Chapter 7

At first there were no buildings at all. There was nothing but a hole in the ground, closed by an iron trapdoor that opened into the shaft, where a wooden ladder was fixed to the rock at one side. At the bottom of the ladder there was a flight of rough stone steps leading farther down into the mine. All was dark and still except for the dripping of water along the galleries that led away into the heart of the hill. One cavern was blasted out to make more room and was fitted with wooden cells and bunks for the prisoners to sleep in, and at night a guard was set to watch the entrance up above and prevent any one from climbing the ladder and getting out. When everything was ready, the committee in charge of the work reported that it would be "next to impossible for any one to escape from this prison."

The first prisoner sent there was a man named John Henson, who was committed on December 22, 1773. He spent eighteen days alone in the mine; then, on the night of January 9, 1774, he disappeared. No one could imagine how he got out. But there was another shaft leading up from the mine, a very deep one, where the copper ore had been drawn out. It had no ladder in it and its opening had not been closed, because it did not seem possible for a prisoner to escape that way. Yet a woman drew John Henson up eighty feet through the shaft in a bucket used for hoisting copper. After that, this shaft, too, was carefully closed and a strong wooden guardhouse was built over the entrance to the other one.

More prisoners were soon committed to Newgate. "Burglars, horse-thieves, and counterfeiters," according to the law, were sent there and they were set to work mining copper, but instead of doing this, they dug their way out with the mining tools; so workshops were built aboveground where they made nails, boots and shoes, wagons, and other things. They slept in the mine as before, but at daylight they were called and came up the ladder in squads of three at a time under a guard, climbing as well as they could with fetters on their legs. They took their meals in the workshops and were chained to the forges and workbenches until late in the afternoon, when they went down again into the mine for the night.

When the Revolutionary War began, in 1775, political prisoners were sent to Newgate in Connecticut, just as such prisoners had often been sent to old Newgate in England. These men in America were the Tories, or Loyalists, who sympathized with the British and were often found giving them information and help. To protect themselves the Americans arrested them. Some of the first were sent by Washington from the camp at Cambridgik where the American army was besieging Boston.

Here is a part of his letter to the Committee of Safety at Simsbury; its date shows that it was written several months before the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia:--

CAMBRIDGE, December 7th, 1775.

GENTLEMEN:

The prisoners which will be delivered to you with this, having been tried by a court martial, were sentenced to Simsbury in Connecticut. You will therefore have them secured so that they cannot possibly make their escape. I am, etc.

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

But the Tories were just as anxious as any other prisoners to escape if they could. Three times the wooden guardhouse over the entrance was set on fire and burned down. Once, when there were a great many Tories in Newgate, they made a concerted plan and carried it out successfully. The wife of one of them had permission, to visit him, and came to the prison one night about ten o'clock. Only two guards were on duty then at the mouth of the shaft. When the trapdoor was lifted for her, the prisoners were all ready and waiting on the ladder. They rushed out, overpowered the two men, took away their muskets, and got possession of the guardroom. The rest of the watch, who had been asleep, hurried in, and there was a desperate fight; one man was killed and several were wounded. At last the prisoners succeeded in putting all the guards down into the mine and closing the trapdoor upon them. Then they escaped themselves, and few of them were ever retaken.

A story is told of a Tory prisoner who, about the year 1780, made his escape in a remarkable and unexpected way. There was an old drain in the mine which had once carried off water, but when the mine became a prison it was stopped up with stone and mortar, except for a small opening where the water still ran off between iron bars. The outlet of this drain was far down on the hillside beyond the sight of the guards. The prisoner, Henry Wooster, who worked in the nail-shop, contrived to hide some bits of iron nail rods in his clothes and carry them back with him into the mine. He learned, with their help, to take off his fetters at night. Then, with the same bits of iron, he worked at the bars of the drain until, little by little, he loosened some of them and took them out so that he could crawl through into the drain. But the drain was too narrow in some places to let him pass and he was obliged to loosen and remove some of its stones. This was a long and hard task, but he was not easily discouraged. Each night he took off his clothed and his fetters, crawled into the drain, and worked until morning. Then he replaced the iron bars, dressed, put on his fetters, and was ready when the guards came down to go up to the shops with the rest of the prisoners. By and by he got nearly to the end of the drain. Then one night, while he was down there, a stone, which he had accidentally loosened, fell behind him and blocked his way back. He could not turn to reach the stone with his hands, for the drain was too narrow, he could not stir it with his feet, and he dared not cry out for help; time passed, and it was almost morning; he would be called and missed, and he shuddered to think of the consequences. At last, as he was about to give up in despair, he felt the stone move just a little. Bracing himself against the sides of the drain, he pushed it vigorously with his feet. Slowly, inch by inch, it rolled back until it fell into a slight depression so that he could pass over it. Bleeding and exhausted, he got to his bunk and into his clothes and fetters again just as the guards came down the ladder. A few nights later he finished his work and, with several other prisoners, escaped through the drain.

