Part 4

We do not know what almanac Miss Martineau consulted. But a glance at a file of the _Farmer’s Almanack_, begun in 1793 by Robert B. Thomas and circulated by him for more than half a century all over New England, shows her quotation to be fully justified in spirit if not in letter. As early at least as the year 1804, Mr. Thomas included in his directions for the month of November, the indispensable item of education in connection with other activities: “Now let the noise of your flail awake your drowsy neighbors. Bank up your cellars. Now hire a good schoolmaster and send your children to school as much as possible.”

The nation was young in 1804. Parts of it were new and for that reason had made but meager educational progress; other parts were backward for different reasons. But in the older states of New England popular education had flourished for one hundred and fifty years. This point, stressed by a score of writers, illustrated by legal enactments, court decrees, town records, and anniversary sermons, cannot be over-emphasized in a summary of the social contributions which the Yankees made to the new western societies they helped to build. Notwithstanding all that has been written to prove the priority, in this or that feature of American educational progress, of other social strains or geographical areas, history may confidently assign to the Yankee priority in the attainment of universal literacy on an extensive scale.

Once the Puritan had convinced himself that the temptation to ignorance came from “ye old deluder Satan,” whose fell purpose was to keep men from a knowledge of the Scriptures and thus the more readily win them for his own, he hesitated not to require the maintenance of schools in all towns and neighborhoods under his jurisdiction. He was also concerned to recruit an “able and orthodox ministry” to take the places of the aging pastors who had come from England and to supply the needs of new settlements. Harvard College could turn out the ministers, if it had properly prepared young men to work upon. So the larger towns were required to maintain grammar schools in addition to the common schools. Thus we have, as early as 1647, provision for schooling from the lowest rudiments up through the college course.

The original religious motive for maintaining these schools persisted. But other motives were added as the Puritans perceived how notably secular interests, as well as religious, were served by schooling. For one thing, young persons who could read, write, and cipher had a distinct advantage in worldly matters over those who could not. Cheats and “humbugs,” of whom every community had its share, made victims of the ignorant, while they fled from the instructed even as their master, Satan, was supposed to flee from them. Many New England stories were designed to carry the lesson, especially to parents, that the best legacy children could receive was good schooling, without which wealth and property would quickly melt away.[24]

Apart, also, from such negative worldly advantages as we have named, one who had enjoyed good schooling might thereby hope to share in many special social privileges from which the unlettered were debarred. New England life on the religious side centered in the church, on the civic side in the town. Each of the two institutions required a full set of elective officers, ranked according to the importance of the offices filled, and all of these were chosen from the instructed portion of the community. To be a deacon in the church or a selectman on the town board might not be financially remunerative, but it imparted a dignity to the individual and a social status to the family which caused these offices to be highly prized. The older theory was that only good churchmen could fill either type of office. Gradually, the town offices, which paid something in cash and yielded considerable political power, came to be sought with increasing frequency by men who might have no interest in the church. “Jethro Bass” was typical, not unique, in his scheming to be chosen selectman, and the training offered by the district school was looked upon as a minimum basis for such preferment. Said the _Farmer’s Almanack_ for November, 1810: “Send your children to school. Every boy should have a chance to prepare himself to do common town business.”

The great majority were satisfied with the elementary training afforded by the district schools, kept for a few months in winter. But the presence of learned men in every community and the existence of secondary schools and colleges tolled a good many on the way to advanced instruction who had no plans for professional careers. From farm, factory, and counting-room, even from among those before the mast, went boys to academy and college, while female seminaries springing up here and there took care of the educational interests of selected groups of girls. Such schools were not free, but their benefits were easy to attain, the principal requisite being pluck and a willingness to work both at earning money and at the studies. Girls and boys alike could usually earn their way by teaching in the common schools. Thus the educational system propagated itself, with the result that men and women of intelligence, culture, and refinement became widely dispersed through Yankeedom, and learning was recognized as an aid to the good life as well as a guarantee of the successful life. This was a fundamental condition of that literary flowering which marked the middle decades of the nineteenth century. It insured the poets, historians, orators, and novelists an audience which waxed ever larger as province after province in the West was added to New England’s spiritual empire.

