. Daniel joined Levi, Jr. in 1784. Martha arrived the following year. Then came John in 1787, Enoch in 1788, and Rebecca in 1792. Martha Lincoln gave birth to her last child, William, in 1801 at age forty. Three other sons all named Waldo shared not only their name but the tragedy of early death. The first Waldo died at age five in 1795, the second died the day he was born in 1799, and the third died of dysentery at age three in 1803.41 Not only had Levi made a name for himself in Worcester as a lawyer, he also found himself front and center in a dispute that fatally fractured Worcester’s Calvinist community. The controversy surfaced over who would succeed Thaddeus Maccarty, the terminally ill pastor of the First Church of Worcester. Maccarty had been preaching traditional Calvinist theology of sin and damnation since 1747 but was allegedly open-minded enough not to condemn the growing number of more liberal members in his parish thereby managing to maintain a fragile cohesion among his congregation.42 Levi headed the committee to find Mccarty’s replacement. They chose Unitarian Aaron Bancroft whose views of free agency, the perfectibility of man, and a benevolent and forgiving God mirrored their own. The orthodox majority, however, believed Bancroft a heretic. Seeing no possibility of compromise, the sixty-seven members who supported Bancroft left to form the new Second Congregational Church (which later became the First Unitarian Church) with Bancroft as their pastor.43 The church brouhaha ignited a family schism for Levi as well. Martha Lincoln’s brother Daniel, along with her sisters Elizabeth, Sarah, and Rebecca, were

The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800 17

Figure 1.3 “Levi Lincoln Mansion Formerly the Hancock-Henchman Mansion, Worcester, Massachusetts.” Reprinted from Worcester Bank and Trust Company, Some Historic Houses of Worcester.

all strict Calvinists and remained committed to the First Church under the pastorship of Samuel Austin, famous for his fiery defense of traditional Calvinist orthodoxy.44 Their devotion to Calvinist orthodoxy was surpassed only by their devotion to each other as the four siblings made a pact to never marry and always live with each other, a promise kept by them all. The Waldo sisters’ reasons for not marrying could have been many, but by remaining single, they were able to maintain singular authority in church matters that they otherwise would have lost had their fortunes been under the control of a husband.45 The model of good citizenship and responsibility, his career booming, Levi put his energies into expanding his land holdings, his practice, and his family. During the war in 1779, the state commissioned him Judge of Probate and special prosecutor in proceedings concerning the disposition of abandoned Loyalist estates. In a move that may have raised eyebrows even then, in 1783 Lincoln purchased a large portion of the confiscated John Chandler estate at fire-sale prices for himself.46 It’s not hard to imagine what a satisfying moment this must have been for Levi. William Chandler, John Chandler’s son, had been his classmate at Harvard. Thanks to his father’s wealth and position, William Chandler had been ranked first in the class of 1772. For four years, every day of his Harvard existence, as he filed into commons, classrooms, and chapel, Levi stood forty-seven places behind William Chandler. Eleven years later Levi quite literally owned Chandler. Levi wasn’t nearly done either. He acquired more property through foreclosure when Timothy Bigelow, Worcester’s most celebrated Revolutionary

18 The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800 War hero, faced financial ruin. Bigelow had led 110 Worcester Minutemen to Concord in 1775, accompanied Benedict Arnold in his ill-fated assault on Québec City, served with General Horatio Gates, and witnessed the surrender of General John Burgoyne at Saratoga. He had spent the winter of 1778 with George Washington at Valley Forge and fought bravely at the Battles of Monmouth and Yorktown. But he returned home from the war destitute. Desperate for money, Bigelow mortgaged his farm to Levi Lincoln so that he might reopen his blacksmith shop. When he could not repay his debt, he landed in debtor’s prison on Levi’s claim. In 1790, alone and friendless, Bigelow died in the desolate jail, an overcrowded, putrid place that “disgraced humanity.”47 After Levi added the Bigelow farm to his properties, the list of taxable wealth in Worcester County cited him as the second wealthiest man in the county, just behind his wife’s uncle, Stephen Salisbury.48 As Worcester’s power shifted from the pre-Revolutionary gentry to the post-Revolutionary elite, Levi Lincoln found himself well-positioned to be a leader of the new order. He had been a seminal figure in the schism from the Calvinist church, he had held the line against the Shaysites, he was a respected jurist who showcased his talents in high profile trials, was a barrister and judge of probate, and one of the area’s largest landowners. Few could rival his position. But reaching prominence as a judge and amassing property did not satisfy his ambitions. Aiming for bigger things, in 1788 he ran for a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. As one of a pack of thirty candidates, he failed to distinguish himself and was not elected.49 After a two-year hiatus, starting in 1790 he ran for elective office on either the state or federal level, sometimes both, every year for the next decade. Victory eluded him until 1796 when he was finally elected to the state House of Representatives. He was reelected to that position the following year during which he also won a seat in the Massachusetts Senate. In 1796, the first year Levi Lincoln won an election, he made a choice that would shape his political destiny. He threw his lot behind Thomas Jefferson, abandoning whatever veneer of loyalty he may have had to his friend and advocate John Adams. Adams, along with the venerated George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, called themselves Federalists or the Federal Party. They supported an authoritative central government with a strong military establishment buttressed by a tradition of deference to be the best protector of liberty. They maintained that by keeping the decisionmaking power in the hands of those who best understood how to wield it, the country would stay the republican course. Commerce would continue to grow with the help of a national bank, Christianity would be the guiding influence of its leaders, and relationships with old friends across the Atlantic would be repaired and flourish to everyone’s mutual advantage. They supported commerce and trade that would make Americans prosperous while at the same time preserving traditional hierarchy. Their outlook favored northern commercial interests, especially in rocky New England which depended more upon trade than agriculture.50

The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800 19 But to those still uneasy over the possibility of a central government with too much power, and even limited power was too much for many, the possibility of a recandescence of monarchy seemed a very real threat. Keenly sensitive to any hint of aristocratic intrusion, suspicious that a consolidated federal government would transmogrify into a closed, hierarchical society, Thomas Jefferson and his followers smelled tyranny in the Federalist agenda and believed it to be anti-republican. To them, the survival of the republic depended upon a confederation of sovereign states that would not only govern more effectively than a distant federal government but would also be a better bastion against assaults on personal liberties emanating from the more powerful.51 In that vein, Democratic-Republicans or Republicans (as they became known) generally opposed national banks, established churches, and federal taxation.52 In addition, they were committed to a limited government that would promote frugality and encourage agriculture, with commerce relegated “as its handmaiden.” The country should expand its borders so as to broaden opportunities for independent farmers. The political differences between Federalists and Republicans were not purely domestic either. Events across the Atlantic contributed to the divide. At first both Federalists and Republicans supported the 1789 French Revolution. But as the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity deteriorated into the Reign of Terror, the execution of Louis XVI, and the Napoleonic Wars, anxiety replaced enthusiasm. To Federalists, the bloody events in France were a red flag of what could happen when political enthusiasm was left uncontained. If that lesson was unheeded, the United States faced a disturbing future of a radical polity gone mad with delusions of power. They could expect importations of guillotines, sharpened to detach the heads of American elites. For Federalists, stability, order, and deference became imperatives. Better to trade with Britain than with the Jacobin French. Attempting to restore some stability to the seas, the Washington administration sent Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay to negotiate a treaty with Great Britain. Jay returned with an agreement that many Americans viewed as a capitulation to British demands rather than protection of American shipping interests. Jeffersonians viewed the treaty as a dangerous backward step toward a commercial dependency upon Britain. They would have none of it. Jefferson, long a Francophile, believed France to be “a counterpart to the American experiment in liberty.”53 In his view, it was the British who threatened the nation, lying in wait, licking their chops at the possibility of reimposing control over their former colonies. They were forcefully interfering with American maritime commerce by impressing sailors and seizing cargos. (Jefferson seems to have downplayed the fact that the French were also capturing American ships and sailors.) As party differences sharpened, the 1790s became more and more politically antagonistic and divisive. Both sides blamed the other for the fissures which, all agreed, could bring ruin to the country. Both sides believed that unity could be realized only by rejection, if not annihilation, of their

20 The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800 political opposition. By accusing the other of fostering dissonance, Federalists and Republicans alike claimed the more virtuous position as reluctant combatant whose only purpose was to save the country.54 The Jeffersonian Republican message of expanding opportunity in a meritocracy resonated with Levi. He had been the “newcomer, the ambitious man, the outsider” who had risen far above his lowly Harvard ranking.55 Yet there was something pointedly opportunistic in Levi’s party choice as well. He knew the demographics outside of Boston favored the Republican message. Among the Worcester elite, of which he was indisputably a member, there were no other Republicans whose resumes could rival his. In central Massachusetts, Levi Lincoln dominated the Republican field. Although Levi won state office in 1796, he didn’t intend to linger there. He had run for the U.S. House of Representatives without party affiliation and lost in 1790, 1792, and 1794. In 1796 he ran for the first time as a Republican, and lost, as did Jefferson against John Adams in that year’s presidential contest. Two years later the Massachusetts electorate still heavily favored Federalists when Levi ran and lost again. Finally, in 1800 fortune found the pertinacious Levi Lincoln. In an unusually fortuitious sequence of events, President John Adams appointed Massachusetts Senator Samuel Dexter to be his secretary of war. Dwight Foster, who had defeated Levi three times, was tapped to replace Dexter in the Senate thereby vacating his House seat. It took three special elections for Levi to win a majority of votes, but in 1800 he finally prevailed and took his place in the Sixth Congress as the representative from Massachusetts’ Fourth Western District.56 He had reached national office, but the House would not be his home for long.

Notes 1 The Fourth of July,” Boston Patriot, July 7, 1810. 2 Waldo Lincoln, History of the Lincoln Family, (Worcester, Mass: Commonwealth Press, 1923), 74. William Herndon and Jesse Weik, Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1900), 289–90. 3 Solomon Lincoln, History of the Town of Hingham, Plymouth County Massachusetts, (Hingham, Mass: Caleb Gill, Jr. and Farmer and Brown, 1827), 148–9. 4 Waldo Lincoln, History of the Lincoln Family, 157. 5 See Robert J. Wilson, III, The Benevolent Deity: Ebenezer Gay and the Rise of Rational Religion in New England, 1696–1787, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984). 6 Waldo Lincoln, History of the Lincoln Family, 157. 7 Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992), 112–13. 8 Donald C. Lord and Robert M. Calhoon, “The Removal of the Massachusetts General Court from Boston, 1769–1772,” The Journal of American History 55 (1969): 735–55. 9 “Editorial Note,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders. archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-01-02–0082-0001

The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800 21 10 Conrad Edick Wright, “Levi Lincoln,” Silbey’s Harvard Graduates Volume 18 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1999), 121. 11 Conrad Edick Wright, Revolutionary Generation: Harvard Men and the Consequences of Independence (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 55–6.Young and popular, Samuel Locke’s tenure was brief. He left the college in 1773 following a scandal involving his wife’s housekeeper who became pregnant with Locke’s child. 12 Samuel Eliot Morrison, “Precedence at Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 42 (1932): 371–431. 13 John James Currier, “Ould Newbury,” Historical and Biographical Sketches, (Boston: Danmrell and Upham, 1896), 130–1. 14 Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of Newbury, (Newburyport, Historical Society of Old Newbury, 1885), 98. 15 Waldo Lincoln, History of the Lincoln Family, 164–8. 16 From Joseph Hawley to John Adams Northampton June 30th. 1773 Dear Sir The letter inclosed herewith contains My Answer to the young Gentn. you was pleased recommend Me to as an Assistant in his Study of the Law and it is in the affirmative. I have heard Nothing of our Publick Affairs since I left Boston. I have only to intreat, That, as I know you Sir can do Much to influence them Nothing be done through Strife or vain glory—and that in all cases which will possibly admit of it, great Consideration and thorough discussion precede action i.e. in other Words that We look before We leap. I am Sir with the Sincerest respect and greatest esteem Yr. Most Obedt. Humble Sert, Joseph Hawley

17 18 19

20 21

“To John Adams from Joseph Hawley, 30 June 1773,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-01-020101. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 1, September 1755 – October 1773, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977, p. 350.] Peter Shaw, American Patriots and Rituals of Revolution, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 131–6. E. Francis Brown, Joseph Hawley: Colonial Radical (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), 24. “To John Adams from Joseph Hawley, August 1774,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-02-020038. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 2, December 1773 – April 1775, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977, pp. 135–8.] Ray Raphael, The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord, (New York: New Press, 2002), 25. Levi’s service constituted a veritable military Land of Lincoln. He served under a cousin, James Lincoln, who served under another cousin, Benjamin Lincoln. Benjamin Lincoln rose to the rank of major general and was George Washington’s second in command in the Continental Army. Lincoln and Hersey, History of Worcester, 194. Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War A Compilation from the Archives Volume 9 (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Company, 1902). 812.

22 The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800 22 Kenneth J. Moynihan, A History of Worcester 1674–1848 (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2007), 83. 23 Charles Tappan, “Worcester in 1799,” in Reminiscences of Worcester From the Earliest Period, ed. Caleb Arnold Wall (Worcester, Mass: Tyler & Seagrave, 1877), 304–5. 24 Wright, Revolutionary Generation, 122. 25 For a full account of the murder and the trial see Deborah Navas, Murdered by His Wife: An Absorbing Tale of Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth Century Massachusetts (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999). Spooner was the first woman to be executed in the United States after the issuance of the Declaration of Independence. 26 The enslaved population of Massachusetts peaked in 1715 at about 2.2 percent or 4,500 enslaved people. “Slavery in Massachusetts,” Slavery in the North, Accessed December 10, 2020, http://slavenorth.com/massachusetts.htm Public sentiment opposing slavery increased after the Revolutionary War. 27 Robert Spector, “The Quock Walker Cases (1781–83) – Slavery, Its Abolition, and Negro Citizenship in Early Massachusetts,” The Journal of Negro History 53 (1968): 431–42. 28 Charles Warren, The History of Harvard Law School and of Early Legal Conditions in America (New York: Lewis Publishing Company, 1908), 189. 29 Ibid., 131; Raphael, The First American Revolution, 215–6. 30 Lincoln and Hersey, History of Worcester, 129. 31 Lisa Saunders, “The Hanging of Henry Gale,” American Spirit (2008): 8. 32 Ibid. 33 Leonard Richards, Shays’s Rebellion: The American Revolution’s Final Battle (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 40. 34 Saunders, 28–9. 35 John L. Brooke, The Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political culture in Worcester County, Massachusetts, 1713–1861 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989), 27. 36 Marvin Junior Petroelje, “Levi Lincoln, Sr.: Jeffersonian Republican of Massachusetts,” (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1969), 49. 37 Waldo Lincoln, Genealogy of the Waldo Family: A Record of the Descendants of Cornelius Waldo of Ipswich, Massachusetts from 1647 to 1900 (Worcester: Press of C. Hamilton, 1902), 158–9. 38 Elizabeth O.P. Sturgis, “A Story of Three Old Houses,” Proceedings of the Worcester Society of Antiquity, 17 (1900): 134–139. 39 John Knowlton and Clarendon Wheelock. Carl’s Tour in Main Street, (Worcester: Sanford and Davis, 1889),152. Kenneth J. Moynihan, A History of Worcester 1674–1848 (Charleston: History Press, 2007), 116. 40 Charles A Chase, “The Daniel Henchman Farm,” Proceedings of the Worcester Society of Antiquity, 18 (1902): 261. 41 Waldo Lincoln, Genealogy of the Waldo Family, 162–4. 42 Moynihan, A History of Worcester, 95–7. 43 Ibid., 97. William Lincoln and Charles Hersey. A History of Worcester Massachusetts From Its Earliest Settlement to September, 1836. (Worcester, Mass: Charles Hersey, 1862), 155. In later years Aaron Bancroft joined the Federalist Party putting himself and Levi Lincoln at political odds. 44 Carolyn J. Lawes, Women and Reform in a New England Community (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2000), 10–11. 45 Ibid., 26–7. 46 Moynihan, 94.

The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800 23 47 Ellery B. Crane, “History of the Jo Bill Road,” Proceedings of the Worcester Society of Antiquity, 18 (1902): 207. Bigelow’s daughter married Levi Lincoln’s brother, Abraham Lincoln, in 1787. In 1859, Bigelow’s grandson Timothy Bigelow Lawrence, won a commission to build a monument to his grandfather. It was dedicated in 1861. Levi Lincoln, Jr chaired the commission. https://kinsmenandkinswomen.com/2016/07/29/the-life-of-timothybigelow-crowdsourced/ 48 Moynihan, 94. 49 “Massachusetts State Senator Election for Worcester County, 1790,” Lampi Collection of American Electoral Returns 1788–1825. (American Antiquarian Society, 2007) 50 The literature on the Federalist side of the republican debate is considerable and still growing. See especially James M. Banner, To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts 1789–1815 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969); Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg, eds., Federalists Reconsidered (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998); Linda K. Kerber, Federalists in Dissent: Imagery and Ideology in Jeffersonian America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980); David Hackett Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965). 51 Saul Cornell, The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism & the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788–1828 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 221–30. 52 Andrew Robertson, “‘Look at this Picture … And On This!’ Nationalism, Localism, and Partisan Images of Otherness in the United States,” The American Historical Review 106 (2001): 1273. 53 Stephen Howard Browne, Jefferson’s Call for Nationhood: The First Inaugural Address (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003), 79. 54 See Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780–1840 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). 55 Petroelje, 58. 56 Waldo Lincoln, History of the Lincoln Family, 159. The special elections of August, October, and November were taking place during the contentious election of 1800. Jefferson was not formally declared the winner of the 1800 election until February 17, 1801, after which Levi Lincoln was already seated.

Bibliography Archival Sources American Antiquarian Society. Daniel Waldo Lincoln Papers. Other Printed Matter Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992. Brown, E. Francis Brown. Joseph Hawley: Colonial Radical. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931. Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of Newbury. Newburyport, Historical Society of Old Newbury, 1885.

24 The Patriarch Levi Lincoln 1729–1800 Currier, John James. “Ould Newbury,” Historical and Biographical Sketches. Boston: Danmrell and Upham, 1896. “Editorial Note,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives. gov/documents/Adams/06-01-02-0082-0001 [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 1, September 1755 – October 1773, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977, p. 350.] Herndon, William and Jesse Weik. Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1900. Lincoln, Solomon. History of the Town of Hingham, Plymouth County Massachusetts. Hingham, Mass: Caleb Gill, Jr. and Farmer and Brown, 1827. Lincoln, Waldo. History of the Lincoln Family. Worcester, Mass: Commonwealth Press, 1923. Lincoln, William and Charles Hersey. A History of Worcester Massachusetts From Its Earliest Settlement to September, 1836. Worcester, Mass: Charles Hersey, 1862. Lord, Donald C. and Robert M. Calhoon. “The Removal of the Massachusetts General Court from Boston, 1769–1772,” The Journal of American History, 55 (1969): 735–755. “Massachusetts State Senator Election for Worcester County, 1790,” Lampi Collection of American Electoral Returns 1788–1825. American Antiquarian Society, 2007. Morrison, Samuel Eliot. “Precedence at Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 42 (1932): 371–431. Moynihan, Kenneth. A History of Worcester 1674–1848. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2007. Navas, Deborah. Murdered by His Wife: An Absorbing Tale of Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth Century Massachusetts. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. Raphael, Ray. The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord. New York: New Press, 2002. Shaw, Peter. American Patriots and Rituals of Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981. Spector, Robert. “The Quock Walker Cases (1781–83) – Slavery, Its Abolition, and Negro Citizenship in Early Massachusetts,” The Journal of Negro History 53 (1968): 431–442. Tappan, Charles. “Worcester in 1799.” In Reminiscences of Worcester From the Earliest Period, ed. Caleb Arnold Wall. Worcester, Mass: Tyler & Seagrave, 1877. Warren, Charles. The History of Harvard Law School and of Early Legal Conditions in America. New York: Lewis Publishing Company, 1908. Wilson, Robert J. The Benevolent Deity: Ebenezer Gay and the Rise of Rational Religion in New England, 1696–1787. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. Wright, Conrad Edick. “Levi Lincoln,” Silbey’s Harvard Graduates Volume 18. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1999. Wright, Conrad Edick. Revolutionary Generation: Harvard Men and the Consequences of Independence. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005.

2

The Republican Levi Lincoln 1800–1803

Figure 2.1 “Thomas Jefferson, Third President of the United States.” Popular Graphic Arts, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. “I fear in my acceptance of it, a great dereliction of the means of domestic happiness, an (sic) loss in advancing the education of my children.”1

Levi Lincoln arrived in Washington in February 1801 just in time to participate in the final vote of the contested presidential election between DOI: 10.4324/9781003091691-3

26 The Republican Levi Lincoln 1800–1803 Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. On the thirty-sixth ballot that finally elected Jefferson, only four states remained steadfast in their support of Burr: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. Eleven of Massachusetts’s fourteen representatives preferred Burr over Jefferson. Levi was one of the three who did not. His support for the new president did not go unnoticed. Jefferson saw in Levi an ambitious, articulate, and successful jurist whose organizational skills and perseverance had won him several state elections in Federalist Worcester County. Jefferson needed a high-profile man with unquestioned loyalty to be his New England proxy. Now he had found him. Lincoln, Jefferson said, was “the ablest and most respectable man of the Eastern states.”2 On March 4, 1801, less than a month after Levi had taken his seat in the House of Representatives, Jefferson offered Levi the office of attorney general. Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin viewed Levi’s appointment positively and wrote Jefferson that “Mr. Lincoln is a good lawyer, a fine scholar, a man of great discretion and sound judgment, and of the mildest and most amiable manners. He has never, I should think from his manners, been out of his own State or mixed much with the world except on business. Both [Lincoln and Henry Dearborn, Jefferson’s Secretary of War also from Massachusetts] are men of 1776, sound and decided Republicans; both are men of the strictest integrity; and both, but Mr. L. principally, have a great weight of character of the Eastward with both parties.”3 As United States attorney general and the highest-ranking Republican in Massachusetts, Levi marched dead center into Federalist crosshairs.4 Bostonian Federalists, the most elite and powerful of whom originally hailed from Essex County (and were later dubbed the “Essex Junto”), felt their maritime interests, upon which their economic health depended, were well protected as long as sympathetic Federalists headed the national government.5 But since Jefferson’s election in 1800, disturbing rumblings of cultural and political upheaval within a widening democratic polity unnerved these men of property. They began to fear for their future.6 Boston’s Calvinist Standing Order also embraced Federalist politics. During the golden days of the Washington and Adams administrations, Calvinist clergy felt cautiously optimistic about the nation’s future. They saw in Federalism a righteous combination of church and state, each supporting the other in building a godly and Christian community by balancing and policing all manner of intemperate inclinations that could lead the nation astray. Now, with the Deist Jefferson in office, clerical influence was threatened, much to the detriment, they feared, of public virtue.7 The matter was made even worse by a post-war influx of selfinterested commercial men who brought with them “skepticism and uncertainty” to say nothing of drunkenness and vice.8 It was obvious to Federalists that Jefferson and his followers would lead the country to ruin.

The Republican Levi Lincoln 1800–1803 27 Fearing that the Jeffersonians would hijack the press and “be read and approved by multitudes, as long as there are base and unhallowed passions in human nature to be gratified by them,” Boston’s Fisher Ames acquired the New England Palladium to be the voice of Massachusetts Federalism.9 The republic, in Ames’s view, was far too fragile to be left in the hands of ordinary men. People were too naturally depraved, selfish, and limited, Ames believed, to see beyond the lies of a demagogue such as Jefferson. “Our mistake is in supposing men better than they are. They are bad, and will act their bad character out,” he declared.10 Launching an all-out assault on Jefferson and his men, Ames penned several essays “to prove the dreadful evils to be apprehended from a Jacobin President” a term synonymous with licentiousness, atheism, and anarchy. Jefferson, he claimed, “would destroy religion, introduce immorality, and loosen all the bonds of society. Laws and a strong federal government preserved and defended republicanism. The only hope for the country’s survival rested on a government by natural aristocracy as a restraining and guiding force.”11 The president would “…lay us prostrate at the feet of France, to annihilate our existence and to reduce us to a Province of that tyrannical Republic.”12 Levi eagerly leapt to Jefferson’s defense and into the ring with Ames. Through a series of essays written under a deceptively modest pseudonym, “A Farmer,” Levi took up the Jeffersonian standard and launched a campaign against Federalist “falsehood, fostered by cunning, and the vilest aspersions.” The use of a pseudonym had been common practice since the pre-war period in which gentlemen camouflaged their identities so to appear as an Everyman and to shield themselves from ugly reprisals. Most often, however, the ruse failed, and everyone seemed to know the true identity of the writer anyway.13 The first of what would total eleven Farmer essays appeared in the Massachusetts Spy on August 19, 1801. For three months bitterness and recriminations flowed back and forth between the Farmer and his antagonists: Quintilian, Portencius, and Verus Honestus. Quintilian, the most eloquent and thoughtful of the group, noted that Levi Lincoln had, up until his federal appointment, been a respected, reasonable lawyer. Indeed, Gallatin had noted such in his endorsement of Levi. But since ascending to the office of attorney general something had gone awry, Quintilian observed. His friends who had respected his “acuteness of reasoning, and the soundness of his judgements …” now found him “beclouded and bewildered.”14 The rantings of the Farmer could be easily dismissed and “pass into oblivion” if it was not for the fact that the writer was also the attorney general of the United States. Quintilian further noted that if the intention of the Farmer was to “vindicate Mr. Jefferson’s conduct and character, then how he was going about it, by writing essays that were “deficient both in simplicity and force” that “abounds with vulgarism” widely missed the mark. It would be much better to let the people get to know the president honestly, to present him candidly, rather than casting aspersions on those who are wary of him.15 Quintilian had a point. Levi

28 The Republican Levi Lincoln 1800–1803 was hardly a graceful writer. In fact, his writing was dense, convoluted, and obtuse, weighed down with florid language and references that obscure his point and at times render his prose impenetrable. As Quintilian understatedly noted, “To comment on the Farmer is, indeed, a task requiring no little patience and hard study. That writer who cannot be understood certainly cannot be answered.”16 Clarity aside, what most disturbed these propertied doomsayers was when Levi made what they took as a direct threat to their property. “Let principles, not men, be your object,” The Farmer counseled his readers. “Whether in the outset, arming yourselves with prejudice and distrust, you will quarrel with principles once you boast, and if left to operate, will ransom your freedom a second time from the hands of the opulent, or whether with magnanimity and candor you will wait their fair experiment.”17 While Quintilian scratched his head over just what The Farmer meant to say, other Federalists howled. Who, pray tell, are the “opulent”? Is Levi encouraging war against the wealthy? Is this not clear evidence that the horror and bloodshed unleashed in France during the Reign of Terror is about to be repeated here? And, most ironically, is not Levi Lincoln himself among the richest men in Worcester County? Does he excuse himself because he is a Republican trying to cast himself as a humble farmer when it is obvious to everyone that he is anything but? Levi quickly offered a flimsy excuse. The word “opulent” was a printer’s error, he explained. What he had intended was “assailant” not “opulent.” Federalists did not buy Lincoln’s defense, partly because even when substituting “assailant” for “opulent” the sentence refused to make sense. As the political debate heated up, it became apparent that The Farmer’s views were out of step with the Massachusetts Spy whose political sensibilities were becoming increasingly conservative and Federalist. Levi decided that Republicans needed a forum singularly devoted to their cause so as to promote fellow Republicans to public office and to pry voters away from the clutches of lying Federalists. Since there was no such vehicle for Republicans in central Massachusetts, Levi and his friend Edward Bangs decided to create one: The National Aegis. When word got out that Levi was starting his own newspaper, even before the first edition was printed, the paper came under attack. “We have lately seen the prospectus of a new political and literary paper to be published at Worcester, Mass entitled the National Aegis,” wrote The Palladium. “From the abuse of language, incongruity of metaphor, and hypocritical canting about liberty and the rights of man, we conclude that this bantling was generated in the rickety brain of some restless democrat…We presume the Attorney General is among the number.”18 Such comments did nothing to discourage Levi and Bangs from their partisan purpose. Saving his most incendiary Farmer letter, the tenth, for the premier edition of the Aegis, Levi unsheathed his rhetorical sword and went into battle against those Federalists whom he viewed as most abusive of the public trust: clergy. The clergy had been receiving free copies of

The Republican Levi Lincoln 1800–1803 29 The Palladium for months. To Levi, this was an unconscionable act of influence peddling by a radical newspaper that had slandered Republicans as men “hostile to law, to Government, and to property.” It was clear to Levi that the Palladium intended to influence public opinion through the pulpit. “The constitution of this Commonwealth as provided for the support of the teachers of religion, piety and morality generally; not for the propagators of sedition, slanders, libels and modern federalism,” he wrote.19 Furthermore, Ames’s Palladium was guilty of insurrection by slandering and insulting the “majesty of the People” by disparaging and discrediting their lawfully elected representatives.20 Predictably, Levi’s assault on their ministers infuriated Federalists. Verus Honestus called the Farmer “an enemy to Christianity and its institutions.” He pointed out that the Farmer’s personal “habitual neglect of public worship” left him ill-equipped to know what ministers were saying one way or the other. It was clear to Versus Honestus that the stingy Farmer cruelly wanted to deprive pastors of their livings to make way for an “uncontrolled reign of democracy.” Then Sulpicius got in on the act. Sulpicus was the alias for Samuel Austin, minister of the First Congregational Church in Worcester, a strict Calvinist, and pastor to Levi’s in-laws. Austin was popular with only a few of the most rabid Federalists and managed to offend many. Sulpicus, it appeared, was not one to forgive anything. It was his duty to “expose the malignant malice of a secluded misanthrope.”21 “You have made a formal declaration of war against the Social Order,” Sulpicus thundered. He belittled Levi’s writing as “long, tedious, artful, ingenious, sophistical without argument, betraying the want of classic taste and of a good early education,” a pointed reference to Levi’s modest early upbringing.22 In case there was anyone who was still unaware, Sulpicius set out to reveal the Farmer’s identity as an officer of government and therefore the voice of Massachusetts Jeffersonianism as well. The mudslinging minister was just warming up. “I shall haunt you in your closet and plant thorns upon your pillow … you will find the injured clergy, rising like the ghost of Banquo, before your perturbed imagination, and will fancy your own mansion in flames amidst the civil war you are striving to excite.”23 For five months Sulpicius went after The Farmer with staggeringly bitter and personal attacks. He called Levi “mad” a “liar” and “despised.” In his view, the Jacobin Farmer and the Jacobin Jefferson were determined to bring carnage and revolution to America. Sulpicus’s outrage was boundless. “Do you expect to see our cities deluged in blood and the deep Potomack and the majestic Delaware clogged with the floating bodies of clergymen and antirevolutionary citizens?” he stormed.24 William Bentley, a Unitarian minister and twice weekly contributor to the Salem Gazette adopted a more measured view of the mêlée. “A most serious dispute has opened in the Gazette in regard to the Clergy. The Clergy had so plainly spoken & written upon the subject of the present administration, that a writer said to be the Attorney General of the U.S. under the signature of a

30 The Republican Levi Lincoln 1800–1803 ‘Farmer’ in his 10 number has openly attacked them. The blow is serious, & the more the Clergy and their friends attempt to defend themselves, the more severe are the strokes upon them. The subject was never so freely handled in New England & never did the Clergy suffer a more serious diminution of their influence & of their power,” Bentley wrote.25 The Farmer’s essays, and especially his clerical condemnations cemented Levi’s reputation among his adversaries as a dangerous and “violent Democrat.”26 Truth be told, Levi was not always so popular with his own party either. Even some of his friends thought his anti-clericalism too harsh and heavyhanded. Others commented that Lincoln was in no way a democrat, “just the opposite, in all respects.”27 He tended not to view others as “created equal,” but rather was reputed to treat subordinates, especially his farm workers, poorly. He paid them only for work accomplished, parsimoniously docked them from time away from the farm, and frequently suspected that they were cheating him. There were notable occasions of sudden dismissal and many who could leave the farm did so as soon as they could.28 Furthermore, no one defended him when Sulpicius called him “stingy,” or that his writing was convoluted and hard to understand, or that he benefited from the emoluments of his office to enlarge his estate, which he clearly did when he bought the Chandler properties. Even some of the less hostile critics wondered what happened to the Levi Lincoln they knew to be a lawyer with a moral purpose. As Quintilian pointed out when he wondered about Levi’s “so ready an adoption of the systems and passions of his Virginia associates,” it seemed that Attorney General Lincoln had sold himself out to slaveholding Southerners.29 Twenty years on since the Quock-Walker decision, Levi found himself in a bind. Whether he wanted to or not, as part of the Jefferson administration he stood with and defended slave-owners. After becoming attorney general, he never again cited the immorality of the “peculiar institution” of slavery. Federalists pointed to Southern Republicans as immoral owners of human property, against all laws of nature and God, and called for the repeal of the three-fifth clause in the Constitution that advantaged slaveowning Southerners in Congress and in the presidency. They believed that had slaves not been counted for the purpose of representation and the electoral college, John Adams would have won re-election in 1800, and they were probably right.30 Levi dismissed the argument as a political maneuver designed to drive a wedge between Northern and Southern Republicans. The public should be reminded, Levi said, that when Massachusetts was under siege in 1775, Virginians had risked all to “rescue the endangered or to perish in the attempt.”31 But the evidence supports Quintilian’s view and suggests that Levi paid for his attachment to Jefferson by burying his antislavery principles for the sake of his Republican ascendency.32 Even though Levi’s political career consumed much of his interest and energies, he was not absent from home for long if he could help it. United States attorneys general were not required to live in Washington, and most

The Republican Levi Lincoln 1800–1803 31 chose to live somewhere, anywhere, else.33 Washington City in 1800 was little more than a “fever-stricken morass” that contained only a “single row of brick houses and a few isolated dwellings within sight” where lonely government men clustered in boarding houses without the benefit of families, amusement, or shops.34 Pigs and other animals freely roamed the filthy fetid streets. Moreover, the Judiciary Act of 1789 conceived of the attorney general position as a part-time post with two chief responsibilities: managing litigation for the federal government and advising the president on legal matters. The government provided Levi with no office space, no clerk, and no supplies. As a part-timer he was paid accordingly, receiving half the pay of other cabinet heads, around $3,000 per year.35 As an embryonic one-man operation it was the attorney general’s personal responsibility to pay for any extra expenses he might incur out of the fees he received from the private cases he prosecuted. Maintaining a separate income was therefore essential. More than personal finances and the turbid climate of Washington prompted Levi to stay in Worcester as much as he could. He needed to educate his children, the most crucial of his paternal responsibilities. At the time of his attorney general appointment, he wrote Elbridge Gerry, “The office was neither an object of my pursuit or choice; and however honorable, I fear in my acceptance of it, a great dereliction of the means of domestic happiness, an (sic) loss in advancing the education of my children.”36 Levi believed that the republican patriarch’s most important duty was to raise the next generation of virtuous and honorable citizens who would lead the nation and ensure its survival.37 Looking to the ideal of republican harmony built on bonds of mutual respect and affection, an enlightened father sought to create a familial republic by carefully reasoning with his children to do what was right, engage them intellectually, and teach them to control themselves emotionally. A dishonorable, delinquent child was not only a parent’s greatest personal shame but also his greatest civic failure. Levi would do everything in his power to give his children all the tools they would need to lead exemplary lives. This, Levi believed, would be his lasting and most valuable contribution to the nation.

Notes 1 Levi Lincoln to Elbridge Gerry, April 26, 1801 Quoted in Marvin Junior Petroelje, “Levi Lincoln, Sr.: Jeffersonian Republican of Massachusetts,” (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1969), 72. From the private collection of Bart Cox, Washington, D.C. 2 Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, September 17, 1800. Letter. The Library of Congress. The Thomas Jefferson Papers.http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/ P?mtj:14:./temp/~ammem_ZhaU:: 3 Albert Gallatin letter to Maria Nicolson, March 12, 1801, quoted in Dumas Malone, The Sage of Monticello Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801–1805 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1981), 58.

32 The Republican Levi Lincoln 1800–1803 4 Ronald P. Formisano, “Boston, 1800–1840 From Deferential-Participant to Party Politics,” in Boston, 1700–1980: The Evolution of Urban Politics, ed. Ronald Formisano, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984), 31. 5 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961), 169. 6 Paul Goodman, The Democratic Republicans of Massachusetts: Politics in a Young Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), 102. 7 Jonathan Sassi, “The First Party Competition and Southern New England’s Public Christianity,” Journal of the Early Republic, 21 (2001): 264–99. 8 David Hackett Fischer, “Myth of the Essex Junto,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 21, (1964): 206. 9 Fisher Ames quoted in Jeffrey L. Pasley, The Tyranny of Printers: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001), 255. 10 Fisher Ames quoted in John W. Malsberger, “The Political Thought of Fisher Ames,” Journal of the Early Republic 2 (1982): 6. 11 Noble E. Cunningham, In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 224–5. For an overview of how newspapers became the popular forum for political debates see Pasley, The Tyranny of Printers and William C. Dowling, Literary Federalism in the Age of Jefferson: Joseph Dennie and The Port Folio, 1801–1811 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999). Ames’s attempt to counter growing Republican popularity through the press ultimately failed, perhaps because he was preaching to the converted and was winning very few new adherents. In 1803 he quit the New England Palladium. 12 “One of the People,” Independent Gazetteer, August 5, 1800, 2. 13 Pasley, 35. 14 Quintilian, “To the People and especially of Worcester County,” Massachusetts Mercury, September 18, 1801, 1. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Levi Lincoln, “A Farmer’s Letters To the People No. 1,” Massachusetts Spy, August 19, 1801, 1. 18 New Hampshire Sentinel (Keene, New Hampshire), September 19, 1801, 3. 19 Ibid. 20 Levi Lincoln, “A Farmer’s Letters to the People, No. X,” National Aegis, December 2, 1801, 1. 21 “Miscellanies Federal Republican,” Massachusetts Spy, January 6, 1802, 1. 22 Sulpicius, “To The Worcester Farmer,” Massachusetts Spy, January 13, 1802, 1. 23 Ibid. 24 Sulpicius, “To the Worcester Farmer,” Massachusetts Spy, April 14, 1802, 1. 25 William Bentley, Joseph Gilbert Waters, Marguerite Dalrymple, and Alice G. Waters, The Diary of William Bentley: Pastor of the East Church, Salem, Massachusetts (Salem, Mass: Essex Institute, 1914), 407. 26 Ronald P. Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 71. 27 Charles Tappan, “Worcester in 1799,” in Reminiscences of Worcester From the Earliest Period, Historical and Genealogical ed. Caleb Arnold Wall (Worcester, Mass: Tyler & Seagrave, 1877), 304. 28 Richard B. Lyman, Jr. “‘What is Done in My Absence?’ Levi Lincoln’s Oakham, Massachusetts Farm Workers, 1807–20,” Proceedings from the American Antiquarian Society 99 (1989): 159.

The Republican Levi Lincoln 1800–1803 33 29 Quintilian, “To the People and Especially of Worcester County,” Massachusetts Mercury, September 18, 1801. 30 Paul Finkelman, “The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Federalism,” Federalists Reconsidered, Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg, eds. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1998), 138. 31 Lincoln, Farmers Letters, 69. 32 Padraig Riley, Slavery and the Democratic Conscience Political Life in Jeffersonian America (Philadelphia; University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 15–44. 33 Leonard D. White, The Jeffersonians: A Study in Administrative History 1801–1829 (New York: MacMillan Company, 1951), 336. 34 Henry Adams, History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1986), 23–4. 35 This would calculate to about $36,000 in 2007 United States dollars. The Inflation Calculator, http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi. 36 Petroelje, 72. 37 Jay Fliegelman, Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution Against Patriarchal Authority 1750–1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 2. See also Rodney Hessinger, Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn: Visions of Youth in Middle-Class America, 1780–1850 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). The Lockean ideal for regulating behavior by internalizing parental prohibitions and values presages Sigmund Freud’s tripartite theory of personality of id, ego, and superego.

Bibliography Archival Sources American Antiquarian Society. Daniel Waldo Lincoln Papers.

Other Printed Matter Adams, Henry. History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1986. Bentley, William, Joseph Gilbert Waters, Marguerite Dalrymple, and Alice G. Waters. The Diary of William Bentley: Pastor of the East Church, Salem, Massachusetts. Salem, Mass: Essex Institute, 1914. Cunningham, Noble E. In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987. Dowling, William C. Literary Federalism in the Age of Jefferson: Joseph Dennie and The Port Folio, 1801–1811. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999. Fischer, David Hackett. “Myth of the Essex Junto,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 21 (1964): 206. Finkelman, Paul. “The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Federalism.” In Federalists Reconsidered, eds.Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1998. Fliegelman, Jay Fliegelman. Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution Against Patriarchal Authority 1750–1800. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

34 The Republican Levi Lincoln 1800–1803 Formisano, Ronald P. “Boston, 1800–1840 From Deferential-Participant to Party Politics.” In Boston, 1700–1980: The Evolution of Urban Politics, ed. Ronald Formisano. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984. Formisano, Ronald P. The Transformation of Political Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Goodman, Paul. The Democratic Republicans of Massachusetts: Politics in a Young Republic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964. Hessinger, Rodney Hessinger. Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn: Visions of Youth in Middle-Class America, 1780–1850. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Lincoln, Levi. “A Farmer’s Letters To the People No. 1,” Massachusetts Spy, August 19, 1801 Lyman, Richard B. “‘What is Done in My Absence?’ Levi Lincoln’s Oakham, Massachusetts Farm Workers, 1807–20,” Proceedings from the American Antiquarian Society, 99 (1989): 159. Malone, Dumas. The Sage of Monticello Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801–1805. Boston: Little, Brown, 1981. Malsberger, John W. “The Political Thought of Fisher Ames,” Journal of the Early Republic 2 (1982): 6. “Miscellanies Federal Republican,” Massachusetts Spy, January 6, 1802, 1. Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Maritime History of Massachusetts. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961. Pasley, Jeffrey L. The Tyranny of Printers: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001. Petroelje, Marvin Junior. “Levi Lincoln, Sr.: Jeffersonian Republican of Massachusetts.” Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1969. Quintilian, “To the People and Especially of Worcester County,” New England Palladium, Issue 23, XVIII (1801): 1. Riley, Padraig. Slavery and the Democratic Conscience Political Life in Jeffersonian America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Sassi, Jonathan. “The First Party Competition and Southern New England’s Public Christianity,” Journal of the Early Republic, 21 (2001): 264–299. Sulpicius. “To The Worcester Farmer,” Massachusetts Spy, Issue 1501, Volume XXX (January 13, 1802): 1. Sulpicius. “To the Worcester Farmer,” Massachusetts Spy, Issue 1514, Volume XXXI (April 14, 1802): 1. Tappan, Charles Tappan. “Worcester in 1799.” In Reminiscences of Worcester From the Earliest Period, Historical and Genealogical. ed. Caleb Arnold Wall. Worcester, Mass: Tyler & Seagrave, 1877. White, Leonard D. The Jeffersonians: A Study in Administrative History 1801–1829. New York: MacMillan Company, 1951.

3

The Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803

Figure 3.1 “Daniel Waldo Lincoln Admission Record, 1801.” Reprinted courtesy of Harvard University Archives.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003091691-4

36 Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 “I am a stranger to all, a pilgrim in a foreign land. Mama will be good enough to remember me to my sisters and brothers & Thaxter & believe me with affection & respect her.”1

On August 18, 1801, Daniel W. Lincoln, age seventeen, stood before the admissions committee at Harvard College. For five hours the board grilled him on his mastery of Latin, Greek, geography, English grammar, history, Cicero, Virgil, and algebra, the last in which he was found “considerably deficient.”2 When it was all over, the exhausted candidate received the good news that he had been accepted into the junior class, the first time Harvard admitted an applicant to advanced standing without that student previously attending another university. In spite of his triumph, Daniel felt far from sanguine about the whole affair. First, the experience had left him feeling ill. Secondly, the thought of living in Cambridge for the next two years, some forty miles from his home in Worcester, troubled him. In Worcester people respected and admired his father. At Harvard, thoroughly and deeply Federalist, Thomas Jefferson and all who supported him were viewed as dangerous Jacobin sympathizers conspiring to overthrow the government.3 To make matters worse, Levi’s stinging attacks on Federalist clergy, some of whom sat on Harvard’s examining board, had begun appearing in the Massachusetts Spy that same week.4 All of this notwithstanding, by 1800 and the ascension of a national Republican administration that dislodged Federalist control, it was critical for Harvard to avoid antagonizing highlevel Republicans. They may have accepted Daniel, but they did not welcome him. Daniel’s torturous but ultimately successful examination day crowned years of his father’s efforts to provide his children with the best foundation for success that he could manage. The Lincoln children grew up in the house their father had bought from John Hancock situated just outside Worcester’s town center. Their neighbors were the old and new Worcester elite – the William Paine family with their five children, the Aaron Bancroft family with their thirteen children (including little George Bancroft who would grow up to become one of the most acclaimed American historians of the nineteenth century) as well as the William Chandler, Daniel Waldo (Martha Lincoln’s parents, brother, and sisters) and Stephen Salisbury families.5 For the Paine, Lincoln, and Bancroft children their abutting farms created a vast playground of some 400 acres, offering countless diversions such as skating and sledding in the winter, gathering butternuts and apples in the fall, and swimming and canoeing in Lincoln’s Pond in the summer.6 Nestled somewhere in the recesses of the estate was Lincoln’s Grove, a clandestine meeting place for the romantically besotted who routinely carved their interlocking initials into the tree-trunks.7 Martha Lincoln’s turkeys, ducks, geese, hens, and chickens wandered the woods, and her luxuriant garden was the family’s pride.8 She also managed a lively trade of

Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 37 her butter and cheese for meat, candles, and clothing with friends and neighbors.9 Three barns sheltered a variety of livestock. The large white house surrounded by hedges of lilac sat a short distance from the Boston Post Road, the same road that took George Washington to Boston during his 1789 New England tour.10 Beyond the idyllic landscape of their verdant estate, just how Daniel and his siblings were to receive their schooling had presented their father with a challenge. The Revolutionary War had disrupted normal operations of Worcester’s grammar school to the effect that the town’s children received no publicly financed education during those years. Between the farm families of the outskirts and the families of the town center, there was little agreement about how and where basic schooling would be provided once the war ended. Farm families preferred to resurrect the old “moving school” system that consisted of an itinerate teacher who instructed their children for three months before moving on to the next town. Families in the town center felt three months of annual education inadequate. They lobbied for a permanent grammar school, such as they had before the war when John Adams had been an unhappy schoolmaster there in 1755.11 All the arguing delayed any real action on the matter and in 1785 their indecision caught up to the town when the General Court fined Worcester for negligence concerning their children’s schooling.12 While Worcester County quarreled with itself, several of the leading men, including Levi Lincoln, took matters into their own hands and formed a jointstock company with the purpose of setting up a college preparatory school as an “academy for the higher branches of education.” They christened their school the Seminary, eschewing the term “academy” as too elitist. The Seminary opened its doors in 1784, but in spite of great initial enthusiasm, it closed in 1799 due to underenrollment.13 While the Seminary failed, the Leicester Academy, five miles down the road and founded the same year, thrived. Leicester was the only private academy in central Massachusetts that offered a classical curriculum in the interest of “promoting true piety and virtue.”14 With the Worcester Seminary defunct, Levi found a new home on the board of the Leicester Academy. He would remain there until he was appointed attorney general in 1801. Embracing rather than skirting elitism, Leicester Academy courted wealthy ambitious families, such as the Lincolns, who were looking to carve out a place for themselves among the post-revolutionary select. Levi Lincoln, Jr. attended Leicester and graduated in 1800 as did his younger brother William in 1818. But the record is silent as to how many other Lincolns attended. Daniel’s name does not appear on the student roster. Nor do his brothers Enoch and John. It’s likely then that instead of receiving their classical training at Leicester, they were privately tutored in Greek and Latin, oratory, geography, and arithmetic. In any case, the educational goal for all the Lincoln boys was the same: admission to Harvard College.

