Part 10

A unique and ingenious feature of the essay is the author's "Moral and Physical Thermometer," which forms its frontispiece. On the ascending scale, "Strong Beer" is placed in the lowest and "Water" at the highest degree, with remarks indicating improving mental and physical conditions in the rising course. On the descending scale, "Punch" occupies the highest while "Rum day and night" is found at the lowest place, accompanied between points by a fearfully intensifying array of vices, diseases and penalties.

In this connection might be quoted the author's interpretation of a familiar myth:

"The fable of Prometheus, on whose liver a vulture was said to prey constantly, as a punishment for his stealing fire from heaven, was intended to illustrate the painful effects of ardent spirits upon that organ of the body."

Here is a curious anticipation of the modern gold cure, as it took form in the fertile intellect of Dr. Rush:

"The association of the idea of ardent spirits, with a painful or disagreeable impression upon some part of the body, has sometimes cured the love of strong drink. . . . This appeal to that operation of the human mind, which obliges it to associate ideas, accidentally or otherwise combined, for the cure of vice, is very ancient. It was resorted to by Moses when he compelled the Children of Israel to drink the solution of the golden calf (which they had idolized) in water. This solution if made, as it most probably was, by means of what is called hepar sulphuris, was extremely bitter, and nauseous, and could never be recollected afterwards, without bringing into equal detestation, the sin which subjected them to the necessity of drinking it."

In this pamphlet was sounded the first effective call for a combined movement against the evil of intemperance--a trumpet call which reverberated in the soul of Dr. Clark until, nobly responding, he stood forth alone before the world, having inscribed upon his banner the word, Organization. For Dr. Rush had said:

"Let good men of every class unite and besiege the general and state governments, with petitions to limit the number of taverns, to impose heavy duties upon ardent spirits, to inflict a mark of disgrace, or a temporary abridgment of some civil right upon every man convicted of drunkenness. . . . To aid the operation of these laws, would it not be extremely useful for the rulers of the different denominations of Christian churches to unite and render the sale and consumption of ardent spirits a subject of ecclesiastical jurisdiction?"

Such are a few of the characteristic portions of Dr. Rush's famous essay, a work which revived, not only the moral sense of this country, but also of England, where it was republished in the following year. But the giant of intemperance exhibited no signs of weakness, though he had been undoubtedly pierced in a vital part. The weapon of Dr. Rush had been slim, but keen--a highly tempered rapier, more effective than in after years was the broad sword of Lyman Beecher's "Sermons on Temperance." With an amiable exterior, the skillful reforming fencer had managed to keep his antagonist off his guard while he transfixed and permanently crippled him. But another mode of attack was necessary in order to bring him under control. To indulge yet further in figurative speech: Dr. Rush had manufactured the ammunition but who was to fire the gun?

It is always a pleasure to visit the homes of eminent persons who long since have died. To look upon the scenes that they once beheld; to walk in the paths that they once trod, is like coming into familiar intercourse with the intimate friend of the honored dead, and we go from the places hallowed by such associations with a sense of having gained almost a personal acquaintance with the great who there have had a habitation. The native town of Dr. Billy James Clark was beautiful old Northampton, in Massachusetts. Primitively Nonotuck of the Indians, it was venerable even on his birthday, January 4, 1778, and then, as now, it was foremost in culture and intelligence. Here, Jonathan Edwards had lived and labored, leaving upon the town an ineradicable impress of his saintly character and heavenly doctrines. Here, David Brainerd the zealous missionary to the Indians, broken in health, had died under the roof of Edwards, who had extended to him the loving hand of hospitality. It was eminently fitting that a life destined to exercise so profoundly beneficial an influence in promoting the higher estate of the race should have its beginning in a town so distinguished for its enlightenment and piety.

Ithamar Clark, when his little son Billy was about six years old, left Northampton and took up his residence in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where also was the home of Mrs. Clark's father. For a period of four years the boy attended the school which afterwards developed into Williams College, at the end of which time the family changed its home to Pownal, Vermont. Of the details of the domestic life of the Clarks, we have no record. Nothing is known of the wife of Ithamar Clark, except that her maiden name was Sarah Simonds, and that she was a daughter of Benjamin Simonds, who had been a colonel in the Continental army, serving in the campaign against Burgoyne. It is probable that the moral and religious leanings of Dr. Clark were inherited from or instilled by his mother. His father seems not to have been much interested in the ideas that his son did so much to advance. Previous to his settling at Pownal, he had followed agriculture and shoe-making, but now, in the capacity of tavern-keeper, he began selling liquor.

In Dr. Holden's article it is stated that the tavern was located upon a farm that Mr. Clark had purchased, one and a half miles from Pownal on the Bennington road.

