a file in the online version of the kouroo contexture ... · nathaniel baker was born, a son of...

JACOB BAKER

December 9, Sunday: John Baker and Judah Simonds got married in Concord.

March 5, Wednesday: Wm. Baker got married with Elizab Dutton in Concord.

August 20, Sunday: Joseph Baker of Marlborough got married with Esther Harwood of Dunstable, in Concord.

In Concord, Benjamin Whittemore, Daniel Brooks, Stephen Hosmer, Samuel Merriam, and John Flint were Selectmen.

In Concord, John Flint continued as Town Clerk.

In Concord, Samuel Merriam was Town Treasurer.

Samuel Chandler was Concord’s deputy and representative to the General Court.

In about this year John Baker and Elizabeth (Wallace?) Baker brought six children from England to what was then the town of Concord (settling near where the Baker Bridge railroad station was to be constructed), and then once here the couple added four more children. Three of their sons –Jacob Baker, Nathaniel Baker, and Amos Baker– would settle in what is now Lincoln. Jacob Baker, born on May 16, 1722 and apparently therefore one of the children brought over from England, got married with Grace Billings. The Billings family had extensive holdings of land, for their ancestor Nathaniel Billings is said to have been the initial white settler to appear in the Concord/Lincoln area. Jacob built the old Baker house. He was a soldier in the French and Indian Wars. It seems that Jacob would inherit the other Baker farm (the one near Walden Pond but in Lincoln) from the parents or grandparents of his spouse.

1668

1681

1724

1729

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/ActiveIndex.pdf

2 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

JACOB BAKER JACOB BAKER

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December 20, Friday: Ebenezer Russell got married with Abigail Baker in Concord.

May 16, Saturday: John Baker got married with Lydia Bradfield in Concord.

March 6, Monday: Jacob Baker got married with Grace Billings at Sudbury, Massachusetts.

February 8, Thursday: Hannah Baker was born to Jacob Baker and Grace Billings Baker.

In Concord, Samuel Heywood, Joseph Wright, David Melvin, John Jones, Nathaniel Whittemore, and Ephraim Jones were Selectmen. (six selectmen?)

In Concord, Samuel Heywood was again Town Clerk.

James Minott was Concord’s deputy and representative to the General Court.

William Lawrence of Concord graduated at Harvard College. He would go into the ministry.

Dr. John Prescott was back in Boston and Concord after the failed filibustering expedition against the island of Cuba. Soon the government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony would be sending him to England on official business.

In about this year Jacob Baker, Jr. was born, a son of Jacob Baker and Grace Billings Baker of Sudbury. He would settle on the farm that later would come to be owned by Major Higginson.

1737

1739

1741

1742

1743

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/thumbnails/T/HDT.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/explanation.pdf


“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3


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April 14, Easter Sunday: In Concord, Benjamin Clark got married with Rebekah Flagg and William Baker got married with Rebekah Conant.

February 26, Wednesday: Robert Baker of Concord got married with Elizabeth Adams of Waltham.

1744






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In Concord, Samuel Heywood, Joseph Wright, John Jones, Ephraim Jones, and Nathaniel Whittemore were Selectmen.

In Concord, Samuel Heywood was again Town Clerk.

Ephraim Jones was Concord’s deputy and representative to the General Court.

James Minott of Concord was an Assistant and Counsellor.

A petition for the separation of Carlisle from Concord explained that this was “in order to their more conveniant coming to ye publik worship of God, from which they are many times many of them hindred by ye Difficulty of passing ye river in times of flud and by ye great Distance of their aboad from ye place where ye publike worship of God is now upheld.”

Nathaniel Baker was born, a son of Jacob Baker and Grace Baker.

Dr. Lemuel Shattuck indicates that “the religious controversies from 1740-1750” was also a reason for such petitioning for separate districts.

After repeatedly petitioning the town and the General Court, thesoutheasterly part became a precinct in 1746, and a town, calledLincoln, April 19, 1754. The north part of the town wasincorporated in 1754 as the District of Carlisle; but the

1746

A WEEK: History has remembered thee; especially that meek andhumble petition of thy old planters, like the wailing of theLord’s own people, “To the gentlemen, the selectmen” of Concord,praying to be erected into a separate parish. We can hardly creditthat so plaintive a psalm resounded but little more than a centuryago along these Babylonish waters. “In the extreme difficultseasons of heat and cold,” said they, “we were ready to say ofthe Sabbath, Behold what a weariness is it.” — “Gentlemen, if ourseeking to draw off proceed from any disaffection to our presentReverend Pastor, or the Christian Society with whom we have takensuch sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God incompany, then hear us not this day, but we greatly desire, if Godplease, to be eased of our burden on the Sabbath, the travel andfatigue thereof, that the word of God may be nigh to us, near toour houses and in our hearts, that we and our little ones mayserve the Lord. We hope that God, who stirred up the spirit ofCyrus to set forward temple work, has stirred us up to ask, andwill stir you up to grant, the prayer of our petition; so shallyour humble petitioners ever pray, as in duty bound —” And so thetemple work went forward here to a happy conclusion. Yonder inCarlisle the building of the temple was many wearisome yearsdelayed, not that there was wanting of Shittim wood, or the goldof Ophir, but a site therefor convenient to all the worshippers;whether on “Buttrick’s Plain,” or rather on “Poplar Hill.”






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inhabitants not being able to agree where to place the meetinghouse it was set back again after three years. Several of theopposers of the Rev. Mr. Bliss lived in the southwest part ofthe town, and a petition was presented, Jan. 4, 1750, for libertyto set up public worship among themselves, but it was notgranted.The ostensible reason of those who had endeavoured to beseparated from the main society, was their remoteness frompublic worship. This was true in some cases, but not always. Thecause is rather to be found in the internal divisions....1

The easterly part of Concord succeeded finally, after several tries, in splitting off as a separate precinct or parish. The west side of the split would incorporate as the present town of Concord while the east side would incorporate as what is now Lincoln.

According to Doolittle’s Narrative, page 17, Journal of the General Court, there was military stuff also going on at this time. This is how it would be recorded by Dr. Shattuck in A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;...:

During a year from Oct. 1746, [Captain Eleazer Melvin] was out,and marched on an “intended expedition to Canada,” with aconsiderable number of soldiers from Concord. Joseph Buttrickwas clerk of the company. After one of their marches, called thelong march, in which he went to Canada, he returned and with 25men went to Lunenburg for the protection of that town; somepersons having been taken by the Indians there a short timebefore. From March to September, 1747, he was stationed atNorthfield. Humphrey Hobbs was his lieutenant and ThomasFletcher of Concord, ensign; Benjamin Hoar, Benjamin Kidder andAlexander Heald, sergeants. Capt. Melvin with a party of 26 men,went out through the woods in May [1746] as far as Crown Point,where he killed several Indians; and on his return home, at thehead of West river, about 35 miles from Northfield, he wassurprised and attacked by a party of Indians who killed six ofhis men - John Hayward, John Dodd, Daniel Mann, Isaac Taylor,Joseph Petty and Samuel Severance. The others escaped.

1. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835(On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.)

READ THE FULL TEXT




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/35/1835_HistoryOfConcord/DrShattuck1835_CONTENTS.pdf



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Rhode Island also participated in this invasion of Canada, while subsidizing herself by the issuance of more and more unbacked and unauthorized paper currency which soon would lose approximately half its value.

Town Clerks of Lincoln2

March 6, Thursday: Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian was born at the château of Florian, near Sauve in the south of France. His mother, Gilette de Salgues. a Castilian, would die while he was still a child and he would be brought up by a grandfather. He would be educated at St-Hippolyte.

Thomas Baker of Littleton got married with Bulah Dakin of Sudbury in Concord.

Ephraim Flint 1746-1752, 1754, 1756-1757 Grosvenor Tarbell 1799-1803

Ebenezer Cutler 1753, 1755, 1759 Thomas Wheeler 1804-1806

Samuel Farrar 1758, 1760-1766 Elijah Fiske 1810-1821

John Adams 1767-1777 Stephen Patch 1822-1827

Abijah Pierce 1778-1779, 1781 Charles Wheeler 1828-1830

Samuel Hoar 1780, 1782, 1787-1798, 1807-1809

Elijah Fiske 1831

Richard Russell 1783-1786

2. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835(On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistakeburied in the body of the text.)

1755

READ EDWARD FIELD TEXT

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/19/00DECADE/02/1902RI_EdwardField_Foreign.pdf







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Amos Baker was born, a son of Jacob Baker and Grace Baker. He and his older brother Nathaniel Baker would settle on the old Baker farm. One had the east end of the house while the other had the west end. Both produced large families. Each kept a horse, cows, and an ox; they put the oxen together and worked them when they needed them. They did their work together, dividing the products harvested; mowing and raking their hay, then dividing in the field and carrying to the separate barns. They brought wood to the door, prepared it for the fire, and their wives divided it.

In her book THE WAY WE NEVER WERE: AMERICAN FAMILIES AND THE NOSTALGIA TRAP, Stephanie Coontz asserts that in Concord during the decades prior to the American Revolution, a third of all children were being conceived out of wedlock. (Surely this author is writing carelessly and the factoid to which she made reference could pertain only to firstborns?)

Due to a religious upheaval in Concord involving his family, the first marriage of Charles Miles was officiated at by a Justice of the Peace rather than by the local minister.

In Concord, Stephen Hosmer, Jr., Jonas Heywood, Samuel Minot, Thomas Jones, Thomas Barrett, and Charles Prescott were Selectmen. (six selectmen?)

In Concord, John Beaton continued as Town Treasurer.

James Barrett was Concord’s deputy and representative to the General Court.

James Minott of Concord was an Assistant and Counsellor.

Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Hoar of Concord was stationed in Nova Scotia, and functioned as an aide to Major General Winslow at Crown Point.

The Hon. James Minott [of Concord] was Lieut. Colonel andsucceeded to the command in 1756. Most of the orders for menpassed through his hands.

Jonathan Hoar [of Concord] was lieutenant-colonel in theexpedition to Crown Point in 1756, and aid to Maj. Gen. Winslow.

Capt. Peter Prescott [of Concord] was there and was left at LakeGeorge to take care of the sick.3

1756

3. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835(On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.)







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November 24, Thursday: According to the Concord Vital Records, Daniel Hosmer, Jr. got married with Hannah Baker of Lincoln (could this possibly be a record instead of the posting of their bans?).

December 10, Saturday: Daniel Hosmer, Jr. of Concord got married with Hannah Baker.

February 28, Wednesday: According to the Vital Records of the town of Concord, Jacob Baker, Jr. and Hannah Ball or Bell of Concord filed their intention to marry (the Vital Records of the town of Lincoln list their intent to marry as being filed on April 7, 1770, so I am taking that to be a record instead of the date of the wedding ceremony).

April 7, Saturday: William Wordsworth was born.

Jacob Baker, Jr. got married with Hannah Ball of Concord (born ~1749, died September 27, 1830). This couple would produce Jacob Baker (III) in Lincoln on February 24, 1771, Sally Baker on February 20, 1774, Abel Baker on July 14, 1782, Nancy Baker on August 7, 1785, Charles Baker on June 17, 1787, and twins, Mercy Baker and Sukey Baker, on August 15, 1790.

February 24, Sunday: Jacob Baker (III) was born in Lincoln, 1st child of Jacob Baker, Jr. and Hannah Ball Baker.

February 20, Sunday: Sally Baker was born in Lincoln, 2d child of Jacob Baker, Jr. and Hannah Ball Baker.

1768

1770

1771

1774






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April 18, Monday: Nathaniel Baker was coming back from a home on the Lexington road where he had been courting Miss Elizabeth Taylor (they would marry) when he encountered Dr. Samuel Prescott and Dawes, who were carrying the message about the movements of the British army. He helped spread the alarm. Jacob Baker, age 54, his five sons Jacob Baker, Jr., Samuel Baker, James Baker, Nathaniel Baker, and Amos Baker (age 19), and a son-in-law Daniel Hosmer, Jr. all mustered with the Lincoln minutemen near the Zachary Smith home at the brook outlet of Sandy Pond, and marched under Colonel Abijah to the Concord common. Amos Baker was in the front line because he was one of the few having a bayonet, and the man next to him took one of the British bullets.4 He sighted the bodies of the two dead British soldiers on the far side of the bridge, and then went back up the hill to the house of Major Buttrick, where the bodies of the two Acton casualties had been carried. Jacob Baker, Jr. and James Baker served as privates in the militia company of Captain William Smith of Lincoln, in Colonel Abijah Pierce’s regiment, for a total of four or five days.

September 10, Saturday: James Baker got married with Hepzibath Taylor of Concord.

4. There is no record of Jacob Baker performing military service after this point and, in fact, the town would reimburse him “toward procuring a man for three years service in the Continental Army” (hiring a man to perform one’s obligatory military service was a common practice, continuing into the Civil War).






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December 13, Wednesday: The portrait painter Ralph Earl and the silversmith Amos Doolittle advertised for sale copies of a series of four engraved prints, in the New Haven newspaper at a price of six shillings the set, uncolored, “or eight shillings colored.” The engravings were of successive stages of the fighting in Lexington and Concord on April 19th, and were offered as “from original paintings taken on the spot.”