38 Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 Although over twenty-nine years and a revolutionary war had interceded since Levi had been a student, Harvard’s curriculum held the line against new ideas that might ignite radicalism. Keeping the outside world from gnawing on its hallowed laws and customs created a problem for Harvard’s overseers. Rational thought, free inquiry, and enlightened philosophies excited the generation of Harvardardians born after the war. To these new men, the path to a secure republican future came through discussion, analysis, and argument, not compliance, deference, and obedience. For the most part, Joseph Willard, the college president, made sure to frustrate their grand ambitions.15 To Willard , independent thinking meant impiety and disorder. It meant the triumph of licentiousness.16 Vulnerable young minds, susceptible to the radical irreligion of Thomas Paine and his Age of Reason needed protection, not provocation. Consequently, instead of liberalizing its curriculum, Harvard became more doggedly conservative, firmly grounded in safe, uncontroversial, tried and true, classical texts.17 A Congregational Calvinist, and Harvard president since 1781, Joseph Willard had been saddled with the unenviable responsibility of bringing the college back to pre-war normality after the convulsions of revolutionary wartime. During his first years as president, he presided over the establishment of a medical school (which elevated Harvard to university status) and raised admissions standards by replacing knowledge of Virgil and Caesar’s Commentaries with Horace and Homer. He was the first to deliver his commencement address in English rather than Latin. But his innovations end there. A formal, distant man, disinclined toward any degree of familiarity with his students, Willard appeared “lean, austere, and of an insufferable circumspection.” His lack of oratorical talent and imagination was said to induce catatonic boredom in his listeners.18 He famously disdained modern dress and insisted on wearing an enormous full-bottomed wig at all times which earned him more ridicule than respect.19 His large imposing head inspired John Quincy Adams to quip when a Harvard student in 1787, “By this almighty wig I swear/ Which with such majesty I wear/ And in its orbit vast contains/My dignity, my power, my brains.”20 Even his son, Sidney Willard, thought the wig a poor idea. “It was a great disfigurement however much sanctioned by the fashion of the times and by an association of reverence for his calling.”21 Willard’s system of public examinations and competitions designed “to excite the students to a noble emulation” had two obvious benefits, in Willard’s view.22 First, students would be forced to work longer and harder on their recitations in order to either win the esteem of their community or to face public disgrace. Second, the competition would act as a kind of public relations tool by putting Harvard’s best and brightest on public display. Students already bracing under Willard’s rigid regime detested the idea of public exposure and petitioned to be excused. Unsurprisingly, Willard denied their appeal. On one occasion the unhappy scholars

Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 39 attempted to sabotage the event by putting an emetic in the commons cooking boilers. Although the predictable gastrointestinal reaction made attendance at examinations impossible for almost everyone, the troublemakers succeeded only in delaying, not derailing the event. Willard simply rescheduled the examination after punishing the offenders.23 The bewigged Willard believed in a tight-fisted authoritarianism to squelch disobedience and disrespect from willful miscreants with big ideas. Accordingly, Harvard’s rules were all-encompassing and tyrannical. Upon entering, each new student received a multi-page pamphlet, or admittatur, entitled The Laws of Harvard College, a rulebook that laid out all allowable and, more to the point, all punishable behaviors. It included what a student could wear (blue-grey-tailed coats and black scholar’s gowns), where he could go, and how he must conduct himself once he got there. It listed the punishments for every infraction ranging from petty fines, private admonition, public admonition, degradation (lowering of a student’s academic standing in his class), suspension (leaving the campus to study with a minister or pater familias), rustication (suspension and degradation plus good report from their pater familias before being allowed to return to college), and finally expulsion. There were so many rules that nearly every student would be found guilty of some infraction. Most were guilty of many. Predictably, students found them to be infantilizing, exasperating, and insulting. No matter . Willard remained resolute.24 Leaving nothing to chance and leaving no time for students to experiment with corrupting influences, Harvard students met with tutors six days a week in morning and afternoon sessions.25 Only literal interpretations of Livy learned by rote from the five volumes of Abbe Millot’s Elements of Universal History, were taught. The esteemed and very elderly divine David Tappan instructed the students out of Philip Doddridge’s theological lectures written a generation earlier. In mathematics, students were expected to master plane geometry, trigonometry, and mensuration of heights and distances. They scrutinized William Enfield’s Institutes of Natural Philosophy and Jean Jacques Burlamaqui’s Principles of Natural Law, a Swiss eighteenth-century natural law theorist and advocate for government by the elite as the best route to happiness for the many.26 Gentlemen scholars who aspired to leadership must also possess a command of proper elocution and rhetoric. In this, however, there was a dim flicker of innovation on the pedagogical horizon. Eliaphet Pearson, professor of Hebrew and Oriental languages as well as English, took on the task of abridging for his students the gold standard of rhetorical treatises: Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. The “new rhetoric” recognized that influential, public speakersadjusted their language so as to be more digestible and persuasive to a wider demographic. Rhetoric, according to Blair, should mirror the growing print culture of belles lettres that touched and stirred passions between speaker and audience, rather than being condescendingly delivered to them from on high.27 This was not

40 Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 to reject ornamented language altogether. Oratory should remain eloquent and uplifting, not vulgar, but it must also be understandable to the average man and woman. Although somewhat normalizing, Pearson’s abridgements were meant to legitimize natural hierarchy and elite rule, not to equalize it.28 Speakers should be inspiring and uplifting, hovering somewhere apart and above their audience. Unfortunately, Pearson’s efforts went largely unappreciated. Known for his abrasiveness and overbearing personality, coupled with a pedagogy of hypercriticism and public humiliation of underperformers, Pearson was universally hated.29 And since oratory was required of every student, Pearson’s infernal classroom was inescapable. In 1806 when an indignant Pearson stormed out of Harvard after being passed over for the college presidency, Daniel commented to his brother Enoch, “I rejoice at the information of the devil abandoning his den.”30 Just as they would have preferred new brain food to recycled scholarly leftovers, Harvard men beseeched the administration for an end to the notoriously inedible offerings that masqueraded as meals.31 Harvard fare generated complaints from just about everyone. The same rancid meat reappeared week after week. Biscuits and bread were so stale that if by any chance a slice became airborne, which apparently happened with some regularity, one could lose an eye.32 Since attendance in commons was mandatory and overseers refused to improve the victuals claiming economic constraints, circumstances created the perfect platform for not only interminable complaints but on several occasions, outright rebellion.33 Despite, or perhaps because of, Willard’s rigidity, restive students found ways to evade the rules by forming social clubs; convivial alternatives to cold dormitories, bad food, and academically induced comas. One such group was the Porcellian Club whose genesis lay in a clandestine evening in 1791 when a few friends gathered to gorge on a roasted pig that a particularly resourceful student managed to cook secretly in his room secretly. They had such a good time that they decided to make their meetings a regular event. Membership in the Porcellians quickly became the most coveted club on campus, known chiefly for their “dedication to Bacchus,” good times, and exclusivity. The Phi Beta Kappa, the Hasty Pudding Club, singing clubs, and speaking clubs also imbibed freely but attempted to add a more respectable veneer by adding literary discussions to their meetings and pooling their books to create private libraries instead of (or in addition to) drinking contests.34 In every club new members had to be approved unanimously and many sought membership, but the doors opened to only a few, thereby disappointing most. Daniel Lincoln joined no club.35 Perhaps he was invited but declined. Or perhaps since arriving midway through his college career as a junior, friends had been made, the membership rosters were full, and adding one more member was one member too man. But the fact that Daniel’s older brother, Levi, Jr., who was a year ahead of Daniel at Harvard, joined no fraternity either suggests that being the son of a high profile Jeffersonian on a campus

Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 41 where Republicans were routinely despised, brought with it a lethal social liability. The doors to the best clubs were bolted and locked to the likes of the Republican Lincolns.36 For the lonely estranged Daniel, who found no joy in recitations, was bored with the pontificating of professors and college chaplins, reduced to eating rancid meat and stale bread as his daily fare, and was desperately homesick, Harvard was a cold and heartless place. He warmed to no one. In his mind, even the mildest of friendly overtures were not what they appeared but instead carried malicious intent. “An acquaintance saluted me with a smile, and I frowned on him, for too often are smiles the masks of villainy,” he told his friend John Caldwell. “Lurking mischief is concealed in smiles, like whited tombstones, they cover rottenness of heart.”37 Ostracized and friendless, feeling like a “poor Arab in the desert,” letters home provided a tender lifeline for the miserable homesick Daniel. Worcester, to Daniel, was “the exact epitome of the world.”38 He filled his time by frequently writing his parents, his sisters, his brothers, his friends, and a young woman he admired, Charlotte Caldwell, whose name, he once said, had “… magic in the sound, a charm to quiet pain and soothe the distressed.”39 Charlotte was the daughter of Worcester’s sheriff, William Caldwell, and the sister of one of Daniel’s closest friends, John Caldwell. William Caldwell graduated from Harvard a year behind Levi in 1773, and Charlotte’s mother, Charlotte Blake Caldwell, grew up in Hingham, the ancestral home of the Lincolns. The two families were undoubtedly well-acquainted.40 Letters from family and friends did much to ease his loneliness, but Daniel still needed to find a way to survive the contempt of his Harvard cohort. What better way than to denegrate his classmates as dishonorable, selfish men that no one in their right mind would want to socialize with anyway? Not only were Harvard men fraudulent when flashing their little tombstone teeth, but worse, they had corrupted self-interest for the sake of ambition. “This (self-interest) is the passion which God implanted within us, not only useful to ourselves but greatly promotive of the well-being of society,” Daniel wrote to his sister. “This spark which warmed the heart of man with love to himself and his species has kindled a consuming fire which destroys happiness of the possessor & all connected with him. O strange perversity! O fatal degeneracy! Which has made this lord of the lower world, this creature after his creator’s own image, man, a brute?”41 Through such observations Daniel not only elevated himself above the brutes but he raised an essential intellectual question regarding the balance of self-interest and civic virtue that was very much in vogue in the early nineteenth century.42 Daniel’s view of self-interest run amok reflected the argument within Scottish philosophical circles between civic humanists who viewed commercial self-interest as a corrupting element to civic society and common sense philosophers who saw enlightened self-interest and commercial success as a means to further the public good.43 Honorable men, those who put the country and community first, were the stewards of

42 Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 republicanism. Honor, to the revolutionary generation, Levi’s cohort, meant position, integrity, virtue, honesty, and a large dollop of noblesse-oblige. But in Federalist eyes the hierarchical system that supported honorable gentlemen was under assault by those who had embraced equality and opportunity and rejected traditional norms, those who called themselves Jeffersonians. Their numbers and their ambitions worried the established class. Where was honor in this new emerging polity? Were self-interest and honor now contradictions in terms? How does one open the door of opportunity to every man while keeping a reign on ambition? The conflict posed a philosophical and political conundrum, to be sure, but it also challenged Daniel’s psychological identity as well. As an elite Jeffersonian, where did he fit in this emerging liberal society? The world of power and wealth that Levi handed to his children rested on a political ideology that conflicted with their privileged advantages. As a wealthy Republican who valued his position the path forward into the nineteenth century was anything but clear. He would have to find a new way to meld his evolving political and cultural identities. It was a question Daniel returned to time and again.44 When he wasn’t struggling with existential questions and writing letters home, and because no fraternity or campus club offered to ameliorate his abysmal social life, Daniel wrote poetry. His melancholic mood found resonance with British graveyard poets such as Robert Blair and Thomas Gray who wrote paeans to the transience of life and inescapabilty of death, the leveler that came to the great and the lowly alike. Graveyard poets elevated death as a kind of poetic apotheosis, or in Daniel’s words “a long wished for happiness.”45 In that dark spirit, Daniel wrote a baleful poem laced with a grim satisfaction that no matter how rich, how beautiful, how elevated, death destroys all mortal distinctions. In the end, the only thing that matters is virtue. He entitled his poem “Missing in a Churchyard” and sent it to his mother. Missing in a Churchyard Hark! Not a breath of wind no gentle breeze To fend the darksome gloom and no ruffled wave Disturbs this silent port of life, nor moves The sleeping calm; a deathlike silence reigns. Those stores of wrath, that oft’ by tyrants breath’d Have shook the trembling world, now die away, In whispers lost. … Death, rigid death, impartially declares That man is nothing, but a heap of dust, Clay-cold, insensible. Wipe from thy cheek, O, man, the soft, emasculating tear, For thou must die! Just as by nature streams

Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 43 In silver mazes roll their easy tide. A tribute to the main; so art thou born Of short-lived glory, preordained to die…. Cease mortal then, to boast thy transient charms A prey to worms. In vain the glass reflects A well-proportioned harmony of parts, If thou must rot in earth, a corpse obscene. Pow’r wealth and beauty are short-lived trust Tis virtue only blossoms in the dust.46 Despite his miseries and days spent in morbid contemplation, Daniel succeeded academically. At the end of the year, he was one of fifteen students awarded the Hopkins Prize, a book prize awarded by the faculty for those “who have made decided improvement in scholarship.”47 By the summer of 1802 he had not only survived his first year but in spite of his misery, had distinguished himself. Daniel’s second and senior year at Harvard bore little resemblance to the monastic and gloomy seclusion of his first. The difference might have been one William Bartlett Sewall. Sewall would later become a lawyer known for his “diffidence and modesty” which by some accounts made him a better writer of almanacs (his avocation) than a litigator.48 But as a young man at Harvard, Sewall was a bon vivant; a member of the Porcellians and Phi Beta Kappa. Although the very clubby Sewall could hardly have lacked for companionship, he took Daniel under his wing and introduced him to the world of women and wine. Daniel took to it with gusto. Suddenly life did not have to be about cemeteries and duplicitous peers. Worthiness and virtue could wait for another day. Life beckoned with more intriguing possibilities. In the spring of 1803, back in Worcester and toward the end of his second and final year, Daniel wrote to Sewall. “The buxom girls with bosoms Bear, the gallantries & amusements, the interesting incidents ‘honi soit,’ the belles, coquettes, beaux, danglers, walks & Parties, all are reviewed by me with the ghosts of past days. The social enjoyments I have there known, are also recollected. To you I am indebted for most of them & to you am proportionally grateful.” Moreover, Sewall’s bawdy distractions helped Daniel put aside the pain inflicted by those who had shunned him. But he was unforgiving of their past transgressions. “The little grievances & anxieties I have there suffered are remembered likewise. For the most part, I can now look with contempt on their causes & with laughter on them. At college one may see all the subtle folly of the world & learn to fence with villains. This is the advantage of a public education, that we may learn all the feints & wiles of experienced players & learn too to guard against them.”49 Daniel and William Sewall were hardly the only college students to take their beaux and danglers (a man who likes to be around women) seriously. Hard drinking was rampant in early America, not only on campuses but

44 Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 throughout the country. Any occasion was a good one to uncork the bottle. Waking up in the morning and getting ready for bed at night were reasons for celebrations. Starting with breakfast, meals called out for a nip or two of beer or rum. In addition, a mid-morning break at 11:00 AM and an afternoon break at 4:00 PM called for a glass of spirituous refreshment. Even babies were given a fortifying taste to start their day. Per capita consumption of hard liquor in the early nineteenth century hovered to seven gallons annually as opposed to less than two gallons today.50 It was also intrinsic to any number of social rituals, from voting to barn-raising to public holidays of any stripe. Although drinking in the company of colleagues signified masculinity if not patriotism, as the nineteenth century progressed, excessive drinking began to be viewed less impassively, due in large part to the contributions of Benjamin Rush, the famous Philadelphia physician and patriot. Rush published a widely read pamphlet in 1784 entitled An Inquiry into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors that equated drunkenness with anti-republicanism and suicide.51 To Rush, forays into drinking indicated a loss of control and weakness of character. Long-term drunkenness, Rush warned, brought not only an array of diseases ranging from fetid breath to idiocy and premature death, even rare cases of spontaneous combustion, but such behavior threatened the growth and survival of the nation.52 A virtuous citizenry, upon which the country relied, practiced self-control and understood the value of balanced passions. Drunkeness signaled the loss of self-control writ large. Public drunkenness that may once have been excused as a normal but unsavory part of life, was increasingly viewed as civically irresponsible.53 The first to categorize drunkenness as a disease that carried long term consequences, Rush was way ahead of his time. In Rush’s view, once someone became enamored of the pleasurable effects of alcohol, it became increasingly difficult to separate from it. Once addicted, the drink controlled the drinker rather than the other way around.54 For the disgruntled Harvardardian, drinking was a means to act up and thumb one’s nose at all the detested rules. Hard drinking and the ribald world that came with it was for Daniel not only a rejection of Harvard authoritarianism but eye-popping liberation. Harvard Faculty Records reveal that the once-reclusive Daniel now held his own among his classmates with a high number of petty infractions. His record reveals a series of small acts of rebellion such as making a disturbance at public declamations, sleeping in chapel, going out of town without leave, scattered absences from lectures and recitations, neglecting an English composition, and omitting forensics.55 Daniel and William Sewall drifted apart after college. After their 1803 graduation, mentions of Sewall faded altogether. Daniel may have regretted the relationship. When his brother Enoch began his studies at Harvard a few years later, Daniel warned him against forming acquaintances that could get him in trouble. “After you shall become informed of the characters of all you may make your selection. By a cautious reserve at the present time you’ll avoid the future embarrassment of a connection with

Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 45 those who may be disagreeable.” Much better that Enoch should concentrate on courting Blair rather than belles as Daniel had done.56 Despite his brother’s admonitions, Enoch ran into trouble anyway during his Harvard years. His involvement in yet another student fracas over inedible meals in 1807 got him expelled. Although the school government offered to readmit him if he should make an appeal, Enoch refused on principle, likely with the support of his father. Two years earlier in 1805, Levi Lincoln chaired a committee of overseers at Harvard during which time a similar rebellion over spoiled food occurred. Levi supported the students’ demands for improvement in commons, prompting the Harvard government to petition the state legislature to permit the university to elect their own overseers thereby edging out contrary voices such as Levi Lincoln’s.57 Even if the questionable William Sewall succeeded in introducing Daniel to an indecorous life that distracted him from his studies and got him fined for sleeping in chapel, Daniel was not so taken by the world of danglers and women that he abandoned his studies altogether. On two important occasions, Harvard recognized Daniel’s poetic talents. The first was during the spring exhibition, an annual event whereby Harvard showcased its best and its brightest for the approbation and enjoyment of its overseers. Daniel was tapped to deliver a poem in English. He treated the overseers to “Purity of Heart,” a 110-line lyrical excoriation of the dishonorable poseurs with whom he had become all too well acquainted. In a cautionary tale for the impure, Daniel called out the “virtuous statesman is ambition’s slave,” the miser who “feeds on misery,” the “powdered fopling,” the “rugged solider with blustering mien,” all directed by “despotic passions” and all “strangers entire to purity of heart.” But there is hope for the wretched and the nation in the form of Thomas Jefferson brilliant example. Without naming him, Daniel paid homage to the president. Come all ye proud, ye ignorant & vain, Lovers of frolic, glory & of gain! Mark how the nobleman of nature lives, And learn the lesson his example gives! Who solely anxious for his country’s good Crost by no faction by no power withstood Greatly consenting to a liberal plan Has sworn allegiance to the rights of man With vigorous sense & independence sought Dares nobly think & boldly speak his thoughts Heavenly goodness e’re beholds distress And kindly pities what he can’t redress.... As when the sun, that chased the clouds away Resplendent glitters with a brighter day If the stained heart from shades of vices refined,

46 Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 The beams of virtue radiate the mind. And weedy passion in the bosom grows, In pure streams, unsullied pleasure flows. Goodness & prudence every thought control, And guard the sacred temple of the soul.58 If hackles were raised by Daniel’s salute to Republicanism and his lambasting of Harvard students, they were not severe enough to keep him from being awarded a part, or a speaking role, in the commencement ceremonies scheduled for August, a much bigger honor. The designation of commencement parts had always been fraught and controversial. Many viewed the awarding (or non-awarding) of parts as a pronouncement on the entirety of their Harvard career, as indeed it was. To be offered a part a student had to be deemed worthy of public exhibition by his all professors and tutors. William Austin, a member of the class of 1798 who was not selected to speak at his commencement ceremony, reproached the college for rewarding not the brightest, not the most talented, but the most dutiful and unoriginal. Merit and talent, according to Austin, guaranteed nothing. In his view, what really counted was how effectively a student had massaged his professor’s ego.59 Austin proposed that Harvard keep the exhibitions but make participation open to everyone. This would generate more original and interesting work, and save the college from the embarrassment of some “blockhead” whose performances were “soporific provocative.”60 Harvard ignored him. Daniel returned to Worcester in July to compose his commencement verse. He was not in a good mood. Charlotte Caldwell was visiting family in Hingham for the month leaving him “unsociable and gloomy.” Drinking did little to assuage his unhappiness. “The strains of the vial are as cheery but the voice of merriment is disgusting for melancholy is the companion of thy friend,” he complained to Sewall.61 He tried to get to work on his commencement poem, but finding a worthy subject proved vexing. “I began a poem on Idolatry when first I arrived at Worcester, became weary of it & abandoned it. Woman was then brought on the tapis, was found too inconsistent, too incomprehensible, too elevated, too damnable a subject to treat of & laid aside. Tomorrow I begin with Benevolence. If I succeed there, it will be the work of the head altogether, the heart will have nothing to do with it, for I was never before so much the misanthrope as at the present moment.” After five days’ labor, he wrote Sewall an exalted, relieved missive full of bravado. “Thanks to all the Gods & Goddesses, Gods in heaven, Gods on earth, Gods in the water & Gods in help, my monologue for commencement is finished. It is a work of fancy I assure you, the true, honest child of fancy; for I neither feel nor believe one sentiment in the work. Tho’ really I esteem the best piece I have ever written.”62 Daniel’s exuberance passed quickly. A few weeks after he sent his ebullient note to Sewall, a fatal wave of dysentery swept through Worcester. Daniel’s three-year-old brother Waldo died of the scourge. Daniel and his sister Martha

Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 47 were also stricken, Martha seriously so. In an unusually personal letter to Thomas Jefferson, Levi wrote of his family tragedy. “My family was healthy and happy on my arrival. They have experienced a distressing reverse. The dysentery has raged on many places and in some of our towns more mortally than the yellow fever in the cities. … It has robbed me of a fine son. … The survivors are recovering their strength but are as yet feeble & sorrowful.”63 Still recoveringand with only a few days left before commencement, Daniel told Sewall that he was uncertain he would be well enough to deliver his poem. According to the Harvard rules, speakers were required to submit their parts to the president for his approval several days before the ceremonies so there would be time for revisions. Too ill to convey his poem himself, Daniel asked Sewall to deliver the 112-line verse to Willard for his inspection. Sewall did so. The poem’s first few lines laid out the familiar Lockean ideal of natural man moving from a state of savagery into one of perfect cooperation and equal laws that protected personal autonomy and popular sovereignty. War, vice, deceit, sordidness, and ambitions were unknown in this paradise. Benevolence, that held society together, ruled with a loving hand. But since that perfect time “disorder, tumult, violence & rage” had torn through the world. The plundering Spanish explorers, the tragedy of the enslaved African, and the wars in Europe had wrought havoc on the perfect plain of human cooperation. Salvation lay with the leadership of virtuous men. But then… Some few there are, a firm & faithful band. The lure of garish splendor that withstand. Some, that to Baal have not bowed the knee, Steadfast, unshook in their integrity. Some, that on human misery have not preyed; Some, that from virtue’s path have never strayed. Some, that have watched with care, the vestal flame, Their lives a satire on their neighbor’s shame. They grant to fortune’s plaything in their gate, A safe asylum from the wrongs of fate. The wretched sufferer they will never shun “Whether he worship twenty gods or one.” The rights of others never will refrain, Who think with Watson, or agree with Paine. ‘Tis thus some sphinx worthies erst have done, ‘Thus too has Franklin, thus great Jefferson. Their noble deeds elude the vulgar ken, Sages, in wisdom & in feelings men. Papists had sainted those of half their worth, Applied their maxims as the test of truth Thought them, vicegerents of indulgent heaven, To alleviate evils by the Godhead given.

48 Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 When nature gives her precept to remove Their kindred spirits to the realms of love; Where he, who labored in the vineyard’s blest; Where he, that’s slandered, has the wrong redrest. They’ll mount escorted by the widow’s prayers, Be recommended by the orphan’s tears.64 Although he had gotten away with obliquely praising Jefferson in his spring exhibition poem, this time Willard would not permit Daniel’s reverential evocation of the Jacobin chief executive. It was too much. Willard claimed that the poem would “give offense.” He directed Daniel to rewrite it. Refusal to comply with Willard’s order could result in forfeiting his place in the commencement ceremonies, or worse, the college could withhold Daniel’s degree altogether. Weak from illness, mourning the loss of his little brother, removed from Harvard and in the company of his family, Willard’s admonition may have been exactly the tonic Daniel needed to gather his strength to deliver the poem in person. Commencement Day ranked second only to the Fourth of July as a day of raucous public celebration in Boston and Cambridge. Shops and banks closed so that anyone who wanted to attend the ceremony could do so. Harvard prepared the yard by installing tents for the curious to view exotic animals such as monkeys, but mostly the occasion was for eating, drinking, dancing, swearing, gambling, and, not that uncommonly, drunken fisticuffs.65 Music from fiddles, fifes, and ram’s horns rippled through the air. The public partying was temporarily muted by the onset of a grand commencement processional that one wag called, “three enormous white wigs supported by three stately venerable men clad in black flowing robes.” After the program of literary exercises, hymns, and the conferring of degrees concluded, the carousing resumed.66 For the class of 1803, however, there would be no revelry. Two days before the event was to take place, David Tappan, the Hollis Professor of Divinity since 1792, died. In deference to Tappan, the public celebrations were canceled, and Willard requested that there be no applause or noisemaking at any point. Fun was forbidden. Performances traditionally greeted by ovations were to be received in silence. Instead of fiddles and fifes and ram’s horns, the assembled sang, “Why do we mourn departing Friends? Or shake at Death’s Alarms? Tis but the Voice that Jesus sends To call them to his Arms.”67 The somber respectful audience heard the 1803 graduates perform an oration in Latin, an English conference on the “Comparative Efficacy of Advice, Commendation, and Satire on the Manners of Society,” a dissertation on “The moral tendency of representations of fictitious distress,” a Greek dialogue upon “The Philosophy of the Ancientss,” an English colloquy on “The influence which the discovery of America has had on the state of mankind,” and a poem by Daniel W. Lincoln entitled “Benevolence” that he defiantly delivered in its unamended original form.68

Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 49

Figure 3.2 1803 Harvard Commencement Program. Courtesy Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Printed Ephemera Collection, The Library of Congress.

Willard’s concerns over how his audience would receive Daniel’s ode were not unfounded. John Pierce, a Harvard alum who had the unusual distinction of attending every Harvard commencement for fifty-eight years (except for one that conflicted with his mother’s funeral, sniffed, “The poem by Lincoln was worthy a disciple of Voltaire …”69 Evoking the Deist Voltaire, of whom Jefferson was a known admirer, was Pierce’s shorthand disdain for all the free-thinking poison that Harvard tried so hard to keep at

50 Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 bay but at least in this instance, had failed to do so. Diarist William Bentley, a Republican Unitarian minister from Salem was not offended by the content but by what he viewed as the class of 1803s middling talents. He quietly remarked that “the class which graduated was small in number as well as gifts.”70 For Daniel Lincoln, however, the day was a triumph. His performance so pleased his father that Levi sent a copy of “Benevolence” to Jefferson along with a note describing Willard’s attempt to censure the work. “The president of the college objected to the latter part, said it would give offence and refused to approbate it,” he wrote. “The author told him he would not alter it … The circumstances show the spirit of the governors of that Seminary ...”71 Despite the joyfulness of leaving on his own terms in celebration of all that Harvard feared and reviled, for the rest of his life Daniel remained bitter about his Harvard experience. Whenever he recalled his college years, he remembered them as a time of boredom, isolation, turmoil, and pain. In 1807, after his younger brother Enoch had been expelled from the college, Daniel consoled him by pointing to the shortcomings of Harvard’s antiquated pedagogy. “There is neither a pleasure nor advantage in the monastic discipline of New England seminaries. Repetition of senseless prayers & rehearsals of useless exercises consume the most part of the terms. Learning is not traditional … Let blockheads drudge in the solemn round superstitious reverence for ancient practice has established. Genius soars on daring wings & directs her own course.”72 Indeed.

Notes 1 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, nd. Daniel Waldo Lincoln Papers (DWL Papers). Although the letter is not dated it was written in 1801 the day after Daniel Lincoln passed his entrance examination to Harvard College. 2 Harvard University. Records of the College Faculty, Copies of Minutes, Vol II, 1797–1806, August 18, 1801, 183. UA III, 5.5.2, Harvard University Archives. 3 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, nd, Daniel Waldo Lincoln Papers (DWL Papers). 4 The faculty included David Tappan in divinity, Samuel Webber in mathematics and natural philosophy, and Eliphalet Pearson, in English, Hebrew, and Oriental Languages. See Conrad Wright, The Unitarian Controversy: Essays on American Unitarian History (Boston: Skinner House Books, 1994), 5–6. 5 Elizabeth Orne Paine Sturgis, “A Sketch of the Children of Dr. William Paine,” Proceedings of the Worcester Society of Antiquity 20 (1904): 133–4. Paine had been a vociferous Loyalist who left Worcester under pressure from local patriots and spent the war as an apothecary to British troops in North America. He returned to Worcester and his father’s home in 1792. 6 Ibid. 7 Worcester Bank & Trust Company, Some Historic Houses of Worcester A Brief Account of the Houses and Taverns that Fill a Prominent Part in the History of Worcester Together with Interesting Reminiscences of Their Occupants (Worcester, Mass: Worcester Bank & Trust Company, 1919), 11.

Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 51 8 Ibid., 9. John S.C. Knowlton and Clarendon Wheelock, Carl’s Tour in Main Street, (Worcester, Mass: Sanford and Davis, 1889), 3–6. 9 Mary Beth Sievens, “Female Consumerism and Household Authority in Early National New England,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 4 (2006): 360–1. 10 Knowlton and Wheelock, Carl’s Tour, 72–3. 11 William Lincoln and Charles Hersey, A History of Worcester Massachusetts From Its Earliest Settlement to September 1836 (Worcester, Mass: Charles Hersey, 1862), 252–3. 12 Duane Hamilton Hurd, History of Worcester County, Massachusetts With Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men Volume II (Philadelphia: J.W. Lewis, 1889), 1512. 13 Ibid. 14 Emory Washburn, Brief Sketch of the History of Leicester Academy (Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1855), 75. 15 William J. Austin, Strictures on Harvard University (Boston: Folsom Printers, 1798), 5–7. 16 Steven J. Novak, The Rights of Youth: American Colleges and Student Revolt, 1798–1815 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), 63–9. 17 Novak, 63–9. 18 Francisco de Miranda quoted in Andrew Schlesinger, Veritas Harvard College and the American Experience (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005), 63. “Biographical Sketch Joseph Willard 1738–1804,” Cambridge Historical Society On-line Collections, http://www.cambridgehistory.org/HLN_House/HLN_Library/ collection_pages/JOseph%20Willard.html 19 Sidney Willard, Memories of Youth and Manhood, (Cambridge, Mass: J. Bartlett, 1855), 209. 20 John Quincy Adams quoted in Schlesinger, Veritas, 60. 21 Willard, 209. 22 Josiah Quincy, The History of Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass: John Owen, 1840), 297. 23 Benjamin Homer Hall, A Collection of College Words and Customs (New York: M. Doolady, 1859), 180–2. 24 Willard, 18. 25 Robert Hallowell Gardiner, Early Recollections of Robert Hallowell Gardiner (Hallowell, Maine: White & Horne, 1936), 44. 26 Petter Korkman, “Introduction,” in Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui. The Principles of Natural and Politic Law. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, Incorporated, 2006), xv. 27 Kenneth Cmiel, Democratic Eloquence: The Fight over Popular Speech in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkley: University of California Press, 1990), 35. 28 J. Michael Sproule, Democratic Vernaculars: Rhetorics of Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Criticism since the Enlightenment (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 378. Shevaun E. Watson, “Complicating the Classics: Neoclassical Rhetorics in Two Early American Schoolbooks,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 31 (2001): 45–65. 29 Conrad Edick Wright and Edward Hanson, eds, Silbey’s Harvard Graduates Volume 18 1771/1774 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1999), 290–1 30 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, March 6, 1806, DWL Papers. 31 Samuel F Batchelder, Bits of Harvard History (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1924), 97–124. 32 Sidney Willard, 192–3. 33 Leon Jackson, “The Rights of Man and the Rites of Youth Fraternity and Riot at Eighteenth Century Harvard,” in The American College in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Roger Geiger (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2000), 52.

52 Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 34 Quoting Amos Kent in Charles P. Curtis, “Liquor and Learning in Harvard College, 1792–1846,” The New England Quarterly 25 (1952): 346–7. 35 Ibid., 74. 36 Novak, 54. Yale University counted only one Jeffersonian on campus in 1800. 37 Daniel Lincoln to John Caldwell, April 19, 1802, DWL Papers. Daniel’s “whited tombstones” is a reference to Matthew 23:27 “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” 38 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, September 15, 1801, DWL Papers. Daniel’s letters made their way to Worcester through a postal service that was still in its infancy. Congress created the Post Office in 1794 and endowed it with the power to establish post offices and post roads. By 1800 there were 20,827 miles of post roads. Stagecoaches and steamboats carried the mail between some 903 post offices. Postage rates were set between six and twenty-five cents, depending upon the letter’s weight and distance it traveled, paid for by the addressee. The innovation of stamped, pre-paid letters lay in the future. By using a quill pen with a nib so fine that at times his writing disappeared into the indecipherable, Daniel maximized the space on his foolscap by squeezing as many words as he could onto a single page, thereby keeping the fee as low as he could manage. Wayne E. Fuller, The American Mail: Enlarger of the Common Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 43. 39 Daniel Lincoln to John Caldwell, March 2, 1802, DWL Papers. 40 Solomon Lincoln, History of the Town of Hingham, Plymouth County Massachusetts (Hingham: Caleb Gill Jr., and Farmer and Brown, 1827), 257. 41 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln (sister) September 15, 1801. DWL Papers. 42 Adam Smith raised this question in his magisterial An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). In that book Smith theorizes that commerce and production are regulated by the “invisible hand” of supply and demand. Self-interest drives production which is in turn shaped by consumer needs resulting in better products for less money. Everyone, rich and poor, would benefit through a free market economy. According to Duncan Foley in his book Adam’s Fallacy, Smith worried about the balance between selfinterest and morality. Leo Damrosch, The Club Johnson, Boswell and the Friends Who Shaped an Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 321–2. 43 Daniel Walker Howe, Making the American Self Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 53–9. 44 Much has been written about the meaning of republicanism to the Revolutionary generation and its inheritors especially in light of the emerging liberal economy. Among the numerous scholars who have discussed the Jeffersonian republican ideal of the early national period and its meanings to the “inheritors of the revolution” are Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967); Robert Shalhope, “Republicanism and Early American Historiography,” William and Mary Quarterly, 39 (1982): 334–56; Joyce Appleby, Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican View of the 1790s (New York: New York University Press, 1984); Gordon Wood, “The Significance of the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic, 8 (1988): 1–20; Lance Banning, “The Republican Interpretation: Retrospect and Prospect,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 102 (1992): 153–79; Daniel T. Rodgers, “Republicanism: the Career of a Concept,” The Journal of American History, 79 (1992): 11–38. 45 Daniel Lincoln to John Caldwell, April 19, 1802, DWL Papers.

Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 53 46 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Waldo Lincoln, July 11, 1802. DWL Papers. What Martha Lincoln made of Daniel’s dark poem about death and worms and mouldering we are left to wonder. 47 Harvard University – Harvard University Archives / Harvard University. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Early Faculty minutes, 1725–1806. Official minutes, August 29, 1797‐August 19, 1806. UAIII 5.5, Volume 18 (Box 14), Harvard University Archives. Benjamin Homer Hall, A Collection of College Words and Customs (Cambridge: John Bartlett, 1856), 158. In 1657, when the Hon. Edward Hopkins was dying, he left a donations to Harvard College “to be applied to the purchase of books for presents to meritorious undergraduates.” “The distribution of these books is made, at the commencement of each academic year to students of the Sophomore Class who have made meritorious progress in their studies during their Freshman year; also, as far as the state of the funds admits, to those members of the Junior Class who entered as Sophomores, and have made meritorious progress in their studies during the Sophomore year, and to such Juniors as, having failed to receive a detur at the commencement of the Sophomore year, have, during that year, made decided improvement in scholarship.” Statutes and Laws of University at Cambridge, Massachusetts (Cambridge: Harvard University 1848), 18. Harvardians called the book that came from the Hopkins estate a Detur from the Latin “let it be given.” The college still makes the awards to sophomores who earned the highest grade point average as freshmen. 48 William Willis, The History of the Law, the Courts and the Lawyers of Maine (Portland, ME: Bailey & Noyes, 1863), 491. 49 Daniel Lincoln to William Sewall, June 28, 1803, DWL Papers. “Honi soit” is short for “Honi soit qui mal y pense” which means roughly “shame be to him who thinks evil of it,” the medieval British Order of the Garter’s motto. 50 William Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 139–40 and Mark Edward Lender and James Kirby Martin, Drinking in America: A History, (New York: The Free Press, 1987), 46. 51 Richard J. Bell, “Do Not Despair: The Cultural Significance of Suicide in America, 1780–1840” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2006), 415–53. 52 Eric Burns, The Spirits of America: A Social History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004), 57–8. 53 Lender and Martin, 36–40. 54 “Drug Abuse, Dopamine, and the Brain’s Reward System” Butler Center for Research at Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. Accessed September 20, 2020. https://www.hazeldenbettyford.org/education/bcr/addiction-research/drugabuse-brain-ru-915 Present-day views of alcoholism as a disease point to the role of dopamine (a neurotransmitter associated with feelings of pleasure) in the brain that alcohol artificially stimulates. The alcoholic, typically with lower levels of dopamine naturally, seeks to recreate pleasure but over time needs greater quantities of alcohol to achieve it, further lowering dopamine. Low dopamine also results in a depressive state or “anhedonia” which drives the need to drink even more. Long-term drinking also damages the pre-frontal cortex, the center of judgment in the brain, impairing the drinker’s ability to reflect on the consequences of his drinking. 55 Harvard University. Records of the College Faculty, Copies of Minutes, Vol II, 1797–1806, August 18, 1801, 252 and 270. UA III, 5.5.2, Harvard University Archives. 56 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, October 10, 1805, DWL Papers.

54 Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 57 Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636–1936 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1936), 211–2. Morison incorrectly states that Levi Lincoln was Lieutenant Governor at the time of the controversy. Levi Lincoln became Lieutenant Governor in 1807. 58 Daniel Lincoln, “Purity of Heart,” April 26, 1803, DWL Papers. 59 William Austin, Strictures on Harvard University (Boston: Folsom Printers, 1798), 15–9. 60 Austin, 20. 61 Daniel Lincoln to William Sewall, July 18, 1803, DWL Papers. 62 Daniel Lincoln to William Sewall, July 29, 1803, DWL Papers. 63 Levi Lincoln to Thomas Jefferson, September 10, 1803. Letter from Library of Congress, The Thomas Jefferson Papers, 1606–1827. http://memory.loc.gov/ cgi-bin/query/P?mtj:31:./temp/~ammem_UC7J. 64 Daniel W. Lincoln, “Benevolence A Monologue,” DWL Papers. 65 Sidney Willard, 251. 66 Benjamin Homer Hall, A Collection of College Words and Customs quoting “A writer in Buckingham’s New England Magazine” (Cambridge, Mass: John Bartlett, 1851), 63–4. 67 John Pierce quoted in Charles Smith, “Some Notes on the Harvard Commencements, 1803–1848, from the Journal of Rev. Dr. John Pierce,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 5 (1889–1890): 168–9. 68 “Order of the Exercises for Commencement,” Harvard University in Cambridge. Commonwealth of Massachusetts. August XXXI. MDCCCIII (Cambridge, Printed at the University Press by W. Hilliard, 1803) 69 Smith, “Some Notes on the Harvard Commencements,” 169. 70 William Bentley, Joseph Gilbert Waters, Marguerite Dalrymple, and Alice G. Waters. The Diary of William Bentley, Pastor of the East Church, Salem, Massachusetts (Salem, Mass: Essex Institute, 1914), 40. 71 Levi Lincoln to Thomas Jefferson, 11 September 1803. Letter. From Library of Congress, The Thomas Jefferson Papers. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/P? mtj:31:./temp/~ammem_UC7J. 72 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, 7 December 1807, DWL Papers.

Bibliography Archival Sources American Antiquarian Society Daniel Waldo Lincoln Papers Other Printed Matter Appleby, Joyce. Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican View of the 1790s. New York: New York University Press, 1984. Austin, William J. Strictures on Harvard University. Boston: Folsom Printers, 1798. Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967. Banning, Lance. “The Republican Interpretation: Retrospect and Prospect,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 102 (1992): 153–179. Batchelder, Samuel F. Bits of Harvard History. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1924.

Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 55 Bell, Richard J. “Do Not Despair: The Cultural Significance of Suicide in America, 1780-1840.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2006. Bentley, William, Joseph Gilbert Waters, Marguerite Dalrymple, and Alice G. Waters. The Diary of William Bentley, Pastor of the East Church, Salem, Massachusetts. Salem, Mass: Essex Institute, 1914. Burns, Eric. The Spirits of America: A Social History. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004. Cmiel, Kenneth. Democratic Eloquence: The Fight over Popular Speech in Nineteenth-Century America Berkley: University of California Press, 1990. Curtis, Charles P. “Liquor and Learning in Harvard College, 1792–1846,” The New England Quarterly 25 (1952): 346–347. Damrosch, Leo. The Club: Johnson, Boswell and the Friends Who Shaped an Age. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. “Drug Abuse, Dopamine, and the Brain’s Reward System” Butler Center for Research at Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. https://www.hazeldenbettyford. org/education/bcr/addiction-research/drug-abuse-brain-ru-915 Frothingham, James. Eliphalet Pearson 1817 (Harvard University Portrait Collection). https://harvardartmuseums.org/art/304512 Fuller, Wayne E. The American Mail: Enlarger of the Common Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. Gardiner, Robert Hallowell. Early Recollections of Robert Hallowell Gardiner. Hallowell, Maine: White & Horne, 1936. Hall, Benjamin Homer. A Collection of College Words and Customs. New York: M. Doolady, 1859. Harvard University. Records of the College Faculty, Copies of Minutes, Vol II, 1797–1806, August 18, 1801, 252 and 270. UA III, 5.5.2, Harvard University Archives. Howe, Daniel Walker. Making the American Self Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Hurd, Duane Hamilton. History of Worcester County, Massachusetts With Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men Volume II. Philadelphia: J.W. Lewis, 1889. Jackson, Leon. “The Rights of Man and the Rites of Youth Fraternity and Riot at Eighteenth Century Harvard.” In The American College in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Roger Geiger, Nashville, Tenn : Vanderbilt University Press, 2000. Knowlton, John S.C. and Clarendon Wheelock, Carl’s Tour in Main Street. Worcester, Mass: Sanford and Davis, 1889. Korkman, Petter. “Introduction.”in The Principles of Natural and Politic Law, ed. Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, Incorporated, 2006. Lender, Mark Edward and James Kirby Martin. Drinking in America: A History. New York: The Free Press, 1987. Library of Congress, The Thomas Jefferson Papers, 1606–1827. http://memory.loc. gov/cgi-bin/query/P?mtj:31:./temp/~ammem_UC7J Lincoln, Solomon Lincoln. History of the Town of Hingham, Plymouth County Massachusetts. Hingham: Caleb Gill Jr., and Farmer and Brown, 1827. Lincoln, William and Charles Hersey, A History of Worcester Massachusetts From Its Earliest Settlement to September 1836. Worcester, Mass: Charles Hersey, 1862.

56 Early Education of Daniel Lincoln 1784–1803 Morison, Samuel Eliot. Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636–1936. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1936. Novak, Steven J. The Rights of Youth: American Colleges and Student Revolt, 1798–1815. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977. “Order of the Exercises for Commencement,” Harvard University in Cambridge. Commonwealth of Massachusetts. August XXXI. MDCCCIII. Cambridge: Printed at the University Press by W. Hilliard, 1803. Quincy, Josiah. The History of Harvard University. Cambridge, Mass: John Owen, 1840. Rodgers, Daniel T. “Republicanism: the Career of a Concept,” The Journal of American History, 79 (1992): 11–38. Rorabaugh, William Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Schlesinger, Andrew. Veritas Harvard College and the American Experience. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005. Shalhope, Robert. “Republicanism and Early American Historiography,” William and Mary Quarterly, 39 (1982): 334–356. Sievens, Mary Beth. “Female Consumerism and Household Authority in Early National New England,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 4 (2006): 360–361. Smith, Charles. “Some Notes on the Harvard Commencements, 1803–1848, from the Journal of Rev. Dr. John Pierce,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 5 (1889–1890): 168–169. Sproule, J. Michael. Democratic Vernaculars: Rhetorics of Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Criticism since the Enlightenment. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. Sturgis, Elizabeth Orne Paine. “A Sketch of the Children of Dr. William Paine,” Proceedings of the Worcester Society of Antiquity, 20 (1904): 133–134. Washburn, Emory. Brief Sketch of the History of Leicester Academy. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1855. Watson, Shevaun E. “Complicating the Classics: Neoclassical Rhetorics in Two Early American Schoolbooks,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 31 (2001): 45–65. Willard, Sidney. Memories of Youth and Manhood, Willard, Sidney. Memories of Youth and Manhood. Cambridge, Mass: J. Bartlett, 1855. Willis, William. The History of the Law, the Courts and the Lawyers of Maine Portland, ME: Bailey & Noyes, 1863. Wood, Gordon. “The Significance of the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic, 8 (1988): 1–20. Wright, Conrad Edick and Edward Hanson, eds. Silbey’s Harvard Graduates Volume 18 1771/1774. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1999. Wright, Conrad Edick. The Unitarian Controversy: Essays on American Unitarian History. Boston: Skinner House Books, 1994. Worcester Bank & Trust Company, Some Historic Houses of Worcester A Brief Account of the Houses and Taverns that Fill a Prominent Part in the History of Worcester Together with Interesting Reminiscences of Their Occupants. Worcester, Mass: Worcester Bank & Trust Company, 1919.

4

Triumph Then Tragedy in Worcester 1803–1806

Figure 4.1 “Old South Meeting House as it Appeared in 1763” From Franklin Rice, The Worcester Book 1657 to 1883 (Worcester: Putnam, Davis and Co., 1884).

“Misfortune has separated me from the friend of my bosom & I am here alone. My gratifications are derived from the recollections of former joys. And much sweeter is their remembrance than the enjoyment of any within my attainment.”1

With Harvard behind him at last, Daniel returned to Worcester to study law in his father’s offices. Whether or not this path was chosen by Daniel or for Daniel is impossible to know, but it is likely that Levi saw lawyering as the best means for educated men to become civic leaders, just as he had. Levi’s career was evidence that the power center had shifted away from clergy and into the secular world of law, which created a new demand for attorneys everywhere.2 Daniel’s future would be before the court. DOI: 10.4324/9781003091691-5

58 Triumph Then Tragedy in Worcester 1803–1806 In 1803 when Daniel began his legal training, there was only one proprietary law school in all New England, Litchfield Law School. Harvard Law School did not open until 1817. Yale had no law program until 1824.3 Other than the very few who attended Litchfield, most men acquired admission to the bar the same way Levi did – as an apprentice. That meant three years of study with an established attorney if the aspiring lawyer had a college degree, five to seven years if he did not. After the training period, he could apply for admission to his county bar association, which required his mentor’s testament to his etiquette and morality and an oral examination.4 As opposed to most students who suffered from a dearth of law books, little in the way of exposure to courtrooms, and whose dreary days consisted largely of copying wills, deeds, and other legal matter, Daniel’s mentor also happened to be the United States attorney general, the chief legal advisor to the president with an expansive library. Since Levi Lincoln was a prominent Worcester attorney as well as a federal officer, his office offered the law student a privileged vantage point for learning the legal business. As Levi was away in Washington for most of 1803 and at least half of 1804, Daniel also studied with Levi Lincoln Thaxter, an older cousin who had been trained by Levi and who took on the job of being Daniel’s temporary mentor.5 Being so far away from Worcester and his family for months at a time was difficult for Levi. His eyesight was worsening. Travel to and from Washington was long and grueling. He was nearing exhaustion. The stress came to a head in 1804 when he appeared at the Supreme Court as counsel to the president in Coxe v. Pennington, a case brought to the court to determine the viability of Jefferson’s 1802 repeal of John Adams’s excise tax on domestic goods.6 Standing before Chief Justice John Marshall, preparing to speak, Levi suddenly became flummoxed and confused. For fifteen interminable minutes he stood silently, trying to recover his composure. When he began to speak again it was in a garbled “wild, incoherent and unargumentative manner.” Overcome and mortified, he slumped into his chair, unable to go on.7 Alexander Dallas, the famous Philadelphia lawyer, was called in to substitute for Levi and the case proceeded. In the end, Marshall ruled against Jefferson, but Levi’s shaky performance probably had no bearing on Marshall’s decision. Much more likely was Marshall’s heralded antipathy to Jeffersonian principles. Levi’s enemies in the Federalist press gleefully pounced and made hay of his embarrassment, adding it to the spiteful arsenal they had already used to discredit him. Rumors circulated that Jefferson was so embarrassed by Lincoln’s performance that he wanted to fire him. Although Federalists pointed to the episode as proof of Levi’s ineptitude, Republicans dismissed the incident as an anomaly. In a testament to their continued regard for Levi, the national Republican caucus nominated him for the office of Vice President in 1804. But Levi polled a distant third in the balloting, well behind George Clinton of New York who won the spot.8

Triumph Then Tragedy in Worcester 1803–1806 59 The following December as the newly re-elected Jefferson prepared to embark on his second term, Levi Lincoln resigned his office. In his letter to Jefferson, he noted his desire to be with his “young and numerous family in want of parental care and assistance in the course of their education.” He also cited his worsening vision and the physical toll of travel between Worcester and Washington. He assured Jefferson in a heartfelt three-page letter that his respect for him remained undiminished. Toward the end of the letter, Levi makes a single cryptic reference to a “successor professing probably a greater quickness of conception & readiness of recollection,” which may or may not have been a reference to the Pennington affair.9 In his response Jefferson concurred that the “sacred duties” of family life demanded more of Levi’s time and attention. He made no mention of Lincoln’s alleged declining mental abilities. “You carry with you my entire approbation of your official conduct, my thanks for your services, my regrets on losing them, and my affectionate friendship,” the president wrote.10 Levi remained a loyal friend and correspondent and continued to act as Jefferson’s New England proxy for the remainder of Jefferson’s presidency and for many years beyond. As United States attorney general, Levi had participated in every significant event of Jefferson’s first administration. He had stood in for James Madison during the controversy that resulted in the famous Marbury v. Madison case. When Jefferson was presented with the opportunity of acquiring over 827,000 square miles from Napoleon Bonaparte in what became known as the Louisiana Purchase, Levi cautioned Jefferson that such a move exceeded his constitutional authorities. On that point he was overruled.11 He had coached Jefferson in his response to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptists’ address when Jefferson called forth the “wall of separation between church and state” guaranteed by the First Amendment.12 He had led a commission to untangle disputed Yazoo land claims in Georgia. Aside from his involvement in these key events, a more significant portion of Levi’s work as the nation’s fourth attorney general involved interpreting international law as it related to neutral American shipping vessels caught between the belligerent England and France who were waging war in the Atlantic.13 Without the muscle of a Department of Justice behind him (that would not be established until 1870), Levi’s role was limited to that of legal adviser only. He was not and could not be an enforcer. Overall, and perhaps most importantly, Levi had been instrumental in turning the political climate in Massachusetts toward Republicans. Jefferson, who lost Massachusetts in 1800, won the state in 1804, much to the alarm of Federalists throughout the commonwealth. New Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode Island also went for Jefferson that year. Although the Massachusetts state government remained in Federalist hands, it was clear to everyone that Federalist control was weakening in New England and Levi Lincoln would continue do what he could to hurry its passing.14 But at the end of 1804, he had had enough of Washington. In 1805 he was back in Worcester, refocusing his political energies closer to home.

60 Triumph Then Tragedy in Worcester 1803–1806 For Daniel, living in Worcester meant more than reading flinty law books and copying deeds. It meant he could court Charlotte Caldwell, now seventeen years old and marriageable. His prospects of winning her were bright if not preordained. The path forward was clear. He would complete his law studies with Levi Thatcher and his father, pass the bar, run for public office, and involve himself in the family farms and civic life. He would present himself to Charlotte as the most honorable of men. They would marry, have a family, and live a happy privileged life in Worcester. In another step toward burnishing his position and reputation, he joined the Worcester Light Infantry.15 Worcester instituted a voluntary militia in 1781 during the Revolutionary War, but by 1803 it had degenerated into a motley conglomeration of transient young men whose attendance at meetings was irregular, whose uniforms were slovenly, and whose interest in defending Worcester, if ever put to the test, was questionable. Their parades were said to be more displays of burlesque than bravery.16 When Jefferson’s Military Peace and Establishment Act of 1802 capped the army at a little over 3,000 men, creating a reliable, well-equipped defensive militia became an imperative.17 Additionally, an improved, upgraded militia offered an opportunity for young men to “assist in an effort which, if crowned with success, will retrieve lost opportunities, and respectability to their characters as soldiers, and place them in a situation to be the example and the boast of the division to which they belong.”18 Three of Worcester’s best and brightest sons, Levi Lincoln, Jr., Joseph Caldwell (Charlotte’s brother), Ledyard Goodell, and thirty-four others, presented Governor Caleb Strong with a petition seeking permission to form the Worcester Light Infantry. “Should your honors see fit to grant the prayer of this petition,” wrote Levi Jr., “a large number of raw, undisciplined, ununiformed young men who already have associated & who immediately would enlist, will soon become a well-disciplined, uniformed and equipped corps.”19 In January 1804 Strong approved their request. Daniel Lincoln enlisted as the corps’ first orderly sergeant and clerk.20 At its inception, the Worcester Light Infantry was a beacon to the elite young Republicans of Worcester County; an ideal showcase for their patriotism, discipline, and masculinity. As volunteers, the enlistees were responsible for their own horses, uniforms, and weaponry, immediately setting them apart from the old rag-tag militia. As a select corps, they met and drilled frequently, so that in six months they were ready for their first public parade under the command of Captain Levi Thaxter. The reviews from The Worcester Aegis were glowing. “…The neatness of their equipments, the correctness of their evolutions, and the exactness of their discipline were equally honorable to themselves and gratifying to those who had patronized the enterprize. A spirit of just emulation gave life to their movements, and pleasure to the spectators. If proportional improvement is attained, and the same praise merited, in their progress, which have marked

Triumph Then Tragedy in Worcester 1803–1806 61 their debut, we cannot sufficiently congratulate the corps, the town, and the militia generally, on the credit they will severally receive from the institution.”21 As a militia unit of the commonwealth, the Light Infantry was now equipped and ready to defend Worcester and Massachusetts from all enemies domestic and foreign. Besides its military purpose, the Worcester Light Infantry provided pomp and ceremony for the town’s patriotic occasions, especially on the Fourth of July when the good people of Worcester could celebrate their identity as Americans, pay tribute to the nation’s founders and veterans, and recommit to republican ideals. Although the observance was ostensibly all-American, the celebration itself had become aggressively partisan. The day became a staging ground for competing interpretations of the legacy of the Revolution, with Federalists and Republicans vying for who could be crowned most patriotic and most faithful to American ideals.22 For Republicans that meant principles of equality and opportunity embedded in the Declaration of Independence. For Federalists that meant protection of property and privilege guaranteed by the Constitution. The disagreement over the meaning of the Fourth became so unbridgeable that many towns settled on a divisive solution of two separate celebrations, two parades, and two orations. Worcester kept to one event until 1812 when tensions over another war dissolved the fragile glue that had held the two sides together. Although there was only one municipal event in 1805, Worcester Republicans had successfully co-opted the town’s parade, oration, and banquet just as they had in previous years. The Aegis magnanimously declared that everyone, including their political opponents, was welcome to participate. In a display more deceptive than genuine, Republicans issued grand special invitations to Federalist clergy to join them in prayer and celebration, the same group that Levi had targeted as malignant to the nation. The invitation was an obvious setup. If they accepted, Federalists would be forced to participate in Republican rituals they detested. If they declined, they would be the object of Republican scorn for being unpatriotic. Rather than endure humiliation and hypocrisy in public, Federalists took the less damaging course and turned down the request. Predictably, Republicans pointed to their refusal as proof of Federalist cold-heartedness. Rather than join the revelry, Republicans reported that Federalists were “dead to sentiment,” preferring to spend the day in “cold and sullen silence.”23 Cleared of Federalists, as they knew they would be, the day belonged to the Republicans. The July Fourth organizers needed to look no farther than the Lincoln family to find their orator, an honor typically bestowed on the up-andcoming generation of leaders. Levi, Jr. had delivered the address in 1804. In 1805 it was Daniel’s turn. In the lead-up to the day the Aegis predicted that Daniel would give his audience just the kind of rousing partisan sentiment they wanted to hear. “From the Republican principles, correct taste and classical acquirements of this Gentleman we anticipate much, and are confident that our anticipations will not be disappointed.”24

62 Triumph Then Tragedy in Worcester 1803–1806 Most July Fourth addresses were unabashedly formulaic, modeled on the first such speech performed in Boston in 1783.25 The prescribed task of the orator was to remind his listeners of the “feelings, manners, and principles” that had led to the Revolution. He followed up with a discourse on the Revolution’s meaning and the responsibilities of its inheritors. References to natural abundance, heroes (which always included George Washington and other notables depending on the political leanings of the speaker), the genius of the Constitution, and the evidence of God’s hand in American destiny provided proof of American exceptionalism. Known as the “Boston style,” July Fourth orations became famous for their “exclamations, hyperbole, and melodramatic oppositions” typical of the new, emotive rhetoric Eliphalet Pearson taught at Harvard.26 Daniel well knew that his oration should inspire but above all, it should entertain his audience. Listeners “congregate not for instruction but amusement; not for improvement but frolic,” he told Enoch. “Strike the harp then & charm their senses with the witchery of modulation. Song will please them more than lectures in philosophy. Strike the harp, for it discourses the language of passion.”27 Daniel meant what he said. Addressing the good Republicans gathered in front of the Old South Church, he dutifully followed tradition and began with an appreciation of the country’s founders, leading his audience through the events that culminated in the Revolution. History lesson completed, Daniel launched into a no-holes-barred macabre bombast layered with portentous darkness. He painted the British as “unnatural” ghoulish parents who heartlessly abandoned their American children to a cruel fate among savages and monsters only to hungrily pounce and exploit them when their enterprises became profitable. Americans fought to protect what they had created but it came at a terrible price of war, rape, and murder. Striking a gory harp, Daniel laid in. “Shall I waken in your ears the cries of the wounded, the groans of the dying, the shrieks of violated chastity, and the screams of murdered helplessness? … Shall I direct you to the dungeons of despotism, the nurseries of pestilence, where the gorged vulture snuffs the tainted wind, where rank contagion withers the vigor of the arm, extinguishes the lustre of the eye, and stifles the expiring sigh of bravery enthralled? Shall I lead you to the wigwam of the merciless savage, the instrument of royal vengeance – show you the scalps, that decorate his hall, where the breathing of the mournful blast waves the tresses of your butchered wives – and there compute the wondrous purchase?” Pausing to leave his audience with the image of female scalps dangling on the wall of a wigwam, Daniel swooped in to remind his audience that despite scheming Federalists out to subvert the principles so painfully gained, all was not lost. Not yet. Paying homage to the national savior, Thomas Jefferson, he extolled the president as a peacemaker, champion of freedom, and engineer of prosperity. It was Jefferson who had freed us from debt, brokered friendly foreign relations, and pacified the Indians. If “Washington was our Romulus,” said Daniel, “Jefferson was our Numa … In the warfare of

Triumph Then Tragedy in Worcester 1803–1806 63 conflicting storms, Jefferson assumes the helm. Late the contention of struggling elements, the ship rights. Extricated from the remora, national prosperity advances. Hope lulls anxiety to slumber in her arms; and the sobs of despondence are stifled in the bosom of security. Blessing succeeds to blessing, chased by a good still greater than the last.”28 The oration concluded, the exultant crowd gathered at Johnson’s Inn where they dined, listened to music, and raised their glasses in seventeen official toasts and countless more unofficial ones, far too many to be documented by the press.29 The Aegis praised Daniel for delivering an “elegant, spirited, and highly Republican oration.”30 But not everyone shared the Aegis’s enthusiasm. The Monthly Anthology, a publication of the Anthology Club, a group of Congregationalist ministers and wealthy mercantile elite whose selfappointed mission was to elevate American culture in their own image, viewed Daniel’s speech dimly. “Though juvenile performances may claim indulgence, by withholding the rod we may injure the child,” their critique began. Giving themselves permission to criticize, or rather eviscerate him, they declared that Daniel was “too much elevated with his own consequence to be hurt by the reflections of another” but the critics soldiered on anyway accusing him of “mistaking acrimony for wit” and being “peculiarly unfortunate in his declamatory endeavors.” Even worse, the Anthology faulted Daniel for producing a tired oration that relied on dredging up old wounds and retelling Revolutionary War atrocities merely for the sake of exciting the crowd. (This would be hard to disagree with.) Trashing Federalists had grown tiresome, they said. “The same wave, attended with the same froth and the same roar, is continually unbosoming itself.” Lastly, as a gentleman and a scholar Daniel should have known better than to produce a speech that was merely “decoration for the Aegis,” a clear reference to the paper as the Lincoln family’s mouthpiece for Republican politics.31 The Monthly Anthology had its opinion and Levi Lincoln had his. As he did with Daniel’s 1803 Harvard address, the proud father sent Jefferson a copy. “Permit me to ask you to throw your eye over the inclosed (sic) oration. It will animate the ambition of a young disciple of the New School, to be informed, that the President of the U.S. has honored his juvenile Essay, with a perusal … to find a quiet place on your shelves for fugitives, as a silent witness of his, & my zeal to serve the public. On reperusing it, I find it in many things needing correction, is very capable of improvement, but in everything expressive of the real feelings of your devoted friend.”32 Although there is no record of what Jefferson thought of the piece, Levi’s pride in his son as a rising spokesman for the Republican cause was unimpeacable. Whatever satisfaction Daniel may have enjoyed after his Independence Day performance, was tragically fleeting. One day after his oratorical triumph, William Caldwell, Worcester’s sheriff, and Daniel’s presumptive father-in-law, died from complications stemming from an earlier suicide

64 Triumph Then Tragedy in Worcester 1803–1806 attempt. Despondent over the recent death of his son John, Caldwell had slashed his own throat.33 Then in a dastardly triple-blow to the family, a mere six weeks after William Caldwell’s death, Charlotte’s mother, Charlotte Blake Caldwell, died. Thought to be financially well-off, the survivors soon discovered that in fact, their father carried an enormous debt forcing the survivors, Charlotte and her brothers Joseph, Charles, Guy, and George, to sell the family home and all its contents. Nearly impoverished, they moved to Hingham to live with the Blake family, their maternal relatives.34 Daniel despaired over Charlotte’s departure. “Misfortune has separated me from the friend of my bosom & I am here alone. My gratifications are derived from the recollections of former joys. And much sweeter is their remembrance than the enjoyment of any within my attainment.”35 Less than two months later, his depression and loneliness crashed into desolation and anguish. On January 14, 1806, Charlotte, who had been suffering from an unnamed illness, died in Hingham. She was nineteen years old and the fourth Caldwell to die in less than a year.36 A few weeks after her death, a poem “On the Death of Miss Charlotte Caldwell” appeared in the Boston Commercial Gazette. Although the author was not identified except as “a correspondent whose effusions have always been respected by us” it could be none other than Daniel. The poem suggests that he was with her when she died. … She drooped like the lily, just opened to view, As disease was wasting her breath, The rose in despair had forsaken her cheek And she sunk in the cold arms of death Tho thy beauties, sweet maid, have gone to decay, Thy loved virtues engraven remain, And he who now weeps in despair at thy tomb, Can tell of thy worth by his pain.37 Daniel struggled to resume his life. He returned to his legal studies and assisted his uncle, Abraham Lincoln, at the Aegis. But it was no good. Heartache overwhelmed him. To his sister Martha he said, “The destroyer has plundered from the wreath of my social pleasures its fairest blossoms but the cord of its texture was entwined with the threads of existence & the cherished remembrance of its beauties will be lost but with life.”38 Seeking relief from the pain, Daniel turned to alcohol, the reliable elixir from his college days to mute his agony. In a matter of months he had sunk into a dangerous alcoholic-fueled netherworld. His excessive drinking became public knowledge and a private embarrassment, a weak surrender to dark forces. His future, once brilliant, inexorably upward and assured, was slipping away. Daniel needed rescuing and everyone could see it.