Some of the Tories in Newgate were well-known and educated men. One was a clergyman named Simeon Baxter. He preached a sermon, one Sunday, to his companions in the mine, in which he advised them, if they could, to assassinate Washington and the whole Continental Congress. This sermon was printed afterward in London and proves how bitter the feeling was in those days between the Americans and the Tories.

After the Revolution, Newgate was the state prison of the State of Connecticut until 1827. New workshops and other buildings were added from time to time as they were needed. The wooden guardhouse was replaced by one of brick, and a strong stone room over the mouth of the shaft went by the nickname of the "stone jug." There was a chapel and a hospital, but the hospital was seldom used because there was very little sickness. The pure air and even temperature in the mine, where it was never too hot in summer nor too cold in winter, kept the prisoners well in spite of darkness and confinement, and men who were sent there in a bad state of health often recovered.

At one time there was a strong wooden fence, with iron spikes on its top, around the enclosure, but in 1802 it was replaced by a stone wall twelve feet high, with watch-towers at the corners and a moat below it. Some of the prisoners helped to build this wall, and when it was finished they were allowed to take part in a celebration. One of them, an Irishman, gave this toast at the feast: "May the great wall be like the wall of Jericho and tumble down at the sound of a ram's horn."

But the wall is still standing on Copper Hill after more than one hundred years and, although the prison is empty and the mines deserted to-day, a great many people visit the place every year because of its interesting history. Guides take the visitors down the steep ladder in the shaft and lead them through the underground galleries where copper was mined, and show them the caverns where the prisoners once slept in old Newgate Prison.

REFERENCES

1. Trumbull, J. H. (editor). _Memorial History of Hartford County._ E. L. Osgood, Boston, 1886.

2. "Newgate of Connecticut." _Magazine of American History_, vol. 15, April, 1886. See also vol. 10.

3. Phelps, Richard H. _Newgate of Connecticut_. American Publishing Co. Hartford, 1876.

THE DARK DAY

"'T was on a May-day of the far old year Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell Over the bloom and sweet life of the spring, Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon, A horror of great darkness, like the night." WHITTIER.

"Yellow Friday," or "the Dark Day," in New England, was the l9th of May, 1780. For nearly a week before this day the air had been full of smoke and haze, and the sun at noontime and the full moon at night had looked like great red balls in the misty sky. Thursday night the sun went down red and threatening.

Friday morning it rose as usual, but, as the weather was overcast, it only peered now and then through the broken gray clouds. There were mutterings of thunder and a few drops of rain fell, big and heavy with black soot. Then the shower stopped and a stillness like that before a great storm settled over the land. The day, instead of growing lighter, grew darker and darker. Yet no storm came.

Strange colors edged the low-hanging clouds, red and brown and a brassy yellow, while the fields and woods below were a deep, unnatural green. The white roads and houses and the white church steeples turned yellow. Even the clean silver in the houses looked like brass. These colors foreboded an eclipse of the sun; yet there was no eclipse.

By noon it was as dark as early night, and the birds sang their evening songs and disappeared. Some of the smaller ones, frightened and fluttering, flew into the houses or dashed themselves against the window panes. Chickens went to roost, the cows came home from pasture, and the frogs croaked in the ponds.

Men planting corn in the fields stopped work because they could not see the corn as it dropped. Women at home lighted candles to find their way about the house. No one could see the time of day by the clocks, and white paper looked like black velvet. Many people were terrified and wondered what was coming. Some expected a great tornado; others said a comet was due and feared it portended some great calamity, perhaps a disaster to the armies in the field who were fighting England in the war of the Revolution. Still others, more ignorant and superstitious, were sure that the end of the world had come, that the last trumpet would soon sound and the dead be raised. One woman sent a messenger in haste to her pastor to ask what this dreadful darkness meant, but he only replied that he was "as much in the dark" as she.

Several gentlemen, who happened to be at the house of Reverend Manasseh Cutler, the minister in Ipswich, Massachusetts, have left us a record of their observations that day.