Note that these works of art bore no resemblance to what Brumidi would place on a wall of our nation’s capitol, Washington DC:

1775






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Friends Moses Brown and David Buffum rode from Smithfield, Rhode Island to Roxbury, where they met three other Quakers of their Smithfield monthly meeting and spent the night. Among them they were carrying gold coins and other currencies amounting to what today would be more than $4,000, money intended for poor relief. The next morning they would ride on into Cambridge to seek the permission of the siege commander, General George Washington, to cross military lines and enter the besieged city of Boston.

February: Major Francis Faulkner of Acton, Massachusetts was commissioned as a Lieutenant Colonel of the Third Middlesex Regiment.

Nathaniel Baker got married with Elizabeth Taylor of Concord.

1776






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March 4, Monday: Fort Nassau surrendered and gave the Americans the keys to Fort Montagne. Esek Hopkins then brought his ships into the harbor to load the captured munitions.

People were trying to kill each other at Yamcrow Bluff in South Carolina.

Amos Baker, a private in the militia company of Captain John Hartwell in the regiment led by Colonel Eleazer Brooks, marched with the unit from Lincoln to fortify Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston.

The Reverend Asa Dunbar recorded the above in his journal:

“ye militia went to Roxbury.”






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March 9, Saturday: Amos Baker was discharged from the Lincoln militia company of Captain John Hartwell in the regiment led by Colonel Eleazer Brooks, which had been fortifying Dorchester Heights, when it became evident that the British army under General Howe, rather than attacking, was in the process of abandoning the port of Boston.

December 20, Friday: Private Amos Baker and Corporal Samuel Baker were in Dorchester as part of Captain Moses Harrington’s militia company of Colonel Dike’s regiment.

Acton observed this day as a day of solemn fasting and prayer to Almighty God for direction and assistance in selecting their new minister.

The 14th May, 1776, the town [of Acton] voted to invite fourcandidates to preach four sabbaths each on probation. And acommittee consisting of Messrs. Samuel Hayward, FrancisFaulkner, Nathaniel Edwards, Josiah Hayward, and John Heald werechosen “to take advice of the President of the College and theneighbouring ministers, who said candidates shall be.” Mr. MosesAdams was subsequently engaged eight sabbaths on trial. The 20thof December was observed as a day of solemn fasting and prayerto Almighty God for direction and assistance in resettling thegospel. Mr. Adams was invited to be their pastor 8th of January,1777; and was ordained 25th of June, 1778. The first and fourthchurch in Dedham, second in Sudbury, second in Reading, and thechurches in Concord, Stow, and Fitchburg, composed the counsel.He received £200 as a settlement, and £180 salary, according tothe value of silver at 6s. 8d. per ounce, and his fire-wood.5

March 1, Saturday: Amos Baker and Samuel Baker were discharged from Captain Moses Harrington’s militia company of Colonel Dike’s regiment. He would be paid for his service by the town.

March 21, Friday: Amos Baker was discharged from the militia company of Captain George Minot, part of the regiment of Colonel Samuel Bullard.

August 14, Thursday, 1777: Samuel Baker was recruited out of the Lincoln militia company of Captain Samuel Farrar of Colonel Eleazer Brooks’s regiment, to serve instead as part of the Northern Department under General Gates.


1777







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August 16, Saturday: People were trying to kill each other at Bennington, Vermont.

Samuel Baker became part of the company of Captain George Minot in the regiment of Colonel Samuel Bullard. A man named Amos Baker, presumably Samuel Baker’s brother, would serve as a private in that militia company for one month and 24 days.

November 3, Monday: Amos Baker enlisted in the militia company of Captain Simon Hunt, part of the regiment of Colonel Eleazer Brooks, to guard in Cambridge a collection of British and German prisoners of war who had surrendered with Burgoyne at Saratoga, for five months.

November 30, Sunday: Samuel Baker was discharged from the militia company of Captain George Minot in the regiment of Colonel Samuel Bullard, having served for 3 months and 25 days during the Saratoga campaign that had led to the surrender of General Burgoyne. Town record indicate that he was paid for service at Saratoga.

August 13, Thursday: The storm at sea began to abate. The French fleet had been somewhat damaged but the English fleet had escaped.

The militia company of Jacob Baker, Jr. reported him as having deserted (he would, nevertheless, be paid by the town of Concord for “a sixth part of a three years Campn in the Continental Army”).

May 9, Sunday: People were trying to kill each other at Fort Nelson near Norfolk, Virginia.

Jacob Baker, Jr. enlisted as a matross6 in the company of Captain Donnell in the regiment of Colonel John Crane (on August 13, 1778 he would be reported as having deserted).

July 14, Sunday: Abel Baker was born in Lincoln, 3d child of Jacob Baker, Jr. and Hannah Ball Baker.

1778

1779

6. A matross worked in cooperation with a gunner in the artillery. His job was to assist in loading, firing, and sponging the cannons, and to march under arms in guard of the store-wagons.

1782






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July 10, Sunday: Amos Baker (1756-1850) got married with Ame Prescott of Concord.

August 7, Sunday: Nancy Baker was born in Lincoln, 4th child of Jacob Baker, Jr. and Hannah Ball Baker.

George Washington, as the first president of the Patowmack Company for making improvements such as bypass canals and sluices to the Potomac and its major tributaries, made some notes in his journal about his surveying activities in the vicinity of Harpers Ferry:

Here we breakfasted [at Harpers Ferry]; after which we set outto explore the Falls below; & having but one Canoe, Colo. Gilpin,Mr. Rumsay (who joined us according to appointment last Night)and Myself, embarked in it, with intention to pass thro’ whatis called the Spout (less than half a mile below the ferry) butwhen we came to it, the Company on the shore on acct. of thesmallness, and low sides of the Vessel, dissuaded us from theattempt, least the roughness of the Water, occasioned by therocky bottom, should fill, & involve us in danger. To avoid thedanger therefore we passed through a narrow channel on the left,near the Maryland Shore and continued in the Canoe to the lowerend of Pains falls distant, according to estimation 3 Miles.

June 17, Sunday: Charles Baker was born in Lincoln, 5th child of Jacob Baker, Jr. and Hannah Ball Baker.

1785

1787

This view of Harpers Ferry dates, actually, to 1803.






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August 15, Sunday: President George Washington and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson left New-York heading for Rhode Island.

Mercy Baker and Sukey Baker, twins, were born in Lincoln, 6th and 7th children of Jacob Baker, Jr. and Hannah Ball Baker.

February 28, Friday: John Adams got married with Mrs. Buelah [Beulah] Baker of Concord.