Triumph Then Tragedy in Worcester 1803–1806 65 Fortunately, Levi had a lifeline. With his father’s help and connections, Daniel would get away from Worcester and all his sorrowful memories. He would start over in Portland, in the District of Maine. Just as Worcester had offered unprecedented opportunities for the intrepid Levi in 1776, Portland, Maine in 1806 was a young man’s game, ready for the bold who possessed the initiative to make their mark. Portland needed lawyers, and Daniel had the professional credentials in hand. Levi’s connections would make it possible to set up a practice there. And the time was right politically. Federalists looked vulnerable when Caleb Strong defeated Republican James Sullivan by a slim 533 vote margin in the 1806 gubernatorial race.39 And after Portland’s Eastern Argus published a secret circular revealing Federalist plans to organize county committees in the district to boost their presence, Massachusetts Republicans knew if they ever hoped to capture the State House they could ignore the growing Federalist threat at their peril.40 If he could stay sober, Daniel’s pedigree along with his elocutionary talents could be of great use in soliciting votes and expanding Republican influence. Daniel had suffered a painful setback and had tasted failure, but at twenty-two he was still young enough to make things right. Portland offered Daniel the perfect opportunity to reclaim his promising future. He could get reinvested in the law there. He could sharpen his focus, meet new people, and make the brilliant life everyone anticipated for him a reality. So in August 1806, Daniel packed his bags and set off for a drier, better, more virtuous life.

Notes 1 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, November 17, 1805, DWL Papers. 2 Gerard W. Gawalt, The Promise of Power: The Emergence of the Legal Profession in Massachusetts 1760–1840 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979), 132. 3 Ibid., 135. 4 Ibid., 54. 5 Levi Lincoln Thaxter was Levi’s nephew, the son of his sister, Bethnia Lincoln Thaxter. He was a consistent presence in the Lincoln household, at least since 1800. Second Census of the United States, 1800. NARA microfilm publication M32 (52 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. 6 Charlotte Crane, “Pennington v. Coxe: A Glimpse at The Federal Government in the Early Republic,” Virginia Tax Law Review 23 (2003): 417–69. 7 Charles William Janson, The Stranger in America 1793–1806 (London: James Cundee, Albion Press London, 1807; reprint New York: The Press of the Pioneers, Inc., 1935), 150–1. Janson was a British tourist and writer who loathed everything American. Nothing in the record substantiates Janson’s claim. 8 Marvin Junior Petroelje. “Levi Lincoln, Sr.: Jeffersonian Republican of Massachusetts.” (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1969), 129–30. 9 Levi Lincoln to Thomas Jefferson, December 26, 1804, Letter. From the Library of Congress, The Thomas Jefferson Papers, http://memory.loc.gov/cgibin/query/P?mtj:22:./temp/~ammem_6WDz:: 10 Ibid.

66 Triumph Then Tragedy in Worcester 1803–1806 11 Levi argued that the purchase of the Louisiana Territory required a constitutional amendment. Albert Gallatin, Jefferson’s secretary of the treasury, argued the opposite. John O. McGinnis, “Models of the Opinion Function of the Attorney General: A Normative, Descriptive, and Historical Prolegomenon,” Cardozo Law Review 15 (1993): 375–436. 12 James Hutson, “Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptists: A Controversy Rejoined,” The William and Mary Quarterly 56 (1999): 775–90. 13 Petroelje, “Levi Lincoln, Sr.,” 77. 14 Richard Buel, Jr., America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle of the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic (New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2005), 23. 15 John L. Brooke, Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political Culture in Worcester County, Massachusetts, 1731–1861. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 245. Albrecht Koschnik examines the development of partisan voluntary societies in Philadelphia. Koschnik credits their creation to an effort to court public approbation in an era that disdained political factions. His work focuses on associations catering to young Federalist men and traces the evolution of voluntary groups after Federalist power was eclipsed around 1812. After 1815, the groups’ interests shifted into more literary and cultural concerns. It is not clear if the same dynamics could be applied to Republican groups. What does seem universal, however, is the opportunity voluntary groups gave young men to establish their credentials as soldiers and citizens ready to defend the nation in the republican spirit of the founders, however differently interpreted. See Albrecht Koschnik, “Young Federalists, Masculinity, and Partisanship during the War of 1812,” in Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, eds., Jeffrey L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, David Waldstreicher (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). 16 Major Fredrick Green Stiles, “A Sketch of the Worcester Light Infantry, 1803–1922,” Proceedings of the Worcester Society of Antiquity 17 (1901), 616. 17 Theodore Crackel, “Jefferson, Politics, and the Army: An Examination of the Military Peace Establishment Act of 1802,” Journal of the Early Republic 2 (1982): 21–38. 18 Levi Lincoln, Jr. quoted in Stiles, 617. 19 Levi Lincoln Jr., quoted in Herbert Lincoln Adams, Worcester Light Infantry 1803–1922 (Worcester, Mass: Worcester Light Infantry History Association, 1924), 27. 20 Ibid., 30. 21 National Aegis, June 13, 1804, 3. 22 Len Travers, Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism in the Early Republic (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997), 1–14. 23 National Aegis, July 3, 1805, 3. It appears there was no Federalist celebration at all in Worcester in 1805. Celebrations were held in Sutton and Petersham in Worcester County, but there is no evidence in existing newspaper accounts that Worcester hosted an Independence Day event that year. 24 “July Fourth,” National Aegis, May 29, 1805, 3. 25 James Spear Loring, The Hundred Boston Orators Appointed by the Municipal Authorities and Other Public Bodies, from 1770 to 1852; (Boston: J.P. Jewett and Company, 1853), 156. Boston’s first July Fourth orator was Dr. John Warren. Warren was a Revolutionary War veteran, surgeon, and one of the founders of Harvard’s medical school.

Triumph Then Tragedy in Worcester 1803–1806 67 26 Paul Goetsch and Gerd Hurm, The Fourth of July: Political Oratory and Literary Reactions 1776–1976 (Tü bingen: G. Narr, 1992), 61. 27 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, June 23, 1809, DWL Papers. 28 Ibid., Numa Pompilius was the legendary second king of Rome after Romulus. His people venerated him for his wisdom and piety. 29 “National Independence,” National Aegis, July 10, 1805, 3. 30 Ibid. 31 “Literary Notice,” The Monthly Anthology, and Boston Review Volume 2, 1805 (Boston: Monroe & Francis, 1805), 436. The Boston Anthology Society began meeting in Boston in 1803 and was part dinner club, part literary society. According to historian Peter S. Field, the society was the favorite gathering place for Boston Brahmin, the coalition of wealthy merchants and intellectuals, many of them liberal Congregationalists. Reflecting the split between orthodox Congregationalists and the liberal vein, the new Brahmin class saw nothing ungodly in accumulating great wealth and using it to elevate the mind and to refine cultural values in their own more secular image. Peter S. Field, “The Birth of Secular High Culture: The Monthly Anthology and Boston Review and Its Critics,” Journal of the Early Republic 17 (1997): 509–75. The magazine it produced under William Emerson as its editor lasted only until 1811 when disorganization, disinterest, internal divisions, and defection of its members led to the group’s dissolution. The younger members, however, reorganized and in 1815 founded the North American Review under the editorship of William Tudor, a former Anthology Society member. Lewis P. Simpson, “A Literary Adventure of the Early Republic: The Anthology Society and the Monthly Anthology,” The New England Quarterly 27 (1954): 168–90. 32 Levi Lincoln to Thomas Jefferson, 30 July 1805. Thomas Jefferson Papers: Founders Online, National Archives, Accessed April 20, 2021. https://founders. archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-2168. 33 Franklin P. Rice, The Worcester Book: A Diary of Noteworthy Events in Worcester, Massachusetts From 1657 to 1823 (Worcester: Putnam, Davis and Company, 1884), 84. “His death was caused in part by an attempt at suicide some time before, while suffering under depression of spirits.” “On account of ill health and mental depression, he cut his throat but recovered from the wound.” Charles Nutt, History of Worcester and Its People (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1919), 71. 34 Conrad Edick Wright and Edward Hanson, “William Caldwell,” Biographical Sketches of Those who Attended Harvard College in the Classes of 1772–1774 from Sibley’s Harvard Graduates Volume XVIII. Massachusetts Historical Society, 226–9. 35 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, November 17, 1805, DWL Papers. 36 There no extant death certificate for Charlotte Caldwell that indicates the cause of death. 37 “Lines on the Death of Miss Charlotte Caldwell,” Boston Commercial Gazette, January 30, 1806, Issue 44, Volume 19, 4. 38 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, August 21, 1806, DWL Papers. 39 “Massachusetts 1806 State Election for Governor,” Lampi Collection of American Electoral Returns 1787–1825. (American Antiquarian Society, 2007) http://elections.lib.tufts.edu/aas_portal/view-election.xq?id=MS115.002.MA. 1806.00002 40 Louis Clinton Hatch, Maine: A History (New York: The American Historical Society, 1919), 70.

68 Triumph Then Tragedy in Worcester 1803–1806

Bibliography Archival Sources American Antiquarian Society. Daniel Waldo Lincoln Papers. NARA microfilm publication M32 (52 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. Town of Hingham, Massachusetts. Record of Deaths of the Town of Hingham, A-G. Other Printed Matter Adams, Herbert Lincoln. Worcester Light Infantry 1803–1922. Worcester, Mass: Worcester Light Infantry History Association, 1924. Brooke, John L. Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political Culture in Worcester County, Massachusetts, 1731–1861. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Buel, Richard Buel Jr. America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle of the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2005. Crackel, Theodore. “Jefferson, Politics, and the Army: An Examination of the Military Peace Establishment Act of 1802,” Journal of the Early Republic, 2 (1982): 21–38. Crane, Charlotte. “Pennington v. Coxe: A Glimpse at The Federal Government in the Early Republic,” Virginia Tax Law Review, 23 (2003): 417–469. Gawalt, Gerard W. The Promise of Power: The Emergence of the Legal Profession in Massachusetts 1760–1840. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979. Goetsch, Paul and Gerd Hurm. The Fourth of July: Political Oratory and Literary Reactions 1776–1976 Tü bingen: G. Narr, 1992. Hatch, Louis Clinton. Maine: A History. New York: The American Historical Society, 1919. Hutson, James Hutson, “Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptists: A Controversy Rejoined,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 56 (1999): 775–790. Janson, Charles William. The Stranger in America 1793-1806. London: James Cundee, Albion Press London, 1807; reprint New York: The Press of the Pioneers, Inc., 1935. Koschnik, Albrecht. “Young Federalists, Masculinity, and Partisanship during the War of 1812.” In Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, eds. Jeffrey L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Library of Congress, The Thomas Jefferson Papers, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ query/P?mtj:22:./temp/~ammem_6WDz:: Lincoln, Daniel Waldo. An Oration Pronounced At Worcester on the Anniversary of American Independence, July 4th, 1805. Worcester, Mass: Sewall Goodridge, 1805. “Lines on the Death of Miss Charlotte Caldwell,” Boston Commercial Gazette, January 30, 1806, 4.

Triumph Then Tragedy in Worcester 1803–1806 69 “Literary Notice,” Monthly Anthology, and Boston Review Volume 2 1805. (Boston: Munroe & Francis 1805), 436. Loring, James Spear. The Hundred Boston Orators Appointed by the Municipal Authorities and Other Public Bodies, from 1770 to 1852. Boston: J.P. Jewett and Company, 1853. 156. “Massachusetts 1806 State Election for Governor,” Lampi Collection of American Electoral Returns 1787-1825. American Antiquarian Society, 2007. McGinnis, John O. “Models of the Opinion Function of the Attorney General: A Normative, Descriptive, and Historical Prolegomenon,” Cardozo Law Review, 15 (1993): 375–436. Nutt, Charles. History of Worcester and Its People. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1919. Petroelje, Marvin Junior. “Levi Lincoln, Sr.: Jeffersonian Republican of Massachusetts.” Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1969. Rice, Franklin P. The Worcester Book: A Diary of Noteworthy Events in Worcester, Massachusetts From 1657 to 1823. Worcester: Putnam, Davis and Company, 1884. Simpson, Lewis P. “A Literary Adventure of the Early Republic: The Anthology Society and the Monthly Anthology,” The New England Quarterly, 27 (1954): 168–190. Stiles, Major Fredrick Green. “A Sketch of the Worcester Light Infantry, 18031922,” Proceedings of the Worcester Society of Antiquity 17 (1901), 616. Travers, Len. Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism in the Early Republic. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997. Wright, Conrad Edick and Edward Hanson, “William Caldwell,” Biographical Sketches of Those who Attended Harvard College in the Classes of 1772–1774 from Sibley’s Harvard Graduates Volume XVIII. Massachusetts Historical Society, 226–229.

5

Promises and Portland 1806–1807

Figure 5.1 Map of the District of Maine: Part of Massachusetts From the Latest Surveys 1806 by Osgood Carleton Courtesy Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, University of Southern Maine.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003091691-6

Promises and Portland 1806–1807 71 “I burn the midnight lamp & open my shutters with the dawn. I confine my attention during the day to law & in the evening to politics … My wish is to be first & first God willing, I will be.”1

The population of the District of Maine had been on the rise since the end of the Revolutionary War, thanks to the influx of thousands of immigrants swept up in the infectious spirit of opportunity that infused the new nation. Between 1783 and 1820 Maine saw a 450 percent increase in growth, rising from 56,000 to 300,000 people.2 Most of the newcomers were farmers seeking land they could call their own. They hailed largely from other parts of New England with just enough money in their pockets to get to the sparsely settled, densely forested Maine frontier, but no farther.3 They built crude cabins on the few acres of land they painstakingly cleared, endured bitterly cold winters, coaxed what they could out of the land, and lived at a subsistence level because they believed in the promise of freehold land. As a group, these newcomers were overwhelmingly Republican and looked to their leaders to champion their cause for cheap land and a free market economy.4 They believed in the Jeffersonian vision of individual rights and opportunity. The town of Portland, however, was a magnet for the better-heeled: the merchants, lawyers, and politicians. Known during the colonial period as Falmouth, the town had been leveled after several days of relentless British bombardment in 1775 that came in retaliation for the capture of a British commander named Henry Mowat. Although the overzealous patriots who nabbed Mowat soon released him, the commander was unforgiving and wreaked vengeance on the town anyway. The British navy opened fire and destroyed 136 dwellings and left nearly 2,000 people homeless.5 When faced with the task of rebuilding, Falmouth inhabitants decided to reorganize their town by separating its commercial shipping center known as the Neck from the rest of town that they rechristened Portland. In 1800, the town numbered over 3,700 people. A decade later that number had more than doubled.6 When Daniel Lincoln arrived in August 1806, 600 homes and scores of businesses made up the flourishing town. Powered as it had always been by massive exports of timber, shipping tonnage had increased from 5,000 tons in 1789 to 45,000 tons, making it the pre-eminent center for shipping in Maine and a close second to Boston as the busiest port in all New England.7 The ongoing warfare between France and England and the blessings of American neutrality made for fabulous profits in the commercial trade of lumber, fish, and sailing vessels with both countries. Under such fortuitous conditions, Portland’s maritime merchants expanded their trade on an unprecedented scale and delighted in their new wealth.8 As monuments to their affluence and gentility, these reputable merchants, lawyers, and bankers commissioned resident architect Alexander Parris to build their mansions in the Greek Revival style made popular by Bostonian Charles Bulfinch. Parris’s creations, the Portland Bank Building in particular, bore witness to the striving for elegance, an island of gracious

72 Promises and Portland 1806–1807 refinement in a great sea of frontier wilderness.9 “No place in our route hitherto, could for its improvement be compared with Portland. … Few towns in New England are equally beautiful and brilliant,” wrote Timothy Dwight who visited in 1807.10 Daniel described it as a “rose in the desert” and “the land of promise.”11 Daniel arrived in booming Portland with a demanding agenda of his own. First, he had to be admitted to the Cumberland County Bar and establish a practice. Politically, he wanted to inculcate himself among the other new arrivals to advance Republican influence throughout the District. But even more critically, he needed a clean slate and a chance to repair the damage his drinking had done to his relationship with his family. He no sooner unpacked his bags at Mr. Graffam’s boarding house, an entrepreneur who launched a business transporting people and newspapers between Portland and Hallowell in the record time of under two days, when Daniel set out to mend his familial bridges.12 He wrote his mother first. He told her he was pleased to be in Portland and away from Worcester where “continual meditation on misfortunes to which I was unavoidably led in” was pulling him into an emotional paralysis. Only by leaving the scene of his lost happiness could he ever find a way to save himself. Redemption required restraint and purpose. “The desire of usefulness & distinction in life has recalled my thoughts, employs the mind & gives scope to the exercise of its faculties. … Again I hear the calls of ambition. They shall be obeyed. Again the demands of duty are attended to, & shall be answered. Be assured, my dear mother, the hopes of my friends shall not be disappointed.”13 He wrote a more conciliatory and apologetic letter to his father, taking a veiled measure of responsibility for his misconduct. He tried to temper the gravity of his situation by recasting his disreputable behavior as evidence of an overabundance of sensitivity rather than a lack of self-control. “I have become very sensible to the childishness of my former conduct, & acknowledge it with shame & regret,” he wrote. “When I should have tilled my field, I have strayed to gather the flowers of the spring; and seduced by their attractive ruddiness have plucked useless haws when I should have dressed my vineyard.” Fortunately, he knew what he had to do to save himself. He would eliminate frivolities and be a serious, sensible, and sympathetic man. He would study. He would work. He would read belles-lettres. He would allow no space for useless haws in a life dedicated to morality and jurisprudence. “With the opinion of Sir William Jones, that ‘the law is a jealous science, & will not have any partnership with the muses,’ I have adopted his prudent determination; to desist from courting them, to abjure their acquaintance forever; & to devote myself to law & oratory. The severer discipline of the law will, so far from being irksome, become no less pleasant, than the cultivation of belles-lettres. The one is ornamental the other greatly useful too. The one is productive of amusement; & private satisfaction; the other of public benefit; distinction & preferment reward the attainment. I have halted in the course,

Promises and Portland 1806–1807 73 but despair not of saving my distance. Future exertions may avail to retrieve past lapses, and in future exertions, I will not be found wanting.”14 Daniel knew that if he could reach the republican ideal as a successful professional, attain financial independence, promote the Republican agenda, maybe even marry, the chances were good that he would regain the respect of those who mattered most to him. The game was his to lose. But if he slid back into intemperance, he would be viewed as a troubled, coddled child, a dishonorable delinquent, and a squanderer of talent and fortune. He would be a man who lacked self-control and purpose.15 It wouldn’t be easy, especially in a culture so besotted with alcohol. As a shipping center and a hub in the rum trade, liquor in Portland was cheap and abundant. At a time when communal glass raising fostered social bonds and cemented common purposes among men, to be a non-imbiber added to the social distance not easily assuaged by reading Coke’s law and contemplating the works of dead philosophers.16 Just as his father’s arrival in Worcester in 1776 had been fortuitous for a young lawyer with ambitions, Portland offered similar opportunities for Daniel. Jefferson’s Secretary of War, Henry Dearborn who hailed from nearby Monmouth, was actively recruiting young Republicans including his son, Henry A.S. Dearborn, to further the Jeffersonian vision there.17 Maine’s growing population needed legal services of every kind and Cumberland County had only nine lawyers to provide them.18 The older established lawyers were retiring or dying. Salmon Chase had practiced in Portland since 1789 and had died just weeks before Daniel’s arrival. Another lawyer, William Symmes arrived in Portland in 1790 with a Black mistress by whom he had a son in 1805. The scandal left Symmes a social pariah and in Daniel’s words, “worse than dead.” (Symmes died for real in 1807 at age forty-five viewed by some to be “too free in the habit of living.”)19 Politically, the reputable men of the Cumberland Bar were overwhelmingly Federalist, but with the arrival of Daniel and several other young lawyers, the ratio of Federalist to Republican evened a little. The established Republicans were delighted with the new arrivals. Daniel Ilsley, who had served in the General Court with Levi Lincoln, shepherded Daniel through his first few months in Portland. Another family friend, William Widgery, helped Daniel find an office in Alexander Parris’s glorious new Portland Bank Building. Widgery also introduced him to other young Republicans, laying the foundation for what everyone hoped would be a promising social and professional life.20 Estranged from his family and friends, Daniel’s first months in Portland were socially barren despite the best efforts of his father’s associates. A paucity of letters from home worsened his isolation. Frustrated with the silence, he asked his brother Enoch, “Whence precedes this cruel neglect? Is it the effect of accident or the consequence of design?”21 Alone, lonely, stung by familial admonitions, he soothed himself by becoming a particularly caustic critic of others, just as he had during his Harvard days. This time the target was Portland’s rising parvenus, the upstarts who called themselves

74 Promises and Portland 1806–1807 Republicans and who, to his dismay, he was tasked to cultivate. He would do what he had to do but he would keep himself apart. “There are very few men of education, but many of sudden fortunes in Portland,” he told his mother. “They are assiduous in their attention to those, who, in their estimation, have good morals & cultivated minds, as if they expected to derive instruction from their conversation … Particular engagements is my standing excuse from all their parties & my answer to almost all invitations.”22 Daniel’s observations of Portland’s nouveau riche led him to the alarming conclusion that the nightmare vision of a populace drunk on rapacity was in fact steadily gaining ground over the Republican vision of virtuous and disinterested citizens striving for the public good. As Daniel saw it, ambitious merchants and newcomers had thrown aside communal interest to help themselves to whatever they could grab out of the town’s glittering economic opportunities. When rumors of peace in Europe rippled through Portland in 1806, merchants feared their fortunes would evaporate and did nothing to hide their hope that the European war would continue so to fatten their wallets. Disgusted, Daniel denounced them to his father as depraved war profiteers, and he wondered how money-grubbing merchants who murdered munificence had the temerity to call themselves honorable. “Nothing is good which is not profitable to them. They chide every wind of heaven which wafts not their cargoes to the port of destination. Their feelings are as callous as an Osnaburgh executioner … These undertakers to the charities of life are held in estimation, ‘Honorable Men,’ who arrogate the right of passing on the conduct of others, whose motives and principles of action they cannot comprehend.”23 Was there a place for virtue and disinterest in a booming all-you-can-eat free-market economy? Or were these vaulted values the provenance of only the educated and elite who could afford them, as the Federalists claimed them to be? It was a question Daniel repeatedly ran up against, and one that Federalists had predicted would have a corrupting, influence on the nation. Indeed, the changing commercial landscape and the changing values that came with it were not unlike what anxious Republicans saw everywhere. How to buttress the moral foundation of republicanism when easy profits seemed to be suffocating honor? And how to do that without admitting that Federalist prognostications were, in fact, becoming a reality? By placing himself above the din of the avaricious nouveau riche, Daniel’s circle of Portland friends remained unsurprisingly small. Finding and cultivating new relationships came slowly to the aloof Daniel but over the course of the next several months, he managed to make the acquaintance of a few other young men he deemed suitable to be among his cohort. In a rendering typical of his acerbic descriptive powers, Daniel depicted one Nathaniel Howe whom he met through his Worcester friend Edward Bangs, as “a great melon with a rough outside & much sweetness under it … a noble mind in so mean a casket.”24 Another was Henry A.S. Dearborn. Daniel thought Dearborn “too fond of amusements” to achieve great professional eminence and he was inclined to dismiss him. But the two

Promises and Portland 1806–1807 75 young men had offices across the hall from one another in the Portland Bank Building and before long they found common ground both politically and personally. Daniel amended his original harsh impressions by substituting them with the qualities that he believed best mirrored what he most prized in himself. “His manners are elegant, his temper generous, his heart cordial & sincere & his morals pure. A delicate sense of propriety & honor directs his conduct. Dignified independence is his character.”25 Curiously, Dearborn’s mother, Dorcas Osgood Marble Dearborn, did not escape Daniel’s censorious eye. “A lady termagant of the family,” Mrs. Dearborn apparently lacked the polished deportment that came so effortlessly to the Lincoln women. Luckily for the quarrelsome Mrs. Dearborn, Daniel deigned to overlook her many deficiencies and to see “what is proper to be seen & be unconscious of everything else.”26 In Daniel’s view it was best to ignore the vulgar. A mature eye, an educated eye, such as his, will notice only that which is correct. Daniel was not the only one to sense opportunity in Portland. His old friend of questionable influence, William Sewall, whom Daniel had credited with his introduction to the alluring world of “buxom belles,” arrived to practice law about the same time Daniel did. Daniel saw him often, since Sewall’s office was also in Parris’s bank building and men of their age were few in Portland. Given Levi’s sensitivity to dishonorable company, the news that Sewall was a neighbor would likely have sat poorly with him. But by 1806 Sewall had become a confirmed Federalist, wrote essays for the Federalist newspaper, and partnered with Prentiss Mellen, a judge and cohort of one of Boston’s richest Federalist leaders, Harrison Gray Otis.27 He was also not much in the way of competition for business. Sewall was better known for his devotion to writing almanacs than his proficiency at the bar. By reputation he had not changed much from his Harvard days and continued to be the bon vivant he was when Daniel knew him there. “He was always, cheerful, social, and often gay. His humor was racy and the play of his mind lambent and genial.”28

Figure 5.2 “W.B. Sewall. Photo by J.T. Locke.” A rather grim looking Sewall in his later years. From W.W. Clayton, History of York County, Maine.

76 Promises and Portland 1806–1807 By mid-1807 Daniel had spent five months in Portland and so far, the experience had been dispiriting. He was still lonely. He had no love interest. His law business was “very inconsiderable.” But his prospects changed when Nathaniel Willis, the editor of Portland’s Republican newspaper, the Eastern Argus, became embroiled in a dispute with a litigious spiteful Federalist named Joseph Bartlett. Willis had provoked Bartlett’s wrath when he published a ferocious diatribe against Bartlett written by a Thomas Thornton in support of Richard Cutts, Bartlett’s rival for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. From the start, Willis had had misgivings about the piece and published it only when Thornton promised him protection from Bartlett. After it appeared and Cutts won the election, the outraged Bartlett sued Willis for libel. Thornton disappeared and Bartlett’s suit prevailed. With no means to pay the $1,500 judgment along with over $400 in court costs, Willis was sentenced to a ninety-day jail term.29 Daniel Lincoln, James Wingate, Isaac Ilsley, and Henry A.S. Dearborn, posted Willis’s bond of nearly $2,000. As his creditors, Daniel and Henry Dearborn seized Willis’s equipment and moved it into their offices, not for collateral but for safekeeping from the fuming, vengeful Bartlett who had threatened to destroy the paper. Bartlett meant what he said. He stormed the Argus office ready for mayhem only to find the place empty and deserted.30 Daniel and Dearborn may have outsmarted Bartlett and won the day, but Bartlett was not finished. In order for Willis to continue publishing the paper, have some means to provide for his family, and pay down his debt, the court permitted him to leave the jail-yard during the day so that he might work at the paper. At day’s end, however, he was mandated to return to the jail until the following morning. Willis abided by the rules until one frigid winter night when the jail-yard pump froze and he left in search of water elsewhere. Someone spotted him outside of the yard and reported him to Bartlett. Delighted, Bartlett pounced and accused Willis of attempting an escape. The judge hearing the case ruled against Willis thereby making Daniel responsible for his part of the forfeited bond. The matter was settled by “the informal arbitrament of some disinterested third party.” For Bartlett, the Willis matter became a pyrrhic victory as public condemnation of his insufferable drive for vengeance lost him his business and the scintilla of public respect he had managed to hold onto.31 He moved to Boston, alienated more people there with his litigious behavior and died friendless in 1827. For Willis, the experience left him disenchanted with politicians of every stripe. Although he had been instrumental in furthering the Republican cause in Maine, in 1808 he underwent an evangelical conversion, opened a grocery store to support his family, and became a temperance crusader. The store failed, Willis fell into debt and was forced to sell the Argus. He moved to Boston and for the rest of his life published The Boston Recorder and Religious Telegraph, one of the country’s first evangelical newspapers.32

Promises and Portland 1806–1807 77 Daniel detailed his involvement in the Willis case to his brother Enoch, but he neglected to tell Levi anything about the episode until some four months later. Couched in a letter celebrating an uptick in business and his raised expectations for success, Daniel apologized for not informing him of the Willis imbroglio. Daniel pledged obedience to the rule of conduct that he had long ago “prescribed to myself” that it was dangerous to lend money to friends.33 Whatever displeasure the event may have caused with his father, it went far in establishing Daniel as an activist and a friend to other Republicans in Portland. He seemingly did not regret his involvement, only his father’s knowledge of the incident. Daniel’s courtroom debut came when William Bridgham, a doctor in nearby New Gloucester, retained him in a malpractice suit. Bridgham, an active Republican in Cumberland County and a practicing physician for over twenty-three years, was being sued by a Mr. Morgan. Morgan had been involved in a horrific accident that somehow ripped his humerus out of its socket and lodged it in his armpit. Bridgham reset the arm as best he could but the injury was so grave that he doubted Morgan would ever recover the full use of it. At first, Morgan seemed satisfied that he had received proper professional treatment. But when his arm failed to heal, Morgan consulted a second doctor who performed another surgery. The second surgery was not only unsuccessful but left Morgan’s arm permanently useless. Morgan sued Bridgham, not the second doctor, for $5,000. Daniel was convinced that politics motivated the suit. During his many years of practice, Bridgham’s competence had never been questioned. Since it was the second surgeon, not Bridgham, who inflicted the final irrevocable injury to Morgan’s arm, the only possible motivation for bringing the suit, according to Daniel, was Morgan’s wish to besmirch a local Republican heavyweight. In his closing argument, Daniel suggested that the suit “has been urged by a hostile coalition of envy, jealousy, private piques and party animosity. … Its instigators have our pity and contempt …”34 The jury did not agree with Daniel. Morgan won his case against Bridgham but the jury reduced the award to $1,000. Bridgham appealed and the costs against him were lowered to $500.35 In the aftermath of the Willis and Bridgham episodes, Daniel’s prospects brightened. “Will it gratify my mother to be informed that my prepossessions in favor of Portland have become confirmed partialities: that my prospects are as pleasant & extended as I at first imagined & that I remain confident of the propriety of my choice of my scene of action?”36 What further proof did his parents need to trust his commitment to industry and sobriety? He confirmed the sentiment to Enoch. “If my hopes have not seduced my judgment, I have great reason to rejoice in my good fortune.”37 Word of Daniel’s professional progress created a buzz back in Worcester. “By the number of actions you tell me Dan’l Lincoln entered the last term he must be doing an ‘immensity of business’, I think he must be very well liked in Portland to receive such patronage,” observed Edward Bangs to

78 Promises and Portland 1806–1807 Nathaniel Howe. “If his habits are correct I make no doubt his advance in riches and fame will be rapid beyond expectation. He certainly possesses abilities to render him a shining character and nothing but a relapse into certain habits of which he was once suspected can prevent his rise.”38 While Daniel was finding his way in Portland, Levi was planning his return to politics. In 1806 he had been elected to represent Worcester on Governor Caleb Strong’s executive council. Although Strong was a Federalist, their paths had crossed several times, often harmoniously. Strong had been Levi’s co-counsel in the Quock Walker case.39 Both studied with Joseph Hawley in Northampton, regularly appeared at court in Worcester, served on the Committee of Correspondence during the war, and were delegates to the state constitutional convention in 1779.40 Strong had served as governor since 1800, but starting in 1804 when Thomas Jefferson won Massachusetts, followed by a controversial and contentious 1806 gubernatorial election, Strong’s political star was waning.41 In 1807 a Republican takeover of the State House looked possible. Gubernatorial hopeful James Sullivan, who had run and lost on four previous occasions, concluded that 1807 could be his year. This time, instead of Revolutionary War General William Heath running with him for the lieutenant governor spot, Levi Lincoln Joined Sullivan on the ticket.42 With a seventeen-year career as Massachusetts attorney general, James Sullivan’s politics were not nearly as militantly Republican as Levi’s. Sullivan had kept a careful distance from Boston’s more vocal and provocative partisans and enjoyed a reputation as a centrist who tried to temper rather than inflame the political rhetoric and partisanship.43 Although Levi Lincoln would guarantee Sullivan no votes from even the most moderate Federalist, it would likely win him the support of the growing number of Republicans flowing into the state, particularly in the District of Maine.44 Swept up in a spirit of filial loyalty and Republican idealism, actively engaged in campaigning for Sullivan while acting as Levi’s eyes and ears in Portland, Daniel reported to his father that he believed Strong to be vulnerable. “All the dispositions which his adherents can make of Mr. Strong in the dark hour of adversity can avail nothing. We know that he marched not in the ranks of the brave; that his footstep was not in the field of death. His gentle spirit loved not well the strife of arms. … As soon would it be believed that Judas Iscariot would be canonized a saint & enrolled among the martyrs …”45 Facts did not interfere with Daniel’s attack on Strong, especially when it came to Revolutionary War heroism, a particularly powerful political credential. Strong had never been a soldier, that much was true, but it was not due to cowardice. An episode of smallpox as a young man left him with chronically terrible eyesight that kept him from service.46 James Sullivan, for that matter, could not claim any war service either. A broken leg in childhood left him with one leg longer than the other and a pronounced limp. Sullivan also suffered from epilepsy believed to have stemmed from a

Promises and Portland 1806–1807 79 too-close encounter with a rattlesnake when he was sixteen years old.47 Levi Lincoln, on the other hand, had been an able-bodied young man in 1775, but had served a grand total of nine days. The Boston Gazette did not hesitate to call out his skimpy record. “Levi Lincoln … skulked into a Probate Office in Worcester, to avoid the storm of the Revolution,” they sniped.48 Wartime credentials notwithstanding, on April 6, 1807, Massachusetts selected the centrist Sullivan and stalwart Lincoln over Strong with sixty two percent of the vote, thanks in large part to the District of Maine. In Maine’s Eastern Country, Sullivan prevailed by a margin of 4,419 votes which more than compensated for the 1,384-vote deficit in Massachusetts proper.49 In Daniel’s district of Cumberland County, 213 votes separated Sullivan from Strong, to Sullivan’s advantage. Daniel and his Republican friends had delivered. Although Federalists still had a chance to obtain a majority in the General Court May elections, Daniel crowed that “this forlorn expectation is the solitary buoy of their sinking fortunes, the sole stay of their declining hopes.”50 He was right. The Federalists did not prevail in the May General Court elections either. For the first time, Republicans controlled all branches of state government.51 It was not only the election of the first Republican governor that excited Maine voters in 1807. The issue of separation from Massachusetts was also on the ballot. In fits and starts the separation question had been under discussion since the end of the Revolutionary War but had been largely dormant since 1803. But in 1807 the issue was raised again by Republicans who believed a less distant state government would be more responsive to their needs.52 Although some Federalist elites supported the measure because they felt that as elected officials they would have greater control over their property and commercial interests, most opposed it. Led by William Widgery, Levi’s friend and Daniel’s benefactor, Portland Republicans caucused over the separation question and resolved to put the matter to a district-wide vote. The General Court consented and authorized the vote for the following April 6, the same day as the gubernatorial election.53 The proposal failed spectacularly.54 The settlers who had anticipated a Sullivan victory were more assured of a sympathetic presence in the State House and were therefore less confident that separation was a positive move and they declined to support it. As Daniel observed to his father, “When the state should be committed to Republican discretion & direction & the government shall be administered by men in whose integrity, fidelity & talents the people repose confidence, they (Federalists) will as strenuously advocate (separation) as they now will oppose the arrangement.”55 Sullivan and Levi were inaugurated May 29, 1807 handing complete control of Massachusetts to the Republicans. Jefferson wrote Sullivan congratulating him on his success and the promise of his full support and cooperation. Sullivan, it later turned out, could not return the sentiment.

80 Promises and Portland 1806–1807 A few weeks following his father’s inauguration, Daniel was admitted to the Supreme Judicial Court to practice law. He had been in Portland for eight months. He assured his skeptical family that his life was on track. “Why is my mother so incredulous to the good report of me? … The friendship of men whom I respect, increase of business & every conspiring circumstance, which promises future consequence, unite to make my situation perfectly pleasant & satisfactory,” he reassured his mother.56 He wrote a similar letter to his grandfather, Daniel Waldo. He told him that despite “Having emigrated from the abode of my fathers, I trust I am not estranged from their love.” He claimed he embraced the opportunities and the new life Portland offered him. He described the pleasantness of the town, his growing business, and perhaps to reassure his grandfather that he had not put down stakes among uncouth backwoodsmen, he described his Portland neighbors as good, ordinary people not unlike the best citizens of Worcester.57 The real story was not so rosy. His grief over Charlotte persisted. “Fifteen moons have waned, but not a tint in the picture has faded,” he told his mother.58 When Henry A.S. Dearborn announced he was getting married and leaving Portland, Daniel felt the loss of his friendship, now sharpened by envy, even more acutely.59 In a letter to his brother John, Daniel declared that although he had happily anticipated marriage to Charlotte he had come to view the institution as a selfish undertaking. To Daniel, marriage increased tribulation by spreading it to an innocent like a vile contagion. It was much better and more noble that “If I must meet the bolt let no one else feel its violence.” It was a transparent ruse and he knew it. Not even Daniel was convinced by his flimsy argument that marriage was best to be avoided. The reality was that when he looked ahead all he saw was a landscape of loneliness. “An unvaried secession of tomorrows consumes a passing year & we can only say at its expiration that we are one stage near to eternity, one degree nearer to the attainment of that knowledge which human speculation can but surmise, our ultimate destination.” Quoting the graveyard poet Robert Blair, he continued down that dark corridor. “Would to God I could borrow an angel’s ken to penetrate the secrets of futurity which to us is ‘dark as was Chaos ere the infant sun had tried his beams athwart the gloom profound.’”60 Daniel may have been envious of his more fortunate acquaintances who had found love and wives, but he was not entirely without friends. He found an unlikely companion in one of Portland’s most famous sons: Commodore Edward Preble. Preble had led the nation’s first overseas naval expedition against the Barbary Pirates in Tripoli in 1803. The pirates had been harassing and demanding tribute from American trading ships off the coast of Morocco for years. Jefferson dispatched Preble to put an end to the torment. In a campaign that lasted nearly four years, Preble prevailed and received the Congressional Gold Medal for gallantry in 1805.61 The Commodore was twenty-three years older than Daniel and a sick man when he returned home to Portland. Perhaps with encouragement from Levi who would have known Preble when he served in Jefferson’s cabinet, Preble

Promises and Portland 1806–1807 81 reached out to Daniel and invited him into his home. During one of their many visits, Preble gave Daniel mementos from his adventures: specimens of written Arabic taken from a Turkish ship and a copy of the Koran. But their warm friendship was short-lived. Preble died from a chronic “digestive disorder” in August 1807 at age forty-six. “I lament in his loss the deprivation of a most valuable acquaintance & a friend very dear to me,” Daniel said to his mother. “You probably never will experience how dreary is the solitude of a residence entirely among strangers, & how grateful are civilities & attention in this situation, & how conciliatory of regard. Under these circumstances the commodore called me to his fireside & I was easily induced to love one in himself and so agreeable & whom all respected.”62

Figure 5.3 “Captain Edward Preble, USN (1761–1807).” Artist Unknown Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

During the summer of 1807 when Daniel was paying regular visits to the dying commander, the Republicans of Portland asked him to deliver the July Fourth address. It was a good time to be a Republican in Massachusetts. They had taken the State House and their numbers were growing. Federalists were struggling against the rising tide of a democratic spirit. Portland Republicans were ready to celebrate and they had the lieutenant governor’s son in their town to lead the way. On Independence Day Republicans gathered in Portland’s Union Hall and proceeded to Dr. Dean’s meeting house for prayers, music, and Daniel’s oration. Although no copy of the address survives, the Eastern Argus praised it as “chaste and elegant, enriched with sound republican principles.” After the service the group reassembled for a banquet and toasts. Daniel saluted the federal government with a quote from Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, “When, spite of cormorant devouring Time, The endeavor of this present breath may buy, That honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge, And make us heirs of all eternity,” a reminder that what we do now will matter always. Well into the night they raised their glasses to each other, Jefferson,

82 Promises and Portland 1806–1807 the country, foreign ministers, James Sullivan, and down the line to include anything and anyone worthy of acclamation: the free press, liberty of the seas, agriculture, and finally, The American Fair, the ne plus ultra of human felicity, or women.63 On the other side of town Federalists had their own, more subdued celebration that day. Riddled with bitterness, they scourged the president and the new governor, decried the loss of national honor due to a “cringing cowardly administration,” applauded Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and cheered on young Federalists to keep up the fight.64 By the end of 1807, Portlanders saw in Daniel Lincoln a busy, intelligent, and dedicated Republican lawyer. A plumb patronage position, thanks to his father, enhanced his station even more. In one of his first efforts to reduce Federalist power in Massachusetts, Sullivan moved to restructure the state judiciary, long a bailiwick of Federalist influence. An increase in the number of justices of the peace and county attorneys throughout the state who served at the pleasure of the governor would safeguard the Republican agenda in the courts.65 Sullivan didn’t need to look far to find the right man for the office of county attorney for Cumberland County in Maine. Daniel Lincoln, his lieutenant governor’s twenty-three -year-old son, was in the right place at the right time to land the job.66 As Cumberland County attorney, it was Daniel’s responsibility “to appear and act on behalf of the Commonwealth, as may be pointed out to them by instructions of the Attorney General or Solicitor General” and to prosecute criminal and other matters that were not represented by the state attorney general.67 When the Supreme Judicial Court appeared in Cumberland County (the court rotated throughout the Commonwealth with appearances in Cumberland in March, May, and October), Daniel’s docket filled with debt, murder, forgery, arson, counterfeiting, and land claim disputes.68 When the court was not in session, he was free to build his private practice. With a prestigious public job, a growing business, a few well-placed friends, and a reputation as an inspiring orator, Daniel Lincoln was nicely positioned as an heir apparent of the Republican mantle. But in late 1807 the tide began to turn against Republicans in Massachusetts, largely because of events on the other side of the oceanic divide. Republicans had reasons to worry that the good times might not last and they had only to look to Jefferson for the reason why.

Notes 1 Daniel Lincoln to Levi Lincoln, February 10, 1807, DWL Papers. 2 Alan Taylor, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760–1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 2–6. 3 Ibid., 63. 4 Charles E. Clark, “James Sullivan’s History of Maine,” in Maine in the Early Republic From Revolution to Statehood eds. Charles E. Clark, James S. Leamon and Karen Bowden (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1988), 2.

Promises and Portland 1806–1807 83 5 James S. Leamon, “Falmouth, the American Revolution, and the Price of Moderation,” in Creating Portland History and Place in Northern New England, ed. Joseph A. Conforti (Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2007), 44. 6 Charles Calhoun, “Longfellow’s Portland,” in Creating Portland, 74. The exact number is 3,704 in 1800 and 7,169 in 1810. William Willis, Guide Book to Portland and Vicinity: To Which is Attached a Summary History of Portland (Portland, Me.: B. Thurston and J.F. Richardson, 1865), 62. 7 Richard M. Candee, “Maine Towns, Maine People Architecture and Community, 1783–1820,” in Maine in the Early Republic, eds. James S. Leamon, Charles E. Clark, and Karen Bowden, (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1988), 50. 8 William Willis, History of Portland from 1632 to 1864 with a Notice of Previous Settlements, Colonial Grants, and changes of Government in Maine (Portland: Bailey & Noyes, 1865), 561–6. 9 Candee, “Maine Towns,” 51–52. For a discussion on how Americans sought to emulate their English counterparts in the trappings of fine material culture see Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Knopf, 1992). 10 Willis, History of Portland, 570. 11 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, August 14, 1806, DWL Papers. 12 William Willis, The History of Portland, 588. 13 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, August 21, 1806, DWL Papers. 14 Daniel Lincoln to Levi Lincoln, September 8, 1806, DWL Papers. 15 The emphasis on the self is described in E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 18–25. 16 Moses Greenleaf, A Statistical View of the District of Maine (Boston: Cummings and Hillard, 1816), 62. The District of Maine produced some 160,300 gallons of spirits in 1810, a goodly amount but a drop in the bucket compared to the 2,852,210 gallons produced by Massachusetts proper. 17 Taylor, Liberty Men, 209. 18 Willis, History of Portland, 632. 19 Samuel Deane, Journals of the Rev. Thomas Smith and the Rev. Samuel Deane, Pastors of the First Church in Portland (Portland: Joseph S. Baily, 1849), 388. 20 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, August 14, 1806, DWL Papers. 21 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, October 28, 1806, DWL Papers. 22 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, September 1806, DWL Papers. 23 Daniel Lincoln to Levi Lincoln, October 21, 1806, DWL Papers. Daniel described the trial to Enoch in a letter a week later. Alfred, Maine had no formal court building. All legal proceedings were held in the meeting house that was so primitive it even lacked a bell. “The attorneys and suitors are summoned by the blowing of conch shells & horns.” Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, October 28, 1806, DWL Papers The reference to an Osnaburgh executioner refers to a prison in Osnaburgh, Germany (Osnabruck) known for torturing inmates before they executed them. William Hepworth Dixon, John Howard: A Memoir (London: Jackson and Walford, 1854), 117. 24 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, n.d., DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, November 21, 1808, DWL Papers. 25 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, January 13, 1807, DWL Papers. 26 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, September 3, 1807, DWL Papers. Henry A. S. Dearborn later became Brigadier-general of the Massachusetts militia in 1814, United States Congressman in 1832, adjutant-general of Massachusetts in 1835, and mayor of Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1847, a post he kept until he

84 Promises and Portland 1806–1807

27 28

29 30 31

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

died in 1851. James Spear Loring, The Hundred Boston Orators (Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1854), 362. Joseph Griffin, History of the Press in Maine (Brunswick, ME: Press established 1872), 37. William Willis, The History of the Law, the Courts and the Lawyers of Maine (Portland: Bailey & Noyes, 1863), 491–3. Interestingly and unusual for a Federalist, Sewall volunteered for the Portland militia during the War of 1812. Records of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia called out by the Governor of Massachusetts to Suppress a Threatened Invasion during the War of 1812–14 (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1913), 242. Fredrick Hudson, Journalism in the United States from 1690–1872 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873), 289. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, November 28, 1806, DWL Papers. Frederick Gardiner Fassett, Jr., A History of Newspapers in the District of Maine 1785–1820 (Orono, Me. University of Maine Press, 1932), 138–9. Bartlett had never been a very popular man. Robert Hallowell Gardiner recalled that during his Harvard days Bartlett “inveigled students into card play in order to get all their money” and that he became “notorious for every species of low petty-fogging and was continually either a plaintiff or defendant in actions of slander.” Robert Hallowell Gardiner, Early Recollections of Robert Hallowell Gardiner (Hallowell, Me.: White & Horne, 1936), 42. Nathaniel Willis, “Autobiography of a Journalist,” reprinted in Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the United States from 1690 to 1872 (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1873), 289–93. Daniel Lincoln to Levi Lincoln, February 10, 1807, DWL Papers. Morgan v. Bridgham, DWL Papers. Supreme Judicial Court Docket From May Term 1807 to October Term 1807, Number 7, Maine State Archives, Augusta, Maine. Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, January 13, 1807, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to John Lincoln, April 29, 1807, DWL Papers. The quote is from William Shakespeare’s King Lear. Edward Bangs to Nathaniel Howe, December 22, 1807, Bangs Family Papers, 1760–1866, Folio Volume 1, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. Ronald P. Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s–1840, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 63. James Russell Trumbull and Seth Pomeroy, History of Northampton, Massachusetts from Its Settlement in 1654 (Northampton, Mass: Press of Gazette Printing Company, 1902), 596–8. Marvin Junior Petroelje, “Levi Lincoln, Sr.: Jeffersonian Republican of Massachusetts.” (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1969), 140–4. Thomas Coffin Amory, Live of James Sullivan (Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1859), 129. Paul Goodman, The Democratic-Republicans of Massachusetts: Politics in a Young Republic (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1964), 100. Amory, 192. Daniel W. Lincoln to Levi Lincoln, March 25, 1807, DWL Papers. James Russell Trumbull and Seth Pomeroy, History of Northampton, Massachusetts from Its Settlement in 1654 (Northampton: Press of Gazette Printing Company, 1902), 594. Amory, 21. “To the Electors of Massachusetts,” Boston Gazette, March 26, 1807, 1. Taylor, Liberty Men, 214–20.

Promises and Portland 1806–1807 85 50 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, April 25, 1807, DWL Papers. 51 Amory, 195. 52 James Leamon, “Falmouth, the American Revolution, and the Price of Moderation,” in Creating Portland, 63–5. 53 Ronald F. Banks, Maine Becomes a State: The Movement to Separate Maine from Massachusetts, 1785–1820, (New Hampshire Publishing Company, 1973), 52. 54 Ibid., 53. 55 DWL to Levi Lincoln, March 25, 1807. DWL Papers. 56 DWL to Martha Lincoln, April 25, 1807. DWL Papers. 57 Daniel Lincoln to Daniel Waldo, April 27, 1807, DWL Papers. 58 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, April 25, 1807, DWL Papers. 59 Simon Dearborn v. Henry A.S. Dearborn, 15 Mass. 316 (1818). This case indicates that when Dearborn moved to Salem with his wife in 1809, he left his practice to Daniel Lincoln. 60 The quote is from Robert Blair’s The Grave. Blair was a Calvinist preacher and an English pre-Romantic or graveyard poet of the mid-eighteenth century. Blair’s perception of death would have found resonance with Daniel. “Blair rarely steps beyond the tight confines of the grave, presenting a bleak perspective of the world where virtually all earthly phenomena are discarded as contrary to his program of ascetic restraint. … He belligerently insists upon death as the great leveler to erase all earthly differences.” Eric Parisot, “Disinterring the Grave: Religious Authority, Poetic Autonomy and Robert Blair’s Fideist Poetics,” Scottish Studies Review 8 (2007): 26–7. 61 See Christopher McGee, Edward Preble: A Naval Biography, 1761–1807 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1972). 62 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, September 3, 1807, DWL Papers. 63 “Independence,” Eastern Argus, July 9, 1807, 3. 64 “American Independence,” Portland Gazette, July 6, 1807, 2. 65 John Brooke, The Heart of the Commonwealth (Cambridge, Mass: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 256. Levi Lincoln also maneuvered to have his friend Edward Bangs, Sr. appointed county attorney in Worcester. 66 “Appointments by his Excellence the Governor,” Eastern Argus, January 26, 1808. The position would become something of a political light switch, turned “on” with Republicans, and “off” with Federalists. The next Federalist governor abolished the office almost immediately. 67 Theron Metcalf, Asahel Stearns, and Lemuel Shaw, The General Laws of Massachusetts From the Adoption of the Constitution, to February, 1822: with the Constitutions of the United States and of This Commonwealth, Together with Their Respective Amendments, Prefixed (Boston: Wells & Lilly and Cummings & Hilliard, 1823), 172. 68 Records of the Supreme Judicial Court. Supreme Court Docket Number 7, May Term 1808 and October Term 1808, Maine State Archives, Augusta, Maine.