Mr. Cutler wrote in his journal:--

"This morning Mr. Lathrop of Boston called upon me. Soon after he came in I observed a remarkable cloud coming up and it appeared dark. The cloud was unusually brassy with little or no rain. Mr. Sewell and Colonel Wigglesworth came in. The darkness increased and by eleven o'clock it was so dark as to make it necessary to light candles ... at half-past eleven in a room with three large windows, southeast and south, could not read a word in large print close to windows .... About twelve it lighted up a little, then grew more dark.... At one o'clock very dark.... The windows being still open, a candle cast a shade so well defined on the wall that profiles were taken with as much ease as they could have been in the night. ... We dined about two, the windows all open and two candles burning on the table. In the time of the greatest darkness some of the dunghill fowls went to roost, cocks crowed in answer to one another, woodcocks, which are night birds, whistled as they do only in the dark, frogs peeped, in short there was the appearance of midnight at noonday.... At four o'clock it grew more light.... Between three and four we were out and perceived a strong sooty smell. Some of the company were confident a chimney in the neighborhood must be burning; others conjectured the smell was more like that of burnt leaves."

These gentlemen went over to the tavern near by and found the people there greatly excited and tried to reassure them. They proved to them from the black ashes of leaves, which had settled like a scum on the rainwater standing in tubs, that the darkness was not supernatural, but probably came from the burning of forests far away.

Dr. Ezra Stiles, who was then president of Yale College in New Haven, gave the same explanation. He says:--

"The woods about Ticonderoga [in New York] and eastward over to New Hampshire and westward into New York and the Jerseys were all on fire for a week before this Darkness and the smoke in the wilderness almost to suffocation. No rain since last fall, the woods excessively dry.... Such a profusion of settlers pushing back into the wilderness were everywhere clearing land and burning brush. This set the forests afire far beyond intention, so as to burn houses and fences.... The woods burned extensively for a week before the nineteenth of May and the wind all the while northerly."

A quaint old ballad, said to have been written about that time, gives a description of this Dark Day:--

"The Whip-poor-will sung notes most shrill, Doves to their cots retreated, And all the fowls, excepting owls, Upon their roosts were seated.

"The herds and flocks stood still as stocks, Or to their folds were hieing, Men young and old, dared not to scold At wives and children crying.

"The day of doom, most thought was come, Throughout New England's borders, The people scared, felt unprepared To obey the dreadful orders."

In Connecticut the legislature was in session at Hartford. It was like night in the streets of this city and candles were burning in the windows of all the houses. Men grew anxious and uneasy. As the darkness became deeper, the House of Representatives adjourned, finding it impossible to transact any business. Soon after, a similar motion for adjournment was made in the Senate, or Council, as it was then called. By this time faces could scarcely be distinguished across the room and a dread had fallen on the assembly; "men's hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which were coming."

Then up rose Honorable Abraham Davenport, a judge of Fairfield County and councilor from Stamford, a stern and upright man, strict in the discharge of his duty.

"I am against adjournment," he said. "The Day of Judgment is either approaching or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment; if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish, therefore, that candles may be brought."

His strong words held the assembly. Its members rallied from their fears and, following his example, turned steadily to the transaction of the necessary business of the hour.

"And there he stands in memory to this day, Erect, self-poised, a rugged face half seen Against a background of unnatural dark, A witness to the ages as they pass That simple duty hath no place for fear."

WHITTIER.

REFERENCES

1. Barber, J. W. _Connecticut Historical Collections_, J. W. Barber. New Haven, 1836.

2. _"The Dark Day." New England Magazine_, May, 1834.

3. Dexter, F. B. (editor). _The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles_. Charles Scribner's Sons. New York, 1901.

4. Cutler, W. P. and J. P. _Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler_. Cincinnati, 1888.

A FRENCH CAMP IN CONNECTICUT

On the Green of the old town of Lebanon a mound is shown to-day on the spot where a large brick oven stood in the winter of 1781--an oven in which bread was baked for the soldiers of the American Revolutionary Army. These soldiers, who might have been seen almost any day that winter in their gay uniforms, crossing and recrossing the Green, or gathered in groups about the oven, were, strangely enough, not American soldiers, but French hussars belonging to the Duke de Lauzun's famous "Legion of Horse."

France, being herself at war with England, had recently sent an army to America to help the colonies in their struggle against a common enemy, and the French commander-in-chief, the Count de Rochambeau, wrote from Newport, Rhode Island, to Governor Trumbull, of Connecticut, asking if the governor could provide winter quarters in Lebanon for a part of his forces--for the Duke de Lauzun and some of his Legion of Horse.

Governor Trumbull's home was in Lebanon. His house was near the village Green, and close beside it stood his store, which, by this time, had become famous under the name of the "War Office," because in this store the governor and the Council of Safety used to meet and talk over the important business of the war, and what Connecticut could do, as her share, to help the American army.