Young Billy Clark, standing behind his father's bar and dealing out intoxicating drinks, was in a position to observe thoroughly the pernicious effects of dallying with alcohol. His daily occupation was an open book, as thrilling as lurid chapters of fiction, and the letters of it remained upon his soul in characters of unquenchable fire. Abraham Lincoln, when a young man, having gone down the Mississippi as a flat-boatman, visited the slave market of New Orleans. He was deeply affected by the harrowing scenes he there beheld, and he registered a vow that should ever the opportunity present itself, he would strike with all his power the institution that encouraged such iniquities. Thus was planted the germ that budded, blossomed and bore fruit in the Proclamation of Emancipation. No doubt it was the memory of his father's bar-room, with the evils radiating from it, that urged forward Dr. Clark to the culmination of his great destiny.

Some writers give the name of Dr. Clark as William J. or W. J. Clark, but he himself signed it, B. J. Clark, while the best authorities refer to him as Dr. Billy J. Clark. It is probable that Dr. Clark, becoming widely known by the more familiar title, found it convenient to substitute the same for William.

When about fifteen years of age, his father having died, young Clark returned to Northampton to attend school there for a term of one year. This experience was probably of great benefit to the youth, not only in improving his education, but by introducing him to one of the most refined and intelligent communities in New England. The inspiration of the life of Edwards was dominant in the society of the old town, and his books were still treasured and read. It is interesting to reflect that the living spirit of the great divine may have been a quickening influence in the heart of this thoughtful youth; that the story of the heroic life of Brainerd may have appealed to his religious and enterprising nature; that the memory of one or both of these devoted men may have contributed to the molding of his mind into the worthy fashion in which it subsequently displayed itself to the world. Be this as it may, not long after his return to the farm, he abandoned the bar and began the study of medicine under Dr. Caleb Gibbs, of Pownal. Still making his home at the farm, he pursued his studies for the space of two years, remunerating his preceptor by assuming the care of his horses. We find him at the end of that period, in 1797, entering as a student the office of Dr. Lemuel Wicker, of Easton, Washington County, N. Y., with whom he remained until March 21, 1799, when he began the practice of medicine in the town of Moreau. He opened his office not far from what afterwards became known as Clark's Corners. This historic neighborhood is situated about three miles in a westerly direction from Fort Edward, and five miles south of Glens Falls. Here, having married Joanna Payn, of Fort Miller, and purchased a farm, he made his permanent residence. The rise of Dr. Clark had been phenomenal; from a bartender to the dignity of a profession, and all in the space of four or five years! Dr. Clark was but twenty-one when he came to Moreau. Having previously satisfied the preliminary requirements, he was advanced to the full privileges of a physician in a license granted by the judge of the court of common pleas for Washington County, in the month of June following his settlement in Saratoga County.

From his home in Moreau, Dr. Clark for thirty-four years went up and down the long stretches of his rides, ministering faithfully to the sick. The region was in a primitive condition, with poor roads, and was but thinly inhabited. Exhausting to body and mind, as must necessarily have been his labors, he yet had a disposition to employ himself in the sphere of agriculture and to inform himself upon the political issues of the day. In 1820 he represented his county as Member of Assembly. Through his daily visits to the sick, Dr. Clark was afforded exceptional advantages for observing and studying the effects upon the people of the prevailing intemperance, which had taken a particularly strong grasp upon the population among which he had come to dwell.

Armstrong seems to attribute the heavy drinking in Moreau to the leading industry, stating that "all the towns and counties in the vicinity of the ever-rolling Hudson were teeming with lumber."

Whatever may have been the predisposing cause of the general and excessive use of intoxicants in England, it is not difficult to point out the conditions which contributed to the growth of the same practice in this country. The lives of the people were laborious, monotonous, and unmitigated by those social relaxations which in modern times so greatly lighten the burdens and alleviate the sorrows of life. Books and periodicals were not plentiful, and the character of the prevailing literature was not such as to invite the attention of the average reader. Transportation being by horsepower along the country roads, public houses, each with its bar, were encountered at every turn, while the little stores to be found at the cross-roads, also dispensed liquor to all comers. Add to this the fact that the materials from which intoxicating beverages are manufactured were abundantly grown within our borders, and near to our shores, and it will be appreciated how naturally the people fell into intemperate habits.

For a period of nine years, while Dr. Clark, in all extremities of weather, rode on horseback to the bedsides of his widely separated patients, the burden of the drink-evil weighed heavily upon his mind. He was a man of energy; one who was not easily thwarted in the carrying out of his plans. But here was a task that seemed too hard for him. What could one man accomplish in the presence of such indifference and overwhelming opposition?