Bibliography Archival Sources American Antiquarian Society. Daniel Waldo Lincoln Papers. Bangs Family Papers. Maine State Archives

86 Promises and Portland 1806–1807 Other Printed Matter Amory, Thomas Coffin. Live of James Sullivan. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1859. “American Independence,” Portland Gazette, July 6, 1807, 2. “Appointments by his Excellence the Governor,” Eastern Argus, January 26, 1808, 2. Banks, Ronald F. Maine Becomes a State: The Movement to Separate Maine from Massachusetts, 1785–1820. New Hampshire Publishing Company, 1973. Brooke, John. The Heart of the Commonwealth. Cambridge, Mass: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Calhoun, Charles. “Longfellow’s Portland.” In Creating Portland History and Place in Northern New England, ed. Joseph A. Conforti. Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2007. Candee, Richard M. “Maine Towns, Maine People Architecture and Community, 1783–1820.” In Maine in the Early Republic, eds. James S. Leamon, Charles E. Clark, and Karen Bowden. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1988. Clark, Charles E. “James Sullivan’s History of Maine.” In Maine in the Early Republic From Revolution to Statehood, eds. Charles E. Clark, James S. Leamon and Karen Bowden. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1988. Clayton, W. Woodford. History of York County Maine with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men and Pioneers. Philadelphia: Everts & Peck, 1880. Deane, Samuel. Journals of the Rev. Thomas Smith and the Rev. Samuel Deane, Pastors of the First Church in Portland. Portland: Joseph S. Baily, 1849. Dixon, William Hepworth. John Howard: A Memoir. London: Jackson and Walford, 1854. Fassett, Frederick Gardiner. A History of Newspapers in the District of Maine 1785–1820. Orono, Me. University of Maine Press, 1932. Formisano, Ronald P. The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s–1840. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Goodman, Paul. The Democratic-Republicans of Massachusetts: Politics in a Young Republic. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1964. Greenleaf, Moses. A Statistical View of the District of Maine. Boston: Cummings and Hillard, 1816. Griffin, Joseph. History of the Press in Maine. Brunswick, Maine: Press of J. Griffin, Charles H. Fuller, Printer, 1872. Hudson, Fredrick. Journalism in the United States from 1690-1872. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873. “Independence,” Eastern Argus, July 9, 1807, 3. Leamon, James S. “Falmouth, the American Revolution, and the Price of Moderation.” In Creating Portland History and Place in Northern New England, ed. Joseph A. Conforti. Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2007. Loring, James Spear. The Hundred Boston Orators. Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1854. McGee, Christopher. Edward Preble: A Naval Biography, 1761–1807. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1972. Metcalf, Theron, Asahel Stearns, and Lemuel Shaw. The General Laws of Massachusetts From the Adoption of the Constitution, to February, 1822: with

Promises and Portland 1806–1807 87 the Constitutions of the United States and of This Commonwealth, Together with Their Respective Amendments, Prefixed. Boston: Wells & Lilly and Cummings & Hilliard, 1823. Parisot, Eric Parisot. “Disinterring the Grave: Religious Authority, Poetic Autonomy and Robert Blair’s Fideist Poetics,” Scottish Studies Review, 8 (2007): 26–27. Petroelje, Marvin Junior. “Levi Lincoln, Sr.: Jeffersonian Republican of Massachusetts.” Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1969. Portland Gazette, July 6, 1807, 2. Records of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia called out by the Governor of Massachusetts to Suppress a Threatened Invasion during the War of 1812–1814. Boston: Wright & Potter, 1913. Records of the Supreme Judicial Court.Supreme Court Docket Number 7, May Term 1808 and October Term 1808, Maine State Archives, Augusta, Maine. Rotundo, E. Anthony. American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era. New York: Basic Books, 1983. Supreme Judicial Court Docket From May Term 1807 to October Term 1807, Number 7, Maine State Archives, Augusta, Maine. Taylor, Alan Taylor. Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760–1820. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. “To the Electors of Massachusetts,” Boston Gazette, March 26, 1807, 1. Trumbull, James Russell, Seth Pomeroy Gardiner, and Robert Hallowell. Early Recollections of Robert Hallowell Gardiner. Hallowell, Me.: White & Horne, 1936. Trumbull, James Russell, Seth Pomeroy Gardiner, and Robert Hallowell. History of Northampton, Massachusetts from Its Settlement in 1654. Northampton, Mass: Press of Gazette Printing Company, 1902. Willis, Nathaniel. “Autobiography of a Journalist.” Reprinted in Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the United States from 1690 to 1872. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1873. Willis, William. Guide Book to Portland and Vicinity: To Which is Attached a Summary History of Portland. Portland, Me.: B. Thurston and J.F. Richardson, 1865. Willis, William. History of Portland from 1632 to 1864 with a Notice of Previous Settlements, Colonial Grants, and changes of Government in Maine. Portland: Bailey & Noyes, 1865. Willis, William. The History of the Law, the Courts and the Lawyers of Maine. Portland: Bailey & Noyes, 1863.

6

Love and The Embargo 1807−1810

Figure 6.1 “Fort Preble, Cape Elizabeth, Portland, Maine” From Maine Forts by Henry E. Dunnack, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons {{PD-US-expired}}.

“Pray be convinced & persuade my father that the goodness of my parents will not be lost on me.”1

James Sullivan and Levi Lincoln came to power just when the heady days of rapid commercial growth and wealth in Massachusetts had started to fade, thanks to the dueling blockades between warring Britain and France. In late 1806 Napoleon had issued the Berlin Decree, blockading all trade with Britain. Any ship trading with Britain would be considered an enemy vessel subject to capture as a prize of war. Matching blockade for blockade, DOI: 10.4324/9781003091691-7

Love and The Embargo 1807−1810 89 Britain retaliated with their Orders-in-Council, requiring any ship trading with France to obtain licenses from England. Britain also warned that neutral American ships trading with France were vulnerable to seizure. The blockades caught American shipping in a web of European hostilities, leaving it susceptible to both French and British aggressions.2 The British were especially hostile to American trading vessels, accosting merchant ships and impressing thousands of sailors and depositing them into the Royal Navy to fight the French. Repeated diplomatic efforts to put an end to the harassment had failed. More drastic steps were required but Jefferson had vowed to avoid a wasteful war that would drain America of precious blood and treasure. Taking an enlightened, pacific approach, Jefferson concluded that a more effective route would be to force a resolution via an assault on both French and British economies with an embargo. He would put an end to all foreign trade. The idea was that without American goods, without ships on the ocean that could be assaulted, without American sailors to be impressed, both France and Britain would be forced to quickly capitulate and stop the harassment. He knew that such a step would be painful, but he also knew that his puny navy was massively outmanned and outgunned by the British. An embargo would give him time to reassess and rebuild his military with the hope that the two European nations would come to terms in the meantime. Accordingly, on December 22, 1807, Congress passed the first of Jefferson’s Embargo Acts. American vessels were prohibited from all foreign trade, forcing them to rely on domestic trade exclusively. When small craft and fishing vessels continued to sail anyway, thinking that they were exempt from the trade restrictions, they quickly learned otherwise when two even harsher laws followed. Those who attempted to evade the law by either smuggling goods into Canada or loading their goods on foreign vessels faced severe reprisals.3 The effects of the embargo came down hard and fast on Portland, whose shipping commerce had been the bedrock of the town’s prosperity. Within weeks Portland’s economy began to crumble. Eleven commercial houses went bankrupt. By the end of 1808, thirty mercantile firms had failed. Customs receipts plummeted from $340,000 in 1806 to $41,000 in 1808. Unemployment rose to sixty percent. Poor houses filled up, soup kitchens opened, ships sat idle and rotting in the harbor while grass grew on the neglected wharves. Portland’s hey-day of prosperity made the once lovely town a wilted rose in the desert, still beautiful but withered and fragile. Merchants and seamen in the town grew desperate and angry. Among the failed businessmen was John Taber, a tanner by trade who like many others, had built his business during Portland’s heyday. A Quaker, Taber enjoyed a reputation for uncontestable honesty and integrity. In 1799 when the General Court of Massachusetts barred the newly incorporated Portland Bank from issuing bills in denominations of less than five dollars (part of an effort to control the number of small bills circulating in from other states) Taber issued his own redeemable bills for one, two, three, and four

90 Love and The Embargo 1807−1810 dollars in silver. Taber bills became sought after commodities of exchange in Portland, a much more reliable medium than the numerous counterfeit bills that floated through from outside. Unfortunately, Taber’s son, Daniel Taber, did not share his father’s probity, and an accumulation of debts led him to recklessly produce and distribute Taber bills willy-nilly to his creditors. Once the effects of the embargo rattled Portland and Taber & Sons failed, the bills once so sought after, were completely worthless.4 Portland resident Thomas Bailey held some Taber bills once valued at sixty dollars. He enlisted Daniel to represent him in an action against the Tabers. Unimpressed by Taber’s Quakerism, Daniel accused the insolvent Tabers of deliberately practicing fraud. “The honest simplicity of the Quaker’s garb gave their makers seeming integrity. … In common with others we received for our goods & in the negotiations of trade for their nominal value & thus we are holders & bearers of the notes & plaintiffs in this action. The defendants have the effrontery openly to avow intentional knavery and to claim from the country immunity from the obligation of their promises. … The mistake of the man who has 100 of Taber’s assignats in his desk will consider himself cheated as well as he who holds but one.”5 Taber’s lawyer argued that if the notes were issued after April 1, 1805 (when the federal government voided promissory notes under the value of five dollars) then they were worthless, and the receiver should have known that they had no value. Daniel countered that they were issued before April 1, 1805 therefore Taber must remit their full worth to Bailey. Taber had abused Portland’s trust and they should be held accountable for knowingly passing worthless currency. The court ruled in favor of Bailey, at least initially. After Taber’s appeal, however, the court reduced the amount owed from sixty to nine dollars.6 Republican loyalty was put to the test in the April gubernatorial election that pitted James Sullivan and Levi Lincoln against Christopher Gore and David Cobb. Two weeks before the contest, Daniel and five others ran a circular in the Federalist Gazette hoping to capture the votes of more moderate Portlanders. They reminded their neighbors that in spite of their pecuniary pinches the incumbent powers kept the nation out of war and “virtue and patriotism reclaimed Massachusetts from the paths of error and the direction of these false guides …”7 The newspaper’s editors, however, saw fit to point out that those who produced the circular were hardly disinterested patriots, but beneficiaries of the present administration’s patronage. “Four of these gentlemen hold lucrative offices either by the appointment of Mr. Jefferson or Mr. Sullivan,” observed the paper.8 Daniel Lincoln, newly established in his high-profile Cumberland County position, stood at the head of the line. Daniel’s attempt to persuade Portland’s voters to support Sullivan and Lincoln was a worthy effort but Republican loyalty in Cumberland County had eroded. The county went all-in for Gore. So did Portland. Although in the final state-wide tally Sullivan and Lincoln held onto their offices, it was

Love and The Embargo 1807−1810 91 by a slimmer margin than what they enjoyed the previous year. More portentously, in 1808 Federalists reclaimed the General Court giving them the power to render the executive as toothless and ineffectual as they possibly could. And they certainly meant to do so.9 Jefferson’s embargo was just the political liferaft Federalists needed. Since 1804 their numbers and influence had been on the decline, but now a comeback loomed. In Portland, desperate times made for desperate measures. Smuggling across the Canadian border became commonplace. Jefferson moved to put an end to this brazen illegality by asking Sullivan to step up his policing of the coasts, but the governor was reluctant to do so. With support for the embargo thin and public antagonism cresting, Sullivan knew his political future was wobbly at best. Caught between the Jeffersonian rock and the Federalist hard place, Sullivan’s political survival depended upon muting rage over the embargo before it toppled him completely. Sullivan thought he found a middle road compromise by granting licenses permitting merchants to bring flour into the commonwealth via the coastal trade. Jefferson had left it to governors to determine for themselves how much flour they needed to keep their citizens fed and to grant licenses accordingly. Sullivan’s easy-handed dispensing of licenses resulted not only in more flour coming into Massachusetts but a spike in smuggling it and other commodities out of Massachusetts, especially through the sieve that was the District of Maine.10 Angry and looking to plug the leaks, Jefferson called on his old friend Levi Lincoln to take over the supervision of issuing licenses and thereby put an end to the smuggling. The president’s request put Levi in a tough spot. He needed to defend Sullivan but he also had to answer to Jefferson. Claiming that his duties as lieutenant governor did not include issuing licenses, Levi begged off. He recommended someone else for the task.11 A few months later as smuggling across the border from Maine to Canada continued to flow freely, a frustrated Jefferson wrote Levi again. “Be so good as to bear in mind that I have asked the favor of you to see that your State encounters no real want, while, at the same time, where applications are made merely to cover fraud, no facilities towards that be furnished … I am informed that Governor Sullivan’s permits are openly bought & sold here & in Alexandria & at other markets.”12 In consultation with his Secretary of War, Henry Dearborn, Jefferson decided not to wait for Sullivan or Levi to toe the line and get tough on smugglers. Jefferson would do it himself.13 He stationed armies along the Canadian frontier and dispatched gunboats to surveil the coast, especially in Maine. He then directed Dearborn to build nine new forts along the coast of Maine, this from a president who argued against the existence of a standing army as a danger to “popular liberties.”14 The about-face did not go unnoticed by Jefferson’s enemies. Whitewashed for the public as an endeavor to protect them from British attacks, Jefferson’s gambit fooled few. The fort’s real purpose, people believed, was not to protect them from bellicose Britons but to snag smugglers.15 Federalists hated

92 Love and The Embargo 1807−1810 the forts to begin with but their ire intensified when it was revealed that the construction contracts were awarded to nepotistic Republicans. Henry A.S. Dearborn, the war secretary’s son and Daniel’s friend was put in charge of overseeing the construction of a fort that would overlook Portland’s harbor.16 Despite all the political commotion and tension around the embargo, as well as shouldering the new demands of the county attorney position, Daniel’s life settled into something better, kinder, and more promising. To his great surprise, he fell in love again. The object of his affection was Mary Hodges, the daughter of Jane Robison and Thomas Hodges. Mary’s maternal grandfather, Thomas Robison, was a shipper in the notorious triangle trade whose investment in human trafficking had made him wealthy. Robison’s vessels brought slaves from Africa, sold them in Hispaniola, bought sugar with the proceeds earned by the sale of his human property, then shipped the sugar to Portland where he distilled it into rum and sold it locally and abroad. Thomas Hodges, his son-in-law, had been Robison’s agent. After Hodge’s early death, Jane Robison Hodges married Captain Robert Ilsley in 1803.17 The extended Ilsley family were a well-known and politically active Republican clan and, according to Daniel, quite prosperous, although the ignoble source of their wealth was never mentioned in his letters. Hoping to boost his stock with his family and win their approval of his new romantic interest, Daniel wrote a detailed description of Mary to his favorite sister Martha. If Martha was impressed with his epistolary introduction, she might help to pave the way for parental acceptance. “Mary’s figure is taller than Aunt Elizabeth’s & quite as slender & she is perfectly erect yet easy & graceful in her carriage, her features are small, & her face oval, more expressive of thoughtfulness than gaiety,” he began. “Her manners are gentle & artless as an untutored child’s. … She can make a pudding, a loaf of bread & apple pie, can make up linen, darn a tattered stocking, patch a ragged elbow & besides the accomplishments which she possesses in common with my sisters, draws with taste, sings & plays admirably well. … Her friends discover in her, uncommon quickness of perception & veracity of thought, a delicacy of mind & goodness of heart which cannot fail to attract and secure regard. … Our grandmother will inquire further if she belongs to a good family. None in Maine is more respectable or more wealthy.”18 To top it off she was also a “pious and exemplary churchwoman.” “I would not marry a woman, that was not religious, & though she chastises me, I believe she trusts implicitly in the uprightness of my principles.”19 There was, however, another sensitive matter that Daniel needed to explain: their age difference. “Perhaps she may be thought too young at seventeen years, but I would not give a fig for a girl who has been in love a dozen times,” he said. “Their affections become as hackneyed as their airs & graces & their attachment is rather habitual complacency than tender affectionate regard.”20 In fact, Mary was not the “too young at 17 years”

Love and The Embargo 1807−1810 93 Daniel described. Mary Hodges was only fifteen years old, too young to be considered marriageable. Did Daniel deliberately misrepresent her age to his sister or did Mary misrepresent her age to Daniel? More likely the former. Not only was he untroubled by their nine-year age difference, but her extreme youth appealed to Daniel. He set out to “purchase the devotion of virgin love.”21 As glowing as Daniel’s description of Mary may have been, it’s clear his view of women was unaffected by more radical ideas concerning female equality that were circulating at the time.22 Jeffersonian ideals of equality and natural rights in the public and political arena did not extend to women. Although Federalists and Jeffersonians viewed natural rights theory as it applied to white men differently, their differences narrowed when it came to natural rights for women. They agreed that if credence was given to the idea of female equality, chaos would result, upending the patriarchical assumption of women’s natural subordinate status as mother and domestic. Women who demanded equality were attempting to appropriate the rights of men which was against the divine order and was therefore immoral. It was a woman’s right to fulfill her God-given duties.23 She had the right to exercise her domestic arts to bind the wounds of factionalism and party strife within a loving home. In this way she had the right (which was synonymous with duty) to be helpmeet to the republic.24 Exposure to weighty philosophical thought and participation in politics masculinized women and distracted them from their greater republican purpose, they believed.25 And yet, in the arena of courtship and marriage, a woman did have authority. Although her role was largely passive, to either accept or decline a suitor’s attention, it was up to her to determine the relationship’s future.26 Mary fit the bill perfectly. Instead of studying Latin and Greek as she might have if she were born male, Mary Hodges attended the Misses Martin’s School for Young Ladies, housed in the mansion that had belonged to her grandfather, the slave trader Thomas Robison.27 The Misses Martin’s School opened in 1804, modeled on the British boarding school system for girls that offered instruction and an emphasis on “delicacy, neatness and good order.” Students were expected to practice “respectful address, willing subordination … respect to superiors in age and experience.”28 Needlework, embroidery, painting, penmanship, and some command of elocution, arithmetic, history, geography, spelling, and Bible lessons fortified Miss Martin’s students with the proper preparation that would mold them into the ideal republican wives and mothers.29 The possibility of a future with a docile well-mannered Mary as a respite from the wild and wooly world of political rabble strongly appealed to Daniel. Mary as unworldly and innocent and Daniel as masterful and experienced, boosted his sagging sense of manliness. “Female hearts may swell with passion, female bosoms heave the sigh of sorrow, the tears of woman’s weakness pour these floods of woe,” he observed to Enoch. “But Man!

94 Love and The Embargo 1807−1810 Lamentation becomes not the roughness of thy nature. The sternness of thy temper yields not to the pressure of misfortune. The Oak resists the boreal blast with sullen firmness, but the pliant branches of the willow tumble at its coming & mourn its roughness in melancholy cadence.”30 Daniel had not been the oak he thought he should and could be. In fact he had been more willow-like. The “sighs of sorrow” he felt after losing Charlotte and his weakness in succumbing to his alcoholism, contradicted this vision of masculine resilience. An adoring, devoted companion and a comfortable home as a refuge from the tumult of the world would anchor him and give him definition and purpose beyond himself.31 It would make him manly. Now at last all the pieces were starting to fall into place for Daniel. With Mary on his arm, he looked the part of the successful professional striding confidently into a brilliant future. And indeed, throughout the summer and into the fall of 1808, the romance blossomed. The two kept steady company, largely apart from “the counterfeit gaiety of genteel mobs” that Daniel disdained.32 That fall during the presidential contest that pitted James Madison against Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Portland’s Republican caucus gathered to endorse Daniel Ilsley for Congress, Mary’s stepfather’s cousin. They also tried to reignite support for the detested embargo, a very difficult sell. Daniel delivered an impassioned speech, imploring his audience to respect the laws in the spirit of the heroes of his father’s generation. “Consider the solemn obligation you owe to your country, to yourselves, to your friends, to your children, to the memory of your fathers, to the heroes who conquered & the heroes who fell in achieving your independence,” Daniel implored his audience. “Let us rescue our country from the toils of foreign foes, from the snares of domestic enemies, from the corruption of British gold.” The future of American independence rested with the election of good and faithful men like Ilsley whose devotion to the “principles of the Revolution” protected the nation from falling under the tyranny of foreign powers. Evasion of the embargo laws meant the abandonment of these principles, jeopardizing the future of the nation which was nothing short of treasonous. “By my hopes, I swear, if I believed there lurked one drop of traitor’s blood in my veins, I would drain every artery dry lest the accursed drop should linger the last,” Daniel grandly pronounced to the crowd.33 Portland’s merchants were unmoved. Brazenly breaking the embargo laws and thumbing their nose at the risks, only days later some 200 disguised and armed men seized Portland’s wharves, loaded their ships, and defiantly sailed off.34 Viewing it as a Federalist conspiracy to undermine the law, Daniel angrily described the incident to his father. “The seafaring men incited, encouraged & countenanced by the federal merchants assemble in disguise & armed in the evening, plant their guards at the avenues of the wharves, put their cargoes on board the vessels & escort them in boats out of the harbor. The Custom-house officers, interfering, are openly & violently resisted, seized & detained,” he said. “Such is the order of things in

Love and The Embargo 1807−1810 95 this town of federalism, religion & traffic. Honor is a fiction to chapmen & patriotism an unintelligible sound. They would barter their civil privileges for commodities & sell their household gods for wares & merchandise. They take no thought of their country. It would be indifferent to them if Napoleon should wear America as a plume on his helmet, or Britain sell her in market to replenish her exhausted exchequer. For gain, they would betray generations to slavery & have the bitterest curses of posterity for their own epitaphs. I do most devoutly wish that the Atlantic were a lake of substantial & eternal flame. We should then be eminently a happy, virtuous & independent people.”35 The seamen did not immolate in the Atlantic as Daniel had hoped. They voted instead. Indeed, right up until the election itself, Daniel believed the good sense of the electorate would prevail. “There is energy enough in the government & sufficient virtue & patriotism in the people to preserve order & tranquility,” he assured Enoch. Good citizens would see through the opposition’s machinations that stirred up public discontent. But Daniel’s confidence in Portland voters was misguided and he underestimated their rage. The Federalist Ezekiel Whitman clobbered Ilsley by 536 votes to 220. Even worse, Ilsley’s defeat turned out to be an anomaly. In a stinging rebuke to Portland’s Republicans, of the four congressional districts in Maine, Cumberland County was the only one not to elect a Republican. On the presidential level, Maine voters split their ballots and went for Charles Pinckney over James Madison. Madison prevailed nationally, but all New England lined up against him.36 With the election over and as the fall faded into winter, the hopefulness of the summer months began to dim as well. There are hints that Daniel may have courted trouble when word of a “trifling affair” made its way to Enoch. In a cryptic sentence that raises more troubling questions than answers, Daniel wrote, “A few dozen hot brained madcap wished to prove my temper. Having ascertained that it was too hard to yield to pressure, their curiosity was gratified & there was an end to the matter.”37 Of much greater consequenc, his relationship with Mary foundered. Sometime in late November, the two parted ways. Humiliated, Daniel denied any responsibility for the break-up. He had been misled, he said. He now saw Mary as she really was: a heartless deceitful coquette who shamelessly took advantage of his trusting nature. If anything, his only fault was an “open heart where love may fly in & out like a bat through a summer window” that left him vulnerable to her icy scheming.38 He declared it was better to love a dead girl and “pour my tears on the grave of my poor Charlotte than to pillow my head on the fairest bosom that heaves the sigh of affection.” He promised himself that he would engage in no more “entangling alliances.”39 It took Daniel over a year to admit it, but the real reason for the separation was a spectacular binge that cost him his relationship. “I did love Mary passionately, tenderly,” he confessed to his friend and colleague Joseph Pope. “Her separation opened the wound, which time had hardly

96 Love and The Embargo 1807−1810 cicatrized, to renewed anguish. She acted wisely however, for she should not have entrusted her fate to one of my then habits.”40 Even fifteen-Mary Hodges could not ignore the calamitous consequences of an addiction that held Daniel in its grip. She had a choice to make, and she did not choose Daniel. A month later, the embargo fort off Portland’s Casco Bay, now christened Fort Preble, was completed. The structure was a state-of-the-art nononsense building equipped with fourteen guns pointed toward the harbor. The good Republicans of Portland who had built the fort invited Daniel to speak at the dedication ceremony. “The fete was graced by the presence of ladies and gentlemen of the highest respectability,” reported The Eastern Argus. “An appropriate address was pronounced on the occasion by D.W. Lincoln, Esq. inspired by the ardent feelings of the orator and responded by according sentiments of every patriot bosom.”41 Daniel took a more laconic and deprecating view of the occasion. “It was a very cold day,” he scornfully told Enoch. “The soldier’s jaws chattered a response to every discharge of the guns & the shawls & tresses of the ladies waved over the parapet like the misty locks of Ossian’s ghosts of the darkling eve. I pitied the silly creatures who exposed their delicacy to the eager & biting air of a wintry day to gratify an idle curiosity.”42 A withering deprecating comment on the event, the speaker, and the “silly creatures” the likes of which may have included Mary Hodges indulging an “idle curiosity.” Daniel ended the year that had started so well in low spirits. He had been bruised by love. His Republican candidate had gone down in flames and Portland’s resistance to the embargo grew more flagrant and violent. Eight days after the dedication of Fort Preble, on December 8, 1808 Daniel’s maternal grandfather and namesake, Daniel Waldo, died in Worcester.43 Two days after that, the Lincoln family was rocked by an event even more significant. Governor James Sullivan died, making Levi Lincoln the acting chief magistrate of the commonwealth. Sullivan had suffered poor health most of his life. His death, however, was not due to a reptilian encounter that doctors had blamed for his epilepsy, but a degenerative heart condition that had left him in bed and largely unable to govern for most of 1808.44 Which of these events took Daniel away from Portland at the end of December 1808, is impossible to know, although it seems most likely that he would have tried to be present for his grandfather’s funeral in Worcester. His letters, make no mention of it, only that he had seen his friends and family and he reported back to them his safe return to Portland. There are hints, however, that not all went well during his visit there. His brother, Levi Jr., refused to see him, not allowing Daniel “within a length of a surveyor’s chain.” The distance between the two brothers remained for months, if not years. Levi, Jr.’s name shows up only rarely in Daniel’s correspondence. Two years older than Daniel, Levi had married Penelope Sever in 1807 and was already taking steps toward what would become an impressive political career. By 1808 Levi Jr. was already the model of young

Love and The Embargo 1807−1810 97 Republican manhood. By comparison, Daniel’s life, Cumberland County attorney notwithstanding, came up short. Depression and fraternal l discord produced another round of record-breaking boozing while he was in Worcester. Upon his return to Portland at the end of December, he wrote a tired letter to his father brimming with the usual apologies and promises to bring no more dishonor to his parents.45 As the acting governor of Massachusetts, Levi’s attention may have been less upon his troubled son than on the daunting tasks before him. It’s impossible to imagine a worse time for an uncompromising Jeffersonian Republican governor to be in charge of a state crushed by the embargo and a legislature controlled by Federalists who despised him. Added to the pressure was the fact that there were only four months before the next gubernatorial election and Levi planned to run for the job in his own right. The massive statewide hostility to the embargo and a Federalist legislature under the leadership of Harrison Gray Otis plotting secession if the embargo should continue, created a political deck stacked against him. In addition, the Republican support for the embargo, flimsy to begin with, was collapsing under the stark reality of dwindling bank accounts. At every opportunity, Federalists pounded away at Levi calling him an “infidel,” “with low cunning and artifice in place of wisdom.”46 They accused him of embezzlement, laughable incompetence, avarice, and self-interest. When the time was right to play their trump card, they exhumed his 1804 humiliation in front of the Supreme Court, publishing verbatim the account as it had appeared then in the National Intelligencer adding “Mr. Lincoln is haughty, reserved, vindictive, and overbearing. Mr. Lincoln is noted for his blind partiality to France.”47 A month into Levi’s tenure, Thomas Jefferson, angry over the relentless embargo evasions, pushed for passage of the Enforcement Act that had been before Congress since December 1808. The new law inflicted severe fines on those caught skirting the law and carried the added provision that suspicious goods could be seized without a warrant. It made opposition to the embargo a federal crime and placed state militias at the service of federal officials. It also enlarged the army to 50,000 men.48 As acting governor it was up to Levi to enforce the law and as commander of the state militia, he possessed the means to do so. There was no getting around the task this time and Jefferson called on him to do so with all he had. When he did, Levi’s popularity and public approval, already precarious, sank even more. Representatives at town meetings throughout the state wrote fuming remonstrations against the Enforcement Act, calling it grounds for secession. They vowed never to submit to such a law. Levi’s old nemesis Samuel Dexter (whose congressional seat Levi had taken in 1800 when Dexter became secretary of war under John Adams) urged four thousand people gathered at Faneuil Hall to draft a petition to the General Court protesting the act as unconstitutional. The next day the General Court passed an even stronger resolution declaring the intention of the people to “not voluntarily

98 Love and The Embargo 1807−1810 aid or assist in the execution of the Enforcement Act” because the Act was “unjust, oppressive, and unconstitutional” and “not legally binding.”49 As expected, Levi immediately vetoed the resolution.50 In his address on January 26, 1809, he condemned such remonstrations as seditious, improper, and dangerous. He scolded Massachusetts for showing itself to the rest of the nation as “distracted with divisions, prepared for opposition to the authority of the law, and ripening for secession from the Union.”51 He questioned the judgment of the people who had been presented with “false views, misstatements, and groundless alarms.” No state, including Massachusetts, should dictate to Congress. Therein lay the undoing of the republic. He urged his citizens to end their debate over the measure and to do the patriotic thing and follow his leadership. Federalists thought otherwise. A week after his speech, the Massachusetts Senate delivered its rebuttal drafted by Harrison Gray Otis. If, as Levi suggested, the people never questioned Congress, would that not be the first step toward despotism? Otis went on to defend the competency of the people to reach their own informed conclusions about the effects of the embargo. The House’s response defended the right to challenge as “the first principles of civil liberty, and the fundamental provisions of the constitution.”52 Just as they had in the run-up to the Revolution, town meetings and the resolutions they produced were imperative to the protection of liberty, they asserted. Moreover, a joint committee of both House and Senate compiled a report as to how to respond to the town resolutions that were coming into the General Court. They recommended that Massachusetts join with other states that were protesting the Enforcement Act. The report also declared the act unconstitutional, urged its repeal, and vowed to push for future constitutional amendments that would protect commerce by putting it under state control. They printed over 500 copies of the report and distributed it throughout the state.53 Under pressure from Jefferson to execute the Enforcement Act, Levi broke protocol by issuing orders directly to militia officers to assist federal agents, sidestepping the Federalist adjutant general for approval as was typically done. The legislature, furious he had high-handedly (although probably not illegally) by-passed their approval for the move, pounced on this as another reason to condemn him. Forthwith they formed a three-man committee, composed entirely of Federalists, to investigate wrongdoing.54 In their final report, they repeated their conviction that since the embargo was unconstitutional, Levi’s actions to enforce it were likewise illegal. Levi believed the General Court’s next move would be to impeach him. “The most and the worst they can do is to declare on my removal from office and future ineligibility,” he wrote Jefferson. “As this, for endeavoring to support the laws and rescuing the State from disgrace and ruin, would be an honor I shall not resist. As I went into office with reluctance, I should leave it under existing circumstances, without regret, on my own account.”55 Levi was not impeached but the Federalist legislature was not done punishing him either. In a grand show of political bile meant to embarrass

Love and The Embargo 1807−1810 99 him, the General Court craftily set aside February 16 as a day of fasting and prayer in the hope that God would deliver them from “suffering under accumulated evils … of imminent peril and publick calamity.”56 They prayed that God might prevail upon the hearts of the government to see the error of their ways. The public event pushed the embattled Levi into an impossible position with no graceful way out. Attendance at such an event to pray for deliverance from a law he supported was out of the question. But if he did not attend, he opened himself to accusations of religious apostasy. He had to find another way to beg off. In his regrets to the General Court for his nonappearance, Lincoln claimed that his wife was ill. Familial responsibilities required him to be in Worcester immediately which meant, of course, he was unable to attend the event. To make sure that his absence from a public service did not cause anyone to think him a lapsed Christian, Lincoln issued a statement reassuring the public of his religious fidelity while underscoring his belief that religion was a private matter. “Religion is truth and sincerity, a holy transaction of the heart, between the creature and the creator …. invoking … quiet and peaceable lives for those in authority, and those under it.”57 The Federalist response was more ridicule. When the unknowing Daniel read in the Portland Gazette that Martha Lincoln’s illness had called the acting governor back to Worcester, he was alarmed and angry. He had been left out of the familial loop and been told nothing about his mother’s health. He shot off a heated letter to Enoch. “Am I so entirely exfamiliated that domestic concerns of so interesting a nature are to be known to me only through the medium of public prints? If such be the case, let me be assured of it that I may return future letters (if perchance I should receive any) from former friends unopened.”58 When the circumstances were clarified and Enoch reassured him that their mother was well, the still smoldering Daniel commented to his brother that he viewed “political contrivances” as cowardly, a rare rebuke of his father. “Why shrink from the brunt of the battle? I would always do as I thought right & defend my conduct tho’ I should provoke an encounter with the host of hell. One ought not to do what he cannot readily justify.”59 One ought to be manly and boldly confront the opposition, just as Daniel was doing or not doing in Portland. In yet another development that proved to be too little too late to save Levi Lincoln’s candidacy, the United States Congress repealed the Embargo Acts on March 1, 1809 and replaced it with the Non-Intercourse Act that forbade commerce with Great Britain and France only. Shipping could resume with all other nations. Between the repeal of the embargo and Election Day, Levi Lincoln had one month to win back voters. His opponent was once again Christopher Gore, one of the authors of the Massachusetts resolution protesting the Force Act, darling of the Essex Junto, and gubernatorial candidate in both 1807 and 1808. Gore, who had plotted with Timothy Pickering to break with the Union over the embargo, was in many ways a consummate Federalist. He had been a longtime admirer of Alexander Hamilton,

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consistently opposed everything Jeffersonian, and strongly sided with Federalist maritime interests. Wealthy from speculation in government securities and modeling himself on the British landed gentry he admired, Gore had a weakness for mansions, velvet coats, plush carriages, and powdered wigs. Bostonians frequently spotted him parading grandly around town in his open carriage drawn by four long-tailed horses.60 Lincoln’s friends in the Republican newspapers called out Gore for being out of step with the hardworking, and long-suffering middling class in Massachusetts. Levi Lincoln was a true and patriotic American, they said, “a rack on which the storms of calumny beat harmlessly.”61 At another time it might have been enough to cast the dandified Gore as a seditious Anglophile, but in 1809 Massachusetts had suffered too long and too much to forgive so quickly, especially when an astonishing four-fifths of the commercial businesses of 1807 had vanished by 1809.62 Leaving nothing to chance, right before the election, Federalists launched one last 4,000-word diatribe against Levi in the New England Palladium calling on voters to reject Republicans and join Federalist leadership throughout New England to protect their interests against those of the Southern states whom they believed had not only neglected them but contrived against them.63 “Democracy Unveiled” a poem written by a sarcastic Thomas Green Fessenden (also known as “Christopher Caustic”) took aim at Levi, pouncing yet again on Levi’s embarrassment with the Supreme Court, his “Farmer’s Letters,” and his obstruse oratory.64 Gore defeated Lincoln by 2,500 votes out of over 80,000 cast, a two percent margin, but enough to usher the embattled Levi Lincoln out of his office in April 1809.65 Jubilant Federalists also held onto both houses of the legislature. Daniel did what he could to get his father Cumberland County’s votes and took up the hammer against Federalists with renewed vigor. He reported to Levi an increase in Republican enthusiasm in Maine’s interior that he hoped would balance the decrease in numbers in the coastal towns. But this time momentum ran against Levi. Irate Federalists organized and made sure every last Portland Federalist cast his vote. “They carried the palsied in his litter & placed the ballot in the hands of dead men who had sufficient lingering vitality to keep them yet on the upper side of the sod, but not enough muscular activity of motion to enable them to open their fingers, to drop their votes … Probably the returns from the District of Maine will correspond, in the aggregate, with the votes at the last gubernatorial election,” Daniel predicted.”66 Daniel’s optimistic estimates in Maine turned out to be correct in that Maine preferred Lincoln by over 1,000 votes but it was not enough to make up the difference statewide. In Cumberland County, however, where he lost by close to 400 votes, the count against Levi was decisive.67 The election over, his father a lame-duck governor, Daniel soldiered on for the duration of his tenure in the county attorney’s office but he was weary and downhearted. His responsibilities as county attorney had grown tiresome

Love and The Embargo 1807−1810 101 making him more cynical about his profession by the day. Law was supposed to be the venue reserved for educated men committed to furthering republicanism and virtue. It was through their labors that the republican ideal would be protected. Instead, in his role of either defending or prosecuting all variety of accused wrong-doers, the law turned out to be a confounding web of hypocrisy. “We are the drudges of oppression, the ministers of vengeance & call our profession honorable,” he groused to Enoch. In a letter brimming with frustration and misanthropy, Daniel’s literary pen lacerated lawyering. “We nickname our actions, denominate our works of most absolute damned villainy praiseworthy & sanctified iniquity. Murder is the act of heroism, cunning the exercise of discretion, hypocrisy a system of prudence & a hell of plotted mischiefs, meditated cheats & knavish devices, wisdom. The man who grows rich in the practice of law deserves a life of wretchedness. His table is furnished from the crumbs of poverty & the cup of his joys is brimmed with the tears of distress. It is a miserable state of society when leeches are necessary to the body politics. I wash my hands of it & am pleased with the reflection that I never received a fee that made a poor man’s child cry for his breakfast.”68 As much as he may have wanted to, Daniel could not wash his hands of the law quite yet. As Cumberland County attorney he was obligated to gather evidence for the commonwealth against the Pejebscot Proprietors in a land claim dispute that had been slogging on since 1792. The Pejebscot Proprietors were a group of eight nonresident landowners who claimed ownership of a large swath of interior Maine that lay within Cumberland County, four miles on both sides of the Androscoggin River from its mouth to the Brunswick Falls. The proprietors’ claims rested on vague seventeenth century royal letter patents and equally disputable Indian deeds that had been bought by a Richard Wharton back in 1684 and purchased by the original proprietors in 1714.69 Clear boundaries between what belonged to the proprietors and what belonged to the settlers who had flooded into Maine following the Revolution seeking free land to which they felt entitled, had never been fixed. Partly as an effort to curry and keep favor among the settlers who were historically Republican-leaning, and partly because the need to avoid violence had become increasingly urgent, in January 1808 Massachusetts state senator William King, proposed land reform legislation known as The Betterment Act. King himself was a proprietor who had encountered settler restlessness and was eager to put an end to the growing tension. He proposed that settlers who had lived on their land for at least six years without legal claims could purchase their improved land at the unimproved land value price. If they chose to leave the land, the proprietors would pay them for the value of their improvements. Payments by those who chose to purchase the land could be made over several years. The final bill after the General Court’s ammendments altered King’s original proposal to one favoring the proprietors. It set the land at considerably higher 1808 values

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rather than what it had been in 1783. Weakening the bill even further, settlers were given only one year to pay off their claims.70 The compromised proposal became law in March 1808. (The Betterment Act did not, however, address the problem of disputed titles that were left to be determined by the courts.) The Pejebscot Proprietors’ agent and fellow inverstor, the hard-headed uncompromising Josiah Little refused to abide by any terms, favorable or unfavorable, of the Betterment Act. Little’s resistance forced the attorney general to sue him in July of 1808. In the spring of 1809, Daniel traversed the area taking depositions from the settlers to use against Little. (It wasn’t until 1814 that the matter was finally settled and reaffirmed the original 1787 decision that drastically limited the Pejebscot claims.71) In the course of his work, Daniel traversed the Androscoggin River, familiarizing himself with the Maine wilderness dotted by the “flourishing towns of Bowdoin, Lisbon, Lewiston, rich in fertility & cultivation.”72 The bucolic scene, while beautiful and evocative, did nothing to ease his gloominess. In fact, it seemed to exacerbate it. To Daniel, the grandeur of the countryside only underscored the absurdity of human temporality. What was the point of existence if everything must die? Why should greedy men strive for riches and celebrity when the same end is foretold? Bitter, forsaken, and disparaged, Daniel cynically noted the futility of it all … “I note the wrinkles in the statesman’s brow & am diverted with the thought that a simple worm has countermined the sagacious contrivances of a polite plotting brain. I behold the structures of grandeur & the accumulations of avarice resolved to their original dust; & I learn to despise all men.”73 Despite his private contemptuousness for everyone and everything, and his widening reputation as a serious drinker, Daniel was still in demand as the preferred toastmaster on the Republican speaking circuit. On June 10, 1809, both Federalists and Republicans hailed the lifting of the embargo with parades and orations. As they did for their July Fourth celebrations, Portland Republicans marched in procession to the Third Congregational Meetinghouse to hear Daniel Lincoln hold forth on the occasion. Trumpeting the virtues of the disastrous embargo must have been challenging, but Daniel reminded his audience that the goal of the embargo, a peaceful means to establish American neutrality and sovereignty,would have been realized had not Federalists schemed to undermine it. Yes, the embargo was painful but it was still correct. As was his custom, Daniel paid “tribute justly due to the excellent policy adopted by the late President Jefferson.”74 Unfortunately for Daniel, some of the facts he cited in his support of the embargo were inflated. Not about to let such a mistake pass unnoticed, the Federalist press sneered at his “larning” for stating that “the embargo had saved 170,000,000 or property, and 50,000,000 of American seamen!!!”75 The Federalists had their fun at Daniel’s expense, but Republicans paid it no mind. A month later Daniel was preparing another July Fourth oration, his third, for the Republicans of Oxford County.

Love and The Embargo 1807−1810 103 At the same time Republicans were celebrating the end of the embargo and the glory of the Fourth, Daniel met James Ogilvie, an immensely popular Scottish speaker and Jefferson supporter who came through Portland – on a speaking tour. Ogilvie gave several addresses while there, including one on suicide and another on the “radical importance of female education”to rapturous receptions. Daniel admired Ogilvie for his “sublime eloquence, elegant diction and animated elocution.” Over the course of Ogilvie’s visit , Daniel had the opportunity get to know him. Like Daniel, Ogilvie suffered from an addiction, his to opium. Just days prior to his arrival in Portland, physicians in Boston warned Ogilvie that unless he stopped using the drug at once, he would die. Convinced, Ogilvie decided that once he got to Portland, he would quit for good. After suffering through days of agonizing withdrawal, he declared himself triumphant. In a surprisngly candid conversation with Daniel, Ogilvie told him that he had beaten the scourge, and was now regenerated and whole. Daniel saw his own life in Ogilvie’s journey and found hope in the man. Here was a man with oratorical talent (like Daniel) a Republican (like Daniel) and an addict (like Daniel) who had risen above it all and captured the admiration of many. Daniel swore he would do the same. Pointing to Ogilvie as living proof that intemperance, addiction, could be overcome, Daniel wrote a long, revealing and optimistic letter to his father. “He has obtained a glorious victory over himself. That this man of most admirable qualities of astonishing abilities has risen like Lazarus from the sepulcher. I can proudly stand up with Ogilvie & triumphantly say, I too am master of myself.”76 Sadly, Daniel’s valedictory declaration proved ephemeral. He had not mastered himself, nor had Ogilvie. Ogilvie later relapsed, returned to Scotland, and committed suicide in 1820.77 Ogilvie might have given Daniel inspiration to abstain from drinking but public views of intemperance were hardening as well. Benjamin Rush whose 1772 pamphlet did much to illuminate the dangers of alcohol, republished his pamphlet for the fourth time in 1805. This time Rush appealed to clergymen to use their pulpit as a platform for moral suasion and push individuals to free themselves from sinful ways.78 In his revised edition, Rush equated drinking with self-murder or suicide, an ungodly act that would result in divine damnation. According to Rush, a habitual drinker engaged in behavior that deliberately undermined civil stability, was morally reprehensible and against God’s laws. Drunkenness was dishonorable, sinful, and a civic betrayal. More importantly perhaps, Rush pioneered the idea that the drunkard was a “victim of intemperance” rather than one who habitually chose to drink too much. Alcohol, not the drinker, was to blame. As would anyone victimized by something evil, the drunkard needed saving and understanding. Limiting or tempering drinking was not enough., according to Rush. Total abstinence was the only path to redemption. In August, finally free from the responsibilities as county attorney, Daniel returned to Worcester for a visit with his friends and family. He had not

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seen them for over eight months. Friends anticipated his return warily. Daniel had made many promises that included a grand show of leaving his boarding house life to live with an upstanding Quaker family, but those who knew him best suspected nothing had really changed. Prior to his arrival Nathaniel Howe wrote Edward Bangs that Daniel had not given up drinking as he had claimed to do. “I am greatly afflicted at your information respecting D.W. Lincoln,” wrote Bangs in response to Howe. “I was in hopes he had reformed. But habits once rooted are hardly exterminated.”79 Even though Daniel refused all drink while in his parents’ home, Bangs suspected his show of sobriety was at best temporary and at worst fraudulent. “I cannot recollect whether my last letter was subsequent to Mr. Lincoln’s visit, or, if so, whether I informed you that he at least made a show of having abandoned his unfortunate habits of intemperance and all the time he was here would not even take a glass of wine to the great satisfaction of his respectable father, who has been exceedingly troubled at the circulation of reports to the dishonor of his son. I hope and trust that this conduct was not an artifice to deceive his family; I have too high an opinion of Daniel’s integrity to believe him capable of such deceit. I rather suppose it to have been an effort of reason which may be victorious but I fear is more likely to be fruitless.”80 Even though Daniel might still be imbibing, Howe insisted that he had seen an improvement in Daniel and conveyed his impressions to Bangs, but Bangs’ optimism remained guarded. “I cannot but cherish some faint hopes that he has at last extricated himself from the slavery into which he had fallen. If however he has not, I fear he will never be reclaimed. I shall grieve for his loss to his family, to republicanism, to his country, to mankind, all of which he might have ornamented and honored. My father has conversed with his father on the subject. Judge Lincoln was no means ignorant of his son’s infirmities.”81 Disheartened and disappointed as Levi may have been, he continued to hope for his son’s recovery and tried once again to impress upon Daniel in what was now a familiar recital of the terrible consequences of intemperance.82 Perhaps in appearances, Daniel had been able to look the part of the dutiful son but it felt hollow, even to him. He fooled no one. After returning to Portland, he plummeted into another cycle of depression and selfrecriminations. He admitted to Enoch that he understood that his unhappiness was of his own making. “Man is the arbiter of his own fate … But few are those who possess sufficient courage & fortitude for continued prosecution of their aims. The feeble in spirit halt like the coward in the onward but the determined mind … pursues its course undeviating to the goal,” he wrote. Daniel knew he could not count himself among the determined few. Instead he saw himself living among the cowardly, too spiritually weak to take fate into his own hands.83 Daniel’s three years in Portland were ending in tatters. Every possible advantage had been given him, but his wrecking ball of depression and

Love and The Embargo 1807−1810 105 addiction crushed his rise. He had not mastered himself. He was not virtuous. He was not honorable. Worse, his promises to reform and his pleas for understanding had grown tired, nearly ridiculous. He had little else in his arsenal to buoy him as he knew his reputation in Portland had become as tarnished as it had been in Worcester. He also knew that drinking would one day destroy him but he was unable to control it. “If one does not halt timely in the course of folly, he will be hurried onward until in his mad career he fall like a furious phaeton … a deliberate murder of the mind, a lingering protracted extinction … God forbid that my soul should be burdened with the offense that my friends should suffer in my continued dissolution & my enemies triumph in my debasement,” he lamented to his mother.84 Daniel had lost his way. Again. He concluded that if he remained in Portland, he would never find his way back. His life had been riddled with contradictions and failures, some but not all, a consequence of his drinking. Some were a product of his upbringing. He could not shake the traditional, elitist views handed down to him since childhood. Daniel believed in erudition, refinement, decorum, good manners, and separate spheres for men and women. He believed in virtue and honor and noblesse oblige. While he may have raised his oratorical fist at the outrages of the Federalists and the authoritarian practices of the Calvinist clergy or the Harvard faculty, he also held a deep and abiding respect for authority. He honored traditional institutions, adopted traditional manners, and obeyed paternal directions. In many ways, this put him at odds with the striving Republicans, those settlers and squatters, who were filling up the Maine countryside whose ambition Daniel deplored. There were, of course, other elite Republicans in Portland; Henry Dearborn, Joseph Pope, Nathaniel Howe, Daniel Newcomb who worked with Daniel and by all accounts tried to befriend him and stand by him. But their friendships were not enough to keep him from ruining himself. Those who failed to prove themselves either by failing in business, failing to marry and have children, or failing in self-control were increasingly viewed as corrupting and dangerous influences to society.85 What he needed to do, one more time, was to start over and put the wreckage he had made of his opportunities behind him. Maybe he would bank on hope and a future after all. It would just have to be somewhere else. Closer to family and Worcester friends. And unlike his father, he would not avoid the political enemy but would boldly fly into the eye of the Federalist storm which was nowhere more ferocious than Boston. He would prove himself a worthy combatant. “I shall leave Portland & endeavor in the vicinity of my friends to revive their dormant, of not alienated & estranged regards. To be seen, one must be present & must be frequently conversant, necessary indeed, to be loved. Affection, during absence, like a picture in crayons, loses a portion of its beauty & richness daily.”86 Maybe there was still some Lazarus in him just waiting for the right situation to rise the way Ogilvie had. At twenty-six, there was still time to reclaim his honor.

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Daniel wrote his Boston-based cousin Francis Lincoln, asking for his help in finding an office and a place to live. Unknown to Daniel, his brother John intervened and fired off a heads-up warning to Francis. “My father has consented to his coming to Boston, as the only means of saving him, believing that any place is better than Portland & as he has yet some reputation to lose he hopes that he may be induced to leave off his bad habits & pay his whole attention to his professional pursuits, if he does that he may yet retrieve his lost character & make himself respected. He certainly has talent & if deserving, will have Friends who will assist him. … I am desirous that he should make the attempt if he has determined to destroy himself he can do it any place. Of him I can truly say “I hope, I fear, I tremble,” wrote John. “You can best judge of a suitable place for him to board, but should wish that it should be in a family whose habits are the very reverse from his that he may not meet with any temptation that can be avoided but should advise you as a friend, not to take him into your own family until you are satisfied that he has redeemed the promise he has made to his Parents & Friends of an entire change in his conduct.”87 Predictions of Daniel’s future failure were universal. “Heaven grant that he may prosper & gratify the fondest wishes of his friends,” wrote Levi Thaxter to John Lincoln. “I do not think myself that Boston is the place for him, particularly as I see no symptoms of returning stability, no evidence of a correction of his former habits.”88 Leaving his Portland practice for his colleague Joseph Pope to manage and ignoring familial admonitions, in April 1810 Daniel arrived in Boston.

Notes 1 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Waldo Lincoln, January 13, 1809, DWL Papers. 2 Garry Wills, Henry Adams and the Making of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 222–3. 3 Douglas Lamar Jones, “‘The Caprice of Juries’; The Enforcement of the Jeffersonian Embargo in Massachusetts,” American Journal of Legal History, 24 (1980): 311–3. 4 William Gould, “John Taber & Son of Portland, and Their Paper Money,” Collections and Proceedings of the Maine Historical Society, 9 (1898): 128–32. 5 Baily v. Taber, nd. DWL Papers. 6 Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Volume V containing the Cases from the Beginning of the Year 1809 to the End of October Term in Barnstable in the Same Year (Newburyport, Mass: Edward Little, 1810), 286–90 and 452–3. 7 “Be Vigilant and Be Safe,” Portland Gazette and Maine Advertizer, March 28, 1808, 2. 8 Ibid. 9 Ronald P. Formisano, Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Partis, 1790s–1840s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 77. Gore won by approximately 2,374 votes out of 83,686 votes cast. “Massachusetts State Election for Governor 1808,” A New Nation Votes Accessed Marcy 2, 2020.

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http://elections.lib.tufts.edu/aas_portal/view-election.xq?id=MS115.002.MA. 1808.00003 Thomas Jefferson to Levi Lincoln, August 22, 1808, Thorp Lanier Wolford, “Democratic-Republican Reaction in Massachusetts to the Embargo of 1807,” The New England Quarterly 15 (1942): 35–61. Levi Lincoln to Thomas Jefferson, September 10, 1808. Founders Online, National Archives, Accessed June 15, 2020 https://founders.archives.gov/ documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-8671 Thomas Jefferson to Levi Lincoln, November 13, 1808. Founders Online, National Archives, Accessed June 15, 2020 https://founders.archives.gov/ documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-9079 Thomas Jefferson to Henry Dearborn, August 9, 1808. Founders Online, National Archives, Accessed June 16, 2020. https://founders.archives.gov/ documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-8471 Henry Adams, History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison: (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1986), 1104. Joshua Smith, “Maine’s Embargo Forts,” Maine History 44 (2009): 143–54. Ibid., 146. William Willis, The History of Portland, from 1632 to 1864, with a Notice of Previous Settlements, Colonial Grants, and Changes of Government in Maine, (Portland: Bailey & Noyes, 1865), 840. Jane Robison’s father, Thomas Robison, was a merchant, distiller, and slave trader. Her husband, Thomas Hodges, captained Robison’s ship Eagle and engaged in illegal trade of African slaves in Hispaniola. He sold twenty-nine people to French colonists there in 1791 and used the proceeds to buy coffee to import to the United States. Maine Memory Network, “Thomas Robison from Thomas Hodges regarding illegal slave trade, Les Cayes, April 6, 1791,” Maine Memory Network Accessed September 7, 2021, https://www.mainememory.net/media/pdf/102023.pdf and “Cargo of Ship Eagle, 1791,” Maine Memory Network Accessed September 7, 2021, https://www. mainememory.net/artifact/101828 Daniel W. Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, May 12, 1808, DWL Papers. Daniel W. Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, July 1813, DWL Papers. Daniel W. Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, May 12, 1808, DWL Papers. Ibid. Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women first published in 1792 articulated her ideas regarding free coeducation, equality between marriage partners, and rights for women. Her work was eviscerated as dangerous and “crazy nonsense” in the Portland Gazette in 1801. Rosemarie Zagarri, “The Rights of Man and Woman in Post-Revolutionary America,” The William and Mary Quarterly 3rd 55 (1998): 220–2. Zagarri quotes Republican orator and lawyer Jeremiah Perley whose 1807 July Fourth Address in Hallowell, Maine just down the road from Portland, addressed the women in terms Daniel would have agreed with. “You will not consult a Wollstonecraft for a code of ‘The Rights of Women.’ Do not usurp the rights of man; they are essentially distinct.” Rosemarie Zagarri, “Women and Party Conflict in the Early Republic,” in Beyond the Founders, ed. Jeffrey L. Pasley, et al, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 119. Ibid., 11. Ellen K. Rothman, Hands and Hearts A History of Courtship in America (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 31–35.