Sylvestre François Lacroix’s COMPLÉMENT DES ÉLÉMENS D'ALGÈBRE, A L'USAGE DE L'ÉCOLE CENTRALE DES QUATRE-NATIONS (Paris: impr. Duprat) and TRAITÉ DES DIFFÉRENCES ET DES SÉRIES; FAISANT SUITE AU TRAITÉ DU CALCUL DIFFÉRENTIEL ET DU CALCUL INTÉGRAL.

It is possible that the Amos Baker who had married Ame Prescott in Concord in 1785 in this year remarried, with Eunice Dudley of Concord.

Nicholas Boylston, Esq. donated $23,200 to establish at Harvard College a professorship in Rhetoric and Oratory — with the condition that John Quincy Adams, son of the sitting President of the United States, be the first person appointed.

Timothy Flint graduated from Harvard. He would study to become a Reverend while teaching for one year at an academy in Cohasset, and delivering practice sermons at Marblehead, Massachusetts.

Washington Allston graduated from Harvard and moved to Charleston, South Carolina.

Rufus Hosmer of Concord, son of the Hon. Joseph Hosmer, graduated from Harvard.

Rufus Hosmer, son of the Hon. Joseph Hosmer, was born March 18,1778 and grad. Harvard, 1800. He was admitted to the bar in Essexin 1803, and son after removed to Stow, where he resided as acounsellor at law.7

1790

1794

1800

7. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835

NEW “HARVARD MEN”

http://surnamesite.com/harvard/harvard1800.htm







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December 29, Monday: Charles Goodyear was born.

John Hadley of Concord got married with Betsy Baker.

January 18, Sunday: Benjamin Wardin Child or Childs of Roxbury got married with Marcy Baker.

March 26, Thursday: Abel Puffer of Sudbury got married with Sally Baker.

September 9, Sunday: Nathan Crane of Cambridge got married with Nancy Baker.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal:

1 day 10 of 9 M 1804 / On looking over the Meeting this Morning, & observing the many careless unconcerned countenances which were in it [crossed out] I was led to reflect on the many Dwarfs there are in the Camps of Israel in these days & felt as if my harp was entirely unstrung, & was ready to conclude that the Ark could no longer be reputably supported in this land & to me it was an affecting consideration, especially when I considered my own unworthyness & allmost entire incapacity to do any thing for its support —The Afternoon was rather a roving time. - Took tea at Sam’l Thurston. in the evening made several short visits. & in one of them I was sensible of sustaining some life from joining in more conversation than was proffitable to any of us

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August 13, Thursday: Charles Baker of Waltham got married with Abigail Parks.


5th day 13 of 8 M / This Morn & before meeting my dear old friend Patience Austin came to the shop & set with me for some time

1801

1804

1807

RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS






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relating the various deep exercises & baptisms of this poor Soul since she left Rhode Island - My heart was much affected thereby & prayers begotten that She may be enabled to bear up under every afflictive dispensation - She is one I have loved much ever since our first acquaintance, & believe her to be a true christianWe had a precious meeting. Our friend Richard Mott was very acceptably engaged in testimony & fervantly in Supplication - it held near three hours -Spent the evening at D Williams in pleasant conversation, but very little life experienced on my part

February 18, Thursday: Jonathan Fiske of Waltham got married with Mary Baker.


5th day 18 of 2 M 1808 / At meeting had to fight with the enemy, even to close quarter, & thro holy help I was favord to know him to be in good measure overcome My mind while writing bows under a Sense of the Lords goodness, & Oh Oh saith my Soul may the warfare be daily renewed untill all that is opposed to the divine will be Slain & lad low - In the evening called at Aunt Martha Goulds, O Williams, & C R’s - at the two latter places my mind was brought into the quiet sweetness in a manner rather uncommon for these Years of fammine & the precious life flowed freely —

1808








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January 10, Wednesday: Jacob Baker, Jr. died in Lincoln (the remains are presumed to be in the Baker tomb in Concord’s Town Hall Cemetery, behind Bemis Hall).

In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal:

4th day 1 M 10th 1810// A day of exercise of Mind, but the good hand has been felt to be near in that Midst of conflict —

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August 30: Isaac-Farwell Holton was born in Westminster, Vermont, a son of William Holton and Olive Rockwood Holton (they named him after Isaac Farwell, a revolutionary commander at the Battle of Bunker Hill). He would commence classical studies in Maine at the academies of South Berwick and Limerick, under the tuition of his uncle Isaac Holton, and complete his preparatory course under the Reverend Simeon Colton at the Amherst Academy in Massachusetts.

Daniel Rice Milts of East Sudbury got married with Nancy Baker.

Tsar Alyeksandr of Russia met Swedish Crown Prince Karl Johan at Åbo (Turku) and they reaffirmed the April 5th Treaty of St. Petersburg. The Tsar promised 35,000 men for the Swedish conquest of Norway.

May 9, Thursday: Jacob Baker got married with Lavina Minott of Concord.


5th day 9th of 5 M / Our meeting was pretty well attended, silent & a season of wrestling to me & a degree of favor witnessed. —

1810

1812

1816







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September 20, Thursday: Captain Hezekiah Weatherbee [Wetherbee] got married with Grace E. Baker [Billings].


5th day 20th of 9 M 1821 / Silent Meeting. — & in The last there was some buisness - Jm Wilbour reported as having married out of the order of Society. —

Pietro Bachi found work in the United States as a teacher of Italian and Spanish at Harvard College, at a salary of $500 per year.

Doctor John White Webster compiled A MANUAL OF CHEMISTRY.

Richard Hildreth graduated from Harvard College. He would teach school for one year, at the Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts, before deciding to follow the example of Sir Walter Scott and pursue a career in law and literature.

In about this year Nathaniel Baker arrived at the age of 80 and sold his portion of the Baker farm to Amos Baker’s son James Baker.

Elizur Wright, Junior graduated at Yale College and went to teach in a school at Groton.

1821

1826







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Samuel Baker died at Enosburg, Vermont.

In Concord, Jonathan Hildreth continued as a Selectman.

John Keyes of Concord was a Senator.

Samuel Hoar, Jr. of Concord was a Senator.

Reuben Brown, Jr. and Samuel Burr were Concord’s deputies and representatives to the General Court.

David J. Merrill, hired from elsewhere, became the schoolmaster for Concord’s grammar students.

1828

1785 Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year

1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year

1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year

1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months

1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months

1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year

1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year

1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year

1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year

1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years

1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years

1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year

1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year

1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year

1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year

1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year

1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown






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Town Clerks of Lincoln8

Ephraim Flint 1746-1752, 1754, 1756-1757 Grosvenor Tarbell 1799-1803

Ebenezer Cutler 1753, 1755, 1759 Thomas Wheeler 1804-1806

Samuel Farrar 1758, 1760-1766 Elijah Fiske 1810-1821

John Adams 1767-1777 Stephen Patch 1822-1827

Abijah Pierce 1778-1779, 1781 Charles Wheeler 1828-1830

Samuel Hoar 1780, 1782, 1787-1798, 1807-1809

Elijah Fiske 1831

Richard Russell 1783-1786








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February 7, Thursday: Civil War officer Ely Parker, author of the terms of surrender at Appomattox, was born on the Tonawanda Reservation in Indian Falls, New-York.