There is a story that Washington used to say when he needed more supplies, "Let us see what Brother Jonathan can do for us," and that this nickname, which is now used for the United States, belonged originally to Jonathan Trumbull. It is true that Washington often turned to him for help. He had approved the application of the Count de Rochambeau to Governor Trumbull for winter quarters for the French troops. But long before the arrival of these soldiers there had been busy times in Lebanon. Provisions of all kinds were brought from all over the state to the governor's store to be packed and sent off to the troops in the field. The governor was usually to be found there himself, weighing and measuring, packing boxes and barrels, dealing out powder and lead, starting off trains of loaded wagons and often large herds of cattle to be driven all the way to the army at the front. Messengers came and went, flying on horseback along the country roads, and sometimes they sat on the counter in the store, swinging their spurred boots, waiting for the governor to give them their orders. A piece of that counter, with the marks of their spurs in the soft wood, can be seen now in the rooms of the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford. Although there were dark days during the war when the state's treasury was exhausted and the people discouraged and the demands of the army hard to meet, yet

"Governor Trumbull never quailed In his store on Lebanon hill."

Somehow or other the supplies were found and little Connecticut became known as the "Provision State." Washington spoke of her governor as "the first of patriots." This is one of Governor Trumbull's proclamations to the men of Connecticut:--

"Be roused and alarmed to stand forth in our glorious cause. Join yourselves to one of the companies now ordered to New York, or form yourselves into distinct companies and choose captains forthwith;... march on; play the man for God and for the cities of our God, and may the God of the armies of Israel be your leader."

Lebanon was then on one of the main roads through New England, and many distinguished men stopped there at different times to see the governor. Washington came, and Lafayette, the young French nobleman whom Washington loved almost as a son, and who is, perhaps, "nearer to the hearts of the Americans than any man not of their own people." Lafayette holds this place in their affections because, before the French Government decided to send help to the colonies, he "came from France of his own accord and brought with him the sympathy of the French people," among whom also new ideas of liberty were stirring.

"From the moment I first heard of America," he said, "I began to love her; from the moment I understood that she was struggling for her liberties, I burned to shed my best blood in her cause."

Lafayette's countrymen, who spent the winter of 1781 in Lebanon, were the gallant soldiers of France. Their leader, the Duke de Lauzun, was a gay French nobleman, very handsome, very fond of good living, brilliant and witty as well as brave; nobody like him or his men had ever been seen before in Lebanon. The people of that quiet little town opened their eyes in surprise when the dashing French hussars, in their tall black caps and their brilliantly braided jackets, came galloping in over the muddy country roads. Governor Trumbull had made provision for them. Barracks were built for some on a farm which he owned just outside the town, and others camped on the village Green.

With their arrival life in Lebanon changed. At daybreak the French bugles blew the reveille. There were parades and reviews, there were balls and parties. Washington held a review of Lauzun's Legion when he passed through the place one day in March. The corps was finely equipped. Its horses were good, its men brave and handsome, and their uniforms vivid and trim. The hussars wore sky-blue jackets braided with white, yellow breeches, high boots, and tall caps with a white plume at the side. They made a great impression on the country people, who had seen their own men, dressed in homespun clothes, mount their rough farmhorses and ride away, just as they were, to the war. The duke himself was friendly and pleasant and popular with his new neighbors. He lived in a house lent him by David Trumbull, the governor's son.

Once, early in the winter, two distinguished visitors from the French army came to see him, the Marquis de Chastellux, who wrote a book of "Travels in North America," and the Baron de Montesquieu; and he gave a dinner for them to which he invited Governor Trumbull. In the marquis's book we can read a description of it and of Governor Trumbull as he appeared to these French gentlemen from the Old World.

"On returning from the chase," says de Chastellux (he had been out hunting squirrels), "I dined at the Duke de Lauzun's with Governor Trumbull. This good methodical governor is seventy years old. His whole life is consecrated to business, which he passionately loves, whether it is important or not. He has all the simplicity and pedantry of a great magistrate of a small republic, and invariably says he will consider, that he must refer to his council. He wears the antique dress of the first settlers in this colony." Then the marquis goes on to tell how the small old man, in his single-breasted, drab-colored coat, tight knee-breeches, and muslin wrist-ruffles, walked up to the table where twenty hussar officers were waiting and with "formal stiffness pronounced in a loud voice a long prayer in the form, of a Benedicite." The French officers must have been surprised; they were not used to simple country manners and to grace before meat on all occasions, but they were too polite and too well trained to laugh. "Twenty amens issued at once from the midst of forty moustaches," says the marquis, and in spite of the fun he makes of the old Puritan governor's stiff manners, we feel in reading the story that he fully appreciates his sterling good qualities.