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27 List of Young Ladies Who Attended the Misses Martin’s School (Portland, Maine, n.d.), Maine Historical Society. 28 Yvonne Souliere, The Misses Martin’s School for Young Ladies, Portland Maine 1803–1834 Maine History 38 (1998): 92. 29 Ibid., 93. 30 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, January 15, 1809, DWL Papers. 31 This was not an unusual ideal for many young men finding their way in the early nineteenth century. See John Demos, Past, Present, and Personal: The Family and the Life Course in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 31. 32 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, October 17, 1808, DWL Papers. 33 Daniel W. Lincoln, Caucus Speech, October 4, 1808, DWL Papers. Ilsley won back his seat the following year in 1809. 34 Greater Portland Celebration 350 (Portland: Gannet Books, 1984), 46–7 and Joshua M. Smith, “Maine’s Embargo Forts,” Maine History 44 (2009): 150. 35 Daniel Lincoln to Levi Lincoln, November 8, 1808, DWL Papers. 36 Massachusetts 1808 U.S. House of Representatives Cumberland District, Lampi Collection of American Electoral Returns, 1788–1825 (American Antiquarian Society, 2007). https://elections.lib.tufts.edu/catalog/cj82k811p 37 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, October 8, 1808, DWL Papers. 38 Ibid. 39 Daniel Lincoln to John Lincoln, December 5, 1808, DWL Papers. Although the term “entangling alliances” is frequently credited to George Washington, the phrase was first articulated by Jefferson. In his “Farewell Address” Washington advised against “permanent alliances.” Jefferson, in his 1801 inaugural, promised “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” 40 Daniel Lincoln to Joseph Pope, July 27, 1811, DWL Papers. 41 “Fort Preble,” Eastern Argus, November 30, 1808, 3. 42 Daniel Lincoln to John Lincoln, December 5, 1808, DWL Papers. 43 “Established in the belief of revelation, his early Christian profession was uniformly supported by Christian practice. His life was devoted to useful pursuits, to the culture of his reason, the discipline of his passions, and to the confirmation of habits of piety and Christian virtue.” “Mortuary Notice,” Massachusetts Spy, December 21, 1808, 3. 44 Amory, 314. Daniel Waldo was buried on December 16, 1808. Although Daniel’s letters indicate that he was away from Portland in December, there is no record of his having been at either Sullivan’s funeral or his grandfather’s although the latter is more likely. 45 DWL to Levi Lincoln, December 30, 1808, DWL Papers. 46 “Levi Lincoln’s Qualifications for Governor,” Portland Gazette and Maine Advertizer, March 27, 1809, 2. 47 “Important Election,” Massachusetts Spy, March 29, 1809, 1. 48 Richard Buel Jr., America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle Over the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 65–8. 49 Adams, History of the United States, 1210–11. 50 Thorp Lanier Wolford, “Democratic-Republican Reaction in Massachusetts to the Embargo of 1807,” New England Quarterly 15 (1942): 54. 51 Quoted in Charles Warren, Jacobin and Junto or Early American Politics as Viewed in the Diary of Dr. Nathaniel Ames 1758–1822 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1931), 218. 52 Buel, 74–6.

Love and The Embargo 1807−1810 109 53 Ibid., 79. 54 Marvin Junior Petroelje, “Levi Lincoln, Sr. Jeffersonian Republican of Massachusetts” (PhD diss., Michigan State University, 1969), 160. 55 Levi Lincoln to Thomas Jefferson, February 23, 1809. 56 “Lt. Governor Lincoln’s Religious Creed!!” New England Palladium, February 17, 1809, 2. 57 Massachusetts Spy, February 18, 1809, quoted in Petroelje, 183. 58 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, February 18, 1809, DWL Papers. 59 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, March 17, 1809, DWL Papers. 60 Helen R Pinkney, Christopher Gore: Federalist of Massachusetts 1758–1827 (Waltham, Mass: Gore Place Society, 1969), 116; Thaxter P. Spencer, “Christopher Gore: Brief Life of a Philanthropic Bibliophile: 1758–1827,” Harvard Magazine (2001). Formisano, 67. 61 “Levi Lincoln,” Independent Chronicle, March 23, 1809, 2. 62 Wolford, “Democratic-Republican Reaction to the Embargo,” 56. 63 “Address to the People,” New England Palladium, March 7, 1809, 2. 64 “Poetry,” New-Bedford Mercury, March 3, 1809, 4. 65 Paul Goodman, Democratic-Republicans of Massachusetts Politics in a Young Republic (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1964), 96. By the time the embargo was repealed, unemployment in Portland was reported to be an astonishing 60 percent. Goodman, 187. 66 Daniel Lincoln to Levi Lincoln, April 6, 1809, DWL Papers. 67 “Massachusetts State Election for Governor 1809,” Lampi Collection of American Electoral Returns, 1788–1825 (American Antiquarian Society, 2007) Levi’s brother-in-law, Daniel Waldo, Jr., was a vigorous supporter of Christopher Gore. Although Gore won Worcester County, Levi still had his loyal following in Worcester where he won by seventy-four votes. 68 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, March 24, 1809, DWL Papers. 69 Ibid., 12. 70 Alan Taylor, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760, 1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 220–5. Three other groups of proprietors owned two other parcels of land dating from the same period and of the same doubtful legitimacy, often with overlapping boundaries. Several smaller squatter claims made by people who had sunk every ounce of their labor and every penny of their resources into making the land far more valuable than what it had been when they arrived added to the confusion. 71 Taylor, Liberty Men, 226. Massachusetts State Archives Record Group Number EA7 Record Group Name: Commissioners to Quiet Settlers on the Pejebscot Claim https://www.sec.state.ma.us/arc//arcpdf/collection-guides/FA_EA.pdf 72 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, May 29, 1809, DWL Papers. 73 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, June 2, 1809, DWL Papers. 74 “Tenth of June,” Eastern Argus, June 15, 1809, 3. 75 “Oration: Lincoln Esq,” Portland Gazette and Maine Advertiser, June 12, 1809, 3. (The population of the United States was only around seven million in 1810). The acerbic author may have been referencing Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Criticism” in which Pope states, “A little learning is a dangerous thing …” 76 Daniel Lincoln to Levi Lincoln, June 20, 1809, DWL Papers. 77 See Carolyn Eastman, The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The World of the United States’ First Forgotten Celebrity (Williamsburg, Virginia: Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture, 2021). 78 Richard Bell, “Do Not Despair: The Cultural Significance of Suicide in America, 1780–1840.” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2006), 426.

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79 Edward Bangs to Nathaniel Howe, August 7, 1809, Folio 1, Bangs Family Papers, AAS. 80 Edward Bangs to Nathaniel Howe, October 1, 1809, Bangs Family Papers, AAS. 81 Edward Bangs to Nathaniel Howe, January 12, 1810, Bangs Family Papers, AAS. 82 Daniel asked Enoch to “inform my parents that my conclusive & absolute determination comports with their wishes & that I shall not be so distant a dweller from them next year.” Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, August 28, 1809, DWL Papers. 83 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, November 12, 1809, DWL Papers. 84 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, February 4, 1810, DWL Papers. 85 Mark E. Kann, A Republic of Men: The American Founders, Gendered Language, and Patriarchal Politics (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 59–62 and Michel Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: The Free Press, 1996), 21. 86 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, March 15, 1810, DWL Papers. 87 John Lincoln to Francis Lincoln, March 8, 1810, Octavo Volume 29, Box 3, Folder 2, Lincoln Family Papers, American Antiquarian Society. 88 Levi Thaxter to John Lincoln, April 15, 1810, Box 3, Folder 3, Lincoln Family Papers, American Antiquarian Society, American Antiquarian Society.

Bibliography Archival Sources American Antiquarian Society. Daniel Waldo Lincoln Papers. Other Printed Matter Adams, Henry. History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1986. “Address to the People,” New England Palladium, March 7, 1809. Baily v. Taber, nd. DWL Papers. “Be Vigilant and Be Safe,” Portland Gazette and Maine Advertizer, March 28, 1808, 2. Bell, Richard. “Do Not Despair: The Cultural Significance of Suicide in America, 1780-1840.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 2006. Buel, Richard. America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle Over the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. “Cargo of Ship Eagle, 1791,” Maine Memory Network https://www.mainememory. net/artifact/101828 Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Volume V containing the Cases from the Beginning of the Year 1809 to the End of October Term in Barnstable in the Same Year. Newburyport, Mass: Edward Little, 1810. Demos, John. Past, Present, and Personal: The Family and the Life Course in American History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Eastman, Carolyn. The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The World of the United States’ First Forgotten Celebrity. Williamsburg, Virginia: Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture, 2021.

Love and The Embargo 1807−1810 111 Formisano, Ronald P. Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Partis, 1790s–1840s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. “Fort Preble,” Eastern Argus, November 30, 1808, 3. Goodman, Paul. Democratic-Republicans of Massachusetts Politics in a Young Republic. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1964. Gould, William. “John Taber & Son of Portland, and Their Paper Money,” Collections and Proceedings of the Maine Historical Society, 9 (1898): 128–132. Greater Portland Celebration 350. Portland: Gannet Books, 1984. “Important Election,” Massachusetts Spy, March 29, 1809, 1. Jones, Douglas Lamar. “‘The Caprice of Juries’; The Enforcement of the Jeffersonian Embargo in Massachusetts,” American Journal of Legal History, 24 (1980): 311–313. Kann, Mark E. A Republic of Men: The American Founders, Gendered Language, and Patriarchal Politics. New York: New York University Press, 1998. Kimmel, Michel. Manhood in America: A Cultural History. New York: The Free Press, 1996. Letters of Thomas Jefferson, Founders Online. National Archives and Records Administration. “Levi Lincoln,” Independent Chronicle, March 23, 1809, 2. “Levi Lincoln’s Qualifications for Governor,” Portland Gazette and Maine Advertizer, March 27, 1809, 2. List of Young Ladies Who Attended the Misses Martin’s School. Maine Historical Society, Portland, Maine, n.d. “Lt. Governor Lincoln’s Religious Creed!!” New England Palladium, February 17, 1809, 2. “Massachusetts 1808 U.S. House of Representatives Cumberland District,” Lampi Collection of American Electoral Returns, 1788–1825. American Antiquarian Society, 2007. “Massachusetts State Election for Governor 1808,” Lampi Collection of American Electoral Returns, 1788–1825. American Antiquarian Society, 2007. “Massachusetts State Election for Governor 1809,” Lampi Collection of American Electoral Returns, 1788–1825. American Antiquarian Society, 2007. Massachusetts State Archives Record Group Number EA7 Record Group Name: Commissioners to Quiet Settlers on the Pejebscot Claim https://www.sec.state. ma.us/arc//arcpdf/collection-guides/FA_EA.pdf Massachusetts Spy, February 18, 1809, quoted in Petroelje, 183. “Mortuary Notice,” Massachusetts Spy, December 21, 1808, 3. “Mortuary Notice.” New-Hampshire Gazette (Portsmouth, New Hampshire), December 13, 1808, 3. “Oration: Lincoln Esq,” Portland Gazette and Maine Advertiser, June 12, 1809, 3. Petroelje, Marvin Junior. “Levi Lincoln, Sr. Jeffersonian Republican of Massachusetts.” PhD diss., Michigan State University, 1969. Pinkney, Helen R Pinkney. Christopher Gore: Federalist of Massachusetts 17581827. Waltham, Mass: Gore Place Society, 1969. “Poetry,” New-Bedford Mercury, March 3, 1809, 4. Rothman, Ellen K. Hands and Hearts A History of Courtship in America. New York: Basic Books, 1984. Smith, Joshua. “Maine’s Embargo Forts,” Maine History, 44 (2009): 143–154.

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Souliere, Yvonne. “The Misses Martin’s School for Young Ladies, Portland Maine 1803–1834,” Maine History, 38 (1998): 92. Spencer, Thaxter P. “Christopher Gore: Brief Life of a Philanthropic Bibliophile: 1758–1827,” Harvard Magazine, 101 (2001), 20. Taylor, Alan. Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760–1820. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. Tenth of June,” Eastern Argus, June 15, 1809, 3. “Thomas Robison from Thomas Hodges regarding illegal slave trade, Les Cayes, April 6, 1791,” Maine Memory Network Accessed September7, 2021, https:// www.mainememory.net/media/pdf/102023.pdf Warren, Charles Warren. Jacobin and Junto or Early American Politics as Viewed in the Diary of Dr. Nathaniel Ames 1758–1822. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1931. Willis, William. History of Portland, The History of Portland, from 1632 to 1864, with a Notice of Previous Settlements, Colonial Grants, and Changes of Government in Maine. Portland: Bailey & Noyes, 1865. Wills, Garry. Henry Adams and the Making of America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Wolford, Thorp Lanier. “Democratic-Republican Reaction in Massachusetts to the Embargo of 1807,” The New England Quarterly, 15 (1942): 35–61. Zagarri, Rosemarie. “The Rights of Man and Woman in Post-Revolutionary America,” The William and Mary Quarterly 3rd, 55 (1998): 220–222. Zagarri, Rosemarie. “Women and Party Conflict in the Early Republic,” in Beyond the Founders, eds. Jeffrey L. Pasley, et al. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

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Figure 7.1 “Old State House and State Street, Boston 1801” by James Brown Marson Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, {{PD-US-expired}}.

“I will strive to become great in the estimation of my own heart & the world. There will be results from this system, utility to others & advantage to myself.1

The Boston Daniel moved to in 1810 was home to the nation’s most vociferous Federalists, haters of Levi Lincoln, and despisers of all shades of Republicanism.2 They ruled Boston politically, culturally, and socially. DOI: 10.4324/9781003091691-8

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They had become rich through generations of world-wide shipping and built a classically beautiful town thanks to the genius of architect Charles Bulfinch. Bulfinch’s State House (built in 1795 by Daniel’s uncle, master craftsman and former tea-party Indian, Amos Lincoln), and the churches and mansions he designed improved not only the appearance of the town but land values as well.3 Through their various interconnections Federalists created a closed, conservative, Anglophilic, and patrician society. They drank together, ate together, danced together, and married each other. They supported philanthropic and charity organizations to aid the indigent, the insane, the sick, and the intemperate. They funded roads, bridges, and wharfs that directed traffic to markets owned by themselves. Their public spirit and humanitarian interest had the dual objective of preserving the social order and sustaining their storied history.4 They went about it brilliantly. Young Federalists of Daniel’s generation formed literary societies and launched journals such as The Monthly Anthology the self-appointed final word on American scholarship and politics and, until 1811, the chief literary conduit for Federalist men of letters in Boston.5 (This was the same publication that had slammed Daniel’s 1805 July Fourth address in Worcester.) Many of the young men who made up these social, literary, and political societies were contemporaries of Daniel’s from Harvard. As he settled into his new office at 79 State Street to commence a career under circumstances he felt were “apparently propitious,” he vowed that he would prove the nay-sayers wrong. He would strive to become great in the estimation of “my own heart & the world.”6 But if Daniel expected his old classmates to extend a welcoming hand , he was quickly disappointed. “No professional brother of my acquaintance has favored me with a call since my arrival in town,” he grumbled to Joseph Pope who was maintaining their law practice back in Portland. “Bestrew their little souls. Civility to me would not alienate their clients.”7 Nor were the Lincoln relatives particularly welcoming to Daniel. Although Amos Lincoln and his son Francis lived within a few blocks of him, they followed John Lincoln’s advice and did little to nothing to ease Daniel’s transition to Boston. Daniel never mentioned either man. Perhaps Daniel needed reminding that he did not move to Boston to dance at cotillions. He moved to Boston to challenge himself in a trial by fire. The greater Boston’s enmity toward him, the more aggressively defiant he must be in response. If he survived it and rose to the top, his estimable credentials as lawyer and Republican would be unimpeachable. The more contentious the better, he reminded himself. “In the commencement of my professional career in Boston, I apprehended the want of that which most men deprecate as an evil – opposition. My fears were groundless. The pack have opened on me. Their baying will amuse me.”8 It wouldn’t take long for the amusement to run thin. In the spring of 1810, just as Daniel was settling into town, another gubernatorial election approached. Federalists had their man, Christopher

Brahmins and Boston 1810–1811 115 Gore, in the State House. The detested embargo that had been partially lifted the year before permitted a resumption of trade with Asia, India, South America, and the Mediterranean, making the shipping merchants rich again.9 Following some confusion regarding a rapprochement in trade and exploiting loopholes in existing law, Boston merchants revived their trade with Britain until new trade restrictions were reimposed through a law known as Macon’s Bill No. 2.10 The new bill was designed to stop both France and Britain from interfering with American shipping. If after a period of three months Britain revoked its Orders-in-Council that continued to interfer with shipping and impress American soliders, America would cease trade with France. Conversely, if France revoked its Berlin and Milan Decrees that blockaded trade with Britain, then Britain would be the odd country out. The bill became law on May 1, 1810. Prescient Federalists fulminated that the Macon Bill favored France, which it did when Napoleon duplicitously agreed to its terms the following September. They darkly warned that such a law passed by a Republican congress might stir enough resentment from Britain so as to ignite another war.11 Citing his deteriorating vision, Levi Lincoln declined to run again for the governorship in 1810. Republicans would have to look elsewhere for their candidate. They found him in Elbridge Gerry, who had run for the post four times and been defeated four times. The irascible Gerry was well known in the Commonwealth. He had been a member of the Continental Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independence, delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, and one of three who refused to sign the document at the convention’s conclusion, fearing a surfeit of power at the national level. After its ratification and the promise of a Bill of Rights, however, Gerry got on board with the new government and served in the First and Second Congresses. His friends praised his diligence and independence, but Gerry was known to be obnoxious and capricious, and one of the most unlikeable and unpopular political figures of his day. (Abigail Adams put it succinctly when she said Gerry “always had a wrong kink in his head.”)12 In 1798 President John Adams tapped Gerry to be an envoy to France in a diplomatic effort to end French impressments and hostilities on American shipping interests. Gerry’s imperiousness, among other factors, contributed to the failure of the effort in what became known as the XYZ Affair, a political setback for Adams.13 To top it off, Gerry was an unabashed elitist. Reaching a gloved hand across the partisan divisions, Gerry was able to inoculate himself among others of his station as a unifier among the wealthiest. He may have been a Republican, but he found common currency with Federalists in the creature comforts of their class. Meanwhile, Christopher Gore’s ill-advised tour of the commonwealth from the plush seats of his fancy carriage, his cold and snobby demeanor, living too comfortably in his enormous Waltham mansion, did nothing to attract the average artisan and laborer still recovering from hard times.14 Banking on their opposition to the trading laws coming out of Washington,

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Federalist hard-liners continued to predict that a calamitous war was a certainty under Republican leadership.15 The voters didn’t agree. Although Gore carried Boston and Suffolk County by 845 votes, Federalist hopes were dashed when Gerry won the election by a little over 2,500 votes of the over 90,000 cast statewide. Voters also gave Gerry a majority in the House of Representatives, but the Massachusetts Senate was equally divided between the two parties with a particularly vociferous Federalist, Harrison Grey Otis, as its president.16 In his inaugural address to the General Court on June 7, 1810, Gerry stressed unity and impartiality. He urged his citizens, many of whom had suffered under Madison’s restrictive trade policies, to put aside their personal woes and abide by the trade laws for the good of the nation. By coming together and pledging neutrality, the United States could resist both French and British incursions.17 His pleas to end partisan rancor appealed to almost no one. Federalist hatred for Gerry and Jeffersonianism, and their belief that France, not Britain was their natural enemy, was hardly pacified by Gerry’s speechifying. Additionally, radical Republicans were illdisposed to call a truce if there was a Federalist alive still agitating against them and predicting if not promoting, national disunion if there should be another war.18 The Fourth of July arrived a few weeks after Gerry’s address to the General Court. Republicans were in an ebullient mood and ready to celebrate, but not with Federalists. Since 1805 Boston’s rival political camps had staged separate Independence Day celebrations. Republicans claimed the day as theirs. After all, they argued, it was their man, Jefferson, who had penned the Declaration of Independence. Furthermore, as the tensions with Britain were escalating, the chorus of independence, liberty, and freedom from British tyranny resonated more with Republicans than those seeking renewed relations with the country’s former and formidable adversary.19 Finding a venue for the Republican celebration and feast, like everything else remotely political, ignited contention. In 1806 the selectmen of Boston (all of whom were Federalist) blocked Republicans from using Faneuil Hall for their festivities, forcing them to have their celebration at Copp’s Hill, an elevation north of Boston that was used as a training ground for Patriots during the Revolutionary War. The next year Faneuil Hall, and all other town facilities were again unavailable as it would be the year after that and, if anyone cared to ask, in perpetuity.20 Frustrated and powerless to wrestle the building away from the town selectmen, in 1808 the Young Republicans looked beyond Boston and across the Charles River to Charlestown. They decided to hold their fete at the bowers of Bunker Hill, where the blood of American patriots spilled so gloriously in 1775. In 1809 the event was again held in Charlestown and thereafter became the established Republican location.21 Starting in 1809, The Bunker-Hill Association, a group of young Republican men, assumed the planning and preparation for the July Fourth

Brahmins and Boston 1810–1811 117 commemorations. They pledged to promote “…an emulation in virtue, an imitation of the characters of the patriots, and whatever else, in our opinion may tend to the permanence and strength of our Federal Constitution, and to the common glory and happiness of this united republic.”22 They had settled on Bunker Hill as their banquet site, but they still needed a venue for the worship service and oration that would precede it. Fortunately, the congregation of the Third Baptist Meeting House volunteered their church for the occasion. The graceful Meeting House was among the newest of Boston’s churches, designed by Asher Benjamin and completed in 1807.23 For the Bunker-Hill Association the church more than answered their needs. Boston’s Baptists were overwhelmingly Republican, finding in the party of Jefferson a home and a path to liberation from what they viewed as the tyranny of the standing order Congregationalists. Perched at the corner of Charles and Mount Vernon Streets on Beacon Hill, the Third Baptist Meeting House overlooked a neighborhood populated by Boston’s wealthiest families.24

Figure 7.2 “Third Baptist Meeting House in Charles Street” Artist Unknown. Courtesy Boston Public Library.

With the two venues in place, the Bunker-Hill Association needed an orator to inspire and uplift loyal patriot hearts. In 1809, the first year the Bunker-Hill Association had taken on the Independence Day responsibilities, Republicans heard from William Charles White, a Worcester lawyer who had become an attorney following a failed career as an actor and playwright.25 Apparently, White’s love of words did not translate into

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good theater. His play Orlando: or Parental Persecution, a Tragedy was roundly panned. He ended up abandoning the theater, moved to Worcester to study law with Levi Lincoln, and became an editor of The National Aegis. White’s 1809 address failed to make an impression upon his audience, as there is no comment upon it in any of the Boston newspapers. In 1810, the Bunker-Hill Association needed a bigger name. As an early supporter with one of the most recognizable Republican names in Massachusetts, Levi may have suggested Daniel, who by that time was a July Fourth veteran orator, whose previous three orations had been wellreceived. However it may have transpired, the Bunker-Hill committee offered the oration to Daniel. It was an enviable, very public entrée to Boston; a stage from which he could present himself to a notable audience as an ascendant standard-bearer of Republicanism. A few weeks before the festivities, Elbridge Gerry, the newly elected unifier governor, appealed to Daniel to join him in his effort to promote moderation and put partisan passions to rest. He pointedly asked Daniel to tone down the anti-Federalist rhetoric. Daniel refused. “Intimation from the Gov. has been given to me of his wish that party politics should be avoided in the July 4th oration,” Daniel told Enoch. “The oration,” he vowed, “will be mine.”26 Just as he had seven years earlier when Joseph Willard objected to his commencement poem, Daniel chose defiance over compliance. He would be uncompromising. He would deliver to the Republican faithful an speech filled with sentiments that mirrored their own. The Boston Patriot noted that “The Orator for the Bunker-Hill Association it is presumed, however stigmatized by the malignancy of Juntoism, will draw as patriotic as honorable, and as valuable, if not as rich an audience as the Orator for the town.”27 Daniel meant to make good on the Patriot’s promise. For Bostonians, no other holiday compared to the Fourth of July. Crowds lined the streets to glimpse their governor accompanied by a battalion of cavalry on his way to the State House where he was met by the Bunker-Hill Association and other dignitaries. Together they proceeded to the Meeting House. Once assembled and seated, Dr. Thomas Baldwin, wellknown for his dissenting views and the pastor of the Second Baptist Church, led the congregation in singing “Behold God is my Salvation.” Passages from scripture, prayers, and several more hymns, one original for the occasion, followed.28 The religious service completed, the crowd quieted for the oration. Daniel’s moment had arrived. He ascended the steps to the pulpit and looked down on his audience. “Tyrants beware!” he thundered. “Dare not to invade the sacred rights, chartered to Nature’s children by Nature’s God! Dare not to provoke the vengeance of valor, the indignation of virtue, the anathema of heaven! Restrain the savage myrmidons of thy power from the sacrilegious violation of peace, the prostration of law, the destruction of estate, and the sacrifice of life!”29 He paused, allowing his invective to hover over the crowd. Who were these terrible tyrants? One of the assembled? Federalists gathering on

Brahmins and Boston 1810–1811 119 the other side of town? No. “England! Be thy unnatural policy accursed! Thy protection of thy western colonies was the oppression of tyranny.”30 Deferring for the present a direct attack on Federalists, Daniel went after their allies, their trading partners, and their friends. England, to Jefferson, to Republicans, had always been the enemy and still was. Its transgressions were legion. Its sins were numerous. England was guilty of “…trampling on prerogatives and immunities of freeman,” “wanton cruelty,” pursuing “filicide” a most “unnatural policy.” Daniel conjured for his audience the memory of “British barbarity” against “mangled victims of the fifth of March,” a reference to what Americans called the Boston Massacre of 1770. He evoked a demented mother England killing her offspring colonies in a blind and jealous rage. Wherever England ruled, in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, or Ireland, bloodshed and grief soon followed. This was the scourge of “British connexion” that “strangled Genius in its cradle and hunted virtue and valor to the tomb” and from which America is blessedly absolved thanks to the Constitution that “secured by equal laws the enjoyment of equal rights to every Citizen” and “conscience was left unconfined.”31 So much for England’s crimes. Moving on, Daniel readied his rhetorical guns straight at his political enemies. It was Federalists who were responsible for “party spirit” that had “frozen the heart and paralyzed pulses of love.” Where there should be a country blessed in fraternal love, they had sewn fratricide and murder. “Mark the rose dripping with blood; where brother falls beneath a brother’s hand; where man is unhumanized and the savage is fleshed in kindred carnage!” He scolded the traitorous resisters of the embargo laws. “Unhappy Nation! Hitherto thy escutcheon, was spotless, as the lily, which no sunbeam has freckled. Thy fame was fair and brilliant as a cloudless morn, until it was blotted with the foul disgrace of factious resistance to authority.”32 Finally, Daniel acknowledged the debt the nation owed to Jefferson who had succeeded in keeping the country at peace while in Europe where “… the sword has consumed the people, and a deluge of blood has drenched their fields, and overflowed their polluted streams…” He crowned his oration on a note of American exceptionalism and a passionate vow as a son of the Revolution to defend the principles upon which the republic rested. “Americans may rejoice in the freedom, sovereignty and independence of the United States. They shall endure forever. By our brave fathers’ memories, by the awful shades of revolutionary martyrs, I swear, they shall endure forever!”33 The speech concluded, the hymns sung, the scripture read, and the original odes performed, the crowd dispersed for the parade and their celebratory repasts. Daniel joined the processional back to the State House for a light supper and marched in a magnificent parade through Boston’s narrow streets to the Bunker-Hill event in Charlestown. Scores of cheering people filled the streets and watched the Washington Infantry at the head of the procession lead seventeen white horses hauling an enormous model ship named “The United States.” Young men carrying flags, the Declaration of Independence,

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the Constitution, plows, mechanical machines, and looms “emblematical of the purity of the intentions of the government and symbols of Agriculture, Commerce, and Manufactures” capped the procession. Once in Charlestown, the good Republicans, Elbridge Gerry among them, settled in to eat and raise their glasses to one another well into the night.34 Ebenezer French, the 1805 orator and Inspector of Customs in 1810, toasted the orator. “Well might his enemies endeavour to obstruct his passage to a rostrum. The name of Cicero was not more dreadful to the Catalines of Rome than is that of Lincoln to the Essex Junto,” he pronounced.35 Across town the Federalist observance was more subdued by comparison. It consisted of elected officials, magistrates, and jurists who marched from the Old South Church to Faneuil Hall following an oration delivered by Alexander Townsend. Townsend graduated from Harvard in 1802, a year ahead of Daniel, and studied law with Levi Lincoln’s old nemesis Samuel Dexter. Townsend owned a hotel in Boston noteworthy for its dreary façade. When people complained that his hotel was unsightly, Townsend would tell them to go have their eyes examined. Saddled with a reputation as an uninspired and “uncouth declamatory manner,” Townsend seems a curious choice to go up against the experienced Daniel Lincoln.36 But then again, Federalists claimed that they weren’t much interested in the whole July Fourth event anyway. In fact, many viewed grand public parades as pandering to the public’s low sensibility and “disregarded stale and trite tricks for popularity, indicating ostentation merely without a presumption of trouble, or a probability of costliness,” they harumphed.37 That’s not to say that they were entirely without public munificence. They decorated Faneuil Hall with three thirty-foot monuments (Naval, Military, and Constitutional), added a large portrait of George Washington, and provided a free public dinner and fireworks for the 600 people who cared to attend.38 The 1810 Boston July Fourth address marked the acme of Daniel’s oratorical career. There are no further references in his correspondence to orations given anywhere else after his performance at the Third Baptist Meeting House. He wanted to make an impression on Boston as a strong, principled Republican, so he risked Gerry’s ire and delivered as partisan a speech as he could muster. To be moderate and conciliatory was, in his view, to be timid and feckless. His purpose was to dispel any taint of weakness and dependence that his intemperance may have left on his public reputation. As he had in earlier orations, he drew on gory images of bloody British and Federal hands committing unspeakably horrible crimes, provocative images designed to disturb his listeners. The harp he struck was not of harmony and unity but of discord and disaster, a terror that only Republicans could end. Leaving his audience with such images swimming in their heads, Daniel positioned himself to be a fearless human lightning rod for the survival of the republic. Daniel’s oration pleased Republicans. Pamphlets of the speech circulated around the city requiring a second edition. “The most severe criticism that

Brahmins and Boston 1810–1811 121 can be passed on Mr. Townsend’s oration is to publish it with Mr. Lincoln’s. The long, labored, tedious detail (without any apt figure to relieve the mind) which petrifies every reader of the former, and the lively, copious display of genius and fancy which animates the reader on the perusal of the latter, must leave impressions of mortification on those who attended the municipal performances of the celebration on the last 4th of July in Boston,” crowed the Republican Chronicle.39 Extensive passages from the speech appeared in papers throughout New England and as far away as South Carolina and Tennessee.40 The Bunker-Hill Association sent a copy of the speech to both the current and former presidents, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. No record exists of Madison’s reaction, but Jefferson responded by congratulating “the father on the satisfaction he must have received from a specimen of talent so interesting to him, yourselves, and our common country on the future benefits it promises us. While sentiments like these are felt and approved by Americans, the ark of our freedom rests in safety.”41 Levi must have been gratified. Perhaps Daniel was right to move to Boston. With such a successful public debut, maybe his dangerous downward trajectory had ended. Maybe the rumors and embarrassments would be remembered as an aberration of young manhood. Redemption was possible. Perhaps redemption had arrived. Not surprisingly there were those who were less rhapsodic about Daniel’s speech. The Harvard Lyceum blasted both Daniel Lincoln and the “uncouth” Townsend. Townsend got the worst of the Lyceum’s invective, but Daniel’s speech, “although not marked with that limping feebleness … is yet as offensive from its noisy rant.” The nameless critic (but likely to have been the magazine’s editor Edward Everett) believed Daniel’s speech too irate to be evidence of his deep love of country. A real patriot does not prove himself by hating other nations, but by loving his own, the editor opined. So dimly did the magazine view the oration, that it requested, “none so pitiful will ever again insult us in a printed pamphlet.”42 In a similar vein, the Federalist newspapers in Boston pointedly ignored Daniel and barely mentioned him at all. Fulsome accounts of Alexander Townsend’s address, the Harvard Lyceum’s appraisal notwithstanding, filled their columns instead. Each side’s papers took the expected position, cheering on their man as an exemplary citizen while castigating the other as seditious. Shortly after his July Fourth performance when his standing with the Bunker-Hill Association was still high, Daniel proposed to the group that they reorganize as political activists rather than Fourth of July organizers only. “It is not enough for us to commemorate the achievements of the heroes … This institution will tend to combine the strength of friends of government to give to individual exertions the weight of general measure to produce uniformity of systems in their plans to inspire mutual trust and confidence.”43 Daniel believed that the Association could be a “guardian & preserver of public rights … a security against the insidious machinations of domestic enemies, whom the restless spirit of aristocratic pride incites to treason.”44

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It would be a protector of the nation from “priests of sedition” and “will be permanent as principle & durable as political virtue.”45 A refashioned Bunker-Hill Association could be Daniel’s political and fraternal home where he and other like-minded men could discuss, organize, and protest all manner of Federalist iniquities and take an active part in righting their wrongs. But the Association disagreed. It sponsored one more July Fourth celebration in 1811 (Daniel was on the committee of Sentiment and Song for that event), after which the group merged with the Young Republicans of Boston and renamed themselves the Washington Society.46 The Washington Society drafted a constitution that portended a broader political purpose beyond the July Fourth observation, just as Daniel had advocated.47 But other than adding a commemoration of Washington’s birthday to its roster and raising funds for a Washington monument to be built in the capitol, the group’s political activities never evolved in the way Daniel envisioned. He did not join the group.48 The similarly named but very different Federalist Washington Benevolent Society was exactly the kind of political group Daniel envisioned for Republicans. Less benevolent than political, the Washington Benevolent Society effectively organized its members into committees that canvassed the wards of the city, soliciting new members and promoting Federalist candidates for public office. Uncharacteristic of their reputation as elitists, the Washingtonians worked to broaden their appeal to working-class people. Like their Republican nemesis, the Washington Benevolent Society celebrated Washington’s birthday and claimed Washington’s Farewell Address as its guiding manifesto. But unlike the Republican Washington Society, the Washington Benevolent Society proliferated throughout the state. Their superior organization was instrumental in organizing voters essential to reestablishing Federalist control of Massachusetts in 1812 when Federalist Caleb Strong beat Gerry for the Governor’s office.49 In Worcester, Daniel’s uncle Daniel Waldo headed the local chapter.50 Although Daniel stayed peripherally involved with the Bunker-Hill Association, his enthusiasm for the group ebbed. The next year he attended the oration and service held at the Third Street Meeting House but skipped the Charlestown dinner, claiming that the heat would undo him.51 To his father he offered a harsh critique of the oration delivered that year by his former best friend Henry A. S. Dearborn. “… a piece of clear fustian, without a thread of classic elegance in the composition …. He appeared to have labored in the selection of high-toned words to ‘split the ears of groundlings with.’ Dearborn is an amiable man, but he is not a scholar,” a biting appraisal of someone who had only a few months earlier been an especially admired and valued friend.52 Perhaps there were other reasons for their disaffection besides Daniel’s dim view of Dearborn’s marriage and his feelings of betrayal when Dearborn left Portland, but by 1811 their falling-out seemed complete. Daniel never mentioned Dearborn in his letters again.

Brahmins and Boston 1810–1811 123 During Daniel’s first autumn in Boston in 1810, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court William Cushing died. The Federalist Cushing had been ailing for years but had been urged to hang on so to prevent a Republican replacement, but it was not to be. Ironically it was Cushing when he was Massachusetts Chief Justice who cited Levi Lincoln’s argument in the Quock Walker case that famously ended slavery in Massachusetts some thirty years earlier.53 For Cushing’s replacement, Thomas Jefferson wasted no time advising James Madison to appoint Levi Lincoln to be his replacement. To Jefferson, Levi Lincoln was Madison’s man because, like Jefferson, Madison needed not only a Republican on the bench but a New England Republican. That way he could swing the court to a Republican majority while also preserving the geographical balance between Northern and Southern justices.54 “The death of Cushing gives an opportunity of closing the reformation by a successor of unquestionable republican principles,” Jefferson wrote Madison. “Our friend Lincoln has of course presented himself to your recollection … Lincoln’s firm republicanism and known integrity will give compleat confidence to the public in their long desired reformation of their judiciary …”55 On October 20, 1810, Madison extended a formal offer to Levi Lincoln to serve on the United State Supreme Court. Despite their enthusiasm over the appointment, Madison and Jefferson knew it unlikely that Levi would accept. He had made no secret that his cataracts were worsening. He had cited his poor vision as a reason not to seek re-election to the Massachusetts State House in 1810. At age sixty-one he felt past his prime as a public servant. Nevertheless, Madison and Jefferson knew Levi’s loyalty to be incontrovertible and they needed a man whose political principles were their own. They thought they might be able to persuade him regardless. Massachusetts Congressman Ebenezer Seaver appealed to Levi’s sense of duty and republicanism. “I have long known your attachment to the sweets of retired life but, Sir, do we live only for ourselves are we not bound by the duties we owe society to sacrifice a part of our domestic enjoyments to satisfy their reasonable demands, especially when our talents are all important to their happiness.”56 When Levi refused to budge, Madison gave it his best shot. “I am not unaware of the infirmity which is said to afflict your eyes; but these are not the organs most employed in the functions of a Judge; and I would willingly trust that the malady, which did not unfit you for your late high and important station, may not be such as to induce a refusal of services which your patriotism will, I am sure, be disposed to yield.”57 Levi held fast and declined for a second time but on January 2, 1811, Madison forwarded his nomination to the Senate anyway. The Senate confirmed him the following day and immediately sent Levi his commission, perhaps thinking that having the commission in hand would do the trick. It did not. Lincoln wrote Madison another, more definite letter. “The difficulty of my sight although it has latterly so encreased as to compel me to abandon

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the use of pen & the examination of books & papers, which is indispensable to the office of a Judge …”58 The letter ended Madison’s efforts to convince, cajole, pressure, or harass Lincoln into accepting the position. Left without a justice, Madison had difficulty filling the seat. After Levi’s refusal, he nominated Alexander Wolcott from Connecticut. Wolcott’s reputation was as an average but even more partisan Republican lawyer than Levi. His lack of legal brilliance lost him Republican support. The Senate rejected his nomination by the largest vote for a Supreme Court Justice before or since: 24–9. Madison then nominated John Quincy Adams, but Adams declined too. Finally, he nominated Joseph Story, who at thirty-two became the youngest justice on the court. He would serve until his death, thirty-three years later.59 Although nearly blind, Levi was still not quite ready to relinquish his political life all together. He served on Elbridge Gerry’s Executive Council in 1810 and did so again in 1811. In 1810 Lincoln attended virtually every Executive Council meeting but in 1811 his name rarely appears in the minutes.60 His signature, unwieldy and sprawling in 1811, had become something quite unlike the tightly controlled hand of even a year earlier, an obvious consequence of his worsening eyesight. Enough was enough. Although he remained active in Worcester’s civic life, in 1811 he retired for good from electoral politics. With his father back in Worcester and now having greater proximity to home, Daniel’s interest in the family farms and the commercial possibilities of agriculture blossomed. His letters brim with suggestions of what kind of seeds and shrubs the family should experiment with. “If no spot has been provided, will it not be expedient to plant pears, cherries, plums & peaches on the onion square by the grapes in rows?”61 He sent slips from honeysuckle, cherry, pear, and crab apple trees for planting. “Fine fruit is one of the greatest & absolutely the cheapest of luxuries,” he wrote his father. “After the cares of early cultivation, the tree requires little more than a modicum of ground for its shadow & it pays its rent with a profusion of delicacies. It supplies the means of health, pleasure & support. It is astonishing that so many occupants, for I will not call them husbands, of the soil neglect to adorn, improve & enrich their farms with fruit trees, entirely reckless of the comforts they would afford & too listless to stretch the hand to pluck and eat.”62 He sent tomato, eggplant, cauliflower, and cabbage seeds. He proposed to drain and restock the fishpond. He wondered about the progress of the grapes, the melons, and squashes. He directed how and when tulip bulbs should be planted for the greatest return of spring colors. “Have you sown the peach stones & pear seeds? Will you have a load of the sand mixed with the soil for a bed of radishes? Plaster of Paris strown on the peas will accelerate their growth. You will find the hog lane.”63 From Boston he also acted as his father’s broker to “gentlemen of estate” interested in purchasing saddle horses and bulls raised on the Lincoln farms. And like many other men of means and property, he was his father’s agent in purchasing Merino sheep.

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Figure 7.3 “Merino Ram,” Artist Unknown from John Wrightson, Sheep. Breeds and Management. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, {{PD-old-70}}.

New England farmers had long known that wool from Merino sheep was far better than the coarse short-staple wool they were accustomed to. Efforts to import sheep from Spain in the early post-revolutionary years proved spotty at best and the 1807 embargo had made them impossible. Once the Non-Intercourse Act permitted trading to resume with countries other than Britain and France, imports of Merino sheep from Spain began to pour in, fueling twenty-four textile mills that had recently swung into operation. By 1809 the “Merino contagion” was in full swing. Anyone who could afford to get in on the wooly excitement of a Merino boom, did.64 Levi Lincoln was one of the first in Worcester County to do so.65 From Boston, Daniel negotiated the price of imported sheep for the Worcester farms. He blamed gentlemen farmers for driving up the cost. “I have been in treaty for 44 Merino sheep to be taken on shares,” he reported. “The price of Merino sheep lately imported is indeed exorbitant. The vanity of some wealthy idiots to be considered agriculturalists has induced them to give prices so excessive as to be remarkable.”66 By 1811, Levi counted close to 500 head on his Oakham farm. “I rejoice with you in the hope that the hills of the Oakham farm shall appear like the billows of ocean furnished with the curly whiteness of the storm.”67 Levi never did as well with his sheep as he had hoped. Partly due to economic downturns and a glut of sheep by 1812, he barely broke even with his investment.68 Daniel’s heart may have been on the farms and indeed his passion for experimenting with agriculture was genuine. “I believe that the farther we remove from Nature, we become more distant from happiness,” he said to

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Enoch. Had he been able to chart his own way, it’s probable that he would have preferred to live in Worcester and manage his father’s huge estate as a gentleman farmer. Nothing else in his letters approximates the enthusiasm, intelligence, and diligence he showed for agriculture. But Levi, not Daniel, would chart his future. John, Levi’s only son not to attend Harvard, would be the designated farm manager. The others would be lawyers, politicians, and leaders. And so they were. As Daniel said to John in one of his many advisory letters regarding the farms, “I have a passion for agriculture & imagine that I should excel in farming. I love to play the advocate too & will excel in that character. I shall not have leisure to direct the ploughing in person, therefore, for a long time.”69 Bowing to his designated role as advocate and lawyer, Daniel moved his office to the second floor of the Old State House, hung out his shingle, and waited for people to come knocking.

Notes 1 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, April 22, 1810, DWL Papers. 2 David Hackett Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 187. 3 Harold Kirker and James Kirker, Bulfinch’s Boston 1787–1817 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 113. See also Fredric Cople Jaher, “The Politics of the Boston Brahmins: 1800–1860 Boston 1700–1980,” in The Evolution of Urban Politics eds. Ronald P. Formisano and Constance K. Burns (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984), 68. 4 Marshall Foletta, Coming to Terms with Democracy: Federalist Intellectuals and the Shaping of American Culture (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 2001), 135–40. Although infrequent, Boston continued to hold executions publicly before they went private. The last public execution was in 1812 when 10,000 people watched poor Sam Tully, a pirate, get hanged. Kirker and Kirker, 94. 5 Foletta, 72–5. This group later formed the North American Review in 1815. That publication was widely viewed as a voice of Federalism in the post War of 1812 era when political Federalism ebbed and cultural Federalism in the form of social and literary criticism rose. James Savage, one of the charter members of the Anthology Society was in Daniel’s Harvard class of 1803. 6 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, April 22, 1810, DWL Papers. 7 Daniel Lincoln to Joseph Pope, April 28, 1810, DWL Papers. 8 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, May 9, 1810, DWL Papers. 9 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts 1783–1860 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961), 193. 10 Richard Buel, Jr., America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle of the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2005), 104–8. 11 Garry Wills, Henry Adams and the Making of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005), 252–7. 12 Quoted in Carol Berkin, A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism (New York: Basic Books, 2017), 165. 13 Berkin, 151–200.

Brahmins and Boston 1810–1811 127 14 Ronald P. Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s–1840s, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 65–8. 15 Buel, 105. 16 Gerry won the election by a little more than 1,500 votes statewide. He lost Suffolk County by 854 votes but won Cumberland County in the District of Maine by 79 votes. “Massachusetts State Election for Governor 1810,” Lampi Collection of American Electoral Returns, 1788–1825 (American Antiquarian Society, 2007). http://elections.lib.tufts.edu/aas_portal/view-election.xq?id=MS115.002.MA. 1810.00003 17 Buel, 108. 18 James T. Austin, The Life of Elbridge Gerry (Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1829), 313–4. 19 Simon P. Newman, Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 9 and 83–119. See David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776–1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 205. 20 Len Travers, Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997), 164. 21 Ibid. 22 Constitution of the Bunker-Hill Association, Boston: B. True, Publisher, 1809. When the War of 1812 began in June 1812, the Bunker-Hill Association suspended operations and the group dissolved. Federalists, however, continued their festivities and co-opted Charlestown for their 1812 observance. The next year, 1813, The Young Republicans who had renamed themselves the Washington Society, limited their celebration to a small meeting at the Exchange Coffee House. Federalists withheld celebrations in 1813 completely in protest of the war. Travers, 193–4. 23 Kirker and Kirker, 51. 24 Ibid., 142–64. 25 “When George O. Seilhamer, a historian of the early American theater, described Orlando: or Parental Persecution as “a very immature work,” he was being generous. Orlando is arguably the worst play in English ever printed, let alone performed. Written by a young man who had been praised for his work as an actor in Boston, Orlando debuted at the Federal Street Theatre on March 10, 1797. With an impossible plot, poorly motivated characters, and alarmingly mixed metaphors, White’s “tragedy” is unintentionally comic.” The First Season of the Federal Street Theatre, Forgotten Chapters of Boston’s Literary History, Accessed March 2, 2020. http://bostonliteraryhistory.com/chapter-6/williamcharles-white-1777–1818-orlando-or-parental-persecution-tragedy-printedboston. Additionally, according to William Lincoln in his History of Worcester, White’s life in the theater set off something akin to an apoplectic fit in his father who viewed it as mortification. Lincoln, 203–205. 26 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, June 22, 1810, DWL Papers. 27 “Independence,” Boston Patriot, July 4, 1810, 2. 28 Ibid. 29 “Without doubt, the abrupt outbreak of the orator prompted the men of power to gaze at him, as the audience involuntarily cast their eyes upon them, desiring to know who were rebuked.” James Spear Loring, The Hundred Boston Orators Appointed by the Municipal Authorities and Other Public Bodies from 1770 to 1852 Comprising Historical Gleanings, Illustrating the Principles and Progress of Our Republican Institutions (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1854), 351.

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30 Daniel W. Lincoln, An Oration Pronounced at Boston, on the Fourth Day of July, 1810, Before the “Bunker-Hill Association” and in the Presence of the Supreme Executive of the Commonwealth (Boston: Isaac Munroe, 1810), 3–4. 31 Ibid., 9. 32 Ibid., 14. 33 Ibid., 16. 34 “National Birth-Day!” The Boston Chronicle, Monday, July 9, 1810, 2. “The Fourth of July,” Boston Patriot, July 7, 1810, 2. 35 “The Fourth of July,” Boston Patriot, July 7, 1810, 2. 36 Loring, The Hundred Boston Orators, 350–5. 37 “Municipal Celebration of American Independence,” Boston Gazette, July 2, 1810. 38 Ibid. 39 “Orations,” Boston Chronicle, July 5, 1810. 40 The database America’s Historical Newspapers revealed excerpts or mention of the oration in over fourteen papers throughout the nation. 41 “Thomas Jefferson to the Bunker Hill Association, 4 August 1810,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/ 03-02-02-0480. 42 “Celebration of American Independence,” in The Harvard Lyceum ed. Edward Everett (Cambridge, Mass: Hilliard & Metcalf, 1811), 35. The Lyceum was a short-lived enterprise. It was the first paper published exclusively by Harvard students with the aim of informing the outside community of events and discussions of topics of interest inside the school as well as articles and poems. The magazine appeared only eighteen times. Publication was suspended in 1811 following a terse notice that stated, “The deficiency of our subscription list has made it convenient to our publisher that the present number be the last….” Moses King, The Harvard Register An Illustrated Monthly (Cambridge, Mass: Moses King, 1881), 357–8. 43 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, November 13, 1810, DWL Papers. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Loring, 362. 47 An Historical View of the Public Celebrations of the Washington Society and Those of the Young Republicans from 1805 to 1822 Compiled by order of the Washington Society (Boston: True and Greene, 1823), 46–7. 48 Ibid. The Washington Society survived until 1833. Daniel Lincoln’s name appears nowhere on the group’s membership roster. 49 See Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 110–28; Matthew Crocker, The Magic of the Many The Rise of Massachusetts Politics in Boston 1800–1830 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 14–23. 50 John Brooke, The Heart of the Commonwealth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 281. The Washington Benevolent Association for the County of Worcester peaked in 1814 with 379 members. Although it professed to be an aid to the less fortunate, its intent was much more political than humanitarian. By 1835, the organization was defunct. Finding Guide, Worcester County, Mass. Washington Benevolent Society Records, 1810–1836. American Antiquarian Society https://www.americanantiquarian. org/Findingaids/washington_benevolent_society.pdf 51 Ibid. 52 Daniel Lincoln to Levi Lincoln, July 4, 1811, DWL Papers. 53 Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History Volume One (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1922), 400.

Brahmins and Boston 1810–1811 129 54 “To James Madison from Thomas Jefferson, 15 October 1810,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/ 03-02-02-0734. 55 Ibid. 56 “Ebenezer Seaver to Levi Lincoln, November 1810,” Manuscript/Mixed Material. Library of Congress. 57 James Madison to Levi Lincoln quoted in Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History Volume One, (Boston: Little Brown, 1922), 407. 58 “Levi Lincoln to James Madison, 20 January 1811,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/03-03-02-0149. 59 Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, 402–7. 60 State Archives Series GC3/327 Executive Records of the Governor’s Council 1650–1977, 36:26. Massachusetts Archives Collection, Massachusetts State Archives. 61 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, September 19, 1811, DWL Papers. 62 Daniel Lincoln to Levi Lincoln, July 27, 1811, DWL Papers. 63 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, March 11, 1811, April 8, 1811, DWL Papers. 64 Tamara Thornton, Cultivating Gentlemen: The Meaning of Country Life Among the Boston Elite, 1785–1860 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 92–3. The shared interest in textile manufacturing worked to smooth over partisan hostility, especially after 1812. Brooke, Heart of the Commonwealth, 283–91. 65 Richard Lyman, “What is Done in My Absence?’ Levi Lincoln’s Oakham, Massachusetts Farm Workers, 1807–20,” Proceedings from the American Antiquarian Society 99 (1989): 166. Footnote 27. Lyman notes that by 1810 Levi Lincoln already counted fourteen Merino and had started to interbreed them with his existing stock. 66 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, April 25, 1810, DWL Papers. 67 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, September 8, 1811, DWL Papers. 68 Lyman,164. 69 Daniel Lincoln to John Lincoln, December 13, 1813. DWL Papers.

Bibliography Archival Sources American Antiquarian Society. Daniel Waldo Lincoln Papers. Massachusetts State Archives. Other Printed Matter An Historical View of the Public Celebrations of the Washington Society and Those of the Young Republicans from 1805 to 1822 Compiled by order of the Washington Society. Boston: True and Greene, 1823. Austin, James T. The Life of Elbridge Gerry. Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1829. Berkin, Carol. A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism. New York: Basic Books, 2017. Brooke, John. The Heart of the Commonwealth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

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Buel, Richard. America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle of the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2005. “Celebration of American Independence.” In The Harvard Lyceum, ed. Edward Everett. Cambridge, Mass: Hilliard & Metcalf, 1811. Constitution of the Bunker-Hill Association. Boston: B. True, Publisher, 1809. Crocker, Matthew. The Magic of the Many The Rise of Massachusetts Politics in Boston 1800-1830. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. Finding Guide. Worcester County, Mass. Washington Benevolent Society Records, 1810–1836. American Antiquarian Society https://www.americanantiquarian. org/Findingaids/washington_benevolent_society.pdf Fischer, David Hackett. The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy. New York: Harper & Row, 1965 Foletta, Marshall. Coming to Terms with Democracy: Federalist Intellectuals and the Shaping of American Culture. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 2001. Formisano, Ronald P. The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s–1840s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Homans, Isaac Smith. Sketches of Boston Past and Present. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1851. “Independence,” Boston Patriot, July 4, 1810, 2. Jaher, Fredric Cople. “The Politics of the Boston Brahmins: 1800–1860 Boston 1700–1980.” In The Evolution of Urban Politics, eds. Ronald P. Formisano and Constance K. Burns. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984. King, Moses. Harvard Register An Illustrated Monthly. Cambridge, Mass: 1881. Kirker, Harold and James Kirker. Bulfinch’s Boston 1787–1817. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. Lincoln, Daniel W. An Oration Pronounced at Boston, on the Fourth Day of July, 1810, Before the “Bunker-Hill Association” and in the Presence of the Supreme Executive of the Commonwealth. Boston: Isaac Munroe, 1810. “Levi Lincoln to James Madison, 20 January 1811,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/03-03-02-0149 Loring, James Spear. The Hundred Boston Orators Appointed by the Municipal Authorities and Other Public Bodies from 1770 to 1852 Comprising Historical Gleanings, Illustrating the Principles and Progress of Our Republican Institutions. Boston: John P. Jewett, 1854. Lyman, Richard. “What is Done in My Absence?’ Levi Lincoln’s Oakham, Massachusetts Farm Workers, 1807–20,” Proceedings from the American Antiquarian Society 99 (1989): 166. Massachusetts State Archives Series GC3/327 Executive Records of the Governor’s Council 1650–1977, 36:26. Massachusetts Archives Collection, Massachusetts State Archives. “Massachusetts State Election for Governor 1810,” Lampi Collection of American Electoral Returns, 1788–1825 (American Antiquarian Society, 2007) Accessed June1, 2021. http://elections.lib.tufts.edu/aas_portal/view-election.xq?id=MS115. 002.MA.1810.00003 Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Maritime History of Massachusetts 1783-1860. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.

Brahmins and Boston 1810–1811 131 “National Birth-Day!” The Boston Chronicle, Monday, July 9, 1810, 2. Newman, Simon P. Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. “Orations,” Boston Chronicle, July 5, 1810. “Seaver, Ebenezer to Levi Lincoln, November 1810,” Manuscript/Mixed Material. Library of Congress. https://loc.gov/item/mjm01622/ “The First Season of the Federal Street Theatre,” Forgotten Chapters of Boston’s Literary History, Accessed March2, 2020. http://bostonliteraryhistory.com/ chapter-6/william-charles-white-1777-1818-orlando-or-parental-persecutiontragedy-printed-boston “The Fourth of July,” Boston Patriot, July 7, 1810, 2. “Thomas Jefferson to the Bunker Hill Association, 4 August 1810,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-02-02-0480 “Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 15 October 1810,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/03-02-02-0734 Thornton, Tamara. Cultivating Gentlemen: The Meaning of Country Life Among the Boston Elite, 1785–1860. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Travers, Len. Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997. Waldstreicher, David. In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776–1820. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Warren, Charles. The Supreme Court in United States History Volume One. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1922. Wills, Garry. Henry Adams and the Making of America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005.