The Leonore Overture no.1 by Ludwig van Beethoven, that had apparently been intended for a Prague production of Fidelio, but coming to light only after the composer’s death, was performed for the initial time.

Charles Baker got married with Joanna Jones of Concord (when they had published their intention to marry “the bands were forbidden by Messrs. Gregory Stone & Daniel Haynes of said Lincoln & after trial before Ebenr Hobs, Charles Wheeler, & Elisha Wheeler, Esqr the Certificate given”).

Henry Neele, still a relatively young man, committed suicide by slitting his own throat.

To Despair.

I.It was Despair,He roll’d his large red eye around,And laid his wither’d hand upon the lyre;Then woke that strain so wildly terrible,That MadnessCeas’d for awhile her idiot grin, and FearCall’d Disappointment from his iron cell,To pause and listen while his own pale cheekGrew paler.

II.It was Despair:The man of dark imaginings,Who sits sullen on some blasted heath,Which the pale moon-beam saddens, not relieves;There raving,Fashioning shapes huge, strange, and horrible,And starting wild, he points at vacancy,And to the spirits of the night-blast tellsHis sorrows.

III.He asks not aid,Nor does the big sigh heave his breast,Nor does the sorrowful tear suffuse his eyes,For sighs and tears bespeak a spirit worn,Not withered;Bended, not broken: they are like the rainsThat bless the plains they deluge, when the flow’rs






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E’en while they bend beneath their weight, are seenReviving.

IV.There was a light,That us’d to flit across his path,Lonely, yet lovely, and it cheer’d his soul,And he would cherish it, and call it Hope:That vanish’d—And he must wander now despairingly,Where never taper lends its little ray,Where never moon must soothe, and never sunShall gladden.

V.Despair is Death:And though he come not in the stormThat blasts the roses, yet he lurks unseen,Eating their core away, and o’er them shedsHis mildew:While of such sad, sad change, the cause and cureAlike unknown, we can but mourn the flow’rsThat look less beautiful and count the leavesThat wither.

VI.Thou Sun of heaven!Tho’ thou art cheerful, and he dullAs blackest night, Despair resembles thee;Fierce as thou art, and lasting as thou seem’st,His sorrowsThy setting sees the same pale marble cheeks,Thy rising radiance vainly strove to gild;The same dull eye’s fix’d glare, the same wild steps,Still wand’ring.

VII.Yet he can smileWith seeming careless jollity,And o’er the goblet gay will join the laugh,And strive to play the courtier deftily.But vainly—The worm that fattens in the dead man’s socket,Looks not less like the life that glitter’d there,Than that faint smile, the heart-exulting mirthIt mimics.

VIII.O saddest lot!Thus barely doom’d to breathe and be,To wander up and down this care-bound sphere,And only know we live, because we feelLife’s sorrows;And only shrink from death because we fearThe grave itself may hold some dream like life,And even that dark slumber may not beUnbroken.






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James Baker died (this was not the James Baker, farmer of Concord, whom Thoreau knew, nor was it his father).

Sam Staples moved to Concord with $1.03 in his pocket, spent the $0.03 for a drink at Bigelow’s Tavern, and became a carpenter’s apprentice on the Milldam.

In Concord, some 200 trees were being planted along the road to the Battle Monument.

Nathaniel Baker died in Lincoln.

August 28, Tuesday: Eliezer T. [or J.] Marsh of Thetford, Vermont [or Cabot] got married with Martha Baker of Waltham.

March 23, Thursday: Henry Thoreau wrote to Waldo Emerson (but would not post the letter until the following day).

A son of Amos Baker and his wife, James Baker, got married with a daughter of Jacob Baker and his wife, Mary Baker, combining their two local farms.

Senator Daniel Webster addressed the US Senate in regard to a plan for the US to borrow $16,000,000 in order further to prosecute the war upon Mexico subsequent to the “treaty of peace, friendship, limits, and settlement” that had been signed at Guadalupe-Hidalgo on February 2, 1848:9

MR. PRESIDENT, — On Friday a bill passed the Senate for raisingten regiments of new troops for the further prosecution of thewar against Mexico; and we have been informed that that measureis shortly to be followed, in this branch of the legislature,by a bill to raise twenty regiments of volunteers for the sameservice. I was desirous of expressing my opinions against theobject of these bills, against the supposed necessity whichleads to their enactment, and against the general policy which

1833

1838

1848

9. Edwin P. Whipple’s THE GREAT SPEECHES AND ORATIONS OF DANIEL WEBSTER WITH AN ESSAY ON DANIEL WEBSTER AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE (Boston: Little, Brown, 1879).

CONCORDZOOM

MAP






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they are apparently designed to promote. Circumstances personalto myself, but beyond my control, compelled me to forego, onthat day, the execution of that design. The bill now before theSenate is a measure for raising money to meet the exigencies ofthe government, and to provide the means, as well as for otherthings, for the pay and support of these thirty regiments.Sir, the scenes through which we have passed, and are passing,here, are various. For a fortnight the world supposes we havebeen occupied with the ratification of a treaty of peace, andthat within these walls, “the world shut out,” notes of peace,and hopes of peace, nay, strong assurances of peace, andindications of peace, have been uttered to console and to cheerus. Sir, it has been over and over stated, and is public, thatwe have ratified a treaty, of course a treaty of peace, and, asthe country has been led to suppose, not of an uncertain, empty,and delusive peace, but of real and substantial, a gratifyingand an enduring peace, a peace which would stanch the wounds ofwar, prevent the further flow of human blood, cut off theseenormous expenses, and return our friends, and our brothers, andour children, if they be yet living, from the land of slaughter,and the land of still more dismal destruction by climate, to ourfiresides and our arms.Hardly have these halcyon notes ceased upon our ears, when, inresumed public session, we are summoned to fresh warlikeoperations; to create a new army of thirty thousand men for thefurther prosecution of the war; to carry the war, in the languageof the President, still more dreadfully into the vital parts ofthe enemy, and to press home, by fire and sword, the claims wemake, and the grounds which we insist upon, against our fallen,prostrate, I had almost said, our ignoble enemy. If we may judgefrom the opening speech of the honorable Senator from Michigan,and from other speeches that have been made upon this floor,there has been no time, from the commencement of the war, whenit has been more urgently pressed upon us, not only to maintain,but to increase, our military means; not only to continue thewar, but to press it still more vigorously than at present.Pray, what does all this mean? Is it, I ask, confessed, then,—is it confessed that we are no nearer a peace than we were whenwe snatched up this bit of paper called, or miscalled, a treaty,and ratified it? Have we yet to fight it out to the utmost, asif nothing pacific had intervened?I wish, Sir, to treat the proceedings of this and of everydepartment of the government with the utmost respect. TheConstitution of this government, and the exercise of its justpowers in the administration of the laws under it, have been thecherished object of all my unimportant life. But, if the subjectwere not one too deeply interesting, I should say ourproceedings here may well enough cause a smile. In the ordinarytransaction of the foreign relations of this and of all othergovernments, the course has been to negotiate first, and toratify afterwards. This seems to be the natural order ofconducting intercourse between foreign states. We have chosento reverse this order. We ratify first, and negotiateafterwards. We set up a treaty, such as we find it and chooseto make it, and then send two ministers plenipotentiary to