Let us not, however, picture to ourselves a Yankee society wholly suffused with intellectual and spiritual light. The Yankees had no such illusions about themselves. Listen to Timothy Dwight’s description of a class of New Englanders who could not live “in regular society. They are too idle, too talkative, too passionate, too prodigal, and too shiftless to acquire either property or character. They are impatient of the restraints of law, religion and morality, grumble about the taxes by which rulers, ministers and schoolmasters are supported--at the same time they are usually possessed, in their own view, of uncommon wisdom; understand medical science, politics, and religion better than those who have studied them through life....” He represents the type as the pioneering or _forester_ class, who had “already straggled onward from New England” to far distant settlements, and whose going he was not disposed to lament. “In mercy,” he says, “to the sober, industrious, and well disposed inhabitants, Providence has opened in the vast western wilderness a retreat sufficiently alluring to draw them from the land of their nativity. We have many troubles even now, but we should have many more if this body of foresters had remained at home.”[25]

The above citation doubtless contains an element of exaggeration, due to Dwight’s ingrained conservatism. He was outraged by the radical views no less than by the erratic and ignorant harangues he heard “by many a kitchen fire, in every blacksmith’s shop, and in every corner of the streets....” Yet we must not lose sight of the fact that he here sketches for us some Yankee social traits of rather extended application which were important in the building of the West. These people belonged to the outstandingly non-conformist type. They were sufficiently independent--contemptuous, one might say--of established customs and institutions to be willing, with what ignorance or awkwardness soever, to bring about changes, some of which were sadly needed. Religiously they were apt to be _come-outers_. It was largely among this class that were recruited the Millerites, Millennialists, and original Latter Day Saints, together with many other minor sects and factions. In politics, when all orthodox New England was Whig, they were mainly Democratic; many, however, backed the program of Nativism; in the person of John Brown they exemplified the principle of direct action as applied to slavery. The social innovator, the medical quack, and the political demagogue found among them welcome and encouragement, sometimes to the temporary distress of society, often to its ultimate benefit. Not unlike the original Puritans who represented “the dissidence of dissent and the protestantism of the protestant religion,”[26] they constituted a dynamic social element although wanting in the intellectual and religious training, the political morale, and perhaps the heroism which distinguished the original planters of Massachusetts Bay. They had the spirit of the revolutionary New Englanders, who were described, not inaptly, as “hard, stubborn, and indomitably intractable.” They were the backbone of Shays’s rebellion. In many ways they illustrate the qualities which, at various times in our later history, have served as the fulcrum of revolutionary change.

Dwight’s _foresters_ were merely the extreme manifestation, the caricature, of a much larger class of heady, self sufficient, opinionated, and troublesome persons who equally with the sober, church going, instructed, conformist type were the product of New England conditions. The cords of restraint were drawn so taut in the parishes and towns, that the person who was determinedly “different” was compelled to break them and become a kind of social pariah in order to gain the freedom his soul craved. It was not an accident that so large a proportion of that class went to the frontier. They found there a less rigorous church discipline, freedom from taxes for the support of the established church, and a more flexible state of society in the midst of which they might hope to function. In western Massachusetts and Connecticut, in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, they were numerous at the opening of the National period. Soon large numbers emigrated to western New York, to northern Pennsylvania, to Ohio, thence throughout the West. They made up an appreciable part of the thronging Yankee immigration which seized upon Wisconsin’s prairies and oak openings between 1835 and 1850, and their presence has left its impress upon our social history. Still the experiences of older frontiers, such as western New York, had already modified the type.

When all necessary deductions have been made, however, the church remained equally with the school a dominant note in the Yankee’s social landscape. His “meeting house,” not infrequently in New England a gem of ecclesiastical architecture, fulfilled his artistic ideal; the congregation was the “household of faith” which claimed his undeviating loyalty; the pastor was “guest and philosopher” in his home whenever he chose to honor it with his presence. To men and women alike, attendance upon the church services was the principal Sabbath day duty and the chief physical and mental diversion of the whole week. It was an old custom to linger after the morning sermon for a social chat either in the church yard, when the weather permitted, or else at a near-by tavern; and while the talk was ostensibly about the sermon, gossip, bits of practical information, and even a shy kind of love making were often interwoven, tending to make this a genuine community social hour.