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Lawyering and Lassitude 1811–1812

Figure 8.1 “View of the Court House in Boston. Erected in 1811 and 1812” by James Kidder. Courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

“I am diligent in the pursuit of scientific acquirement & the cultivation of letters, whose attainment will enable me to please my friends and instruct mankind.”1

Daniel’s sundry and tangled legal papers, replete with cross-outs, doodles, and omissions, rendered with a quill pen in an impossibly small script, reveal that many of his Boston clients were not among the better classes. They were ordinary people, some poor, who ran into trouble and needed help getting out of it. Collectively, the papers offer a glimpse of life among the many unknowns who made up the over 33,000 people who lived in 1810 Boston.2 The only record of their having passed through that growing DOI: 10.4324/9781003091691-9

Lawyering and Lassitude 1811–1812 133 town are the crumbling drafts of Daniel’s grandiloquent defenses in what was likely their worst moments. A young vagrant who fenced stolen goods was too young and impressionable at “scare manhood, the period of credulity … when judgment is in its state of pupilage, when the affections are glowing & the heart is so fraught with benevolence & confidence, that there is no room for another sentiment …” He was far too young to know better and was “like a bird that first fluttered from its nest … he was the easy dupe of the deceiver. This has been his misfortune rather than his crime.”3 Or the baker (Mr. G) accused of purloining a patented bread recipe from a Mr. Pettibone must be found not guilty because the granting of a patent for a common bread recipe was ridiculous. “It is proved on trial that he did in fact make bread, used flour & water & yeast as the patentee did & the knave kneaded & baked it too as the patentee did & indeed his loaves were bread a la Pettibone. He is thus cast in the suit & miserably perishes in prison for a biscuit.”4 A thieving girl was led astray by her older sister and should be regarded more victim than villain. “A child like this that could not be so mature in villainy as to have invented a systematic falsehood & sworn to it under the awful solemnity of an oath against the feelings of her nature.”5 A ship’s captain, a “man of feeling,” had been provoked into violence in a “mere ebullition of momentary passion” by an inflammatory provocation. “No man who retained the breath of life in his frame, no one who possessed the least degree of sensibility could have refrained …”6 An Irishman of limited intelligence by the name of Mars was accused of attempted burglary but only needed a warm place to sleep. “The emerald of the ocean has reflected no beam of heaven on his mind for it is questionable if he possesses sufficient intelligence to qualify him for a criminal. … When the bustle of the day had ceased he laid down beneath the window of Mr. _______’s house and slept pillowed by the pavement and blanketed with the night dew … though a Lazaretto might as well be mistaken for a dean of thieves as this paralytic for a burglar.”7 Daniel’s poetic arguments reached for the better, more forgiving sympathies of the judge and juries. He asked them to view his unfortunate clients as weak and misguided, never evil. But try as he did to elevate their circumstances, in the end it was an ungratifying, grueling slog with little chance of any monetary compensation from people who had fallen to the nadir of their lives. He admitted to Enoch that his heart wasn’t in it. “Attendance at Courts in guarding a meager & starving list of penniless clients has murdered imagination in me,” he grumbled.8 Luckily, not all his clients were out to kill Daniel’s muses. His Portland practice, still active thanks to his colleague Joseph Pope, catered to a more high-profile, better-heeled group, such as the town’s postmaster, James Wingate. Wingate’s legal troubles started when a man named Ward accused him of lifting money enclosed in a letter destined for Boston. The letter had passed through Wingate’s Portland post office where, Ward believed, the money had been pocketed. Daniel knew Wingate through family and

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professional networks and took on his defense. He argued that Ward sought to slander Wingate because it was impossible to prove that it was he, and not another postmaster along the way, who misappropriated the cash. Wingate’s spotless reputation won him the confidence of the government and his community, argued Daniel, and he would not betray “his name to disgrace, his person to punishment and his soul to damnation by a violation of his oath of office, by transgression of laws of society and of God …”9 The jury agreed. Daniel won the case and Wingate continued in the postmaster’s office until 1815. The Wingate case paled in comparison to Daniel’s largest, knottiest, and most contentious legal undertaking that involved disputes over Maine land claims, a subject with which he was all too familiar. As Cumberland County attorney he had represented the state against the claims of the Pejebscot Proprietors in 1809. In 1811, however, he moved to the opposite side of the fight, representing fifty-five claimants, all of whom swore a shared ownership to an enormous swath of land in Lincoln County. Some were descendants of John Brown, and still others of Samuel Waldo (Daniel’s distant cousins), John Hathorne, or Thomas Livingsworth.10 The Brown claim dated from 1625 when John Brown paid Captain John Somerset (thought also to be the famous Abenaki Indian Samoset) fifty beaver skins for a tract of land stretching from the coast to some twenty-five miles inland approximating 100,000 acres.11 Brown later sold parcels of his claim to Samuel Waldo and Charles Vaughn. Other non-resident descendants sold tracts of land they had never seen to people they didn’t know.12 Brown, however, was not the only one to benefit from Somerset’s largess. Somerset deeded the same land over and over to other eager speculators as well. Adding to the confusion, many of these later claimants waited almost 100 years before officially recording their deeds with the Commonwealth. To make matters even muddier, in 1748 the Boston courthouse and all the ancient Indian deeds inside it, burned to the ground.13 Indian deed or no Indian deed, in the seventy-year interim, proprietors casually wrote new deeds to one another without the benefit of surveys and boundaries. As time went on, the accuracy of the claims became vaguer and vaguer. No one knew which way was up let alone what belonged to whom. The settlers who came into the area after the Revolution revived the claimant’s interest in their property if only to force the settlers to purchase their tracts before another proprietor showed up and demanded the same thing.14 Settlers, never sure when the next alleged landlord would appear with an outstretched hand, grew alarmed when a suit by a Brown claimant opened the way for Judge George Thatcher of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to order a survey: the first volley in another new battle between proprietors and settlers. This time, however, local farmers would not passively watch surveyors carve up their property. About sixty men confronted the surveyors and offered to relieve them of their surveying instruments and their lives unless they vacated immediately.15 The surveyors,

Lawyering and Lassitude 1811–1812 135 wisely valuing their time on Earth as well as their instruments, retreated. Ready for a fight, Judge Thatcher called out 500 of the state militia to shut down the farmer rebellion. His strong-armed response fizzled when the militia, many of them local men, came face to face with their neighbors. Their loyalty to distant civic authorities quickly evaporated. However sweet the victory, the settlers understood that this was but one small triumph in what could be for them a disastrous war. They needed heftier allies. Accordingly, they dispatched a delegation to the General Court for relief from future proprietary suits.16 In 1810, Judge Thatcher, a Federalist and good friend to the proprietors, ordered a survey of the Brown Claim, that included Bristol, Nobleboro, Jefferson, and part of Newcastle.17 Luckily for the settlers, Thatcher was a judge and not governor of the Commonwealth; Republican Elbridge Gerry still held that post. Almost immediately upon receiving the settler’s resolution, Gerry ordered a commission to investigate the situation in Maine, motivated in part by his wish to undermine Thatcher’s influence there. The commissioners arrived in Bristol, Maine in late April 1811. They spent three weeks gathering information and depositions from all involved parties. In their final recommendation to Gerry, they urged the Commonwealth to establish yet another commission to untangle the Gordian knot of claims once and for all rather than revert to the expensive and time-consuming practice of innumerable separate trials between proprietor and settler projected to last an eternity. Under the terms of the new commission, all claimants would abide by the decision of the commissioners.18 Upon receiving the recommendation, Gerry acted quickly and established the Eastern Land Claims Commission with three disinterested non-Massachusetts residents as commissioners.19 With Enoch assisting him, Daniel spent the next year and three-quarters (from April 1811 to January 1813) taking affidavits and depositions, copying land deeds, gathering birth certificates, death certificates, and marriage certificates from courthouses, parishes, lawyer’s offices, and private homes to prove to the commission his clients’ legitimate connection to the lost Indian deeds. Among his clients were Noah Stone and his sister Temperance Stone Swan, the children of Josiah Stone who had bought the land in 1737 from Sarah Pierce Stackwell. Stackwell’s mother was Elizabeth Brown, daughter of the original John Brown. Daniel’s other clients were the Livingsworth heirs who traced their claim to the infamous John Hathorne, best known for his enthusiasm for sentencing people to be hanged during the 1693 Salem witch trials. (Unlike others involved in that travesty, Hathorne never repented his cruelty toward the accused. His great-great grandson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, added a “w” to his surname, allegedly to distance himself from his notorious ancestor.)20 Daniel dutifully attended all the hearings in Maine and Massachusetts.21 In January 1813, after months of meetings, the Commission finally issued its ruling. It did not turn out as Daniel had hoped. None of the Brown claimants were entitled to compensation of any kind at any time ever. “We

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have received and considered the evidence adduced, and have no hesitation in saying that the claimants, against whom we have awarded, have (with a single exception) no claim, even on this broad ground …. neither they nor any of them … have had either in law or equity, any title to any lands under their respective claims, and within the boundaries thereof, and situate within the towns aforesaid, or any of them.”22 With that, the commissioners extinguished all land claims based on non-existent Indian deeds in Maine. They even nullified the stipulation that the proprietors be indemnified through a granting of other properties in Maine to compensate for losses. Daniel’s clients walked away with nothing at all. Daniel may have done his best to prove his clients’ connection to old John Brown but there was nothing he could do to prove their right to the claim. Only traceable deeds drafted in England and recorded in Massachusetts received land compensation and those belonged to the Kennebec proprietors. The settlers within the boundaries of the Brown claim, however fluid that may have been, were granted deeds to their property at for a mere thirty cents an acre. If the Commission’s decision disappointed or embarrassed Daniel, he never mentioned it in his letters except when pursuing remittance which, after several months, he received in full. If it troubled Daniel who once represented the settlers and curried favor with them to promote Republican candidates in Maine when he was county attorney, to switch sides and represent the proprietors against the same people, he hid it well. As the son of a large property holder and distant Waldo descendant himself, he never hesitated to take on the cause of the settlers’ nemeses. It suited him much better than the “penniless clients” he had been reduced to serving. Plus, the Brown case had the added benefit of being a well-paying job that he hoped would refurbish his damaged reputation with his extended family. He candidly wrote, “The court cases of my kindred friends is to me ‘the feast of reason & the flow of soul.’ I am most happy in it & my enjoyment would be enhanced by the consciousness that I am less unworthy of them.”23 With clients in both Portland and Boston, Daniel traveled between the two towns with some regularity. The coastal surveillance that accompanied the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 limited transport by packet boat, forcing him to travel by horseback on roads that were little more than wheel ruts with a path down the middle. In good times transport by water on a packet took about twelve hours. Horseback, averaging eight to twelve miles per hour, took Daniel over two exhausting days. On one such excursion to Portland, Daniel was forced to forge his way through “girth deep” mud until finally reaching Maxy’s Inn at Wells Beach, “a dirty, cold & comfortless hovel.” At Maxy’s there would be no rest for the bone-tired Daniel. He met his slovenly host perched on a chair as a “spoonful of applesauce would lie on the floor.” His pillow felt like “a bundle of knotted switches, bound up in sackcloth.” Barking dogs kept him awake all night sounding like “jackals howling around over their prey …. Thank Heaven I have escaped & lived to tell of it.”24

Lawyering and Lassitude 1811–1812 137 Daniel’s adventure in rough travel and inhospitable lodging was commonplace in early nineteenth-century Massachusetts. Most people, if they went anywhere at all, did so on horseback and, as Daniel could attest, with plenty of difficulty and discomfort. The transportation revolution that would speed travel along canals, steamboats, and railroads, had not yet emerged from its planning stages, yet alone come to fruition along the coast of Maine. The turnpike network that transformed southern New England had bypassed Maine (except for one that came through a notch in the White Mountains to Portland) where the roads were notoriously horrible. Rainy weather converted them to muddy sloughs. Horses stumbled on rocks, roots, and stumps. Riders tumbled from their horses and broke bones. Travelers shared the roadway with drovers taking animals to market. Getting anywhere required grit and a very good, reliable horse such as Daniel had in his mare, Dian.25 The two, Daniel and Dian, watched out for one another. Most of the time Dian was stabled in Worcester and looked after by Daniel’s brother, John. Daniel frequently sent strict instructions as to how much she should be fed, how she should be groomed, and to never put a harness on her. She was meant only for the saddle. “You will not find her like on earth,” he once commented to Enoch.26 Upon his return to Boston, Daniel was disappointed to discover that Governor Gerry had not come through with a patronage position for him. Ever since Gerry’s installation as governor, Daniel had been anticipating an appointment that he viewed was his due as a Republican activist and as Levi Lincoln’s son. But months had passed and still there was nothing. Daniel was growing testy and impatient. What was behind all the dilly-dallying? To Daniel it was pure cowardice. He believed that the governor delayed in order to duck the outrage that would be sure to erupt once Federalist appointees were jettisoned in favor of Republicans. Or maybe, thought Daniel, Gerry wasn’t the Republican loyalist he said he was. The evidence spoke for itself. Gerry had supported Federalists in the past when he had served in the Adams administration. He publicly socialized with Federalists, attended the inauguration of the new Harvard President John Kirkland, and accepted from that bastion of Federalist tradition an honorary degree. Whatever the reasons, the postponements had become personal. Daniel wrote his brother John that “Instead of the emphatic tone of undoubted confidences, you hear from him (Gerry) the senseless, whining cant of conciliation, moderation, forbearance, impartiality & policy … disgusting his electors by the demonstration of pusillanimity. … The Republican Party will sink in listlessness and apathy and die in lethargy,” he predicted.27 While Daniel waited for a comfortable position that would rescue him from the tedium of taking on more indigent clients, an opportunity arose to visit Washington D.C. Except for brief excursions to New Hampshire, it would be the first time he ventured beyond Massachusetts. He jumped at the chance. Departing Boston on February 16th, his week-long journey took him through New York and Philadelphia by a rickety mail coach

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leaving “an ague in every articulation.” Except for some of the public buildings in New York and the Academy of Fine Arts and the Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, the great eastern cities failed to impress him. Crossing the frozen Delaware River, he entered Baltimore in a snowstorm then pushed on to Washington, still under construction, a “corporation of bushes & brambles.”28 Supplied with a letter of introduction from his father to James Madison that read, “My son, Daniel Waldo Lincoln, journeying from Boston to the seat of government on business & desirous of paying his respects to the President of the United States will avail himself of the delivery of this letter as an introduction for that purpose,” Daniel was granted entrée to the president and his family.29 Washington D.C. came with all the social perquisites of his class that Boston had denied him. Here he was among friends. Madison invited Daniel to the executive mansion for a levee and a dinner party on February 25th. The president struck Daniel as “dignified” and Mrs. Madison as “easy & playful and in appearance voluptuous.”30 Not incidentally, Daniel particularly enjoyed the attentions of some beautiful Southern women whose “beauty glows at a glance & melts upon a smile” unlike their Northern sisters who had been as cold “as the icicles that hang from Dian’s temple.”31 All was brilliant in Washington, if he remained indoors in the company of handsome, engaging people. “You forget yourself & the desert around you in the dazzling splendor of the drawing room & enjoy a pleasing delirium of fancy in the contemplation of the Graces & Loves who throng it. Step out of the door & you are in the reclaimed wilds, rude & uncultivated as when the hand of nature threw the shreds of creation from her lap & left them on this spot unregarded & abandoned.”32 The next day, February 26th, Daniel attended a session of the House of Representatives during which debate over the reinstatement of another nonintercourse bill with Great Britain was underway. Macon’s Bill No. 2, to which Napoleon had ostensibly consented, required him to cease harassing American shipping. But seventeen months after agreeing to the measure, there was no evidence that Napoleon ever intended to comply. Madison had given Britain three months, starting in November 1810 to lift its Orders-in-Council or face the consequences of renewed embargos, but by the February deadline there had been no communication from Britain. The impasse pushed Madison to reinstate another non-intercourse against Great Britain that he had promised to do under the terms of Macon’s Bill No. 2. The day Daniel attended the House session, the brilliantly acerbic John Randolph of Virginia (a conservative Republican or Tertium Quid) and John Eppes (Jefferson’s son-in-law) were in the midst of what would be an eighteen-hour debate over the bill. Eppes had introduced the measure and Randolph opposed it on the grounds that there was no evidence of French cooperation and to reinstate another non-intercourse act against Britain would devastate commerce. When the time grew late and Randolph proposed an adjournment for two days, Eppes countered that the House should remain in session until the

Lawyering and Lassitude 1811–1812 139 matter was settled. The House voted down Randolph’s suggested postponement but Randolph persevered, suggesting that debate resume the following day. “On this motion a debate, which for its nature caused irritation, took place in which Messrs. Randolph and Eppes were the principal speakers. Much warmth was excited and frequent calls to order made.”33 Somewhere in the middle of all the yelling, Eppes challenged Randolph to a duel. The exchange was so heated and vulgar that the Congressional Record did not print the Randolph/Eppes exchange, but Daniel heard every word and was rapt. Randolph’s verbal assault was as “impetuous as low lightning of heaven & almost as awful too,” he told Enoch.34 The duel never happened but the law, reinstating non-intercourse, against Britain did. It became effective March 3, 1811. Daniel stayed in Washington for only three days. On his return, slow travel forced him to endure the indignity of being in Hartford, Connecticut on a Saturday evening. The state’s blue laws forbade any travel on the Sabbath thereby marooning Daniel in a sea of rock-ribbed Federalist clergy, the same group whom Levi had so caustically eviscerated in his Farmer’s Letters and whom Daniel had reproached as hypocrites. For a full day Daniel was forced to bide his time reading sermons such as “Warning to Sinners” and “The Saint’s Everlasting Rest.” He covered his ears to muffle the tolling of the church bells with its “sanctimonious cant.” “I am as impatient to return home as a bridegroom on honeymoon,” he grumbled to Enoch. “I will not obey the summons of superstition or hypocrisy to participate in their fooleries, mockeries, or blasphemous ceremonies of observances. Bending the knee, whining through the nose, are not acceptable service to the Most High; but the great devotion of the heart, the profound sentiment of the soul, are the worship he deigns to approve,” he proffered.35 Monday arrived right on time, releasing him from his Connecticut perdition. At first light Daniel resumed his trip with alacrity. A month later in April 1811, Elbridge Gerry and Christopher Gore began to gear up for the next election. At a rally at Faneuil Hall, Federalist electors adopted a series of resolutions comparing Gerry to the tyrannical colonial England and themselves to the valiant patriots of 1776. They denounced the latest non-intercourse bill as a confirmation of their suspicions that Republicans were more interested in punishing Massachusetts merchants than saving the nation from British depredations. They stamped the Virginians as incompetent, corrupt, and anti-commerce. They vowed to resist the laws. The only salvation for the nation, they declared, lay in electing Federalists who would join with Great Britain to defeat Bonaparte once and for all.36 Fearing Republican control of the General Court, Federalist assessors in Suffolk County tried to tip the scale in their favor for the 1811 election. Because the number of representatives from each county was determined by population, the assessors included in their count every male with a pulse, including alien non-citizens and children. One Edward Proctor smelled

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something fishy and lodged an official protest that Suffolk County enjoyed the benefit of an overabundance of representatives to which they were not entitled. In what became known as the “ratable polls controversy” Daniel drafted a petition to the General Court in support of Proctor. “With extreme diffidence I appear to question grey hairs & to charge honorable age with swearing an undeserved dignity,” Daniel wrote. “We respect the personal worth, talents & character of the gentlemen who claim seats as members in this house, but we do not acknowledge them to be duly representatives & constitutionally elected; we cannot & we will not submit in silence to the usurpation of the metropolis by which the civil rights of the citizens throughout the commonwealth have been infringed.”37 Republican officers were prepared to resign their commissions if the General Court did not rectify the issue. The Republican committee hearing the remonstrance ruled the polls invalid, but the Federalist justices on the Supreme Judicial Court reversed their decision. “Ratable polls of aliens may constitutionally be included in estimating the number of ratable polls to determine the number of representatives any town may be entitled to elect,” Federalist Supreme Judicial Court justices Theophilus Parsons, Samuel Sewall, and Isaac Parker concluded.38 Federalist interpretation of the law remained in Federalist hands no matter what laws the Republican legislature passed. Except for delivering partisan speeches to groups of Republicans or “declaiming the caucuses,” Daniel did not stump for Gerry during the 1811 election cycle. He had been disgusted with what he viewed as Gerry’s incompetence and procrastination on delivering to Daniel his patronage position. As much as he disliked the governor, however, he disliked Federalists far more. He would vote for Gerry who at least called himself a Republican. In a letter to Enoch, Daniel aired his frustration with politics as usual. Federalists marshal again for the contest the stale slanders which have been refuted, the falsehoods that have been expressed, the implications that have been detected, the arguments that have been controverted. … The old fable of French influence may not be pretermitted by those wiseacres in politics, those shrewd and sagacious statesmen who can discern French influence in a ragout & discover the finger of Napoleon in a Christmas pye. … I will not vote for Gerry, but will vote against Federalists & according to my own principles. … Men are often capricious & always transient, they may change & must perish; but principles founded in truth & justice are immutable & eternal as the throne of God.39 Even without an all-out effort from Daniel, Gerry won re-election by more than 3,000 votes, a slightly wider margin than the previous year.40 Republicans also won back the state senate giving them majority rule over the General Court.

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Figure 8.2 “Elbridge Gerry” by James Barton Longacre. Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

Reinvigorated, for his second inaugural a different, fiestier Elbridge Gerry showed up. He forcefully denounced the Federalist leadership as criminal and possibly treasonous.41 Great Britain, Gerry said, aimed to dismember the Union and Federalists wanted to help them do it. With these truculent words it was likely that Gerry’s invitations to Federalist soirees were about to evaporate. The gloves off, the conciliatory demeanor shed and backed by a majority in both houses, Gerry the Partisan Republican replaced Gerry the Unifying Conciliator. Republicans cheered. The new Elbridge Gerry began his second term with a powerful, if not vindictive, agenda meant to pry away the Federalist grip on power. No better place to start than by settling the question of whether or not dissenting church associations were eligible for the same privileges enjoyed by the corporate churches, such as legal protection and public support.42 In the Religious Freedom Act of 1811, Congregational Calvinism remained the established church (that would not end until 1833) but the new law provided protection and support for unincorporated churches.43 Towns were now required to apportion the church tax among several denominations. In one bill, Gerry expanded religious freedom to all citizens while simultaneously delivering a delicious blow to Federalist clergy.44 Next Gerry extended suffrage to every male over twenty-one who could pay a poll tax so to broaden the Republican base.45 He chartered the State Bank to be managed by Republican shareholders since Federalists controlled all the existing private banks. He dissolved the Court of Common Pleas and revived the Court of Sessions and filled it with Republican appointments. Then he went after his enemies who had maligned him in print. He sued Federalist newspaper editors for libel. Among them was Merrill Butler, also known as Timothy Touchstone, the editor of the short-lived

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Scourge whose only purpose was to fillet Republicans. Butler was convicted of libel and spent six months in jail.46 There was also the matter of representation and redistricting. Gerry’s incorporation of ninety new towns in western Massachusetts and Maine threatened to overpower Federalist representation from the maritime districts.47 That was enraging enough for Federalists, but when Gerry went on to oversee a clumsy redistricting meant to ensure a lasting Republican majority in the state legislature, the Federalist press skewered him in a political cartoon likening the district outline to a monstrous salamander. The term “gerrymander” as a legal but notorious political machination meant to secure partisan power stuck, thereby winning the last word on the controversy for the opposition.48

Figure 8.3 “The Gerry-Mander” by Gilbert Stuart. Reprinted from the Boston Centinel, March 26, 1812.

Lawyering and Lassitude 1811–1812 143 During the early summer of 1811 as political cacophony rocked Boston, Daniel’s resolve to be forever temperate crumbled. What triggered the slide is a mystery. Family in Worcester sensed something was wrong when his letters became too few. At first, he blamed his silence on work and the ineptitude of his law partner, Leonard Parker. “Some new engagements in business and the endeavor to reduce the chaos of Major Parker to something like order …” Next, he imputed an “annual bilious attack” for his silence. “I have suffered my annual recurrence of my bilious complaints,” he told Enoch. “After having freed my stomach of more bile than a diplomasized M.D. would have removed in a month, I feel now, as did the good matron, who had been in the straw.”49 A word needs to be said here regarding early nineteenth-century humoral medicine. Bodily ills, it was believed, could be traced to an imbalance between the four humors: blood, yellow bile (liver), black bile (spleen), and phlegm that roughly corresponded to air, fire, earth, and water. Which humor was out of balance was determined by the excretion of either urine, blood, feces, or vomit. Physicians recommended purging one of the four humors by bloodletting or emetics to restore balance and health.50 But Daniel’s bilious fever was not due to inhaling gasses emitted from spring soil that upset the delicate balance of the body’s four humors, as was commonly thought. Rather if Daniel was experiencing excessive vomiting of bile, it was due to something else entirely: another spectacular bender. According to Leonard Parker, the same man Daniel accused of ineptitude, Daniel was drunk for the better part of a week while his brothers were in town that June. On a trip home from a weekend in Hingham, Parker also noted that an inebriated Daniel “played off his gallantry” to a Miss Freeman “under the excitement of 2 or 3 glasses.” He showed up at their law office, wasted and obnoxious, offending potential clients and driving them away. “His “trifling about the office frightened [clients] and carried them off,” complained Parker.51 Word of the slip made its way to Worcester, but no one was buying the “bilious fever” excuse. Daniel had to come clean to them. In his effort to reconstruct the episode and make it appear less damning, he admitted his relapse then did what he could to put it behind him. Once again he recast himself as a noble conqueror of addiction rather than the dissipated disastrous disappointment his family thought him to be. “The best news I can communicate concerning myself is the attainment of the mastery of appetite & the discontinuance of a damning habit of drinking strong waters,” he assured Enoch. Next in a flurry of outlandish if not inspired grandiosity, he offered his unconvinced mother the opportunity to cheer his deliverance rather than grieve his profligacy. “I received your congratulations on my resurrection with pleasure,” Daniel wrote. “I shall never go back into the same grave again. I shall be proud in deserving your commendations 12 months hence & very happy in promoting the felicity of my parents.”52 A few days later, he proffered more

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reassurances. He had returned to good health and would be forever temperate. “As to my resolutions, I require no additional motive to confirm, no further inducement to affect them…The return to Nature & to virtue is easy & like the return of the prodigal to his paternal home, may be attended with compunction & regret for past errors, but it will be greeted with delight & crowned with rejoicing.”53 Huzzah! With his father, Daniel took a different approach. He sidestepped responsibility for the bender by pointing to “nervous stimulation” as the culprit for his problems. Although humoral medicine was still the go-to explanation for physical maladies, many physicians also looked to the gut, the body’s powerhouse and the center of nervous energy, as the source of psychological disequilibrium. There was, they believed, a close relationship between the gut and the mind. An imbalanced digestive track triggered all kinds of troubling emotional complications. Bad food could set off a “gastric derangement,” that rippled through the body, disordered the nerves, triggered malaise, and crescendoed in a powerful inclination to drink.54 The system could also work in reverse. Too much thinking required an oversupply of fluids to the brain thereby upending the delicate humoral balance emanating from the stomach.55 Writers, poets, and intellectuals who spent their days pondering and cogitating, were particularly at risk. It was the fault of a sensitive stomach coupled with an excess of cerebral activity that set off a binge, not a dishonorable character. Daniel adopted the gut-mind model wholeheartedly. “Oh that nature might quit us of this overbearing burden, this tyrant-God the belly! Take that from us with all its bestial appetites, and man, Exonerated man, shall be all soul,” he pronounced to his father. He assured Levi that he would calm his passions so as to be “purified and corrected for usefulness and honor.” An upset stomach “paralyzes the energies of the mind, petrifies the pulses of the heart & murders the charities of social intercourse, the sympathies of friendship & the sensibilities of love,” he explained. Henceforth, as a sensitive man he would work harder to avoid unnecessary nervous stimulation, bad food, and too much rumination. He decided to shut himself away for a while. From the safe confines of his office and home in the months that followed, Daniel continued in his private practice and tried to keep his promise to be an honorable Lincoln. “When I can say to you that many months have elapsed since I have put an enemy into my mouth to steal away my brains, when I shall be confirmed by continual observance of the strictest regularity, in habits of temperance & industrious application to Books & Business, when I shall cease to blush from the recollection of recent folly, I will come & see you & enjoy that happiness in your domestic circle which I am resolved to merit,” he said to Enoch.56 He pledged to his parents that he would not attend liquorish public events such as the “feast of shells” at Squantum, an annual celebration honoring Boston’s Indian past because it was a “confusion of mixed companies.” He didn’t want to go anyway. The

Lawyering and Lassitude 1811–1812 145 event was “a puppet show” that offered “no improvement.” Improvement was the order of the day, found only “among the religious of learning.”57 Time spent in pursuit of frivolous activities was worthless, even damaging. And when Boston readied itself for Harvard’s commencement that spring, Daniel told his parents that he would not be attending that affair either. In a purposeful dual potshot aimed at his alma mater and the senseless dull masses who attended such spectacles, Daniel wrote, Is devotion to letters or reverence for learning to be inferred from the eagerness with which dealers, factors, apprentices, clerks, lumpers & stable boys, matrons, misses, laundresses & chambermaids have hurried to hear & criticize academic exercises? Do they seek for pleasure in the jostling elbowing & pressure of a crowd, or in observance of the tyros of the day who ‘strut their hour upon the stage’ & vent the undigested crudities of science to a mob? The University derives no advantage from these exhibitions, nor do they profit individuals. It would be well that they should be discontinued, if to save interruption to labor & inducement to dissipation.58 During the summer and fall of 1811 when Daniel was doing what he could to right himself, polish himself off, and start on a different path, he was also still waiting for the patronage appointment to give him a professional boost. He had received nothing during Gerry’s first term and now, some months into Gerry’s second term the field of expectants had started to get crowded. More and more office seekers were clogging the line. A “scanty train of advocates & supporters … Every voter who gave his suffrage for Gerry’s election imagines that he has claims on executive patronage & makes boast …”59 The ersatz competitors were a distraction and a nuisance. Whatever he may have thought of Gerry’s embrace of Republican legislation, the only thing that really mattered to Daniel Lincoln was an appointment that would benefit him personally. “I wait on the old woman & tell him he is as great as Julius & as wise as Cato,” he groused to Enoch. “The truth is, he is jealous of our father & General Dearborn as a child fearing that his playmates will pocket his toys …. If it were not a rascally thing to trifle with a girl, I would go & court his daughters & be the executive pet, but I am too honorable to be insidious & too proud to be sycophantic.”60 Finally, at the end of October, the waiting ended. Gerry handed Daniel a judge advocate commission. “The unsolicited appointment had been made in my absence & was an unexpected compliment,” he disingenuously told Enoch. “I cannot now decline the distinction of being called ‘Major.’”61 As a judge advocate it would be Daniel’s responsibility to provide legal counsel for military courts martial. It was a plum post, but his excitement for his new job wore off quickly. He plunged into reading military trials but instead of finding something novel and more exciting than the stale courtroom that he knew, the transcripts bored him. The trials lacked the

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“chivalry, honor and sublime sentiment” of times past. “… Martial tribunal are at present little else than common law courts and their records are hardly more interesting judicial precedents …. I have found few trials of great merit and interest.”62 Even with the commission in hand and all the status and rank that came with it, Daniel realized he was still relegated to the courtroom, still a lawyer, still trapped by the dreariness of the judicial process. He would look elsewhere for happiness, and he would find it, for a little while, with the British Romantics. Daniel had long been drawn to the poetry of Thomas Gray, William Collins, William Wordsworth, and Lord Byron. The Romantic’s vision of masculine sensibility, a man acutely, painfully attuned to the workings of the natural world, frustratingly bound by the limitations of his human existence, at odds with the venality of others, searching for authenticity and understanding, was Daniel to himself. “In this moral Kamchatka we only catch at intervals a casual, vagrant, sickly gleam of joy & instantly obscurity succeeds but fancy with her magic prism collects every ray from heaven & paints Elysium on the mind.”63 He filled his missives with musings and poetry, some original, some from memory. “Writing verse is a pleasant literary recreation and not unprofitable, for I think it a most useful exercise in forming the orator,” he told Enoch. He quoted long showy passages from James Montgomery and Thomas Campbell, two contemporary Scottish poets who moved him, Campbell especially. He was drawn to war poetry, Montgomery’s Battle of Alexandria, Campbell’s Battle of Hohenlinden and Gertrude of Wyoming, a ninety-two stanza 828line poem that depicted Indian atrocities inflicted on American patriots during the Revolutionary War in Wyoming, Pennsylvania. Campbell tells the story of Gertrude the beautiful daughter of the idyllic town’s leading figure and wife to the equally perfect Albert. Both Gertrude and her father were murdered by Indians. Gertrude died in her loving husband’s arms. The poem ends with the friendly Indian Outalassi beseeching Albert to join him in seeking revenge for Gertrude’s death. “It is so natural and pathetic,” he commented to Enoch about the poem, “that the mind, not lost to all sense of feeling cannot but perceive and enjoy its beauties.”64 He also nurtured a special affinity for William Collins, a British poet who died mentally ill, poor, and friendless at age thirty-seven, whose talent as a great lyric poet was recognized posthumously. So much did Daniel admire Collins that he composed an original ten-stanza poem he entitled The Shade of Collins “conjured by the art of an enthusiastic admirer.” His tribute concludes with the following stanza: Farewell, sweet bard! Thy grave around Shall still with flowers be dressed, While Sympathy & love are found To warm the human breast. There truth & friendship, hand in hand

Lawyering and Lassitude 1811–1812 147 Shall dew with tears the blooming land And scatter wreaths of every hue! The mournful muse will turn away Repeating still thy thrilling lay Will weep a last adieu!65 In addition to his poetic efforts, Daniel infused his prose with imagery of nature and Providence and other-worldly phenomenon, ornate passages sprinkled with Latin and Greek phrases that only those others as educated as he could appreciate. For instance, a small seabird, the storm petrel also known as Mother Cary’s chicken, inspired Daniel to wax lyrical about the bird’s mysterious habit of appearing only when the weather turned treacherous. “… though the thunder knolls the fate of human enterprise, yet the dread artillery of heaven the fearful horror of the tempest cannot frighten away this constant companion of peril & destruction ...” Both Joseph Pope and Enoch received copies of Daniel’s Mother Cary’s chicken soliloquy. “Man cannot tell the place where Mother Cary’s chicken hatches her young, yet pretends to know the heart where friendship dwells,” he added.66 If we are baffled by where sea birds go in good weather, how can we understand something as mysterious as the workings of the human heart? When a December snowstorm swept through Boston it was another occasion to marvel at beauty’s evanescence. If all that is precious is fleeting, how do we understand the Christian promise of everlasting life for Godfearing humans? Is it even desirable? “Winter stretches his fleecy mantle over the ruins of Nature, over the horrors of desolation. Where now is the rose bud of spring? It rejoiced in the kiss of the zephyr, it exulted in the gaze of the sun, it flaunted on the cheek of beauty, it blushed in the emotion of sensibility … What proves to me that I am eternal & the plant ephemeral? … The immortal existence of the human mind exists only in the speculation of the theorist.”67 Eternal life offered no appeal to the skeptical Daniel. What mattered to him was this one, sublime, painful, and tortured as it may have been. It was a question he pondered in his letters repeatedly to Enoch, Joseph Pope, and Leonard Parker. Although sequestering himself may have kept him from the temptation to drink, his preoccupation with himself became obsessive as he circled around and around existential questions. He grew more despondent, and people were noticing. “Friends complain that I have become secluded, unsocial & misanthropic. They do not know me … Misanthropy is the brother of sensibility … Care may have curled the face of misanthropy into frowns, ill required confidence may have curdled the current of his affections; but his heart may throb with agonizing fondness, while it swells with sullen pride and resentment.”68 Yet at times, and not uncommon to sufferers of depressive disorders, Daniel’s mood occasionally shifted into grandiosity. Clearly alluding to himself, he scorned those who failed to see the whole of his good character

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and chose to judge him only by his missteps, his shadow. In a not very oblique but rather grandiose reference to himself, Daniel wrote, “In such manner mankind regards illustrious characters. The benevolence of their motives, the elevation of their thoughts, the inspiration of their minds, the dignity of their manners & the nobleness of their actions are, like solar influences, witnessed daily without emotion, consideration, or observance, but should accident or error eclipse the splendid disk of their fame, curiosity & envy would speculate on the shadow & malice & calumny proclaim the twilight of an hour as the extinction of worth & the loss of virtue & triumph in the knowledge that the sun may be darkened.”69 During these months of soulful introspection, Daniel added sexual attraction to his litany of unanswerable mysteries. He wondered to his sister Rebecca why he should be interested in “the lips of a pretty girl … although they do not pronounce the oracles of wisdom or utter tones of melody.” He concluded that, “… the strings of well-tuned instruments vibrate in union, accordant sympathies will echo each other’s tone and mutually unite in harmonious concert …. We are moved by subtle influences, of which we are not aware and urged by mysterious impulses of which we are unconscious.”70 Where was Daniel’s harmonizing partner? His first love, Charlotte, was gone. He had given his heart to Mary, but she had rebuffed him. There had been other flirtations, several in fact, but in the end, among the living none compared to feelings for Mary. He decided he wanted her back. It was clear to him now. If he was ever to be happy in this tempestuous temporal life, it had to be with Mary. “As my soul liveth, I will deserve her,” he declared to Enoch. “Though she put the seal of perpetuity on our disunion, yet I will enjoy the delicious triumph of virtue and the consciousness that her own heart is compelled to the acknowledgement that I deserve her!”71 Standing in the way, however, was the fact that Daniel loved another woman more. Although she had been dead for five years, Daniel’s affectionfor Charlotte lived on. His visits to his sister Martha in Hingham where she had gone to recover from an unnamed illness, brought him back to the scene of Charlotte’s death, as it was in there that she had died and was buried. The memory of her beauty and her love burned undiminished. “I would not exchange the sweet recollection of her virtues & her love in which I have been so much blest, for all the wealth & pomp, the honors & distinctions, the applause & veneration of the world … the woman lives not whom I could love so truly, so fervently, as Charlotte,” he said to Joseph Pope. “My first & best affections slumber in her grave & will awaken only at the resurrection of the dead.”72 In his most graceful poetic effort he wrote: O bright was the morning that smiles on my youth And gay were my visions of bliss When the maid of my soul fondly plighted her truth And sealed the dear pledge with a kiss. …

Lawyering and Lassitude 1811–1812 149 When the angel of peace on his last message flies From earth this tired spirit to sever I’ll seize the sweet flower, that enriches the skies To bloom in my bosom forever.73 Still, if there was any hope for happiness with Mary, he knew he must try to move beyond his grief. For five years he had kept a packet of Charlotte’s letters, read and re-read hundreds of times. If he could hold her letters, study her writing, listen to her words, even hear her voice, he could keep her alive but the assurance was false. The time had come to put the letters aside and out of reach. He sent the collection to his mother for safekeeping. “I ought not keep these myself for they supply food for melancholy, almost for madness,” he told her. “It has been the fortune of my life to have been loved beyond my deserts. My heart has reciprocated every sentiment of affection, but love for love is the only return I have been able to render.”74 Perhaps without the daily tactile reminders of Charlotte, a distraction that pulled on his heart, he could shift his affections completely and truly to Mary. He began his pursuit tentatively, gradually testing the romantic waters through mutual friends acting as intermediaries. Evidence that she might be receptive to him arrived when a Wilhelmina (last name never mentioned) delivered to Daniel a poem entitled “Injunction to D.W.L., Esq.” As an injunction, Wilhelmina demanded that if Daniel was serious he must do something to prove himself to Mary. She encouraged him to use his “statesman’s reason and poet’s fire/wit to delight and virtue to improve” then urged him to follow his heart, write to Mary, and try again to win her. Wilhelminia concluded her advisory with.

Here then thy heart, its noblest precept hear! With life of fondness dry the impatient tear Let whispered passion every doubt remove And wake to beauty, elegance & love.75 Daniel responded a few weeks later with a poem for Mary that meant to convey his lasting anguish over their break-up. He could not, would not, love another. Rather than send it directly to her, he sent it first to Joseph Pope for his opprobrium. If Pope approved of it, he would send it on to Mary with the hope she would agree to let him back into her life. Oh, had my fate been joined with thine As once thy smiles appear to token Such follies had not then been mine For then my peace had not been broken.

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Lawyering and Lassitude 1811–1812 To thee my errors do I owe The wise & great reproving, Who know my sins, they do not know, T’was thine to break the bonds of loving. Once was my soul, like thine own pure And all its wild desires could smother But not thy vows no more endure; I am my own. Seek thou another! Ee’er since the angel self was’t gone My heart no more can rest with any And what was sought in thee alone Attempts, alas to find in many. Then fare thee well, deceitful maid ‘Twere vain & fruitless to regret thee, Nor hope nor memory yield their aid But Pride may teach me to forget thee! Yet, once the vernal scene was sweet, For nature seemed to smile before thee, My heart with fond devotion beat, But then it beat, but to adore thee! But now I seek for other joys To love would drive my soul to madness In thoughtless throngs & empty noise I conquer half my bosom’s sadness Yet ‘een in these a thought will steal In spite of every vein endeavor; And friends might pity what I feel To know that thou art lost forever!76

His bold overture to Mary notwithstanding, Daniel was appropriately cautious about a positive outcome. Only reluctantly did he admit to his brother that he might like to have a wife and family as did his brother, Levi, Jr. “I sometimes envy him his family,” he admitted to John. But even this qualified acknowledgment required amendment. He stoically but unconvincingly claimed that he preferred the bachelor’s life. “The bachelor is the commoner of society, the married man is the prisoner of the nursery …. I shall prefer a bachelor’s life ‘til I next meet a fine girl & then peradventure I may believe that it is not good for man to be alone.”77 False bravado aside, he believed it already. Besides, the marital clock was ticking. He was now a twenty-seven-year-old bachelor with a tarnished reputation. He believed he had found the woman who would love him and save him. They would build a life together. They would be happy. The way forward to a good life was clear. He waited for her response.

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Notes 1 Daniel Lincoln to Joseph Pope, July 27, 1811. DWL Papers 2 The population of Boston in 1810 was 33,787, a 36% increase from the 1800 census. “Population Trends in Boston 1640–1990,” Boston History and Architecture, Accessed September 7, 2021 http://www.iboston.org/mcp.php? pid=popFig 3 Commonwealth v. George Robinson, DWL Papers. 4 Untitled legal argument, DWL Papers. 5 Commonwealth v. Ellen Janson, DWL Papers. 6 Commonwealth v. Libby, DWL Papers 7 Commonwealth v. Mars, DWL Papers. 8 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, December 15, 1811, DWL Papers. 9 Ward v. Wingate, DWL Papers. 10 Award of the Commissioners for Determining the Rights of Claimants to Lands in the County of Lincoln,” Resolves of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Passed at the Sessions in October 1812 and January 1813 (Boston: Russell and Cutler, 1813), 181–4. 11 John Johnston, A History of the Towns of Bristol and Bremen in the State of Maine Including the Pemaquid Settlement, (Albany, N.Y.: John Munsell, 1873), 464. 12 Ibid., 473. 13 Francis Greene, History of Boothbay, Southport, Boothbay Harbor, Maine 1623–1905 (Portland, Me: Loring, Short & Harmon, 1906), 164; Resolves of the General Court of Massachusetts Passed and Begun at the Session Holden in Boston, On the Twenty-Ninth Day of May in the Year of Our Lord, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Eleven, (Boston: Adams Rhoades, 1811), 165. 14 Ibid., 478. 15 Greene, 170. 16 Alan Taylor, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760–1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 227. 17 Greene, 232. 18 Ibid., 236. 19 Ibid., 228. 20 Margaret B. Moore, The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne, (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008), 38. 21 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, September 21, 1811, November 15, 1811, March 19, 1812, March 21, 1812, March 29, 1812, March 30, 1812, May 6, 1812, May 7, 1812, January 8, 1813, DWL Papers; Eastern Land Papers, Series 89X, 90 X, 92X, Massachusetts Archives Collection, Massachusetts State Archives. 22 “Award of the Commissioners for determining the rights of Claimants to Lands in the County of Lincoln, Boston, 26th January 1813,” Resolves of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Passed at the Several Sessions of the General Court Holden in Boston Beginning 26 May 1812, and Ending on 2nd March 1815 (Boston: Russell Cutler, 1815), 182–7. The exception was William Vaughn whose repeated efforts to improve the land for the benefit of the settler’s community were noted by the commissioners. 23 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, July 15, 1811, DWL Papers. 24 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, September 4, 1810, DWL Papers. 25 Roger Parks, Roads and Travel in New England 1790–1840 (Sturbridge, Mass: Old Sturbridge Village, 1967). http://www.teachushistory.org/detocquevillevisit-united-states/articles/historical-background-traveling-early-19th-century 26 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, May 24, 1813, DWL Papers.

152 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

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Daniel Lincoln to John W. Lincoln, August 8, 1810, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, February 24, 1811, DWL Papers. Levi Lincoln to James Madison, February 15, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, February 26, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, February 28, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, March 1, 1811, DWL Papers. A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1876. Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, 11th Congress, 3rd Session, 1086. Henry Adams, History of the United States of America during the Administrations of James Madison, 5th edition, (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1986), 244; Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, February 28, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, March 10, 1811, DWL Papers. “To the Republicans of Norfolk County,” Boston Gazette, March 25, 1811, 1. “Ratable Polls Controversy,” DWL Papers. Luther S. Cushing, Reports of Controverted Elections in the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 1780 to 1852 (Boston: White & Potter, 1853) 90–6, 117–24. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, March 29, 1811. Ronald P. Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s–1840s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 74. James T. Austin, The Life of Elbridge Gerry, (Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1829), 331. Johann N. Neem, “The Elusive Common Good Religion and Civil Society in Massachusetts, 1780–1833,” Journal of the Early Republic 24 (2004): 396–8. Ibid. Paul Goodman, The Democratic-Republicans of Massachusetts Politics in a Young Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), 165. A poll tax was required to vote in other town affairs. George Billias, Elbridge Gerry: Founding Father and Republican Statesman (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1976), 317. “The Scourge (Boston) 1811–1811” Library of Congress, Newspaper Division. Accessed August 6, 2021. https://www.loc.gov/item/2006255045/ James M. Banner, To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts 1789–1815 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), 286–8. Ibid, 339–42. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, June 25, 1811, DWL Papers. Faith Lagay, “The Legacy of Humoral Medicine,” The History of Medicine 7 (2002): 7. Quoted in Lindsay Schakenbach Regele, “Early National Bro Culture in Daniel Parker’s War Department,” Commonplace, 17 (2017). http://commonplace. online/article/early-national-bro-culture-in-daniel-parkers-war-department/ Daniel Lincoln to Martha Waldo Lincoln, July 12, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Martha Waldo Lincoln, July 15, 1811, DWL Papers. Lagay, 4 https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/legacy-humoral-medicine/ 2002-07 and Ian Miller, “The Gut-Brain Axis: Historical Reflections,” Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease 29 (2018): 2. Anna C. Vila, “The Philosophe’s Stomach Hedonism, Hypochondria and the Intellectual Enlightenment in France,” Cultures of the Abdomen: Diet, Digestion, and Fat in the Modern World, ed. Christopher E. Forth and Ana Carden-Coyne (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 89–104. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, July 26, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, July 24, 1811, DWL Papers.

Lawyering and Lassitude 1811–1812 153 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, August 28, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, August 13, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, November 6, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, October 29, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Joseph Pope, November 2, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, December 15, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, November 4, 1810. DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, September 14, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, September 21, 1811, DWL Papers. Danie Lincoln to Joseph Pope, November 2, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, December 22, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Joseph Pope, updated. DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to John Lincoln, September 17, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Rebecca Lincoln, July 20, 1811, DWL Papers Daniel Lincoln to Joseph Pope, July 27, 1811, DWL Papers. Ibid. Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, July 30, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, September 2, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Joseph Pope, April 8, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Joseph Pope, July 27, 1811, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to John Lincoln, December 22, 1811, DWL Papers.

Bibliography Archival Material American Antiquarian Society. Daniel Waldo Lincoln Papers. Massachusetts State Archives. Other Printed Matter A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1876. Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, 11th Congress, 3rd Session, page 1086. Adams, Henry. History of the United States of America during the Administrations of James Madison, 5th edition. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1986. Austin, James T. The Life of Elbridge Gerry. Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1829. “Award of the Commissioners for Determining the Rights of Claimants to Lands in the County of Lincoln,” Resolves of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Passed at the Sessions in October 1812 and January 1813. Boston: Russell and Cutler, 1813. Banner, James M. To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts 1789–1815. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970. Billias, George. Elbridge Gerry: Founding Father and Republican Statesman. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1976. Cushing, Luther S. Reports of Controverted Elections in the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 1780 to 1852. Boston: White & Potter, 1853.

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Eastern Land Papers, Series 89X, 90 X, 92X, Massachusetts Archives Collection, Massachusetts State Archives. “Award of the Commissioners for determining the rights of Claimants to Lands in the County of Lincoln, Boston, 26th January 1813,” Resolves of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Passed at the Several Sessions of the General Court Holden in Boston Beginning 26 May 1812, and Ending on 2nd March 1815. Boston: Russell Cutler, 1815. Formisano, Ronald P. The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s–1840s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Goodman, Paul. The Democratic-Republicans of Massachusetts Politics in a Young Republic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964. Greene, Francis. History of Boothbay, Southport, Boothbay Harbor, Maine 1623–1905. Portland, Me: Loring, Short & Harmon, 1906. Johnson, John Johnston. A History of the Towns of Bristol and Bremen in the State of Maine Including the Pemaquid Settlement. Albany, N.Y.: John Munsell, 1873. Lagay, Faith. “The Legacy of Humoral Medicine,” The History of Medicine, 7 (2002): 7. Miller, Ian. “The Gut-Brain Axis: Historical Reflections,” Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease, 29 (2018): 2. Moore, Margaret B. The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008. Neem, Johann N. “The Elusive Common Good Religion and Civil Society in Massachusetts, 1780–1833,” Journal of the Early Republic, 24 (2004): 396–398. Parks, Roger. Roads and Travel in New England 1790-1840. Sturbridge, Mass: Old Sturbridge Village, 1967. “Population Trends in Boston 1640–1990,” Boston History and Architecture, Accessed September7, 2021 http://www.iboston.org/mcp.php?pid=popFig Regele, Lindsay Schakenbach. “Early National Bro Culture in Daniel Parker’s War Department,” Commonplace, 17 (2017). http://commonplace.online/article/earlynational-bro-culture-in-daniel-parkers-war-department/ Resolves of the General Court of Massachusetts Passed and Begun at the Session Holden in Boston, On the Twenty-Ninth Day of May in the Year of Our Lord, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Eleven. Boston: Adams Rhoades, 1811. Taylor, Alan. Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760–1820. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. “The Scourge (Boston) 1811–1811” Library of Congress, Newspaper Division. Accessed August6, 2021. https://www.loc.gov/item/2006255045/ “To the Republicans of Norfolk County,” Boston Gazette, March 25, 1811, 1. Vila, Anna C. “The Philosophe’s Stomach Hedonism, Hypochondria and the Intellectual Enlightenment in France,” In Cultures of the Abdomen: Diet, Digestion, and Fat in the Modern World, eds. Christopher E. Forth and Ana Carden-Coyne. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

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Figure 9.1 “USS Enterprise takes the HMS Boxer, September 5, 1813” By J.O. 1857, Courtesy Wikimedia Commons {{PD-US-expired}}.