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negotiate thereupon in the capital of the enemy. One wouldthink, Sir, the ordinary course of proceeding much the juster;that to negotiate, to hold intercourse, and come to somearrangement, by authorized agents, and then to submit thatarrangement to the sovereign authority to which these agents areresponsible, would be always the most desirable method ofproceeding. It strikes me that the course we have adopted isstrange, is even grotesque. So far as I know, it is unprecedentedin the history of diplomatic intercourse. Learned gentlemen onthe floor of the Senate, interested to defend and protect thiscourse, may, in their extensive reading, have found examples ofit. I know of none.Sir, we are in possession, by military power, of New Mexico andCalifornia, countries belonging hitherto to the United Statesof Mexico. We are informed by the President that it is hispurpose to retain them, to consider them as territory fit to beattached to these United States of America; and our militaryoperations and designs now before the Senate are to enforce thisclaim of the executive of the United States. We are to compelMexico to agree that the part of her dominions called New Mexico,and that called California, shall be ceded to us. We are inpossession, as is said, and she shall yield her title to us.This is the precise object of this new army of thirty thousandmen. Sir, it is the identical object, in my judgment, for whichthe war was originally commenced, for which it has hitherto beenprosecuted, and in furtherance of which this treaty is to beused but as one means to bring about this general result; thatgeneral result depending, after all, on our own superior power,and on the necessity of submitting to any terms which we mayprescribe to fallen, fallen, fallen Mexico!Sir, the members composing the other house, the more popularbranch of the legislature, have all been elected since, I hadalmost said the fatal, I will say the remarkable, events of the11th and 13th days of May, 1846. The other house has passed aresolution affirming that “the war with Mexico was begununconstitutionally and unnecessarily by the executivegovernment of the United States.” I concur in that sentiment; Ihold that to be the most recent and authentic expression of thewill and opinion of the majority of the people of the UnitedStates.There is, Sir, another proposition, not so authenticallyannounced hitherto, but, in my judgment, equally true andequally capable of demonstration; and that is, that this war wasbegun, has been continued, and is now prosecuted, for the greatand leading purpose of the acquisition of new territory, out ofwhich to bring new States, with their Mexican population, intothis our Union of the United States.If unavowed at first, this purpose did not remain unavowed long.However often it may be said that we did not go to war forconquest,

“credat Judaeus Apella,Non ego,”

yet the moment we get possession of territory we must retain itand make it our own. Now I think that this original object has






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not been changed, has not been varied. Sir, I think it existsin the eyes of those who originally contemplated it, and whobegan the war for it, as plain, as attractive to them, and fromwhich they no more avert their eyes now than they did then orhave done at any time since. We have compelled a treaty ofcession; we know in our consciences that it is compelled. We useit as an instrument and an agency, in conjunction with otherinstruments and other agencies of a more formidable anddestructive character, to enforce the cession of Mexicanterritory, to acquire territory for new States to be added tothis Union. We know, every intelligent man knows, that there isno stronger desire in the breast of a Mexican citizen than toretain the territory which belongs to the republic. We know thatthe Mexican people will part with it, if part they must, withregret, with pangs of sorrow. That we know; we know it is allforced; and therefore, because we know it must be forced,because we know that (whether the government, which we considerour creature, do or do not agree to it) the Mexican people willnever accede to the terms of this treaty but through the impulseof absolute necessity, and the impression made upon them byabsolute and irresistible force, therefore we purpose tooverwhelm them with another army. We purpose to raise anotherarmy of ten thousand regulars and twenty thousand volunteers,and to pour them in and upon the Mexican people.Now, Sir, I should be happy to agree, notwithstanding all thistocsin, and all this cry of all the Semproniuses in the land,that their “voices are still for war,”—I should be happy toagree, and substantially I do agree, to the opinion of theSenator from South Carolina. I think I have myself uttered thesentiment, within a fortnight, to the same effect, that, afterall, the war with Mexico is substantially over, that there canbe no more fighting. In the present state of things, my opinionis that the people of this country will not sustain the war.They will not go for its heavy expenses; they will not find anygratification in putting the bayonet to the throats of theMexican people. For my part, I hope the ten regiment bill willnever become a law. Three weeks ago I should have entertainedthat hope with the utmost confidence; events instruct me toabate my confidence. I still hope it will not pass.And here, I dare say, I shall be called by some a “Mexican Whig.”The man who can stand up here and say that he hopes that whatthe administration projects, and the further prosecution of thewar with Mexico requires, may not be carried into effect, mustbe an enemy to his country, or what gentlemen have consideredthe same thing, an enemy to the President of the United States,and to his administration and his party. He is a Mexican. Sir,I think very badly of the Mexican character, high and low, outand out; but names do not terrify me. Besides, if I have sufferedin this respect, if I have rendered myself subject to thereproaches of these stipendiary presses, these hired abusers ofthe motives of public men, I have the honor, on this occasion,to be in very respectable company. In the reproachful sense ofthat term, I don’t know a greater Mexican in this body than thehonorable Senator from Michigan, the chairman of the Committee






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on Military Affairs.

MR. CASS. Will the gentleman be good enough to explainwhat sort of a Mexican I am?

On the resumption of the bill in the Senate the other day, thegentleman told us that its principal object was to frightenMexico; it would touch his humanity too much to hurt her! Hewould frighten her—

MR. CASS. Does the gentleman affirm that I said that?

Yes; twice.

MR. CASS. No, Sir, I beg your pardon, I did not say it.I did not say it would touch my humanity to hurt her.

Be it so.

MR. CASS. Will the honorable Senator allow me to repeatmy statement of the object of the bill? I said it wastwofold: first, that it would enable us to prosecute thewar, if necessary; and, second, that it would showMexico we were prepared to do so; and thus, by its moraleffect, would induce her to ratify the treaty.

The gentleman said, that the principal object of the bill wasto frighten Mexico, and that this would be more humane than toharm her.