The mode of action that Dr. Clark finally adopted was that of organization--a working together of the friends of temperance for a common purpose. This now seems like a very natural solution of the problem of finding his best means of procedure; but Dr. Clark was the first man to announce and to give the idea practical demonstration, though it is not probable that he possessed any clearly defined conception of the lines along which it was to operate, nor of the vast proportions which the movement was destined to attain. Like a prophet under the guiding influence of inspiration, scarcely knowing what he did, he was yet availing himself of a fundamental principle of all nature. For, investigate wherever one may, from the vilest atom of earth to the court of high heaven, organization is the law of every upward step. The ancients, dimly apprehending this sublime truth, conceived of the universe as a gigantic animal, a cosmic leviathan, whole, complete and harmonious in all its parts, while philosophy has ever striven, though in vain, to demonstrate by processes of reason what the higher authority of intuition has proclaimed in all generations.

Dr. Rush, by reason of a liberal education, supplemented by medical study in the capitals of Europe, and on account of his high social, professional and literary standing, greatly outshone his coworker, the struggling country doctor on the frontier of Northern New York. But these two greatest factors in the advent of the temperance reformation, and who, it should be said, were acquaintances through the medium of correspondence, each performed his peculiar part, and who can determine which is entitled to the greater honor. Dr. Rush manufactured the ammunition, but Dr. Clark fired the gun, his match being organization.

The idea of forming a temperance society had perhaps been suggested to Dr. Clark by his connection with the Saratoga County Medical Society, the first institution of its kind in this state, and of which he was the founder. He had attempted early in April, 1808, to interest prominent men, whom he had met at Ballston Springs at a session of court, in his projected temperance enterprise. His plan may have been to establish a central society at the county seat and to encourage the organization of branches in the surrounding towns; but, to use Dr. Clark's own words, "they with one accord began to make excuses and brand our scheme as Utopian and visionary." Previous to this, however, he had taken the initiative in the work among his neighbors, for he says: "I returned to Moreau like a bow well bent that had not lost its elasticity, and resumed the labor there." The determination he exhibited was remarkable, and one cannot dwell upon the difficulties with which he contended and meditate upon the unselfish, devoted and humanitarian spirit by which he was actuated without expressing admiration.

The first successful step in the sublime drama of the temperance reformation took place in the same month of April, referred to a moment ago, when Dr. Clark made his memorable visit to his minister. I quote from Armstrong:

"After having projected a plan of a temperance organization, the doctor determined on a visit to his minister, the author of these memoirs, who was then the pastor of the flourishing Congregational church in the town of Moreau. The visit was made on a dark evening, no moon and cloudy. After riding on horseback about three miles, through deep mud of clay road, in the breaking-up of winter, the doctor knocked at his minister's door, and on entrance, before taking seat in the house, he earnestly uttered the following words: 'Mr. Armstrong, I have come to see you on important business.' Then, lifting up both hands, he continued: 'We shall all become a community of drunkards in this town unless something is done to arrest the progress of intemperance.'"

The poet has sung in soul-stirring numbers of the midnight ride of Paul Revere. There are, indeed, certain resemblances between it and Dr. Clark's historic adventure. It was night; there was national peril; heroes were in the saddle, and the voices of their fervent appeals were destined to reverberate down the aisles of time--"words that shall echo forevermore."

Due notice having been given to the people of the towns of Moreau and Northumberland, a meeting for the purpose of forming a temperance society was held at the public house of Captain Peter L. Mawney, at Clark's Corners, on April 13, 1808. Resolutions were adopted, the chief of which was that "in the opinion of this meeting it is proper, practicable and necessary to form a temperance society in this place; and that the great and leading object of this society is wholly to abstain from ardent spirits." A committee, of which Dr. Clark was chairman, was appointed to prepare the Bylaws for the organization, and twenty-three persons enrolled themselves as members.

The following is the list of the signers: Isaac B. Payn, Ichabod Hawley, David Parsons, James Mott, Alvaro Hawley, Thomas Cotton, David Tillotson, Billy J. Clark, Charles Kellogg, Jr., Elnathan Spencer, Asaph Putnam, Hawley St. John, Nicholas W. Angle, Dan Kellogg, Ephraim Ross, John M. Berry, John T. Sealy, Cyrus Wood, James Rogers, Henry Martin, Sidney Berry, Joseph Sill, Solomon St. John.

The meeting having adjourned one week, to April 20, at the Mawney house, a long and comprehensive system of By-laws was then adopted. Article I stated that "This society shall be known by the appellation of Union Temperance Society of Moreau and Northumberland." Like Dr. Rush's essay, the Constitution of the society took grounds only against spirituous liquors, making exceptions regarding the use of them in circumstances of religious ordinances, sickness and public dinners.