“In truth I have been in a chrysalis condition for some wasted years, but will now emerge in intellectual expansion & the brightness of virtue.”1

While Daniel struggled with his depression and his future, the country edged ever closer to another war with Great Britain. Relations between the two nations were at a breaking point. Britain’s Orders-in-Council that had hobbled American commerce remained in place. Rumors circulated that further restrictions were forthcoming. Young Republicans in Congress who hailed mostly from the South and West such as thirty-four-year-old Henry Clay of Kentucky and South Carolina’s twenty-nine-year-old John C. Calhoun, were DOI: 10.4324/9781003091691-10

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Madison’s voice for the pro-war cause.2 Clay and Company, known as War Hawks, had been demonizing Britain for months, outraged by British intransigence on the seas that they saw as insulting to American sovereignty. Equally menacing to American well-being, they insisted, were pernicious Canadians who were fomenting anti-American unrest among the Northwest Indians. A favorable outcome of a war with Britain, they argued, would not only strengthen American identity but by invading and acquiring Canada, the Indian threat would be neutralized, with the added bonus that British commerce would suffer from lack of Canadian timber, fish, and wheat.3 Although older, more conservative Republicans, the Randolph Tertium Quids, were reluctant to begin another war with Britain, eventually the War Hawks succeeded in persuading their reticent colleagues that the only possible American rejoinder to British depredations had to be war.4 Fortified by the War Hawk rhetoric streaming out of Washington, Elbridge Gerry and his supporters, including his mordant critic Daniel Lincoln, were not only convinced that another war meant ultimate deliverance from British oppression, but that Federalists in Massachusetts were on the run. In his address to the General Court in January 1812, Gerry equated Federalists with Royalists. Reaching for an old chestnut that dated back to the ratification debate over the Constitution, Gerry suggested that Federalist subversives hoped to establish a monarchical government, that they polluted a free press by promoting license instead of liberty, and were the architects of deeply divisive politics meant to shatter the nation.5 Federalists listened, got angry, and got organized. Gerry may have thought Federalism was finished in Massachusetts. Gerry was wrong. To Boston Federalists, everything about the war spelled disaster. They would defend their homes and their families and support a navy (they had long championed a maritime defense to protect merchant shipping) but would not participate in anything they believed would encourage an armed conflict.6 Calling themselves the “Peace Party,” Federalists believed that forcing Britain into a two-front war strengthened Napoleon, who to Federalists, had always been the bigger threat. They also rejected the view that occupying Canada was anything but a fever dream. Acquiring Canada would make the United States too large and unwieldy to function as a republic. Besides, Canada had shown no hostility to the United States. Invading it would prompt Britain to strike back across the border, most likely in Massachusetts’s own backyard, the District of Maine.7 Determined to stop the movement toward war, in the run-up to the March 1812 gubernatorial election Federalists spilled antirepublican ink onto broadsides, pamphlets, and newspaper editorials by the dozens. Federalists promised that a vote for Gerry was a vote for “Taxes, Embargo, and War.”8 Gerry’s own legislation, especially the Religious Freedom Act, also contributed to the opposition’s arsenal. Otherwise complacent Congregationalists who felt their position under attack by zealous Baptists and others roused themselves to get to the polls. For other voters, Gerry’s

War Zones 1811–1813 157 clumsy partisan prestidigitation in the gerrymandering episode convinced them that Gerry could not be trusted.9 It was of no help to Gerry that just days before the election Madison imposed a ninety-day trade embargo as a signal to American shipping to return home before the cannons started firing. Over 100,000 voters went to the polls in April 1812 to show Gerry the door and put the Federalist stalwart Caleb Strong back in the governor’s seat in the heaviest election turnout Massachusetts had ever seen.10 (One of the few Republicans elected that year was Worcester County’s freshman state senator, Levi Lincoln, Jr., Daniel’s older brother.) Two months later, on June 18, 1812, Congress issued a proclamation of war on Great Britain. Emboldened by his gubernatorial victory and a Federalist majority in the state House of Representatives, Strong refused to provide James Madison with his forty-one companies of militia for the national defense. The governor contended that because the national government had not gone through proper channels when making its request to federalize the state militia, the quota demand was, in fact, illegal.11 Three Federalist judges in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court lined up behind Strong and agreed that the state constitution guaranteed the governor’s right to decide where and how to use the militia of his commonwealth. The lower house also supported Strong’s position, but the Senate, with its slim Republican majority, strongly dissented.12 “The rightful authority has decreed. Opposition must cease: He that is not for his country, is against it,” the Senate declared.13 Levi Lincoln, Jr. assisted in writing the opposition speech, but the lower house indignantly struck the speech from the House Record.14 The Republican delegation in Massachusetts may have been out of power but they were not about to permit Federalist anti-war sentiment to prevail in the commonwealth. To them, Federalist resistance signaled support of Great Britain and was nothing less than treason. Gerry, who interpreted Strong’s refusal to summon the militia as an invitation to a British invasion, encouraged Republicans to form informal home guards to curtail and monitor Strong and other Federalist “Tories.”15 Back in Worcester, Levi dusted off his collection of Farmer’s Letters that assailed Federalist clergy for their political activism and pro-British sympathies and republished them.16 Skipping Independence Day celebrations in favor of a day of fasting on July 23, Strong called for the Boston public to mourn the “needless” war instead. Federalist clerics enjoined their congregations to resist war measures while several counties drafted protests and sent them to the president.17 The fevered Federalist opposition made for tempestuous times for Boston’s Republicans. Republican leader Benjamin Austin’s house was stoned, and other Republicans were fired from their jobs or assaulted on the street.18 Daniel blamed Strong for the unrest. He had “abused the occasion of fasting in the bitterest reviling of the General Administration,” in order to stir up “exhortations to sedition.”19 On August 10, 1812, Daniel and other Middlesex County Republicans gathered for a public rally in Concord. Their purpose was to draft and pass

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a series of resolutions protesting Strong’s response to the war declaration and present it to the assembled faithful. In the resolutions to which Daniel contributed, the Middlesex Republicans vowed to “repel and defeat the seditious attempts of the opposers of constitutional authorities” whose “avarice has wasted like the pestilence and whose ambition has devoured like the grave.” In a stirring declaration of Republican principles, they resolved a war against Great Britain was “just, expedient and necessary; that it was the only remaining means left unattempted by the government of the United States for the vindication of their natural rights and natural honor.” They promised to “endure all the hardships, privations and perils and hazard our lives and estates for the preservation of the liberty and independence purchased by heroes arms, sealed with our father’s blood and transmitted in invaluable and perpetual inheritance to their posterity.”20 Next, they commended the senators and congressmen who supported the war and damned the Federalists for their “heinous outrages of order and decency … and contempt of the sovereignty of the people” that their “specious names and hollow professions … has excited opposition to the government.” Furthermore, “professed teachers of religion who have perverted their vocation to party purposes” are “rebels against heaven and traitors to their country” and should resign their pulpits. Caleb Strong’s refusal to call up the Massachusetts militias forced the citizens of Middlesex to take up arms independently for the protection of their families from “the tomahawk and bayonet.” “Traitorous conspirators” will be carefully watched until they find a new government “more congenial to their wishes” elsewhere. Republicans resolved to promote domestic manufactures as essential to achieving independence from England while guarding against the avarice and ambition that corrupted Britain. Finally, the Middlesex Republicans promised that a County Committee and a Committee of Correspondence and Public Safety would be formed as protection against their enemies.21 As grown men and heirs of the Revolution they pledged to protect the independence their fathers had won for them. Severing the lingering bonds with Britain would not only secure independence but would prove their worthiness on a field of battle.22 “The meeting was more numerous, more respectable & more spirited than any one of like kind than I ever attended & was entirely unanimous,” reported a charged Daniel to Enoch the following day. “My resolutions were passed – an address prepared by Mr. Gerry, was submitted, accepted & ordered to be published with the resolutions. The resolutions are thus honorably noticed in the Boston Gazette of this morning …. I will now defend these resolutions by chapter & verse.”23 Indeed, The Gazette noticed and then dismissed the Middlesex Resolutions as a temper tantrum. “The Resolutions of the War party … are the most indecent ever known …. The malignity of these Resolutions would be alarming, but that the party, avowing these sentiments, is too contemptible to be feared.” Downplaying the attacks on their patriotism and morality, Federalists pointed out that

War Zones 1811–1813 159 the Republican meeting attracted fewer attendees than did the meeting of the Peace Party Federalists that went on simultaneously. Their message of opposition and resistance produced a more animated civic response, at least according to one Federalist reporter.24 Although Daniel pledged great loyalty to the war effort, he preferred that his service to his country be away from the field of battle and inside the courtroom as a judge advocate. He did, however, work to procure equipment for the Worcester Light Infantry under his brother John’s command, but there is no evidence that he entertained any notion to join that militia or any other, even as a commissioned officer and even though his country needed soldiers badly. On the eve of the war the regular United States army totaled a miniscule 4,000 men. The American navy was equally small and underequipped. During 1811 and early 1812, Congress increased the size of the army mostly through incorporating state militias. Very few, however, enlisted in the regular army despite inducement for bounty land or extra pay. Many opted to stay at home, either because they opposed the war politically or because they were not inclined to head off to the northern wilderness to fight Indians or Canadians against whom they had no grudge. Plus, the integration of local militia with the regular army was loaded with problems. Regular soldiers looked on militias with scorn, as poorly trained, poorly equipped, and feckless.25 Even if a Massachusetts man had wanted to soldier, Caleb Strong’s resistance to federalizing his militias ensured that even the most eager would be going nowhere.26 From Boston, Major Daniel Lincoln’s first court-martial case involved serving on the defense counsel for General Ebenezer Goodale, Major General of the Second Division of the Militia of Massachusetts. Goodale was charged with six offenses “against the laws for regulating, governing, and disciplining the militia of this Commonwealth.” The chief judge advocate was John Varnum, a Federalist who to Daniel’s surprise had recommended him to Gerry. Daniel’s role as a junior judge advocate was to question witnesses and produce motions which were then communicated to the court through Varnum.27 One of the charges against Goodale stemmed from his leniency with a Captain Bowditch who had illegally excused a private from July Fourth training. When Goodale refused to act against Bowditch, he was accused of delegating authority to incompetent subordinate officers.28 The rest of the suit charged that in his last few days as governor, Elbridge Gerry directed Goodale to use his influence in the election of a brigadier general by attempting to bribe the voting officers with a quid pro quo. If they would vote for Goodale’s choice for brigadier general, he would appoint their choice to be colonel. The tactic backfired. The eight voting officers split their votes, failed to elect Goodale’s choice, and word of Goodale’s bribe made its way to Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Brimblecom who was eager to testify against Goodale and his patron, Gerry. In his defense as presented by Varnum, Goodale claimed that he had visited the officers not as their commander but

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as a private man which was his prerogative as a citizen-soldier.29 If the officers voted as Goodale recommended it was only because they were impressed with his demeanor, not intimidated by his rank. As a man-toman exchange, he had done nothing more than express his own opinion, Varnum argued. While waiting for the verdict, Daniel told Enoch that he had no complaint as to how the trial was conducted and felt that the witnesses reported well of Goodale. But he felt the opposing side had “perverted” Goodale’s case. He doubted the outcome would be favorable.30 He was right. Of the six charges, Goodale was guilty of the four most serious ones, including election tampering. He was relieved of his office and barred from holding any military office for five years.31 At the conclusion of the trial, Daniel returned to his private practice until called upon to assist in another court-martial. During most of 1812, Daniel’s continued to make periodic visits to Maine on Dian. On his way to Waldoboro in June 1812, Daniel stopped at a small cabin looking for a drink of water. A Black woman “half-clad and half in native sable” or half-naked, opened the door. She had no water to offer him, but she volunteered to go down the road and fill a bowl for Daniel. As she went inside for a container, Daniel followed her. What he found shocked him. The hut’s floor was earthen. There were no windows, only holes cut in the timbers. In one corner a pig lay in its pen, in another stood a “ragged bedstead crossed with ropes” upon which the woman’s crippled husband slept. What little money they had she had earned by spinning, only she had no spinning wheel of her own. She borrowed the neighbor’s wheel whenever it was not in use, which was seldom. “It was the darkest picture of misery – it was the most absolute reality of wretchedness I have ever witnessed,” Daniel said to Enoch. When he left, he gave the woman what money he had and said to her. “Then go poor devil & buy a wheel & spin on it all the time, after you have put straw under your crippled husband. God bless you.” The grateful woman ran ahead for the water and with a trembling hand, offered it to Daniel. No longer thirsty, he took the bowl from her anyway. “I knew she wished it nectar for my sake & I drank it to the bottom, as eagerly as if it had been the beverage of the Gods.” The “poor negress,” he told Enoch, “haunted my dreams.”32 The encounter was as unusual as it was surprising. Slavery had essentially eneded in Massachusetts since 1783 when Levi Lincoln argued a case on behalf of Quock Walker, but the Black population had remained very small. In 1810 there were still few people of African descent in the District of Maine: 929 out of a total population of 227,736 or 0.4 percent.33 Out of the 1,516 people who made their home in Waldoboro in 1810, four of them were Black. Most everyone else was of German descent who had fled civil wars and taxation and were drawn by the inducement of 125 acres courtesy of patent holder Samuel Waldo.34 Most people of African descent who landed in Maine tended to work on the docks in the cities where they had arrived via the Caribbean trade route. Waldoboro, famous for its ship-building and

War Zones 1811–1813 161 coastal trade, located on Broad Bay with an open access to the ocean, was one such town.35 Perhaps the family Daniel came upon, like so many others, had dared to dream of owning their own farm and had squatted there hoping for the best. After the man of the family became infirm, the task of survival fell to his wife. Her work opportunities were few. She might have hired herself out as an indentured servant, but that would have forced her to leave her husband for extended periods. As a woman, she would have been unemployable as a laborer. To make matters worse, Waldoboro had experienced huge losses during the 1807 Embargo leaving poor relief coffers particularly strained. It would take another thirty years before there was a benevolent association established for the aid of “deserving widows.”36 The woman Daniel encountered had no resources, no help, no benevolent society. For a penniless spinner without a spinning wheel, Daniel’s gift was a temporary buoy in her ocean of despair. Once away from Waldoboro, Daniel turned his attention back to the war and his business at hand. No further mention of African Americans or slavery appear in his letters. Daniel followed the prosecution of the war through correspondence with his twelve-year-old brother, William. William was fascinated by all things war-related and eager to find a like-minded compatriot with whom he could discuss it. For several months the two brothers exchanged opinions about battles, generals, and strategies. In 1813, however, progress on the American front had been negligible. The Niagara Campaign that was supposed to drive out the British and end with the occupation of Lower Canada had been foiled by internal squabbles between Republican Brigadier General Alexander Smyth and Federalist Major General Stephen van Rensselaer. Their mutual distrust frustrated any chance of coordinating their troops and won both officers the distrust and contempt of men and officers alike. After two misguided and abortive attempts to cross into Canada that had dissolved into massive confusion among the men and blame bordering on mutiny, Smyth dismissed the militia.37 Frustrated and angry, his volunteers resorted to mayhem, randomly firing their guns and threatening to murder their commander.38 Daniel shared their anger. “Smyth deserves crucifixion,” a scornful Daniel wrote to William. “A gallows is the only elevation to which he has pretensions. Rashness & ignorance have undertaken & cowardice & treason have counteracted the military enterprises of this country in the late campaign.”39 Smyth’s actions were not what the pro-war Republicans had counted on. He had betrayed their confidence and humiliated them. Daniel blamed an incompetent military for failing to assemble a robust army. “Talent & martial spirit are as rare in the Army as system & science have been in the War Department.”40 Smyth, for his part, was forced into military retirement back in Virginia. Four years later he was elected to Congress.41 Grim war reports notwithstanding, Daniel delighted in his correspondence with William. Besides discussing botched military campaigns and

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Smyth’s shortcomings, Daniel offered William counsel on matters of the heart. What young William made of Daniel’s insights on love (“True love is guileless. It utters no lie, plays no tricks on credulity & practices no impositions”) is open to speculation, but the letters quickly moved away from the serious and philosophical to a more playful tone.42 Daniel pronounced William’s marches with his frog and mice soldiers superior to the real thing. He praised William’s courage in taking on the geese & turkeys, but he also admonished him to be disciplined in all matters and offered him an aphorism. “Cowards bluster from fear while heroes are quiet in the confidence of their strength.”43 To add to his brother’s domestic army, he sent him a dog, a terrier companion to be named and cared for by William. The spring of 1813 brought some hope that Americans might prevail after all. “The best of men for soldiers enlist very freely now & promise a harvest of martial glory to the United States. The war will be urged very earnestly, as soon as this season will permit,” Daniel observed.44 Daniel may have been too optimistic. Reasons to celebrate remained few except for the battle at York (present-day Toronto) in April. American soldiers burned and plundered the town thereby boosting the American advantage on Lake Ontario, essential to the American plan to control the St. Lawrence River and Canada.45 “The intelligence of a victory over the Allied Armies at Little York gilds this morning & dissipates the chill & gloom of an Easterly storm. No patriot will be haunted with blue devils today,” exulted Daniel.46 Unfortunately, the American advantage proved temporary. By May they were in retreat. By June their “operations remained inconclusive.”47 Daniel spent most of 1813 gathering evidence for the Brown Claim (now in its second year) and arguing causes in the Supreme Judicial Court and in the Court of Common Pleas. Although his professional life continued to be busy, in early spring an intriguing business opportunity presented itself. Daniel does not specify what it was, only that he needed a loan from his father to close the deal. He assured his family that it would not interfere with his other professional pursuits and if it came to fruition, the arrangement would anchor him in Boston for life. His family advised him against it, fearful that if it should fail, it would set off a downward spiral from which there would be no return. Disappointed by their lack of support emotionally and financially, Daniel reluctantly dropped the plan.48 A few weeks later in the company of his brother John, Daniel encountered an acquaintance who inquired about Levi who, to Daniel’s surprise, was recovering from an accident. During their several days together, John had said nothing about the incident. It was obvious to Daniel that the family conspired to leave him in the dark about the mishap, as one would an emotionally unstable child. He immediately dispatched an indignant letter to Enoch.

War Zones 1811–1813 163 Would to God my heart was case hardened! But I am learning philosophy, rather, I am taught misanthropy & must have been an egregious blockhead having been so long under tuition to have profited so little by my instruction…. I have just relinquished hopes of great promise & prospects of high expectations because certain persons were terrified by the apprehension that I might meet a scar, that those persons should suppose me indifferent concerning their wounds. I believe I shall cease to be the shuttlecock of whim bye & bye.49 His family’s estimation of his immaturity and his ability to weather disappointment without plunging into despondency and drink, left him wounded and infantilized. The “certain persons” whom he had tried to please, who predicted disaster if he encountered “a scar,” who thought him “indifferent concerning his wounds” had to be Levi, his father. It was a harsh and crushing rebuke. The betrayal cut and festered. Relationships with the Hingham cousins foundered as well. Martha Lincoln, the third wife of Levi’s brother, Amos Lincoln, summoned Daniel to the family home to bid goodbye to her daughter who was seriously ill. The young woman, Martha Robb, had been in love with Daniel but he had not reciprocated the feeling. Perhaps in an inebriated state, he had flirted with her without serious intent, but poor Martha had fallen for him. Now she was sick and brokenhearted. Her family blamed Daniel for her decline. “My ingratitude for the regard with which she honored me is an imputed cause of this dreadful alteration. Every eye but hers complained of me…. Every sympathetic fiber of my soul is jangled into a tumultuous dissonance by this unhappy affair. I believe fortune has selected me for the butt of her archery. She will exhaust her quiver bye & bye or my heart will become so scarified, that she will be unable to distinguish her marks & unrecorded success will be no support for her.”50 Although he dutifully continued to visit Martha, her family’s contempt for him remained undiminished. They had had enough of Daniel Lincoln who, in their view, sowed upset and heartache. In the end, Martha survived but Daniel’s relationship with her family did not. After his aunt’s indictment, Daniel drifted away from his Hingham cousins. He never mentioned Hingham, Quincy, or his cousins again in his letters. Martha Robb, however, lived to be seventy-three- years old, dying wealthy and unmarried in 1874.51 Wounded by his Worcester family, considered cruel by his extended family, it seemed to Daniel that all those closest to him, apart from the loyal but distant Enoch, had lost faith in him. He could hardly wait to escape the recriminations, saddle Dian and “fly to the wilderness” on another business sojourn to Maine.52 Stopping in Portland to check in on his business there with Joseph Pope, when he was feeling most dejected and unwanted, he discovered that Mary Hodges had not only agreed to see him, but was open to resuming their courtship. The elated Daniel could hardly wait to tell Enoch the good news. “She has promised to repeat the miracle of restoring

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a man, who had been bowed down for years, which ended for me & will not love the penitent less for being her moral patient. She has exorcised me & cast out an evil spirit. You will expect to find me a regular, discreet man hereafter for I have firmly resolved to go & sin no more. I am on probation.”53 Leaving nothing to chance, and finding little reason to stay in Boston Daniel decided to move back to Portland as soon as he could. Within two months he had left his Boston practice to Leonard Parker, found lodgings in Portland with a Dr. Samuel Ayer, and reopened his Portland office with Joseph Pope in Haymarket Row, the town’s commercial center.54 “I can anticipate a happier life than I have passed in Boston & a more useful one, one more prudent & respectable; indeed I will command success gainsay it, whosoever may …. I am in high health, spirits & hopes ….” he reported to his father.55 Levi responded with a chilly silence. The resurrection of his relationship with Mary and another chance at a good and worthy life, triggered ruminations on what mattered in life, thoughts he candidly shared with his mother who, unlike his father, still corresponded with her errant son.Strengthened by Mary who could love him in spite of all the pain and disappointment he had caused, gave Daniel the courage for an honest self-appraisal. Many times he had shunned society protesting that it held no interest for him, that it was a distraction, not worth his while. Something was fundamentally wrong, he had said time and again, with a world of selfish strangers who saw only his shortcomings, blind to who he really was. Now comforted and confident in his restoration, he admitted to his mother that love, concern, or “social magnatism” was what mattered most. With growing confidence in his future contentment, Daniel concluded that the secret ingredient to a balance between responsibility to others and the pursuit of self-interest was personal happiness. Virtue was essential for the public man, but it was friendship, regard, and love that brought joy to the private man. Here was the bridge between old school republicanism and new school self-interest. Private happiness made public virtue possible. What is virtue? Conformity of our actions to the interests of mankind …. Justice, temperance, benevolence & piety are essential equally to private prosperity & general welfare … Heaven would be no paradise but for the society of angels & saints …. The sweet attraction of social magnetism has been the cause of all my enjoyments. It has tied me to friends, bound me to parents, yoked me in fraternal relations & linked me to Charlotte & Mary & tho it has drawn me to the grave of one I most loved, my temper has been chastened & the wildness of my spirits retrained by the holy bondage & I hope in some degree, prepared me for a world of love …. In truth I have been in a chrysalis condition for some wasted years, but will now emerge in intellectual expansion & the brightness of virtue.56

War Zones 1811–1813 165 During this period of contentment and promise, a question from Mary prompted Daniel to examine his feelings on religion. A sporadic and cynical Unitarian churchgoer at best, Daniel was, like his father, anti-clerical rather than anti-religion. Daniel mentioned going to church only twice in his letters. Once was in the context of selling his pew in Portland, which suggests that he had actually used the pew from time to time but no longer. The second mention was when he attended services with his sister Martha in Hingham. On that occasion Martha scolded him for laughing at the musical accompaniment of an inept fiddler and disrupting the service with his irreverance.57 But Mary inquired about his beliefs, not his Sunday habits. When she asked him if there was such a thing as an atheist, he hazarded an answer. No, he concluded, there could not be such a “moral monster.” God was undeniable because as the creator he was everywhere in nature. God existed, Daniel told her, even though humans cannot fully comprehend Him. “The mind is restrained by a chain, howsoever extensive, yet limited & cannot approach God.” God should not be anthropomorphized in a childish effort to understand Him. “Let ignorance clothe the Creator with Justice, Truth, mercy & every variety color & tint of virtue …. It is decorating an idol with ideal robes & worshipping a rainbow garment, not Deity.” To illustrate, Daniel equated man with a horse and God with the rider. The horse cannot know what the rider has in mind for him. He must go with his commands even when he cannot understand the purpose of the journey, but he cannot doubt that “naught exists without a cause.” Whether it be called Fortune, chance, accident or otherwise, whether one or another class of attributes be ascribed may not be essential. It is the first cause, the creator of all things by whom we live & move & have our being, this is the unknown & incomprehensible God, whom it is our duty to worship in ‘spirit & in truth.’ Reverence to Deity & benevolence to mankind is the sum of our Savior’s precepts. The law is written in the hearts of all men & all have acknowledged the authority of the original Legislator whose son has proclaimed it to the nations. The arrogance of pride or the fatuity of ignorance in Jew or Gentile, Christian or pagan, civilized or savage have always recognized & reverenced a first cause.58 Having clearly established his belief in the Divine, Daniel reiterated that he would remain well outside the church walls as long as there were pastors inside them. “The presumption & folly of preachers, their almost blasphemous arrogance disgusts & offends me.” He ended his letter with a comment concerning Mary’s piety. “I would not marry a woman that was not religious … I believe she trusts implicitly in the uprightness of my principles.”59 Tutored by Unitarian Aaron Bancroft prior to entering Harvard, Daniel received his theological instruction in college from David Tappan, a

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moderate Calvinist. His personal theology, therefore, reflected an amalgam of several influences. It did not stray far from the Unitarianism that Bancroft preached, free inquiry and private judgment unhindered by Calvinist dogma, but he added a dose of enlightened philosophy that rested on observable empirical phenomena, inductive reasoning, and sensory experience.60 As did many Deists, he rejected the notion of eternal life for humans when all other living things perished forever at death. The message of Christianity was simple. “Reverence to deity and benevolence to mankind.” Love God. Live by the Golden Rule.61 Feeling more secure in his private life, Daniel felt equally hopeful about his professional future. Joseph Pope had kept the Portland practice going for the three years Daniel was in Boston. The two men were confident that with Daniel’s return they could substantially increase their business and profits. Still, returning to Maine in the middle of a war that bordered a hostile country was risky. American progress along the St. Lawrence had stalled that summer and Canada had yet to be conquered.62 Because of the ongoing dispute between James Madison and Caleb Strong regarding the legality of the war and Strong’s refusal to deploy his militias, the eastern counties were largely undefended and therefore frighteningly vulnerable to British aggression. Additionally, rumors circulated that Maine was suffering food shortages that were not due to trade embargos but because of the Almighty’s displeasure with the war. God, apparently, was punishing those who supported the conflict by keeping the pickings on their tables slim. Daniel found the Maine shortages to be non-existent and Strong’s edict ridiculous. “The reported scarcity in Maine is fabulous. The price of grain is nearly the same as in Boston. Meats are plenty as usual,” he reported.63 “Unknown fertility covers the fields of Maine …. Plenty smiles everywhere …. Pray is this abundance ‘a judgment on the nation, on account of their unnatural, unjust & wicked war’?”64 The closest Portland came to seeing any direct military action came in August 1813 when an army regiment passed through on its way to Swanton, Vermont to avenge British depravations that had occurred there a month earlier. Swanton, strategically located near the border with Canada, had hosted several Vermont militia regiments. A few weeks after the troops departed in July, British soldiers swooped in and torched three empty barracks, a hospital, ransacked the countryside, and allegedly raped a young woman. “The injuries inflicted on their countrymen by these barbarians rankle in their bosoms; fever of their indignant resentment will be abated only by a bath of blood,” Daniel commented to Enoch. During their brief stopover, Portland feted the soldiers that included William Gray, the former lieutenant governor who had been present at Daniel’s 1810 oration in Boston. In an unusual display of unity and patriotism, the grateful citizens of Portland, Federalists and Republicans alike, entertained the “distinguished civil and martial characters” at an elegant dinner, raising their glasses innumerable times in appreciative toasts.65

War Zones 1811–1813 167 Portlanders had every reason to be grateful to see some soldiers in their neighborhood, even if just for an overnight visit. The town’s proximity to the harbor and the open sea beyond left Portlanders uneasy. They were relieved when a few weeks after William Gray and his soldiers had come through town, the USS Enterprise, a fourteen-gun schooner under the command of twenty-eight–year-old William Burrows , sailed into port. Burrows was tasked with safeguarding the fishing trade from enemy vessels with maleficent ideas. A few weeks later, on September 4th, word came that the HMS Boxer, a British twelve gun brig-sloop had been in an altercation with a Danish vessel, the Margaretta off Pemaquid Harbor, about forty miles north of Portland. The altercation, as it turned out, was pure theater. Merchants from the area had been illegally importing British goods through the Margaretta with protection from the Boxer. To make it look like the Boxer and Margaretta were not in cahoots, they staged some harmless firing at one another. The whole scheme backfired when their skit drew the attention of Burrows who then prepared for a real engagement.66 On September 5, 1813, the Enterprise met up with the Boxer off Penguin Point, a few miles outside of Portland. After circling one another for six hours, the British brig fired the first blast but inflicted little damage. The Enterprise quickly steered across the Boxer’s bow and peppered the vessel with cannon fire. Thirty minutes later, Burrows was fatally struck by a musket ball but managed to maintain his command and ordered his crew not to strike the flag. He remained on deck for the remaining fifteen minutes of the conflagration until the Boxer surrendered, its mast severed.67 Burrows died, the victor, eight hours later. The thirty-year-old captain of the Boxer, Samuel Blyth, also died, severed nearly in half by an eighteenpound cast-iron cannonball. In all, four Americans and twenty-five British sailors perished (although estimates varied) and seventeen others were wounded.68 The crippled ships sailed into Portland the following day, their progress carefully tracked and reported from observers in the Portland Observatory. Hailed “Another Brilliant Naval Victory” by the Portland papers, celebrations were quickly muted when word spread that both Burrows and Blythe had been killed.69 The good citizens of Portland took no time in deciding that they would provide appropriately dignified funerals complete with “all the honors that the civil and military authorities at the place, and the great body of the people, could bestow” on both captains.70 Few who witnessed the funerals could ever forget that day.71 Out in the harbor the brigs and the ports fired their guns. Open hearses carried the coffins through the streets as officers, state and local officials, and other dignitaries followed behind. Following the service at the Second Parish, the two young captains were laid to rest, side-by-side in the Eastern Cemetery.72 The somber affair led many who already opposed the war, to despise it even more. Even those who supported it were brought up short by the loss of two men just entering their adult lives. Haunted by the sadness of the day,

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Daniel composed a tribute to the fallen Burrows, and as was his custom, sent the completed poem to Enoch, Leonard Parker, and his father. With reverent footsteps be approached the tomb, Where laurels flourish in the Cyprus gloom, And tear & trophies consecrate the grave, Where nation’s plaudits eulogize the brave, And honor makes her bed on freedom’s ground, By virtue’s sacred halo circled round! Contented martyr to the country’s cause The stern avenger of insulted laws Thy dauntless arm thy martial spirit proved By heroes honored & by patriots loved Of soul unsullied of unquestioned truth Though fallen, untimely, in the pride of youth.73 Parker, enthused, thought the poem should be immortalized in a national monument to Burrows. (It was not.) Levi, however, chose not to respond to Daniel’s grandiloquent attempt to reach him. Daniel had hoped that being witness to a to a great naval victory and a participant in the sad events that followed, would rouse his family to contact him. Wouldn’t they want to know what his experience had been? Wouldn’t they be interested in an insider’s view of what happened? His brother John’s silence appeared “almost obstinate” but maybe, Daniel admitted, he was being overly sensitive. “I shall learn better bye & bye, shall have my affectionate regards weaned from Worcester & the things which were home. If nothing else, the naval victory obtained in our bay must have reminded you that such a place as Portland existed & I should hope your heart would have whispered that a brother was there.”74 In letter after letter Daniel inquired as to the meaning of his family’s silence. In December he complained to his mother “more in sorrow than in anger” that except for Enoch, no one from home had written to him for months. In a poor joke, he said the lack of correspondence had allowed him to economize on stationery and quills. “If my brothers & sisters find no response to my cordial feelings of friendship in their hearts, if the sentiments of my soul awaken no echo in their minds, then nature is a step-dame & I am her spoilt child for she has fondly indulged me in wild fancies … of fraternal unity & love.”75 The deafening silence from the Worcester Lincolns made clear to Daniel that they intended to marginalize and punish him, especially after his decision to abandon Boston and return to Portland. They had tired of broken promises and giddy prophecies of contentment and sobriety that had proven time and again to be short-lived. They had done what they could to save him. In their view, and especially in Levi’s, Daniel had recklessly

War Zones 1811–1813 169 thrown away his Boston practice to tether his happiness to a woman who had refused him once before. If disappointed in love again as surely he would be, how easy would it be for Daniel to reach for a drink, and another and another, to dull the pain and retreat into a bitter, blaming, solitary existence?76 Daniel persisted in trying to convince his parents that Portland was the answer to all his troubles. “I am ranked more highly in my own estimation than aforetime, am occupied in law, literature & love & am very content, save the lack of letters from home.”77 Except for Enoch, and even his letters came sparingly, no one responded. As the estrangement from his family wore on, Daniel grew more apprehensive. He pleaded with Enoch to move to Portland and practice law with him there. “I am sensible of all the comforts & joys, social attractions & endearments that encircle, with magic influence, the paternal hearth, but we have a great deal of work to perform during our lives, Enoch & must be up and doing.”78 Enoch did move to Maine, but to Fryeburg, not Portland. Daniel did his best to get Enoch to change his mind and come to Portland instead.He enlisted a fellow attorney, Simon Greenleaf, to offer Enoch a parcel of land on which he could build an office near him.79 But Enoch was not persuaded and keeping his distance, remained in Fryeburg. He continued to write Daniel from time to time but refused to visit him. Ill-tempered and alienated, when Daniel learned of his sister Martha’s engagement to his former partner Leonard Parker, he sullenly proffered that the two were a terrible match. “There is too much of Sterne’s subacid humor in their dispositions & this is no ingredient in the cup of connubial felicity ….” Prompted by familial disaffiliation, Daniel could not resist the opportunity to insert a dollop of some “subacid humor” of his own by pronouncing the two unsuitable. By comparison, he added that his relationship with Mary, better and purer and happier, was free of such corrosive qualities. “In the composition of my measure of social choice, let not a modicum of such qualities be confused. Forgetfulness, petulance, complaint, disputes & quarrels pioneer the host of vexations & troubles which follow the lead of disappointment. Cheerfulness is a barrier which they cannot surmount.”80 The patronizing cheerful Daniel may have spoken too soon. Sometime during the fall of 1813 or the winter of 1814, Mary, his answer to loneliness, separation, and despair, his “miracle,” whom he expected to marry and spend his life with, quietly disappeared from his letters. He left no hint of what might have provoked the final separation. He may have been drinking again. She may have tired of his grandiose self-pitying ways. There was simply no mention of her ever again. This time there were no recriminating poems or taking himself to task for his bad habits. The rejection was final. Henceforth, love and marriage to Charlotte or Mary, or as he once so gracefully put it, “in memory or hopefulness,” was never spoken of in any context. Daniel had given up on love. Then he began to give up entirely.81

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Notes 1 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, July 10, 1813. DWL Papers. 2 Ronald L Hatzenbuehler and Robert L. Ivie, Congress Declares War: Rhetoric, Leadership and Partisanship in the Early Republic (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1983), 16–7. Although they were the point men for the prowar movement, historians believe that the War Hawks acted on the instructions of the president and other influential Republicans at the apex of the Madison administration. 3 Garry Wills, Henry Adams and the Making of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 280–3. 4 Hatzenbuehler and Ivie, 126; Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: Norton, 2005), 156. Donald Hickey notes that the congressional vote for war was very close. In the House the vote was 79–49. In the Senate it was 19-13. 61% voted in favor of the war. Donald Hickey, Don’t Give Up the Ship!: Myths of the War of 1812 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 39–42. 5 Elbridge Gerry, Speech of His Excellency the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to both Houses of the Legislature at the Session Commencing in the Second Wednesday in January, 1812 (Boston: Printed at the State Press,1812). 6 Donald R. Hickey, “Federalist Party Unity and the War of 1812,” Journal of American Studies 12 (1978): 25; Samuel Eliot Morison, Harrison Gray Otis 1765–1848 The Urbane Federalist, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), 327. 7 Hickey, “Federalist Party Unity,” 25–7. 8 Ronald P. Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 273–4. See also J.C.A. Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 253. 9 Stagg, 256. 10 Ibid., 253–6. The outcome, however, was hardly a landslide but it was enough. Out of the over 104,000 votes cast, 52,978 went to Strong while 51,598 went to Gerry, a mere 1,380 vote difference. Federalists also reclaimed the state House of Representatives although Republicans held on to a one seat majority in the Senate. In 1813 Federalists won both chambers. Massachusetts would not elect another Republican governor for eleven years. Formisano, 116. Gerry was not finished with politics although Massachusetts politics was finished with him. In a position largely viewed as a sinecure, he went on to be elected James Madison’s second vice president in November 1812. He was inaugurated in March 1813 but a year and a half later, on November 13, 1814, he collapsed and died on his way to the Senate. George Billias, Elbridge Gerry: Founding Father and Republican Statesman. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1976), 323–9. 11 Stagg, 259. 12 Carl Edward Skeen, Citizen Soldiers in the War of 1812 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 68. 13 Report on the Committee of the Senate of Massachusetts, June 26, 1812. (Boston: Adams, Rhoades & Co., Printers, 1812), 27. 14 Charles C. Hasewell, “Death of Ex-Governor Lincoln,” in A Memorial of Levi Lincoln the Governor of Massachusetts from 1825 to 1834 (J.E. Farwell, 1868), 55–6. “Mr. Lincoln was a firm supporter of the war, and opposed the course of the majority here with indomitable courage, but always maintained the courtesies of political warfare.” 15 Stagg, 261. 16 Kenneth J Moynihan, A History of Worcester 1674–1848 (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2007), 115.

War Zones 1811–1813 171 17 Richard Buel, Jr., America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle over the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Nation (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 160. 18 James M. Banner, To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts, 1789–1815 (New York: Knopf, 1970), 306–7. 19 Daniel Lincoln to John Lincoln, July 24, 1812, DWL Papers. 20 “Voice of Middlesex!” Boston Patriot, August 12, 1812, 2. 21 Ibid. 22 Steven Watts, The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 208–16. 23 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, August 13, 1812, DWL Papers. 24 “Middlesex County Meeting,” Boston Gazette, August 13, 1812, 2. 25 Water R. Borneman, 1812: The War that Forged a Nation (New York: Harper Collins, 2004), 46; Reginald Horsman, The Causes of the War of 1812 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975), 237; James H. Ellis, A Ruinous and Unhappy War: New England and the War of 1812 (New York: Algora Publishing), 240; and Skeen, Citizen Soldier, 39–61 26 In addition to the Worcester Light Infantry, Worcester County raised one other company of fifty-eight men raising the combined total to about a hundred men in a total population of over 3,000 people. William Lincoln and Charles Hersey, A History of Worcester Massachusetts From Its Earliest Settlement to September, 1836 (Worcester, Mass: Charles Hersey, 1862), 135. 27 Record of the Proceedings of a General Court Martial Holden in the Court House in Salem, in the County of Essex, Monday, September 28, 1812 By Order of his Excellency Caleb Strong, Esq. Governor and Commander in Chief of the Militia of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on the Complaint of Lieut. Col. Samuel Brimblecom and others against Ebenezer Goodale, Major General of the Second Division of the Militia (Cambridge, Mass: Hilliard and Metcalf, 1812), 38. 28 Ibid., 42–6. 29 Ibid., 44–6. 30 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, October 4, 1812, DWL Papers. 31 Record of the Proceedings of a General Court-Martial, 2. 32 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, June 22, 1812, DWL Papers. 33 Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, “Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, For The United States,Regions, Divisions, and States Population Division,” Working Paper Series Number 56 United States Census Bureau Washington, D.C. 2003 September 2002. http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0056/twps0056. html 34 Samuel Llewellyn Miller, History of the Town of Waldoboro, Maine (Wiscasset, Me.: Emerson, 1910), 137; US Federal Census 1810, Series M252, Roll 12, 93. 35 Martha Ballard who lived just down the road in Hallowell, records in her diary having several Black women as assistants. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812 (New York: Knopf, 1990), 224–5. 36 Miller, History of Waldoboro, 138. 37 Stagg, 245–51. 38 Taylor, 196. 39 Daniel Lincoln to William Lincoln, January 8, 1813, DWL Papers. 40 Ibid. 41 When General Peter Porter accused Smyth of cowardice in the Canada campaign, Smyth challenged him to a duel. “Unfortunately, both missed.” John R.

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55 56 57

58 59 60

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Etling, Amateurs, to Arms! A Military History of the War of 1812. (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1991), 71. Daniel Lincoln to William Lincoln, January 16, 1813, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to William Lincoln, nd, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to William Lincoln, April 2, 1813, DWL Papers. Hickey, 37; Stagg, 267; Formisano, 117–8. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, May 9, 1813, DWL Papers. Buel, 179. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, March 8, 1813, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, April 3, 1813, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, April 15, 1813, DWL Papers. Suffolk County (Massachusetts) Probate Records, 1636–1899: Massachusetts. Probate Court, Vol 481–482, 1875 (Salt Lake City, Utah: Genealogical Society of Utah, 1969–1971). Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, April 18, 1813, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, May 26, 1813, DWL Papers. “Notice,” Eastern Argus, August 19, 1813, 3. Haymarket Row was later renamed Monument Square. “The hay scales stood in the middle of the square, surrounded by farmers with wagonloads of hay, meat, eggs, and other produce they had brought to Portland to sell. Buildings were clustered more closely together as the land sloped to the waterfront, where ships arrived laden with molasses and other imported goods or departed with cargoes of wood and other New England products. On the horizon, the islands of Casco Bay were visible across the harbor.” “The House and Grounds,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Maine Historical Society Website, http://www.hwlongfellow.org/house_ exterior.shtml Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, August 12, 1813, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, July 10, 1813, DWL Papers. During one visit to Martha when she was living with relatives in Hingham, he volunteered to be her amanuensis, transcribing her words in his hand in a joint letter home. Daniel, Martha said, was no longer permitted to attend church with her because he had had “the impudence to laugh at our best fiddler, which was not only an evil example, but an offense to the saints and saintesses.” After an arch description of the service conducted by a “stupidly reverend” preacher and music that could be mistaken for an “African funeral howl,” she (or he) followed with a lofty pronouncement on the true meaning of piety – one need not go to church to pray. “The fervent orations of devotion require no interpreter with Heaven.” Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, July 27, 1811. Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, July 1813, DWL Papers. Ibid. E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 174–5. There are four doctrines in Unitarianism theology as it evolved in the early nineteenth century: unity of God, unity of Christ, human potential for good and evil, and atonement to alter the heart rather than satisfy divine law. Holifield, 199. E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era, (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 130–9. Walter R. Borneman, The War that Forged a Nation, (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004), 173. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln May 26, 1813, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, August 22, 1813, DWL Papers.

War Zones 1811–1813 173 65 The Americans had their reprisals at Missisquoi Bay in Canada where on October 15, 1813, they attacked a British regiment. The skirmish lasted ten minutes after which they took 100 British prisoners and marched them through Swanton on their way to military prison. Elaikim Persons Walton, Records of the Governor and Council of the State of Vermont …: Record of the Governor and Council, 1804–1813. (United States: Steam Press of J. & J.M. Poland, 1877), 483. “A Teacher’s Treasure Hunt,” Rutland Herald, October 12, 2014. 66 David Hanna, Knights of the Sea The True story of the Boxer and the Enterprise and the War of 1812, (New York: NAL Caliber, 2012), 180–1. 67 Benson J. Lossing, The Pictorial Field-book of the War of 1812, (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1896), 718; “Seventh Naval Victory,” National Aegis, September 15, 1813, 2. 68 Ellis, A Ruinous and Unhappy War, 134–8. 69 Hanna, 191–4. 70 Quoted in Ellis, 140. 71 One observer was the young Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was six years old at the time. In 1855 he published My Lost Youth, a tribute to his childhood home of Portland that includes a moving stanza to the dead captains, the memory of which never left him. Hanna, 197. 72 Lossing, 718; Ellis, 140–1. 73 “Sacred to the Memory of what was Burroughs (sic),” Daniel Lincoln to Levi Lincoln, October 19, 1813, DWL Papers. 74 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, September 18, 1813, DWL Papers. 75 Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, December 9, 1813, DWL Papers. 76 S.D. Ramos, “What can we learn from psychoanalysis and prospective studies about Chemically Dependent Patients?” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 85 (2004), 467. 77 Daniel Lincoln to Levi Lincoln, October 10, 1813, DWL Papers. 78 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, October 10, 1813, DWL Papers. 79 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, November 19, 1813, DWL Papers. 80 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, September 26, 1813, DWL Papers. 81 Mary Elizabeth Hodges married John Belknap on June 13, 1815 two months after Daniel’s death. Belknap was the son of Jeremy Belknap, a noted abolitionist, historian, and theologian. She moved to Boston with her husband, had four children, and died at the age of 39 in 1832. Accessed July 30, 2020. Maine State Archives; Cultural Building, 84 State House Station, Augusta, ME 04333–0084; Pre 1892 Delayed Returns; Roll Number: 7

Bibliography Archival Material American Antiquarian Society. Daniel Waldo Lincoln Papers. Other Printed Material “A Teacher’s Treasure Hunt,” Rutland Herald, October 12, 2014. Banner, James M. To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts, 1789–1815. New York: Knopf, 1970. Billias, George. Elbridge Gerry: Founding Father and Republican Statesman. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1976.

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Borneman, Water R. 1812: The War that Forged a Nation. New York: Harper Collins, 2004. Buel, Richard. America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle over the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Nation. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005. Ellis, James H. A Ruinous and Unhappy War: New England and the War of 1812. New York: Algora Publishing, 2009. Etling, John R. Amateurs, to Arms! A Military History of the War of 1812. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1991. Formisano, Ronald P. The Transformation of Political Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Gerry, Elbridge. Speech of His Excellency the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to both Houses of the Legislature at the Session Commencing in the Second Wednesday in January, 1812. Boston: Printed at the State Press, 1812. Gibson, Campbell and Kay Jung, “Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, For The United States, Regions, Divisions, and States Population Division,” Working Paper Series Number 56 United States Census Bureau Washington, D.C. 2003 September 2002. http:// www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0056/twps0056.html Hanna, David. Knights of the Sea The True story of the Boxer and the Enterprise and the War of 1812. New York: NAL Caliber, 2012. Hasewell, Charles C. “Death of Ex-Governor Lincoln,” In A Memorial of Levi Lincoln the Governor of Massachusetts from 1825 to 1834. Boston: J.E. Farwell, 1868. Hatzenbuehler, Ronald L and Robert L. Ivie. Congress Declares War: Rhetoric, Leadership and Partisanship in the Early Republic. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1983. Hickey, Donald. Don’t Give Up the Ship!: Myths of the War of 1812. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Hickey, Donald. “Federalist Party Unity and the War of 1812,” Journal of American Studies, 12 (1978): 25. Holifield, E. Brooks. Theology in America Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Horsman, Reginald. The Causes of the War of 1812. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975. Lincoln, William Charles Hersey. A History of Worcester Massachusetts From Its Earliest Settlement to September, 1836. Worcester, Mass: Charles Hersey, 1862. Lossing, Benson J. The Pictorial Field-book of the War of 1812. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1896. Mary Elizabeth Hodges. Accessed July30, 2020. https://www.ancestry.com/familytree/person/tree/7368310/person/102179072241/story “Middlesex County Meeting,” Boston Gazette, August 13, 1812, 2. Miller, Samuel Llewellyn. History of the Town of Waldoboro, Maine. Wiscasset, Me.: Emerson, 1910. Morison, Samuel Eliot. Harrison Gray Otis 1765-1848 The Urbane Federalist. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969. Moynihan, Kenneth J. A History of Worcester 1674-1848. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2007. “Notice,” Eastern Argus, August 19, 1813, 3.

War Zones 1811–1813 175 Ramos, S.D. “What can we learn from psychoanalysis and prospective studies about Chemically Dependent Patients?” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 85 (2004): 467. Report on the Committee of the Senate of Massachusetts, June 26, 1812. Boston: Adams, Rhoades & Co., Printers, 1812. Record of the Proceedings of a General Court Martial Holden in the Court House in Salem, in the County of Essex, Monday, September 28, 1812 By Order of his Excellency Caleb Strong, Esq. Governor and Commander in Chief of the Militia of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on the Complaint of Lieut. Col. Samuel Brimblecom and others against Ebenezer Goodale, Major General of the Second Division of the Militia. Cambridge, Mass: Hilliard and Metcalf, 1812. Rotundo, E. Anthony. American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era. New York: Basic Books, 1993. “Seventh Naval Victory,” National Aegis, September 15, 1813, 2. Skeen, Carl Edward. Citizen Soldiers in the War of 1812. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. Stagg, J.C.A. Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Suffolk County (Massachusetts) Probate Records, 1636–1899: Massachusetts. Probate Court, Vol 481–482, 1875. Salt Lake City, Utah: Genealogical Society of Utah, 1969–1971. “The House and Grounds,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Maine Historical Society Website, http://www.hwlongfellow.org/house_exterior.shtml Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812. New York: Knopf, 1990. United States Federal Census 1810, Series M252, Roll 12, 93. “Voice of Middlesex!” Boston Patriot, August 12, 1812, 2. Walton, Elaikim Persons. Records of the Governor and Council of the State of Vermont …: Record of the Governor and Council, 1804–1813. United States: Steam Press of J. & J.M. Poland, 1877. Watts, Steven. The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. Wilentz, Sean. The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. New York: Norton, 2005. Wills, Garry. Henry Adams and the Making of America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.

10 Providence Slept 1813–1815

Figure 10.1 “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog” by Caspar David Friedrich, 1818. Friedrich captured the archetype of the romantic hero – a man who was one and apart from nature exactly as Daniel saw himself. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons {{PD-US-expired}}. “I consider it quite an equal chance that I never leave this town, that I find my settlement among those who have been.”1

In the gloomy fall of 1813, Daniel’s health started to fail, likely the result of neglect, rejection, and the cirrhosis. In a letter to his mother, he described an ominous “church yard cough” that had been unresponsive to various therapies of roasted onions, extract of garlic, syrups of licorice, and flaxseed.2 The zeal and righteous anger that lit up his earlier letters dimmed. He grew lethargic. He rarely mentioned the war that had ground to a stalemate, or the politics that pitted Caleb Strong against James Madison in an even more bitter political fight. The incendiary topics that had been the spark for political excoriation and indignant diatribes were no longer fodder for his epistolary assaults.3 Fatigue replaced fervor. DOI: 10.4324/9781003091691-11

Providence Slept 1813–1815 177 Coughing, exhausted, and frail, Daniel nevertheless had professional responsibilities he couldn’t ignore. He was still a judge advocate with a high-profile court-martial in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on his calendar. On December 23, 1813, Daniel arrived in Portsmouth as part of the defense team in the trial of William Harper, who had been the sailing master on the Enterprise during its storied battle with the Boxer the previous September. Lieutenant Edward McCall, who had assumed command of the vessel after William Burrows had been fatally injured, accused Harper of cowardice, a capital offense.4 Harper, McCall said, had ordered the flag struck during the fighting, left his station, and frightened the crew by seeking cover behind the foremast screaming, “By God, we shall all be killed!” Arrested on September 11, Harper had been awaiting trial for nearly three months, all the while suffering the hostility and derision of his Portland neighbors. Exhausted by the delay, Harper wrote the Secretary of the Navy, William Jones, pleading for his trial to begin so that he might clear his name and “stand erect in society.”5 Jones ordered Isaac Hull, in command of the Portsmouth Navy Yard, to commence the trial immediately. The trial was scheduled to begin on December 28, 1813, onboard the Enterprise, now fully repaired, restored, and relocated to Portsmouth. Two days before his arrival in Portsmouth a ruinous fire had swept through the town, destroying 108 homes and businesses. The place was still smoking and smoldering when Daniel got there. “The town is emboweled by the flames …. My eyes & heart ache at the contemplation of the spot & of the miseries occasioned by this conflagration to many poor & destitute people who will hardly find shelter from the inclemencies of the season.”6 According to Portsmouth locals, the fire was set by a girl named Colbath who worked as a domestic for a Mrs. Woodward. In trouble with her mistress for pilfering some wine, Colbath vowed revenge and set fire to the Woodward barn. The fire quickly consumed everything surrounding it and left much of Portsmouth in ashes. Remarkably, there were no deaths.7 The blaze did not interfere with the commencement of Harper’s longawaited trial. Daniel was cautiously optimistic about the outcome as there was ample reason to distrust McCall’s charges. There were no other eyewitnesses whose testimony corroborated McCall’s. In fact, what became apparent was that Harper’s biggest crime was not cowardice but unlikability. Many, especially McCall, thought him “cross and crabbed.”8 During the September melee one fractious sailor told Harper that he hoped he would “get killed.” McCall’s case was weakened further when it emerged that Harper had been prize master of the Boxer immediately after the battle, meaning he oversaw the Boxer’s safe arrival in Portland’s harbor.9 Daniel believed that the proceedings were “technically exact … The arrangement of the defense is therefore more easy and methodical” but he stressed over the outcome, as well he should. A guilty ruling would bring Harper to the gallows. “As a question of honorable life or ignominious death may be involved in the result of this trial, I assure you I feel great

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responsibility as the advocate of the defense & associate the ideas of a convict & the yardarm of a ship of war ‘with fear and trembling.’”10 Daniel lined up a series of credible witnesses all of whom refuted McCall’s testimony.11 When Harper delivered his oral defense to the court, many thought it unusually sophisticated for an unschooled sailing master, prompting many spectators to wonder if the words were more his lawyer’s than his own. Harper spoke passionately on a subject with which Daniel was all too familiar – living with a damaged name. “The reputation of an Officer is his existence, his honor the soul of his official being; it should be not only unimpeached, but unsuspected; like a mirror it should be preserved not only free from fracture, but unsullied by a breath of reproach. My honor is dear to me as life and sacred as religion,” said Harper.12 After a lengthy, white-knuckled deliberation, the court unanimously acquitted Harper on January 22, 1814.13 It was Daniel’s biggest and most consequential courtroom victory.14 After the trial the triumphant but drained Daniel returned to Portland, languid and weak. An even weightier court-martial of a brigadier general was on his calendar leaving him no time to indulge his symptoms. He needed to get back to work.15 For a little while, the familiar tetchy Daniel managed to make a reappearance if just to add his armchair observations of wartime brinksmanship. In 1813, the Governor of Upper Canada, George Prevost, ordered that captured American citizens be sent to Great Britain to be tried for treason as the British citizens they once were. The move carried with it the likelihood of execution for the guilty. The United States responded by imprisoning British soldiers who would receive whatever sentences the Americans did. In a military tit-for-tat, the British upped the ante by imprisoning two American officers for every one British soldier taken. In response, ten paroled British officers who had been permitted to reside in Worcester under house arrest were abruptly relocated to the town jail.16 Worcester locals with British sympathies strongly objected. Unsympathetic, Daniel wrote to William, “I do most devoutly wish that those who lose sight of their own country in their commiseration for enemies might be reduced to the situation of their fellow citizens in English prisons, or in savage bondage.”17 Six weeks later, nine of the confined officers tied up the guard and ran off through Worcester County. The guard freed himself and set off an alarm of cannon fire and church bells. Without the benefit of a search warrant, officials entered private residences looking for the fugitives. Five were caught the following day, but four fled to Quebec, scattered, and were never found. The five captured officers were taken elsewhere for the duration of their confinement.18 Getting word of the Worcester fracas, Daniel scolded those who urged leniency for the officers, as misguided, immature, brainless, and womanly. “Every petty & every petticoat politician stood forth, prepared for controversy … The terms expatriation & retaliation to matrons ‘were familiar as household words’ & fitted the rosy lips of flippant maidens as if kisses were in them …. Sympathy should be extended, in no less degree, certainly,

Providence Slept 1813–1815 179 to our fellow citizens, officers of the United States in English prisons who suffer more, fairing ill. Let the brawlers who claim against the severity of the measure as an outrage on humanity & civilization, look to the cause & they will find it to be a measure of self-defense, an accustomed expedient to prevent the destruction of the subjects of one government by another by a minatory denunciation of its own, who are restrained for that purpose,” he added.19 Some weeks later, Daniel could no longer ignore his failing health. Descending a flight of stairs made him feel faint. He lost weight. He tried to pacify his mother’s anxieties by passing off his compromised condition to “the bleak winds on the Piscataquis,” the river he had to pass over daily when going to Harper’s trial in the Portsmouth Navy Yard. He assured her he was taking good care of himself and that the spring air, when it came, would restore him.20 The spring air did not bring recovery, but it did, at last, bring Enoch. Enoch insisted that Daniel remove to Worcester where he could get the care and attention he needed to convalesce. At first Daniel resisted but thanks to Enoch’s “obstinate perseverance,” he relented, believing that the move would be temporary.21 As soon as he was healthy again, he would return to Portland and resume his life there. With that understanding, the two Lincolns made their way back to Worcester. Once Enoch installed Daniel in their father’s house and in the care of their mother and a Dr. Green, he returned to Fryeburg. After a month of rest and recuperation, Daniel reported to Enoch that his health was slowly improving, but he was impatient about it. “I have almost conquered my cough & have acquired an appetite …. from food I gain strength to exercise & from exercise ability to attend to business again.”22 But a month later he was back in his sickbed, blaming inclement weather for the setback. Doctors prescribed a new regime of medicines but to no positive effect.23 For the remainder of the spring he struggled to regain his strength, but even moderate exercise depleted his reserves. “I am incapable of the thought of business, a walk of one quarter of a mile is beyond my reach & a ride of a half-dozen miles length should exhaust me to faintness.” He began to wonder if this lingering illness would one day claim him. Would it be so bad to leave this hollow, empty life? “As for this big, bustling world, it is too little, too vain & vacant to deserve or receive a moment’s notice or consideration. It appears to me like a showman’s exhibition. Is it in reality anything more serious? Those who are in it, must join in its confusion & participate in its giddy motion, must not only dance but must dance in figures to tunes of the fashion, changing as it varies. I am but hors de combat at present.”24 During the spring and summer of 1814 the war came home to Massachusetts. In early April Governor Strong celebrated Napoleon’s defeat at British hands with city-wide festivities in Boston, a remarkable demonstration of support for an army still at war with his own country.