MR. CASS. That’s true.

Well, Sir, the remarkable characteristic of that speech, thatwhich makes it so much a Mexican speech, is, that the gentlemanspoke it in the hearing of Mexico, as well as in the hearing ofthis Senate. We are accused here, because what we say is heardby Mexico, and Mexico derives encouragement from what is saidhere. And yet the honorable member comes forth and tells Mexicothat the principal object of the bill is to frighten her! Thewords have passed along the wires; they are on the Gulf, and arefloating away to Vera Cruz; and when they get there, they willsignify to Mexico, “After all, ye good Mexicans, my principalobject is to frighten you; and to the end that you may not befrightened too much, I have given you this indication of mypurpose.”But, Sir, in any view of this case, in any view of the properpolicy of this government, to be pursued according to any man’sapprehension and judgment, where is the necessity for thisaugmentation, by regiments, of the military force of thecountry? I hold in my hand here a note, which I suppose to besubstantially correct, of the present military force of theUnited States. I cannot answer for its entire accuracy, but Ibelieve it to be substantially according to fact. We havetwenty-five regiments of regular troops, of various arms; iffull, they would amount to 28,960 rank and file, and includingofficers to 30,296 men. These, with the exception of six or sevenhundred men, are now all out of the United States and in fieldservice in Mexico, or en route to Mexico. These regiments arenot full; casualties and the climate have sadly reduced theirnumbers. If the recruiting service were now to yield ten






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thousand men, it would not more than fill up these regiments,so that every brigadier and colonel and captain should have hisappropriate and his full command. Here is a call, then, on thecountry now for the enlistment of ten thousand men, to fill upthe regiments in the foreign service of the United States.I understand, Sir, that there is a report from General Scott;from General Scott, a man who has performed the most brilliantcampaign on recent military record, a man who has warred againstthe enemy, warred against the climate, warred against a thousandunpropitious circumstances, and has carried the flag of hiscountry to the capital of the enemy, honorably, proudly,humanely, to his own permanent honor, and the great militarycredit of his country,—General Scott; and where is he? AtPuebla! at Puebla, undergoing an inquiry before his inferiorsin rank, and other persons without military rank while the highpowers he has exercised, and exercised with so much distinction,are transferred to another, I do not say to one unworthy of them,but to one inferior in rank, station, and experience to himself.But General Scott reports, as I understand, that, in February,there were twenty thousand regular troops under his command anden route, and we have thirty regiments of volunteers for thewar. If full, this would make thirty-four thousand men, or,including officers, thirty-five thousand. So that, if theregiments were full, there is at this moment a number of troops,regular and volunteer, of not less than fifty-five or sixtythousand men, including recruits on the way. And with thesetwenty thousand men in the field, of regular troops, there werealso ten thousand volunteers; making, of regulars and volunteersunder General Scott, thirty thousand men. The Senator fromMichigan knows these things better than I do, but I believe thisis very nearly the fact. Now all these troops are regularlyofficered; there is no deficiency, in the line or in the staff,of officers. They are all full. Where there is any deficiencyit consists of men.Now, Sir, there may be a plausible reason for saying that thereis difficulty in recruiting at home for the supply of deficiencyin the volunteer regiments. It may be said that volunteerschoose to enlist under officers of their own knowledge andselection; they do not incline to enlist as individualvolunteers, to join regiments abroad, under officers of whomthey know nothing. There may be something in that; but pray whatconclusion does it lead to, if not to this, that all theseregiments must moulder away, by casualties or disease, until theprivates are less in number than the officers themselves.But however that may be with respect to volunteers, in regardto recruiting for the regular service, in filling up theregiments by pay and bounties according to existing laws, or newlaws, if new ones are necessary, there is no reason on earth whywe should now create five hundred new officers, for the purposeof getting ten thousand more men. The officers are alreadythere; in that respect there is no deficiency. All that is wantedis men, and there is place for the men; and I suppose nogentleman, here or elsewhere, thinks that recruiting will go onfaster than would be necessary to obtain men to fill up thedeficiencies in the regiments abroad.






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But now, Sir, what do we want of a greater force than we havein Mexico? I am not saying, What do we want of a force greaterthan we can supply? but, What is the object of bringing thesenew regiments into the field? What do we propose? There is noarmy to fight. I suppose there are not five hundred men underarms in any part of Mexico; probably not half that number, exceptin one place. Mexico is prostrate. It is not the government thatresists us. Why, it is notorious that the government of Mexicois on our side, that it is an instrument by which we hope toestablish such a peace, and accomplish such a treaty, as we like.As far as I understand the matter, the government of Mexico owesits life and breath and being to the support of our arms, andto the hope, I do not say how inspired, that somehow or other,and at no distant period, she will have the pecuniary means ofcarrying it on, from our three millions, or our twelve millions,or from some of our other millions.What do we propose to do, then, with these thirty regiments whichit is designed to throw into Mexico? Are we going to cut thethroats of her people? Are we to thrust the sword deeper anddeeper into the “vital parts” of Mexico? What is it proposed todo? Sir, I can see no object in it; and yet, while we are pressedand urged to adopt this proposition to raise ten and twentyregiments, we are told, and the public is told, and the publicbelieves, that we are on the verge of a safe and an honorablepeace. Every one looks every morning for tidings of a confirmedpeace, or of confirmed hopes of peace. We gather it from theadministration, and from every organ of the administration fromDan to Beersheba. And yet warlike preparations, the incurringof expenses, the imposition of new charges upon the treasury,are pressed here, as if peace were not in all our thoughts, atleast not in any of our expectations.Now, Sir, I propose to hold a plain talk to-day; and I say that,according to my best judgment, the object of the bill ispatronage, office, the gratification of friends. This verymeasure for raising ten regiments creates four or five hundredofficers; colonels, subalterns, and not them only, for for allthese I feel some respect, but there are also paymasters,contractors, persons engaged in the transportation service,commissaries, even down to sutlers, et id genus omne, people whohandle the public money without facing the foe, one and all ofwhom are true descendants, or if not, true representatives, ofAncient Pistol, who said,

“I shall sutler beUnto the camp, and profits will accrue.”