It was not until 1843 that the society "after a long season of declension," on a motion put by Dr. Clark, adopted a resolution of total abstinence.

Col. Sidney Berry, ex-judge of Saratoga county, was chosen president and Dr. Clark secretary of the new society. As there exists an apparent contradiction as to the particular roof under which this historic meeting was held, one account stating that it occurred at the Mawney house and another at the neighboring school house, it is proper to say here that this discrepancy is removed by the statement made in Judge Hay's book, page 22, that the session opened in the Mawney house, but that "the society completed its organization" in the school house. In the association, as a coherent institution, coming into existence within the walls of such a building, may be found a prophecy of what the temperance movement in the future was to lay particular stress upon--that is, upon temperance teaching in the public schools. Indeed, it should be said that the Moreau society itself was an educative organization as well as a moral one, having a circulating library and maintaining a lyceum.

But, although it had at its head intelligent, high-minded and enterprising men, its career was hard and discouraging to its members. "That little, feeble band of temperance brethren," says Armstrong, "holding their quarterly and annual meetings in a country district school house from April, 1808, onward for several years, without the presence of a single female at their temperance meetings; who were made the song of the drunkard; who were ridiculed by the scoffs of the intemperate world; undisciplined in arms of even moral suasive tactics for warfare, and unable of themselves to encounter the Prince of Hell, with his legions of instrumentalities . . . were, nevertheless, the seed of the great temperance reformation."

That Armstrong deplored the narrow ideas which prevailed to the discouraging of women from fraternizing with the society, is more explicitly shown in the words which express his gratification in the great numbers of women who, by their presence and cooperation, subsequently aided so much in the promotion of the work. Dr. Clark also protested against the exclusion of women from membership in the temperance societies. These statements are introduced that it may be known that the two leading men in the Moreau society would have hailed with delight the advent of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. That great institution, not reckoning many others devoted to the same cause, is of itself alone a glorious monument to the pioneers of Moreau who, in a tempest of scorn and ridicule, laid its foundations. Wisely the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, as the name implies, built up its sublime edifice of the same material--the granite of organization. From towns, through counties, states, nations and the civilized world, it carries on systematically its vast and beneficent enterprises. Words cannot express, nor the mind conceive, the power of the prodigious engine which, distributed in a diversity of directions, is being exerted daily, hourly and momentarily by this great association of consecrated women. And here let me say that not only did the temperance reformation come into existence within the borders of our commonwealth, but that the late Frances Elizabeth Willard, the great light in the organization of which I have been speaking, was a daughter of the state of New York.

Dr. Clark continued in the practice of medicine for a quarter of a century after the formation of the Moreau temperance society, making his residence on the farm of his original purchase. Of this long period of professional labor there remains no memorial, though in common with the routine duties of medical men, it undoubtedly abounded in elements which, interesting of themselves, would be all the more so as belonging to the life of one so distinguished in the annals of reform. Beginning to experience the physical effects of his protracted devotion to his profession, and having accumulated considerable property, Dr. Clark in 1833 purchased real estate in Glens Falls and embarked there in the retail drug business. This successful enterprise engaged his attention until 1849, when he retired from trade. Two years later, longing for the quiet life on the farm, he returned to reside at the old home at Clark's Corners. He was now at the age of seventy-three, but enjoyed, with the exception of a gradual failing of the sense of sight, an almost unimpaired mental and physical vitality. But the gloom before his eyes grew remorselessly thicker and thicker until every familiar scene and the faces of family and friends faded from his view. In the custody of this great affliction, the spirit of Dr. dark was not crushed, but rather purified and exalted, so that he who in earlier years had been conspicuous as the heroic leader, was now none the less remarkable for his Christian humility, hope and love. A few years longer he tarried upon the earth, in order that there might be registered upon the hearts of men the beauty and nobility of the character that was his. And then, at Glens Falls, in the home of his son, James C. Clark, the spirit of the great reformer went to its long home. His death occurred on Wednesday morning, September 20, 1866. Dr. Holden says: "The intelligence of his departure was swiftly borne through the place; his name was on every lip as all, with hushed reverence, bore testimony to his virtues, and to the usefulness of a life luminous with the light of a Christ-born principle."

Notwithstanding his portrait, in its severe lines, gives evidence of his decisive mind and undeviating purpose, he yet possessed elements of character that endeared him to all. While in terms of affectionate banter, alluding to his spirit of determination and his practice of proposing to formulate the mind of public meetings in resolutions, he was sometimes spoken of as "Resolution Billy," the people knew that beneath the crust of self-reliant earnestness dwelt the loving humanitarian and the undying fires of a moral volcano.