The tradition that the minister must be a man of learning was of incalculable social importance. His advice was called for under every conceivable circumstance of individual and community need. He assisted about the employment of schoolmasters and was the unofficial supervisor of the school. He enjoined upon negligent parents the duty of sending their children, and he had an eye for the promising boys--lads o’pairts, as the Scotch say--whom he encouraged to prepare for professional life. He fitted boys to enter the academy and sometimes tutored college students. In the rural parish the minister occupied the church glebe, which made him a farmer with the rest. He was apt to read more widely and closely in the agricultural press, or in books on husbandry, than his neighbors, thereby gaining the right to offer practical suggestions about many everyday matters. Some ministers were writers for agricultural journals. Many contributed to local newspapers items of news or discussions of public questions in which their parishioners were interested with themselves.

The home missionary idea was inherent in the New England system both as respects religion and education. Older, better established communities always felt some responsibility for the newer. Since settlement proceeded largely by the method of planting new townships of which the raw land was purchased by companies from the colonial and state governments, it was possible for the larger community to give an impetus to religion and education under the terms of township grants. This was accomplished by reserving in each grant three shares of the land--“one for the first settled minister, one for the ministry forever, and one for the school.” Other grants of raw land were made for the support of academies. Here we have the origin of the system of land grants in aid both of the common schools and of state universities, in the western states. The grants for religion necessarily were discontinued after the adoption of the national constitution.[27]

The religious unity established by the Puritans, and maintained for a time by the simple method of rigorously excluding those holding peculiar doctrines, gave way to considerable diversity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Episcopalianism made some progress in the older settlements, and Unitarianism created a great upheaval, while toward the frontiers the Methodists and Baptists flourished more and more. These several elements, by 1820, were powerful enough politically to secure the abolition of the ancient tax for the support of the established (Congregational or Presbyterian) church--a tax which had long caused ill feeling between West and East, and no doubt had contributed to the growth of dissenting churches. These frontier churches had the characteristics of the frontier populations. Their ministers were less learned, their morale less exacting, their religion less formal and ritualistic, their ordinances less regularly and habitually enforced. But there was an emotionalism which in a measure compensated for defects of training, for looseness of habit and negligence in the practice of religion. In a word, the camp meeting type of Christianity prevailed widely along the frontier, and that type entered Wisconsin Territory with the numerous Methodist and Baptist settlers from New York and New England. As early as August, 1838, such a camp meeting was held under Methodist leadership in the woods near Racine; it was attended by hundreds of pioneer families drawn from the sparsely settled neighborhoods for many miles around. Its appointments were of the typical frontier kind, though one would expect less boisterousness in the manifestations of emotion among those people than seems to have accompanied similar gatherings in the Southwest.[28]

The stated religious services in early Wisconsin, as in every frontier region, were apt to be less frequent than in older communities. Ministers were too few in number and neighborhoods too impecunious to justify each locality in supporting a minister. The circuit riding custom prevailed generally among all denominations. One preacher traveled, on foot, six hundred miles, making the round in six weeks. Each group of churches also had its conferences, which were occasions for planning missionary effort, for unitedly attacking special religious or social abuses, and for promoting constructive community effort. The ablest speakers addressed such gatherings; the membership of the churches concerned and others attended, in addition to the delegates; and important religious, social, or moral results sometimes flowed from them.

Another peculiar Yankee institution allied at once to the school and the church, was the lyceum or local coöperative organization for bringing lecturers to the community. The settlements in southeastern Wisconsin had their lyceums at an early date, and many distinguished public men from the East had occasion to visit this new Yankeeland in the capacity of lecturer. Among them were Horace Greeley, Bayard Taylor, and James Russell Lowell.

Reform movements, however, though usually receiving valuable aid from churches, lyceums, mechanics’ institutes, and other permanent organizations of men for public discussion, had a way of creating special organizations to propagate themselves. That was true of the temperance movement, which by the time of the Yankee immigration into Wisconsin was under vigorous headway. Beginning, in serious form, about 1820, the intervening years witnessed the creation of hundreds of local temperance societies in New England and New York, and the federation of these societies into state societies. These central organizations stimulated the movement by sending out lecturers, conducting a newspaper propaganda, and issuing special publications. Some of their tracts are said to have been scattered “like the leaves of autumn,” all over New England and New York.