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Strong’s confidence in British friendship was soon put to the test when Britain, now liberated from fighting on two fronts, launched a rejuvenated campaign to end the hostilities in North America. They blockaded Boston, Gloucester, and Salem, attacked Plymouth, captured Nantucket, and burned ships in Wareham and Scituate.25 By September they had captured 100 miles of coastline, between Eastport and Castine in Maine, intended for annexation to Canada at the war’s conclusion. Fearing a direct British invasion was imminent, Strong finally called out the local militias for the defense of Boston, but he steadfastly refused federal command over them.26 Furious, Secretary of State James Monroe told Strong, “The measures which may be adopted by a state government for the defense of a state must be considered as its own measures, not those of the United States.”27 In other words, Massachusetts, you’re on your own. Don’t expect any assistance from the federal government when the situation worsens. Frozen out by the government but unwilling to bend, Strong supported Harrison Grey Otis’s proposal to convene a special convention to discuss self-interest and defense with other New England states. They would draft new constitutional amendments “to preserve for the Eastern states their equal rights and benefits.”28 Strong meant to defend the commonwealth not against the British but against the federal Republicans. To many,Strong’s proposition sounded like an ominous step toward secession.29 Unknown to most was that Strong had also begun secret meetings with the British in Nova Scotia with the intention of negotiating separate peace for Massachusetts if Madison continued to withhold military protection.30 Meanwhile, with or without federal aid, Strong had to defend Boston. He called up several militias, including the Worcester Light Infantry on September 11, 1814. Under the leadership of Captain John Lincoln, the Worcester Light Infantry’s forty-four men set out for Boston. For six weeks they spent their days in a monotonous routine of “passing from dinner to drill” readying for an attack that never came.31 On November 2, they were sent home untested and unhappy, viewing their dismissal as not only premature but an open invitation to the British to come ashore and occupy the defenseless city.32 Edward Bangs, the editor of the Aegis and officer in the Worcester Light Infantry, was among the forty-four who participated in the month-long Boston bivouac. Prior to his departure, Bangs put out an appeal for a temporary replacement “… willing to wield the pen while he (Bangs) shoulders his musket.”33 Daniel answered the call. A turn at the Aegis would give him the perfect forum for his political pontifications at a particularly precarious period. Daniel and the publisher, Henry Rogers, occupied the editor’s office for two months from early September to early November. War news filled the paper’s pages but in 1814 the tide was turning in favor of the Americans. They had won what would be the war’s last great naval battle on Lake Champlain, prevailed at Pensacola in Florida and at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. In celebration of the victory, the

Providence Slept 1813–1815 181 Aegisprinted a poem entitled “Defence of Fort McHenry” written by an anonymous author and set to the tune of “Anacreon in Heaven,” a British drinking song.34 The poem was later renamed “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The more startling news, however, was coming from the State House. The Federalist majority who supported Strong’s call for a special convention were planning for the meeting to be held in Hartford that December, igniting rumors that New England was on the verge of withdrawing from the union. Troubled state representatives, including Levi Lincoln, Jr., drafted a protest that was signed by seventy-five of their members. “The Constitution, hitherto respected as the charter of national liberty and consecrated as the ark of our political safety, will be violated and destroyed; and in civil dissensions and convulsions our independence will be annihilated,” they wrote.35 Unimpressed, Federalists plowed on with their event planning, claiming that they only wished to discuss mutual defense and propose healthy changes to the functioning of the federal government.36 Republicans were not at all convinced. The Aegis echoed the legislative minority’s sentiments that the Federalist convention was “fatal to the tranquility and repose of our country.”37 In a prescient statement, the paper’s editor affirmed that the convention would not only fail to bring about secession but would be the beginning of the end of the Federalist Party. The people would not stand for such mendacity. “Even in Massachusetts it will, we trust, be found, that there is a redeeming spirit in the people, that will quell the ragings of faction and prove that she is still the zealous defender of liberty …. Let them go a little further, and their career is completed. The crisis is at hand that will terminate their wickedness. The people will shake off their slumbering indifference and wake to save themselves and the republic.”38 No matter how much they may have disparaged the judgment of the populace, Republicans still clung to the notion, at least publicly, that the people would provide the moral balance to Federalist extremism. Perhaps even more than its commentary on battles and treaties, the Aegis’s vehement response to the proposed convention sparked an unsigned editorial that had all the hallmarks of a Daniel Lincoln diatribe. “If there be a portion of our countrymen who are satiated with the blessings of liberty; and who are ready to encounter the hazard of the most unbridled anarchy for the sake of attaining a connection with a nation with which we are at war; these vile and debased characters should be driven from the asylum of freedom to suffer the hardships of a most rigorous despotism.”39 When the caucus convened in Hartford on December 15, 1814, Vermont and New Hampshire did not send any official delegates, but two unofficial delegates from New Hampshire and one unofficial delegate from Vermont attended anyway.40 Twelve men from Massachusetts, seven from Connecticut, and two from Rhode Island joined them. Most were lawyers. A few were jurists and at least one was a banker: Daniel Waldo, Jr., Daniel’s uncle. Arch-Federalist Uncle Daniel Waldo had opposed Levi on every

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political argument that had churned through Massachusetts since the founding of the nation. Yet his name either as beloved uncle or notorious nemesis never appears in Daniel’s letters. Perhaps Daniel considered their disagreements a private matter, not a subject for publicly airing even between family members. Or perhaps by not mentioning him, Daniel could ignore him. Or maybe Daniel’s open disgust with all Federalists and their seditious plans, freed him from naming names. They were all one and the same to him. Daniel Waldo and the other twenty-five delegates had been angry for a long time. Their grievances over how the government prosecuted the war, the feeble defense of their shorelines, and the war’s disastrous effects on Massachusetts’ economy, formed the rallying cry for all disaffected Federalists. Despite all the controversy and excitement surrounding the Hartford meeting, the ultimate outcome was a disappointing dénouement. The convention proposed seven amendments to the Constitution which were pointedly anti-Jefferson, anti-South, and anti-embargo, but steered well clear of endorsing secession.41 The Massachusetts Federalists who delivered the petition to James Madison in February 1815 were upstaged by news of General Andrew Jackson’s stunning victory in the Battle of New Orleans as well as the signing of the Treaty of Ghent that officially ended the war on Christmas Eve 1814, some six weeks earlier. Although the United States neither lost or gained territory (Canada remained British), and the treaty failed to address the issues of impressment, boundary disputes, or fishing rights that pushed the United States into war in the first place, Republicans framed the treaty as “honorable” and a testament to American heroism that successfully resisted British subjugation. In short, the Americans won by not losing the war was over and although over 15,000 Americans lost their lives in the conflict, its end allowed Madison to not only disregard the protestations of the Federalists but discredit them, especially those who had gathered in Hartford with grand proposals on how to improve the government.42 (All of which were ignored.) For all intents and purposes, on a national level the Federalist Party was done. In Massachusetts, however, Caleb Strong held on despite the Hartford Convention debacle. He was easily re-elected in 1815.43 Worcester, as did many cities, celebrated the war’s end with a grand Peace Ball. It was not, however, a public event. Only Worcester’s best and most influential were invited. As captain of the Worcester Light Infantry, John Lincoln chaired the planning board. His republican ideals did not extend themselves to democratic gestures. “No one thing since my recollection has created more commotion,” he sniffed. “I did not think it expedient to go out into the highway & bid the lame & the blind to the hall, many who had not the wedding garments were dissatisfied that they were excluded.”44 Harumph. Daniel’s bout at the Aegis had a surprisingly salubrious effect on Daniel that Edward Bangs enthusiastically noted when he returned to the paper. If Daniel could stay healthy, if he could stop drinking, Bangs predicted he could live out a satisfying and productive life.

Providence Slept 1813–1815 183 During my absence I committed the whole care of the Aegis to Mr. Rogers, who, with the assistance of Danl W. Lincoln and other choice friends, managed it to my satisfaction …. Our friend Danl W. Lincoln, has, to the astonishment of everyone, not only survived to this time but is regaining his health and strength so as to take exercise and employ the powers of his well-storied mind in the editorial department of the Aegis. Should God spare his life, I trust that a thorough reformation from his imprudencies, will prepare him for high usefulness in life and for the publick honours which he is qualified to obtain.45 Although Daniel appeared to be improving, thoughts of death and dying tugged at him. Death meant oblivion and evanescence. “Sepulture is the fatal separation. Love may loiter for a while at the barrier of the tomb, but it is soon delivered to other objects & affection, respect & sympathy have ceased.”46 Yet he was not quite ready to resign himself to the end. He still hoped that he might grab onto that better, sober, and productive life Bangs had predicted. In December Daniel wrote Leonard Parker, now his brotherin-law, to pursue and recover all the professional fees that were owed him. He estimated that within a few weeks he would begin reviewing law in “preparation for resumption of practice.”47 The timing, Daniel knew, was propitious. The war was over, international trade bustled, domestic manufacturing was taking off, government investment in internal improvements and infrastructure boomed, and the formidable Federalist Party had suffered a crippling blow. Eighteen-fifteen promised unity, growth, and expansion everywhere.48 Lawyers would be in high demand and Daniel meant to be part of it. But he had been out of circulation and without an income for nearly a year. He needed money to get started again. He instructed Enoch to shutter his business in Portland, settle his debts, and to make a list of all the “actions with which I have had any concern.”49 He asked that his “military equipage, civil dress, white hat & military boots, spurs, bridle, & what little things you may find …” be sent to him in Worcester. Finally, in what must have been a heart-wrenching decision, he asked Enoch to find a buyer for Dian. “She is worth much money to any person who is fond of a horse & wishes to keep one.” His brother, Levi, Jr., had shown interest in the mare but had wanted to pay for her in installments. Daniel nixed his offer in favor of a more immediate pay-out. By tying up loose ends in Portland, retrieving the formal attire that he might need for future events, scrambling for money to open a practice in Worcester, Daniel began the process of rebuilding his life one more time. The surge of determined hopefulness that prompted the letter to Enoch had dissipated by the time John Lincoln wrote Parker only five days later. “Daniel is not able to leave his bed even for a short time & appears to be gradually failing,” he reported.50 John’s assessment of Daniel’s condition was accurate. On April 17, only three weeks after he had written Enoch requesting his books, his white hat, and military boots, Daniel Waldo

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Lincoln, lawyer, poet, orator, romantic, farmer, Republican warrior, and alcoholic, quietly passed out of this life. It was a peaceful ending to a turbulent life. “He fell asleep and literally died without a struggle,” Leonard Parker recounted in a letter to his brother.51 There is no death certificate to certify the cause of Daniel’s death, but His symptoms point to either cirrohsis or alcoholic cardiomyopathy, and possibly both.52 John wasted no time in making the funeral arrangements. As a merchant, he had the means to acquire all that was necessary for an apporpriate but quick burial. On the same day that Daniel died John ordered a cambric shroud and commissioned carpenter Jedidiah Healy to construct a simple coffin. He also bought black crepe in quantities useable for women’s mourning clothes and black ribbon for men’s armbands.53 Although it was traditional for a deceased loved one to repose a few days in the family home so friends might have time to gather and pay their respects, Daniel was buried the day after he died, on April 18, in Worcester’s Mechanic Street Burial Ground. Perhaps Daniel had been so disfigured by severe jaundice that an open casket, which was typical for the times, hastened his burial. There is no written account of his funeral and who might have attended except Isaiah Thomas’s simple one-line entry in his diary that he was there that day. “Attended the funeral of Daniel Lincoln. The son of the Hon. Judge,” noted Thomas.54 Two days after his death, Daniel’s old friend, the optimist Edward Bangs, printed a respectful, moving tribute in the Aegis. The loss of this gentleman is a calamity which reaches beyond the circle of his connections and acquaintances. Society is deprived of the most distinguished talents and virtues. In the attainments of the scholar, in the accomplishments of the gentleman, in the noble enthusiasm of the patriot, in all the best qualities and affections of the human heart, few in our country have equaled, scarce any exceed him. All who knew him were his friends, all who remember him are his mourners. Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inebeare longam.55 Bangs did not need to mention the cause of Daniel’s death because his Latin closing (“Life is too short to spend it drunk”) acknowledged that Daniel’s alcoholism was no secret. Others who knew him made similar posthumous remarks in their records. An unknown hand scribbled on his Harvard transcript his birth date, his Cumberland County Attorney position, his death date, and the words “a victim of intemperance.”56 Samuel Deane the Unitarian minister in Portland recorded in his diary that “Mr. Lincoln died in the prime of life, a victim of intemperance … and a man of brilliant talents.”57 Perhaps James Spear Loring, the chronicler and author of the Hundred Boston Orators came closest to identifying the cause of Daniel’s early death. In his introduction to the 1810 orators, Loring wrote of Daniel, “The early decease of the beautiful

Providence Slept 1813–1815 185 Charlotte Caldwell, of Worcester, to whom he was engaged, shortened his days.”58 Loring, at least, believed that Daniel was not so much a victim of drink as he was of his grief. Daniel’s fragile makeup, his melancholy and depression, his loneliness that he tried to mask with drink and a haughty aloofness, support Loring’s conclusions. It wasn’t only Charlotte’s death that contributed to Daniel’s depression and dissolution, however. In the early nineteenth century traditional social roles were shifting. The virtuous man who put public interest ahead of private interest was fading into the dusty recesses of the classical republican ideal that had guided the founders. In their place, emerging out of a still nascent but growing liberal economy, was the ambitious self-starter and entrepreneur. Society had never been more openly competitive and challenging to the traditional social hierarchy.59 As a member of the elite, Daniel could not identify with the challengers, but he knew he fell well short of the virtuous republican ideal of his father’s cohort. For Daniel and other Republicans of his generation who were searching for legitimacy waging a second, more decisive, war against Britain was the ticket.60 Although Daniel supported the war, once it got underway, he watched it unfold from the safety of a courtroom. Unlike his brothers John and Enoch, he did not volunteer to serve in any militia. Perhaps he was already too ill or perhaps his brief tour with the Worcester Light Infantry in 1806 was enough for him. He would rather have been a farmer or a poet than a lawyer, but to indulge in poetry as more than an avocation flirted with the luxurious and was of questionable virtue. Farming, though virtuous, meant leaving the law, the profession his father had chosen for him.61 Try as he might to identify with his father and be a good Republican lawyer, Daniel never really could. He had to submerge his real passions and shoehorn himself into a false identity that he never owned, or even liked. His was a “not me” existence; a world he could not help but live in yet never felt part of. As he traveled through his life, Daniel relied on negative constructs to define who he was, crippling the development of a healthy sense of belonging and splitting his world into good and bad, black and white.62 Despite all the contradictions he wrestled with, Daniel never stopped trying to find a place for himself and a companion to share his life. He found and lost love twice, once through no fault of his own, the second time entirely at his own hand. Until he was physically unable to keep going, even after his addiction stole his health and his hope, even when frustrated and cynical, he never stopped thinking he if he tried one more time, his inner demons would be put to rest and he could live the life he was meant to live. In the end, the demons triumphed. Daniel’s journey was fraught with psychological, social, and familial conflict. Understanding all too well his father’s expectations of him, Daniel obediently trudged on as he was supposed to even though his heart lay elsewhere. From time to time, he tangled with the merits of practicing law,

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but he never seriously considered abandoning it. He was too dutiful to be so bold, except when he drank. When he acted impulsively and drowned his future in alcohol, he not only rejected his father’s ambitions for him but punished him by setting him up for public embarrassment. Daniel knew his failures would disturb and torment his family. After all, Levi had twice sent Thomas Jefferson examples of Daniel’s literary talents. He had reassured the third president that the Republican vision rested safely in the hands of the next generation he had produced. (He did not send examples of Levi, Jr., John’s, or Enoch’s talents. Only Daniel’s were received at Monticello.) Levi had fostered his son’s career, seeing to it that Daniel was offered the Cumberland County Attorney position. It is also likely that Levi had a hand in Daniel’s selection to be the Bunker-Hill Association’s 1810 orator. Both were high profile public assignments that testified to Levi’s faith in his son’s intelligence and talents as a future leader. Levi well knew that a successful son would reflect positively on the parenting of the father. Whatever the motivation, while he still had the means and resources, Levi invested a great deal in his wayward second son. After Daniel’s return to Portland, however, the relationship grew cold and brittle. But no matter how humiliated he may have been by Daniel’s public dissolution, to reject him or disinherit him completely would have compounded Levi’s failure as a father in the public eye. Even more, apart from the political implications, privately it pained him to see his brilliant, talented son squander his future and engage in damaging behavior that he was helpless to stop. So although Levi distanced himself, disapproved of Daniel’s decisions and communicated with him only rarely in the last two years of his life, he opened his home to his sick and dying son. Along the way, while Daniel tried and failed and tried and failed to be what his father wanted him to be, or what Daniel thought a Lincoln should be, he lost himself. In a particularly poignant letter to Enoch in which he once again deprecated society for its dishonesty and cruelty, his loneliness and isolation are unusually palpable. He complained of feeling adrift and separate from the rest of human intercourse. He was doing the right thing, reading and practicing law, writing and studying the classics, but he still felt himself to be an imposter. Why this gnawing discontent? He could not step back and see that the life his father laid out for him had estranged him from himself. All he knew was that nothing seemed to be turning out as it should have. With so much outside his control and so much beyond his understanding, Daniel laid the blame for his doleful discontent on nothing less than a divine miscalculation. I believe our souls must have been strangely bewildered in their passage from heaven or they never could have strayed so far toward the North Pole & stopped amid a moral winter where selfishness locks up all social feeling & interest petrifies every pulse of the heart. This drift of hailstones called Society has no charm for me. I would not melt the

Providence Slept 1813–1815 187 paltry things but it chills me to walk among them. Neither you nor I were intended to be Lincoln or Waldo. There have been some mistakes & it is too late to correct them. Providence slept perhaps.63

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, May 9, 1814. DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to John Lincoln, December 14, 1813, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, October 10, 1813, DWL Papers. Naval Historical Center Department of the Navy, The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History Volume II 1813 (Bolton Landing, New York: American Naval Records Society, 2011), 289. Michael Crawford, ed. The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History Volume II. (Washington, D.C.: Naval Historic Center, 1985), 290. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, December 28, 1813, DWL Papers. Charles Brewster, Rambles about Portsmouth (Portsmouth, NH: L.H. Brewster, 1873), 201–7. James H. Ellis, A Ruinous and Unhappy War: New England and the War of 1812 (New York: Algora Publishing, 2009), 142. James Valle, Rocks & Shoals: Order and Discipline in the Old Navy, 1800–1861 (Annapolis, MD: United States Naval Institute, 1980), 155–6. Daniel Lincoln to John Lincoln, January 6, 1814, DWL Papers. David Hanna, Knights of the Sea (New York: New American Library, 2012), 227–39. Sherwood Picking, Sea Fight Off Monhegan (Portland, Maine: Machigonne Press, 1941), 163. Ellis, A Ruinous and Unhappy War, 142. Naval Historical, 292. Harper returned to Portland exonerated but remained in the navy only another five months before he resigned. Unfortunately, Daniel never names the brigadier general in question, but it’s likely that it was the trial of William Hull. Hull was charged and convicted of treason, cowardice, and neglect of duty due to his surrendering of Detroit to the British in 1812. Instead of the firing squad, Madison pardoned Hull, but his military career was over. Bud Hannings, The War of 1812: A Complete Chronology with Biographies of 63 General Officers Jefferson, NC: McFarland, Inc., 2020), 327–8. Daniel’s illness prevented him from being involved in the trial. Lincoln and Hersey, History of Worcester, 135–6. Daniel Lincoln to William Lincoln, February 12, 1814, DWL Papers. William Lincoln and Charles Hersey, A History of Worcester Massachusetts From Its Earliest Settlement to September 1836 (Worcester: Charles Hersey, 1862), 135–6. Daniel Lincoln to William Lincoln, February 12, 1814, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Martha Lincoln, February 18, 1814, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, April 9, 1814, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, April 9, 1814, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, June 1, 1814, DWL Papers. Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, May 9, 1814, DWL Papers. Charles Warren, Jacobin and Junto or Early American Politics as Viewed in the Diary of Dr. Nathaniel Ames 1758–1822 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1931), 270–1.

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26 J.C.A. Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 469. 27 “Answer of Mr. Sec’y Monroe to His Excellency,” in the Worcester Aegis, October 14, 1814, 3. 28 James M. Banner, To the Harford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts 1789–1815 (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), 324. 29 Warren, 276. 30 Samuel Eliot Morison, “Our Most Unpopular War,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 80 (1968): 48. 31 Fredrick Green Stiles, “A Sketch of the Worcester Light Infantry 1803–1902,” Proceedings of the Worcester Society of Antiquity, 17 (1900): 621. Ellis, A Ruinous and Unhappy War, 226. 32 “State Troops Discharged!” National Aegis, November 2, 1814, 2. 33 “Notice,” National Aegis, September 14, 1814, 2. 34 National Aegis, October 12, 1814, 4. 35 Emory Washburn, “Memorial of Hon. Levi Lincoln,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 1869–1870 11 (1871), 54–5. 36 Banner, 333. 37 “Federal Delegation,” National Aegis, October 26, 1814, 2. 38 Ibid. 39 “Federal Delegation,” National Aegis, October 26, 1814, 2. 40 Richard Buell, America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle of the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2005), 218. 41 Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: Norton, 2005), 166. 42 Ibid., 175. There is evidence, however, that Caleb Strong tested the possibility of negotiating a separate peace with Great Britain should the war be protracted. Buell, 219. 43 Federalists continued to hold the governor’s office in Massachusetts until 1823. A New Nation Votes https://elections.lib.tufts.edu Strong benefited from Daniel Waldo’s endorsement who warned the public that although the war had ended, the movement to usurp power was still very much alive. 44 John Lincoln to Leonard Parker, March 20, 1815, DWL Papers. 45 Edward Bangs to Enoch Lincoln, November 3, 1814, DWL Papers. 46 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, December 7, 1814, DWL Papers. 47 Daniel Lincoln to Leonard Moody Parker, December 22, 1814, DWL Papers. 48 Ibid., 275–321. 49 Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, March 25, 1815, DWL Papers. 50 John Lincoln to Leonard Parker, March 30, 1815, DWL Papers. 51 Quote in Lindsay Schakenbach Regele, “Early National Bro Culture in Daniel Parker’s War Department,” Commonplace, 17 (2017). 52 George E. Vaillant, The Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995), 205. By 1815, medical doctors were well acquainted with liver disease because there were so many people drinking excessively and falling ill. The English doctor Matthew Billie was among the first to make the connection and labeled it “liver tubercles” in his book The Morbid Anatomy of Some of the Most Important Parts of the Human Body published in 1812. French physician Rene Laennec renamed the condition “Laennec

Providence Slept 1813–1815 189

53 54 55 56 57 58

59 60

61 62

63

cirrhosis” around 1832. See Jacalyn M. Duffin, “Why Does Cirrhosis Belong to Laennec?” Canadian Medical Association Journal 137, (1987): 393–6. John Lincoln Papers, Lincoln Family Papers Box 3 folder 3, AAS. Isaiah Thomas, “Diary of Isaiah Thomas 1805–1828 Vol. 1,” Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society Volume IX, (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1909), 267. “Mortuary Notice,” National Aegis, April 19, 1815, 2. Records of the Harvard College Class of 1803 [Lincoln, Daniel Waldo] Biographical Folder, Harvard University Archives. Samuel Deane, Journals of the Reverend Thomas Smith and Samuel Deane, Pastors of the First Church in Portland (Portland, Me.: Joseph Bailey, 1849), 389. James Spear Loring, The Hundred Boston Orators Appointed by the Municipal Authorities and Other Public Bodies from 1770 to 1852 Comprising Historical Gleanings, Illustrating the Principles and Progress of Our Republican Institutions (Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1854), 351. In his later years Levi Lincoln shifted his interests to increasing the commercial potential of his Merino sheep and away from penning political polemics. Steven Watts argues that the inheriting generation’s march toward war worked to bind together parts of the personality that had failed to find cohesion due to the changing economic and cultural circumstances of the early nineteenth century. The War of 1812, argues Watts, carried with it an oedipal component in that the youthful, virile son (America) wanted to kill of the old decrepit father (Britain). See Watts, The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America, 190–1820. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 210–1. Joseph Ellis, After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture New York: W.W. Norton, 1979), 36–7. Ellis argues that the attitudes of the founders concerning the arts delayed their development and rise in America. Erikson writes of the perils of transitional periods when recognizable ideological or occupational precepts are absent resulting in identity diffusion. See Erik Erikson, “Identity Crisis in Autobiographic Perspective,” in Life History and the Historical Moment (New York: Norton, 1975). Daniel Lincoln to Enoch Lincoln, March 8, 1813, DWL Papers.

Bibliography Archival Matter American Antiquarian Society. Daniel Waldo Lincoln Papers. Other Printed Matter “Answer of Mr. Sec’y Monroe to His Excellency,” Worcester Aegis, October 14, 1814, 3. Banner, James M. To the Harford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts 1789-1815. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1970. Brewster, Charles. Rambles about Portsmouth. Portsmouth, NH: L.H. Brewster, 1873. Buell, Richard. America on the Brink: How the Struggle of the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2005.

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Crawford, Michael. The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History Volume II. Washington, D.C.: Naval Historic Center, 1985. Deane, Samuel. Journals of the Reverend Thomas Smith and Samuel Deane, Pastors of the First Church in Portland. Portland, Me.: Joseph Bailey, 1849. Duffin, Jacalyn M. “Why Does Cirrhosis Belong to Laennec?” Canadian Medical Association Journal, 137 (1987): 393–396. Ellis, James H. A Ruinous and Unhappy War: New England and the War of 1812. New York: Algora Publishing, 2009. Ellis, Joseph. After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture. New York: W.W. Norton, 1979. Erikson, Erik. “Identity Crisis in Autobiographic Perspective,” In Life History and the Historical Moment. New York: Norton, 1975. “Federal Delegation,” National Aegis, October 26, 1814, 2. Hanna, David. Knights of the Sea. New York: New American Library, 2012. Hannings, Bud. The War of 1812: A Complete Chronology with Biographies of 63 General Officers. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, Inc., 2020. Lincoln, William and Charles Hersey. History of Worcester Massachusetts From Its Earliest Settlement to September, 1836. Worcester, Mass: Charles Hersey, 1862. Loring, James Spear. The Hundred Boston Orators Appointed by the Municipal Authorities and Other Public Bodies from 1770 to 1852 Comprising Historical Gleanings, Illustrating the Principles and Progress of Our Republican Institutions. Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1854. Morison, Samuel Eliot. “Our Most Unpopular War,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 80 (1968): 48. “Mortuary Notice,” National Aegis, April 19, 1815, 2. National Aegis, October 12, 1814, 4. Naval Historical Center Department of the Navy. The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History Volume II 1813. Bolton Landing, New York: American Naval Records Society, 2011. “Notice,” National Aegis, September 14, 1814, 2. Picking, Sherwood. Sea Fight Off Monhegan. Portland, Maine: Machigonne Press, 1941. Records of the Harvard College Class of 1803 [Lincoln, Daniel Waldo] Biographical Folder, Harvard University Archives. Regele, Lindsay Schakenbach. “Early National Bro Culture in Daniel Parker’s War Department,” Commonplace, 17 (2017). Stagg, J.C.A. Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783-1830. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. “State Troops Discharged!” National Aegis, November 2, 1814, 2. Stiles, Fredrick Green. “A Sketch of the Worcester Light Infantry 1803-1902,” Proceedings of the Worcester Society of Antiquity, 17 (1900), 621. “The Strong Ship Massachusetts,” Boston Columbian Centennial, March 19, 1814, 1. Vaillant, George E. The Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995. Thomas, Isaiah. “Diary of Isaiah Thomas 1805-1828 Vol. 1,” Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society Volume IX. Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1909, 267.

Providence Slept 1813–1815 191 Valle, James. Rocks & Shoals: Order and Discipline in the Old Navy, 1800-186. Annapolis, MD: United States Naval Institute, 1980. Washburn, Emory. “Memorial of Hon. Levi Lincoln,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 1869-1870, 11 (1871), 54–55. Warren, Charles. Jacobin and Junto or Early American Politics as Viewed in the Diary of Dr. Nathaniel Ames 1758–1822. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1931. Watts, Steven. The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America, 1790–1820. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1987. Wilentz, Sean. The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. New York: Norton, 2005.

Conclusion

Figure 11.1 “Daniel Lincoln’s Grave, Rural Cemetery, Worcester, Massachusetts” Photograph by Author.

Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inebeare longam.1

When Daniel Lincoln died in April 1815, the Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812 was only a few months old. Levi Lincoln and other men of the Enlightenment who had founded the nation on principles of honor and virtue were fading from the national scene, replaced by the clatter of innovation and commercialization of an emerging liberal economy. Rumblings over party politics, slavery and liberty, westward expansion, religion, and economic opportunity that had alternately troubled and intrigued Daniel became the defining issues of his generation in the decades that followed his death.2 He would not have welcomed the surge of democratic participation from ordinary American men that came with the rise of Andrew Jackson in the 1820s. He would have been nonplussed by the deepening sectional division DOI: 10.4324/9781003091691-12

Conclusion 193 over slavery in the 1830s. He would have been aghast at the idea of woman suffrage in the 1840s. And he would have either taken the oath or taken umbrage from the growing activism of the temperance reform movement throughout the antebellum period. His estrangement from the changing cultural values of his times would not have become easier to bear had he lived to see them. Levi Lincoln lived another five years after Daniel’s death. Nearly blind, he moved to the relative seclusion of his farms, devoting much of his time to breeding Merino sheep and participating in civic organizations. (He once famously threw a handful of coins at a flock of geese mistaking them for school children.)3 He served as the first president of the Worcester Agricultural Society which he had formed with his brother-in-law, the Hartford convention-goer, Daniel Waldo, Jr. His sons recalled watching the aging patriarch of the family, sitting erect “in his old-fashioned, straightback chair, by the library fire.”4 When he died at the age of seventy-one in 1820, he was eulogized for his legal talents, his love of religious freedom, his contribution to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts, and the political stir created by his fractious Farmer’s Letters.5 The Aegis summed up his legacy: “He has left to his family and friends a legacy which they will prize more than the inheritance of his wealth—the lasting treasure of a good name.”6 Indeed, the Lincoln name continued to carry substantial influence in Worcester for generations more.7 Daniel’s mother, Martha Waldo Lincoln, lived for eight years more following her husband’s death. She died in 1828 at age sixty-seven.8 Daniel was not the only Lincoln son who felt cruelly buffeted by the shifting cultural landscape and his uncertainty of his place in it. Three of Daniel’s surviving brothers lived lonely, and in the case of William, despairing, private lives. Only one of the five Lincoln sons, Levi Jr., married and had a family.9 Daniel’s sister Martha, who married Daniel’s law partner, Leonard Parker, moved to Shirley, Massachusetts where Leonard set up another practice and was thrice elected representative to the General Court. She died in 1822 at age thirty-five shortly following the birth of her third daughter. After her death, Leonard Parker left his daughters to be raised by his sister-in-law, Rebecca Lincoln Newton.10 In 1817, Rebecca Lincoln, Daniel’s youngest sister, had married Rejoice Newton, an attorney and politician who had studied with Levi. Rejoice Newton teamed up with Daniel’s youngest brother William to establish a successful law practice and was instrumental in bringing the railroad to Worcester.11 Rebecca Lincoln Newton was a founder of the Worcester Children’s Friend Society whose purpose was to provide good homes to abandoned children or those whose parents were incapacitated by “habitual, inveterate habits of intemperance.”12

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Figure 11.2 “Levi Lincoln, of Massachusetts.” Courtesy Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-pga-11907.

As the family’s greatest success, Levi Jr., began his political life as ferociously partisan as his father. But as Federalist power began to wane during his first decade of public life, he emerged as a moderate consensus

Conclusion 195 candidate finding support from voters of both parties. He later became a Whig.13 Levi, Jr.’s political acumen got him elected nine times governor of Massachusetts and five times representative to the United States House of Representatives. He was also the first mayor of incorporated Worcester. Friends described him as diligent, judicious, and dignified, but not a particularly eloquent orator.14 Others noted that he always wore a full-dress suit and that “his manners were meticulously correct, his speech precise.”15 His relationship with his brother Daniel, however, always seemed deliberately distant. Daniel seldom mentioned him in his letters, except to comment on his distance and on one occasion when he praised an address Levi delivered to the Worcester Light Infantry. Another time he wistfully commented that he envied Levi’s family life. But even then, he backed away from his admission by belittling the married Levi as “… like an Esquimaux Indian is confined in the smoke & dirt of his burrow …”16 Judging by the extant letters the two brothers lived quite separate lives. The other three Lincoln brothers, John, William, and Enoch had much closer relationships with Daniel. All three were more successful in their public lives than their private ones. John, a frequent correspondent and occasional harsh critic of his brother Daniel, was captain of the Worcester Light Infantry and owned a hardware and dry goods store that he inherited from his uncle, Daniel Waldo, Jr. He sold the store in 1822 when his father bequeathed him one of his farms. As much drawn to public service as his brothers were, John served in the General Court as a state representative for four years and as a state senator for another five. He became High Sheriff of Worcester County, established regular Sunday services in the jail, and presided over the jail’s first private execution when Thomas Barrett was hanged for murdering Ruth Holton.17 He later donated a house for the use of the Worcester Children’s Friend Society, the philanthropic group that his sister Rebecca helped found. John Lincoln’s rise is particularly remarkable because unlike his brothers, he suffered from a childhood speech disorder that kept him from Harvard’s doors. Instead of providing him an elite education, his parents apprenticed him to his uncle. It was said John accepted the decision gracefully. But perhaps some bitterness lingered, contributing to the stern, undemonstrative, and off-putting nature for which he was known. He died unmarried in Rebecca Newton’s house in 1852.18 Daniel’s youngest brother, William was only fourteen when Daniel died. He went on to attend Harvard, studied law with his older brother Levi, Jr., and practiced in Worcester with his brother-in-law, Rejoice Newton. An amateur historian, William wrote History of Worcester, Massachusetts published in 1837, a book still cited by scholars. He was, like Daniel, a writer and editor at the Aegis. As did Daniel, William battled addiction. For one period in his adult life, he managed to swear off alcohol so successfully that he became a speaker for the Washingtonian Temperance Society.

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But his resolve foundered, and he succumbed to an opium addiction, dying bankrupt in 1843 at age forty-one.19 Daniel had no better consistent friend throughout his life than his brother Enoch. Like Daniel, Enoch never married.20 Unlike Daniel, by all accounts Enoch was highly regarded for his “rectitude of judgment.”21 After Daniel’s death, Enoch returned to Fryeburg, practicing law until 1819 when he was elected to the United States House of Representatives. In 1826 he became the third governor of Maine. He died suddenly and unexpectedly in October 1829 three days after giving an oration at the dedication of a girl’s academy in Augusta.22

Figure 11.3 “Maine Governor Enoch Lincoln,” Artist unknown. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, {{PD-US-expired}}.

In a surge of inspiration shortly after Daniel’s death, Enoch produced a 2,000-line poem entitled The Village.23 In rhyming verse, Enoch held forth on the frailties of human society. He wrote about slavery, Indians, the law, the church, medicine, party spirit, women, and the great evil, intemperance. O! drive the fiend, Intemperance, away Ere vice attack, or ruin seize the prey See where the reeling monster stalks around How God’s redoubled curses blast the ground He sits at home, and, life and sense to drown Brims the deep bowl and guzzles poison down.24 As much as Enoch despised liquor and may have blamed it for poisoning and killing his brother, his grief for Daniel appeared in his sympathetic tribute to the physician who tried but failed to save his brother.

Conclusion 197 He knows full well what hosts of ills destroy On life’s wide field the proudest hopes of joy How health’s attack’d and strength and beauty fly How genius is cut down and virtues die How the high energies of mind and soul Bow to the tyrant Death’s supreme control I know it too and felt it in the blow Which laid at once a friend and brother low.25 Asterisked, at the bottom of the page, was a note from the writer, asking his reader’s forgiveness for “a few lines indulged to private feeling.”26 Daniel was a bibliophile, whose seven-volume library offers a pastiche of his political and literary influences. Two books are historical and political: Bonaparte and the French People by Gustav Schlabrendorf and An Essay on the Natural Equality of Men by William Lawrence Brown. Schlabrendorf’s book on Napoleon had garnered controversy for the criticism he leveled at Napoleon as a despot and betrayer of the ideals of the French Revolution.27 Brown’s 1792 essay on natural equality posited that social inequalities descended from natural inequalities, an argument that ran counter to the natural rights theory of the founders.28 The third book, The Eloquence of the British Senate, compiled by William Hazlitt, was a two volume collection of famous orations given before Parliament dating back to Charles I. Daniel may have used them as models for his own political oratory. The rest of Daniel’s collection was three volumes of verse by the mideighteenth-century poet, Thomas Chatterton. Regarded by scholars as the first Romantic, in early adolescence the brilliant Chatterton had written poetry that he passed off as the creation of a fictitious fifteenth-century priest, Thomas Rowley. Once his ruse was exposed, the ruckus over the forgery led many to question Chatterton’s legitimacy as a poet, ignoring the genius required to render Rowley believable in the first place. Desperate and convinced he would never be respected, just before his eighteenth birthday Chatterton committed suicide by drinking arsenic. Not long after his death in 1770, the great Romantic poets who followed him, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, and Shelley, all acknowledged a literary debt to Chatterton for his recreation of the vernacular poetical style of the Rowley poems.29 Daniel would have sympathized with the pathos of Chatterton’s short life, his romanticism, the posthumous fame of a poet maligned by those more concerned with reputation than talent. Daniel, too, had been saddled with a reputation as “secluded, unsocial & misanthropic” that he thought unmerited. People did not see him as he really was. He may have seen himself as a closeted latter-day Chatterton, troubled, talented, and misunderstood. Daniel had always been prone to depression and for years flirted with notions of early death. Although he did not kill himself by drinking arsenic as Chatterton had done, his years of over-imbibing ended in the same self-annihilation. He knew the dire consequences his habits had

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on his family and his reputation. He knew that all his grand efforts to convince himself and the world that he was honorable still failed to compensate for his dissolution, depression, alienation, and shame. He knew he had never mastered himself, and he knew that without that, without selfmastery, he would never win the respect he craved. He would never be viewed as virtuous and without virtue he was an embarrassment to his party, his family, and himself. And yet. As an elite conservative Republican from New England out of step with his times, Daniel Lincoln left an autobiography that defies the family genealogist who tried to shuffle him onto the margins of the family record. Although he speaks to us from an age of foolscap and quill pens, Daniel Lincoln’s need for self-possession, competence, and love bridges the divide of time. He is no remote figure off in the distance we must squint to see. Daniel Lincoln’s story is a full and complex portrait of one man’s experience in a transformative period. They chronicle a different perspective of a nation in transition and add a singular voice, as lost and angry as it sometimes was, to the cultural and historical synthesis of early nineteenthcentury America.

Figure 11.4 “Signature of Daniel Waldo Lincoln, 1813.” Photograph by author.

Notes 1 “Mortuary Notice,” National Aegis, April 19, 1815, 2. 2 Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln New York: Norton, 2005), 177. For an expansive synthesis of the United States in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century see Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 3 “In the twilight of a distinguished lifetime, the eyesight of Levi Lincoln, Sr., of Worcester began to dim. Riding along Lincoln Street in his carriage toward his farm, he met a man shooshing a large flock of geese. Their white heads bobbed every which way. Mr. Lincoln mistook them for children. Flinging out a handful of small coin, he said, “Bless you, my children.” Ivan Sandrof, Your Worcester Street (Worcester, Mass: Franklin Publishing, 1948), 95. 4 Conrad Edick Wright, Revolutionary Generation: Harvard Men and the Consequences of Independence (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 211. 5 William Lincoln and Charles Hersey, History of Worcester, 196–7; Marvin Junior Petroelje, “Levi Lincoln, Sr.,” Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1969, 204–5.

Conclusion 199 6 “Obituary Notice,” National Aegis, April 26, 1820, 2. 7 Levi Jr’s son, also named Daniel Waldo Lincoln, born in 1813, attended Leicester Academy and Harvard, served in the state legislature and was mayor of Worcester. He rose to become president of the Boston and Albany Railroad Company. He was killed in a train accident while watching the Harvard-Yale regatta in 1880. Waldo Lincoln, History of the Lincoln Family An Account of the Descendants of Samuel Lincoln of Hingham Massachusetts 1637–1920 (Boston: Goodspeed’s Book Shop), 415. 8 Waldo Lincoln, 162. 9 Levi Lincoln, Jr. married Penelope Winslow Sever in 1807. Penelope Sever was the granddaughter of John Chandler, the leading Worcester loyalist who fled the county during the Revolutionary War. Chandler’s “abandoned” farms were bought by the patriot Levi Lincoln, Sr. Waldo Lincoln, 163–4. 10 Carolyn J. Lawes, Women and Reform in a New England Community, 1815–1860 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000), 110. 11 Ibid., 110. 12 Lawes, 92. 13 Ronald P. Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s–1840s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) 81–3. Waldo Lincoln, 278–83. 14 Emory Washburn, “Memoir of Hon. Levi Lincoln,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 1869–1870 11 (1871), 80. 15 Mildred McClary Tymeson, Rural Retrospect: A Parallel History of Worcester and Its Rural Cemetery (Worcester, Mass: Albert W. Rice, 1956), 38. 16 Daniel Lincoln to John Lincoln, December 22, 1811, DWL Papers. 17 Thomas Barrett was convicted of the rape and murder of 70-year-old Mrs. Houghton. It was John Lincoln’s job as High Sheriff to invite the witnesses to his execution and to cut the rope that hanged Barrett. Thomas Barrett, Trial and execution of Thomas Barrett, who first committed a rape on the person of Mrs. Houghton, of Lunenburg, an aged lady of 70 years, and then foully murdered her to conceal his crime, … Together with the particulars of the execution, and some confessions of the murderer. (Boston: Skinner and Blanchard, 1845), 27. 18 Nathaniel Paine, “John W. Lincoln,” Reminiscences and Biographical Notices of the Worcester Fire Society, (Worcester, 1877), 14–8. 19 Lawes, 110; Waldo Lincoln, History of the Lincoln Family, 289–91; Charles Chase, “William Lincoln” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 7 (1891): 424–36. 20 The family genealogy mentions that he was betrothed to Mary Chadbourne Page of Fryeburg. Waldo Lincoln, Lincoln Family History, 287. 21 Lincoln and Hersey, History of Worcester, 207. 22 Ibid. 23 Henry Ernest Dunnack, The Maine Book (Augusta, Me: [s.n.], 1920), 135–8. Dunnack comments, “We must bear in mind that when this poem appeared in 1816, very little poetry had been written in America. Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, the illustrious trio who have given American poetry a place in the world’s literature, were boys at school. No poem of so wide scope and sustained length as “The Village”, dealing with nature and with man in so many of their aspects, had then appeared in our land. As the production of a young man with no wide experience of the world, it must be considered remarkable, not only for its high standard of right, and its advanced moral sentiment, anticipating many of the reforms of our day, but also for its erudition and its evenly-sustained poetical merit.”

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Conclusion

24 Enoch Lincoln, The Village A Poem With an Appendix (Portland, Me.: Edward Little, 1816), 75. 25 Ibid., 60–1. 26 Ibid. 27 William McCall, “A Paris Diogenes,” The Argosy: A Magazine of Tales, Travels, Essays, and Poems (London: Strahan and Company, 1867): 206–7. 28 Thomas Philip Schofield, “Conservative Political Thought in Britain in Response to the French Revolution,” The Historical Journal 29 (1986): 601–22. Brown’s voice contributed to the conservative backlash in Britain to the revolution in France, igniting the Romantic Movement. 29 Grevel Lindop, “Introduction,” Thomas Chatterton Poems Selected Poems ed. Grevel Lindop (Manchester, Great Britain Caranet Press, 1972), 7–24.

Bibliography Barrett, Thomas. Trial and execution of Thomas Barrett, who first committed a rape on the person of Mrs. Houghton, of Lunenburg, an aged lady of 70 years, and then foully murdered her to conceal his crime,… Together with the particulars of the execution, and some confessions of the murderer. Boston: Skinner and Blanchard, 1845. Chase, Charles. “William Lincoln” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 7 (1891): 424–436. Dunnack, Henry Ernest. The Maine Book. Augusta, Me: [s.n.], 1920. 135–138. Formisano, Ronald P. The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s–1840s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Lawes, Carolyn J. Women and Reform in a New England Community, 1815–1860. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000. Lincoln, Enoch. The Village A Poem With an Appendix. Portland, Me.: Edward Little, 1816. Lincoln, Levi. An Address Delivered on the Consecration of the Worcester Rural Cemetery, September 8, 1838. Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1838. Lincoln, Waldo. History of the Lincoln Family An Account of the Descendants of Samuel Lincoln of Hingham Massachusetts 1637–1920. Boston: Goodspeed’s Book Shop, 1923. Lincoln, William and Charles Hersey. A History of Worcester From Its Earliest Settlement to September, 1836. Worcester, Mass: Charles Hersey, 1862. Lindop, Grevel Lindop, “Introduction,” In Thomas Chatterton Poems Selected Poems, ed. Grevel Lindop. Manchester, Great Britain Caranet Press, 1972. McCall, William. “A Paris Diogenes,” The Argosy: A Magazine of Tales, Travels, Essays, and Poems. London: Strahan and Company, 1867. 206–207. McClees, J.E. McClees, “Levi Lincoln, Governor of Massachusetts,” Reprinted from Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. http://hdl.loc.gov/ loc.pnp/cph.3b09013 “Obituary Notice,” National Aegis, April 26, 1820, 2. Paine, Nathaniel. “John W. Lincoln,” Reminiscences and Biographical Notices of the Worcester Fire Society. Worcester, Mass: Charles Hamilton, 1877. Petroelje, Marvin Junior. “Levi Lincoln, Sr.: Jeffersonian Republican of Massachusetts.,” Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1969.

Conclusion 201 Sandrof, Ivan. Your Worcester Street. Worcester, Mass: Franklin Publishing, 1948. Schofield, Thomas Philip. “Conservative Political Thought in Britain in Response to the French Revolution,” The Historical Journal, 29 (1986): 601–622. Tymeson, Mildred McClary. Rural Retrospect: A Parallel History of Worcester and Its Rural Cemetery. Worcester, Mass: Albert W. Rice, 1956. Washburn, Emory. “Memoir of Hon. Levi Lincoln,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 1869–1870, 11 (1871), 80. Wilentz, Sean. The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. New York: Norton, 2005. Wood, Gordon S. Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Wright, Conrad Edick. Revolutionary Generation: Harvard Men and the Consequences of Independence. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005.

Index

Page numbers followed by “n” indicate a note on the corresponding page.

1789 French Revolution 19 1803 Harvard Commencement Program 48, 49 Adams, John Quincy 4–5, 8, 10, 38, 51n20, 58, 115, 124 Adams, Samuel 8 Age of Reason 38 Ames, Fisher 32nn9, 10 Arnold, Benedict 13 Austin, Benjamin 157 Austin, James T. 127n18, 152n41 Austin, William J. 51n15, 54nn59, 60 Baldwin, Thomas 118 Bancroft, Aaron 165 Bangs, Edward 28, 84n38, 104, 110nn79–81, 180, 184, 188n45 Bartlett, Joseph 76 Battle of Alexandria 146 Battle of Hohenlinden 146 Battle of New Orleans 182 Battles of Monmouth and Yorktown 18 Benevolence poem 46, 48, 50 Bentley, William (Republican Unitarian minister) 29, 32n25, 50, 54n70 Bernard, Francis 10 The Betterment Act 101–102 Bigelow, Timothy 17 Blair, Hug 39 Blair, Robert 42, 80, 85n60 Bonaparte and the French People 197 Boston (1810–1811) 113–126; 1810 Boston July Fourth address 118–120; 1810 governorship election 115–119;

challenges in 114; farming 124–125; interest in agriculture 124; Quock Walker case 123 Boston Massacre of 1770 119 Boston Tea Party 11 Bowdoin, James 14 Broken Hints 13 Brown, William Lawrence 197 Bulfinch, Charles (ship builder) 71, 114 Bunker-Hill Association 8, 116–117, 121–122 Burr, Aaron 26 Burrows, William 167 Byron, Lord 146 Caldwell, Charlotte Blake 46, 60, 64 Caldwell, John 14 Caldwell, Seth 14 Caldwell, William (Worcester’s sheriff) 63–64 Campbell, Thomas 146 Chandler, John 17 Chandler, William 17 Collins, William 146 Cumberland Bar 73 Cutts, Richard 76 Dallas, Alexander (Philadelphia lawyer) 58 Dearborn, Henry A.S. (Jefferson’s Secretary of War) 73, 74, 76, 80, 91–92 “Democracy Unveiled” poem 100 Dexter, Samuel 97 Doddridge, Philip 39

Index 203 Dwight, Timothy 72 early education of Daniel Lincoln (1784–1803) 35–50; admission record, 1801, 35father’s efforts 36–37; aiming Harvard admission 38–39; drinking habit 44; Joseph Willard’s authoritarianism 39–40; at Leicester Academy 37; in loneliness 41; poetic talents 42, 45; Revolutionary War and 37; at Worcester County 36–37 earthly possessions 1, 2 Eastern Argus 76, 81 Edwards, Jonathan 12 Elements of Universal History 39 Eloquence of the British Senate, The 197 embargo (1807−1810) 88–106; contradictions and failures 104–105; Embargo Acts 89; end of 1808 96; fell in love with Mary Hodges 92–94; parting relationship 95; woman’s right and 93 Enforcement Act 97–99 Essay on the Natural Equality of Men, An 197 Farnham, Daniel 11 Fearing, Rachel 8–9 Federalist Washington Benevolent Society 122 Fessenden, Thomas Green 100 First Church of Worcester 16 Force Act 99 Franklin, Benjamin 5 French, Ebenezer 120 Gale, Henry 15 Gay, Ebenezer 9 Gerry, Elbridge 8, 31, 115–116, 118, 120, 124, 135–137, 139–141, 156, 159, 170n5 “gerrymander” 142 Gertrude of Wyoming 146 Gore, Christopher 99, 114–116, 139 Gray, Thomas 42, 146 Gray, William 8, 166 Greenleaf, Simon 169 Hamilton, Alexander 99 Hancock, John 8, 15 Harper, William 177

Harvard Lyceum 121 Hawley, Joseph 11–13, 21n16 Hazlitt, William 197 Hodges, Mary Elizabeth 81, 92–93 Honestus, Verus 27–29 Howe, Nathaniel 74, 104 Hundred Boston Orators 184 Ilsley, Daniel 73, 94 Inquiry into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors, An 44 Institutes of Natural Philosophy 39 Jackson, Andrew 182 Janson, Charles William 65n7 Jefferson, Thomas 3, 18–19, 26–27, 31n2, 36, 45, 47, 58–59, 97, 107nn10, 12–13, 123 Jennison, Nathaniel 14 Jones, William (Secretary of the Navy) 177 Judiciary Act of 1789 31 Laws of Harvard College, The 39 lawyering and lassitude (1811–1812) 132–150; 1811 election cycle 140; bodily ills 143–144; entering Baltimore 138; Pejebscot Proprietors case 133–136; poem for Mary 149; poem on Charlotte 148–149; prose 147; Randolph/Eppes exchange 139; ratable polls controversy 140; soulful introspection 148 Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres 39 Lincoln, Abraham 9, 64 Lincoln, Daniel W. 2, 8, 120; childhood 3–4; earthly possessions 1, 2; writing poetry, pastime 4 Lincoln, Enoch 8–9 Lincoln, Francis 106 Lincoln, Levi 37, 45, 59, 88, 113, 115–118, 120, 123, 157, 160; resignation letter to Jefferson 59 Lincoln, Levi (1729–1800) 7–20; Daniel Shays case 14–15; defending Bathsheba Spooner 14; election win in 1796 18; at Harvard College 9–11; married to Martha Waldo 16; Quock Walker case 14; in Worcester 13–14 Lincoln, Levi (1800–1803) 25–31, 31n1, 32nn17, 20, 33n31; “A

204

Index

Farmer” pseudonym 27–29; Federalists infuriated by 29; in the House of Representatives 26 Lincoln, Levi, Jr 9, 16, 66nn18–19, 96–97, 157, 181 Lincoln, Martha 99 Lincoln, Samuel 8 Litchfield Law School 58 Locke, Samuel 11 Loring, James Spear 66n25, 184, 189n58 Louisiana Purchase 59 Macon Bill 115 Madison, James 123, 138, 157, 166, 176 Marshall, John (Chief Justice) 58 Massachusetts Spy 27–28 McCall, Edward (Lieutenant) 177 Military Peace and Establishment Act of 1802 60 Millot, Abbe 39 “Missing in a Churchyard” poem 42 Monroe, James 180 Montgomery, James 146 Monthly Anthology, The 63, 114 Moore, Margaret B. 151n20 Morton, Perez 8 National Aegis 61, 66nn21, 23 Neck (shipping center) 71 Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 125, 136 Ogilvie, James 103 Orlando: or Parental Persecution, a Tragedy 118 Otis, Harrison Gray 97–98, 116, 180 Paine, Robert Treat 8 Paine, Thomas 38 Parker, Leonard 168 Parris, Alexander (architect) 71 Pierce, John (Harvard alum) 49, 54n67 Pinkney, Helen R 109n60 poetry writing 4 Portencius 27 Portland, Daniel Lincoln at (1806–1807) 70–82; admitted to Supreme Judicial Court 80; arrival 71–72; courtroom debut 77; at Cumberland Bar 73; first months in 73; friends 74–75; by mid-1807 76; opportunities for Daniel 73, 75;

separation from Massachusetts issue 79; in Willis case 76–77 Preble, Edward (Captain) 80–81 Principles of Natural Law 39 Proctor, Edward 139 providence slept (1813–1815) 176–187; health failing 176–177, 183; returned to Portland 178 “Purity of Heart” poem 45 Religious Freedom Act of 1811 141, 156 Revolutionary War 37, 60, 78–79 Rowley, Thomas 197 Ruggles, Timothy 14 Rush, Benjamin 44, 103 Schlabrendorf, Gustav 197 Second Congregational Church 16 Sewall, William Bartlett 43–45, 75 Shade of Collins, The 146 Shays, Daniel 14 Spooner, Bathsheba 14 Stamp Act 10–11, 13 Stoddard, Solomon 12 Story, Joseph 124 Strong, Caleb 78, 157–158, 166, 180, 182 Sullivan, James 15, 65, 78–79, 82, 88–91 Sulpicius 29, 32nn22, 24 Symmes, William 73 Taber, John (businessman) 89–90 Tappan, David 39, 50n4, 165 Taylor, Zachary 9 Thatcher, George (Judge) 134–135 Thatcher, Levi 60 Thornton, Thomas 76 Timothy Touchstone 141 Townsend, Alexander 120–121 Townshend Acts 10 Treaty of Ghent 2, 192 triumph then tragedy in Worcester 57–65; see also Worcester, triumph then tragedy in (1803–1806) Waldo, Martha 16 Walker, Quock 14, 160 War Hawks 156 war zones (1811–1813) 155–169; to Boston Federalists 156; as defense counsel for General Ebenezer

Index 205 Goodale 159–160; Niagara Campaign 161; Portlanders during 167; tribute to the fallen Burrows 168 Washington Benevolent Society 122 Washington, George 120 Wharton, Richard 101 White, William Charles 117 Whitman, Ezekiel 95 Widgery, William 73, 79 Willard, Joseph (Harvard college president) 38–39, 118 Willis, Nathaniel 76, 84n32 Wingate, James 133

Wolcott, Alexander 124 Worcester, triumph then tragedy in (1803–1806) 57–65; joined Worcester Light Infantry 60; July Fourth orations 62; “On the Death of Miss Charlotte Caldwell” poem 64 Worcester Aegis, The 60–61 Worcester Light Infantry 60–61 Wordsworth, William 146 XYZ Affair 115