One of these tracts affected the social history of Wisconsin very directly. It is known, traditionally, as “The Ox Discourse,” because it was based on Exodus 21:28-29: “If an ox gore a man or woman, that they die: then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be quit. But if the ox were wont to push with his horn in time past, and it hath been testified to his owner, and he hath not kept him in, but that he hath killed a man or a woman; the ox shall be stoned, and his owner also shall be put to death.” The sermon on this text produced a great sensation and gained many new adherents to the temperance cause. Among these were two brothers, Samuel F. and Henry Phoenix, who were storekeepers in a New York village and sold much whisky. They publicly destroyed all the liquor they had on hand and became crusaders in the temperance cause. In the spring of 1836 Colonel Samuel F. Phoenix selected in Wisconsin a “Temperance Colony claim,” on which he settled that summer. Then he rode to Belmont and induced the first territorial legislature to set off from Milwaukee County a county to be known as Walworth, in honor of the chancellor of the state of New York, who was a noted temperance leader. He named the village begun by him Delavan, in honor of E. C. Delavan, pioneer temperance editor and at that time chairman of the executive committee of the New York State Temperance Society. Colonel Phoenix lectured on temperance, helped to organize early temperance societies, rebuked his neighbors--especially the New Yorkers--for employing whisky at raisings, and, before his death in 1840, had succeeded in giving a powerful impulse to the movement in southeastern Wisconsin.

Another dramatic figure in early temperance annals was Charles M. Goodsell, who in 1838 settled at Lake Geneva and built the first mill operated in Walworth County. He was of Connecticut birth, and his father owned and managed, among other properties, a whisky distillery. Goodsell, however, when he came west from New York State, was a most determined opponent of the traffic in intoxicants. Soon after opening his mill a local company erected in Lake Geneva a distillery for making corn whisky. Goodsell warned them, he says, not to expect him to grind their grain and they installed a grinding apparatus of their own. But, their machinery proving inadequate, they finally sent a grist of corn to Goodsell’s mill, demanding, as under the law they had a right to do, that it be “ground in turn.” Goodsell refused, thereby producing a tense situation, for the pioneer farmers looked to the distillery as a cash market for their grain. Finally, the distillers brought suit, won a verdict, and Goodsell appealed. But meantime, he rode to Madison, where the legislature was sitting, and procured the adoption of an amendment to the law regulating milling, to the effect: “Nothing in this section contained shall be construed to compel the owners or occupiers of mills to grind for distilling, or for sale or merchant work.” This proviso, adopted in 1841, remained a feature of the statute for many years.[29]

It must not be supposed that pioneer Yankee society, even in Walworth County, was prevailingly of the temperance variety. All testimony, both of the reformers and of others, tends to show that a large majority was at first in the opposition. Frontier history would indicate that excessive indulgence in whisky was apt to be more common during the primitive phase of settlement than later, due perhaps to the looser social and religious organization.

Wisconsin may be said to have been born to the temperance agitation which, in a few years’ time, produced societies pledged to total abstinence all over the southeastern part of the state and in many other localities. In March, 1843, a legislative temperance society was organized with a list of twenty-four signers. The house of representatives at the time had twenty-six members, the council thirteen, or a total of thirty-nine. So a decided majority was aligned with the movement. Moses M. Strong was chosen president, which was considered a triumph for the cause, and much interest was aroused by the adherence of William S. Hamilton, who is reported to have addressed one of the society’s meetings.[30]

The temperance agitation everywhere received a notable impetus from the adoption in 1851 of the prohibition law by the state of Maine. Immediately other states moved for the same objective, and in Wisconsin a referendum vote was taken in 1853 which resulted favorably to prohibition, though no enactment followed.[31] In that election the southeastern counties were overwhelmingly for the Maine law. Walworth gave 1906 votes for it and 733 against, Rock 2494-432, Racine 1456-927. Milwaukee at the same time voted against prohibition by 4381 to 1243. This shows where was to be found the powerful opposition to legislation of this nature, which was destined to increase rather than diminish with the strengthening of the German element already very numerous.

From the time of the Maine law agitation the communities dominated by Yankees were generally found arrayed in favor of any proposal for limiting or suppressing the liquor traffic, although, as we shall see in later articles, no large proportion of their voters ever joined the Prohibition party. They did not succeed in abolishing drunkenness, though it became very unfashionable to indulge heavily in spirituous liquors and the proportion of total abstainers among the younger generation steadily increased. Yankees furnished a very small per cent of those who gained their livelihood through occupations connected directly with intoxicating liquors, except as such traffic was carried on incidentally as a feature of the drug business. The disfavor with which saloon keeping, brewing, and distilling have long been regarded among that class of the population is explained by the fervor and thoroughness of the early temperance campaigns.