Sir, I hope, with no disrespect for the applicants, and theaspirants, and the patriots (and among them are some sincerepatriots) who would fight for their country, and those otherswho are not ready to fight, but who are willing to be paid,—withdue respect for all of them according to their several degreesand their merits, I hope they will all be disappointed. I hopethat, as the pleasant season advances, the whole may find it fortheir interest to place themselves, of mild mornings, in thecars, and take their destination to their respective places ofhonorable private occupation and of civil employment. They have






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my good wishes that they may find the way to their homes fromthe Avenue and the Capitol, and from the purlieus of thePresident’s house, in good health themselves, and that they mayfind their families all very happy to receive them.But, Sir, to speak more seriously, this war was waged for theobject of creating new States, on the southern frontier of theUnited States, out of Mexican territory, and with suchpopulation as could be found resident thereupon. I have opposedthis object. I am against all accessions of territory to formnew States. And this is no matter of sentimentality, which I amto parade before mass meetings or before my constituents athome. It is not a matter with me of declamation, or of regret,or of expressed repugnance. It is a matter of firm, unchangeablepurpose. I yield nothing to the force of circumstances that haveoccurred, or that I can consider as likely to occur. Andtherefore I say, Sir, that, if I were asked to-day whether, forthe sake of peace, I would take a treaty for adding two newStates to the Union on our southern border, I would say, No!distinctly, No! And I wish every man in the United States tounderstand that to be my judgment and my purpose.I said upon our southern border, because the present propositiontakes that locality. I would say the same of the western, thenortheastern, or of any other border. I resist to-day, and forever, and to the end, any proposition to add any foreignterritory, south or west, north or east, to the States of thisUnion, as they are constituted and held together under theConstitution. I do not want the colonists of England on thenorth; and as little do I want the population of Mexico on thesouth. I resist and reject all, and all with equal resolution.Therefore I say, that, if the question were put to me to-day,whether I would take peace under the present state of thecountry, distressed as it is, during the existence of a warodious as this is, under circumstances so afflictive as nowexist to humanity, and so disturbing to the business of thosewhom I represent,—I say still, if it were put to me whether Iwould have peace, with new States, I would say, No! no! And thatbecause, Sir, in my judgment, there is no necessity of beingdriven into that dilemma. Other gentlemen think differently. Ihold no man’s conscience; but I mean to make a clean breast ofit myself; and I protest that I see no reason, I believe thereis none, why we cannot obtain as safe a peace, as honorable andas prompt a peace, without territory as with it. The two thingsare separable. There is no necessary connection between them.Mexico does not wish us to take her territory, while she receivesour money. Far from it. She yields her assent, if she yields itat all, reluctantly, and we all know it. It is the result offorce, and there is no man here who does not know that. And letme say, Sir, that, if this Trist paper shall finally be rejectedin Mexico, it is most likely to be because those who under ourprotection hold the power there cannot persuade the MexicanCongress or people to agree to this cession of territory. Thething most likely to break up what we now expect to take placeis the repugnance of the Mexican people to part with theirterritory. They would prefer to keep their territory, and thatwe should keep our money; as I prefer we should keep our money,






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and they their territory. We shall see. I pretend to no powersof prediction. I do not know what may happen. The times are fullof strange events. But I think it certain that, if the treatywhich has gone to Mexico shall fail to be ratified, it will bebecause of the aversion of the Mexican Congress, or the Mexicanpeople, to cede the territory, or any part of it, belonging totheir republic.I have said that I would rather have no peace for the present,than have a peace which brings territory for new States; and thereason is, that we shall get peace as soon without territory aswith it, more safe, more durable, and vastly more honorable tous, the great republic of the world.But we hear gentlemen say, We must have some territory, thepeople demand it. I deny it; at least, I see no proof of itwhatever. I do not doubt that there are individuals of anenterprising character, disposed to emigrate, who know nothingabout New Mexico but that it is far off, and nothing aboutCalifornia but that it is still farther off, who are tired ofthe dull pursuits of agriculture and of civil life; that thereare hundreds and thousands of such persons to whom whatsoeveris new and distant is attractive. They feel the spirit ofborderers; and the spirit of a borderer, I take it, is to betolerably contented with his condition where he is, untilsomebody goes to regions beyond him; and then he is all eagernessto take up his traps and go still farther than he who has thusgot in advance of him. With such men the desire to emigrate isan irresistible passion. At least so thought that sagaciousobserver of human nature, M. de Talleyrand, when he travelledin this country in 1794.But I say I do not find anywhere any considerable and respectablebody of persons who want more territory, and such territory.Twenty-four of us last year in this house voted against theprosecution of the war for territory, because we did not wantit, both Southern and Northern men. I believe the Southerngentlemen who concurred in that vote found themselves, even whenthey had gone against what might be supposed to be local feelingsand partialities, sustained on the general policy of not seekingterritory, and by the acquisition of territory bringing into ourpolitics certain embarrassing and embroiling questions andconsiderations. I do not learn that they suffered from theadvocacy of such a sentiment. I believe they were supported init; and I believe that through the greater part of the South,and even of the Southwest, there is no prevalent opinion in favorof acquiring territory, and such territory, and of theaugmentation of our population by such an accession. And such,I need not say, is, if not the undivided, the preponderatingsentiment of all the North.But it is said we must take territory for the sake of peace. Wemust take territory. It is the will of the President. If we donot now take what he offers, we may fare worse. Mr. Polk willtake no less, that he is fixed upon, He is immovable. He—has—put—down—his—foot! Well, Sir, he put it down upon “fifty-fourforty,” but it didn’t stay. I speak of the President, as of allPresidents, without disrespect. I know of no reason why hisopinion and his will, his purpose, declared to be final, should






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control us, any more than our purpose, from equallyconscientious motives, and under as high responsibilities,should control him. We think he is firm, and will not be moved.I should be sorry, Sir, very sorry indeed, that we shouldentertain more respect for the firmness of the individual at thehead of the government than we entertain for our own firmness.He stands out against us. Do we fear to stand out against him?For one, I do not. It appears to me to be a slavish doctrine.For one, I am willing to meet the issue, and go to the peopleall over this broad land. Shall we take peace without new States,or refuse peace without new States? I will stand upon that, andtrust the people. And I do that because I think it right, andbecause I have no distrust of the people. I am not unwilling toput it to their sovereign decision and arbitration. I hold thisto be a question vital, permanent, elementary, in the futureprosperity of the country and the maintenance of theConstitution; and I am willing to trust that question to thepeople. I prefer that it should go to them, because, if what Itake to be a great constitutional principle, or what isessential to its maintenance, is to be broken down, let it bethe act of the people themselves; it shall never be my act. I,therefore, do not distrust the people. I am willing to take theirsentiment, from the Gulf to the British Provinces, and from theocean to the Missouri: Will you continue the war for territory,to be purchased, after all, at an enormous price, a price athousand times the value of all its purchases, or take peace,contenting yourselves with the honor we have reaped by themilitary achievements of the army? Will you take peace withoutterritory, and preserve the integrity of the Constitution of thecountry? I am entirely willing to stand upon that question. Iwill therefore take the issue: Peace, with no new States,keeping our own money ourselves, or war till new States shallbe acquired, and vast sums paid. That is the true issue. I amwilling to leave that before the people and to the people,because it is a question for themselves. If they support me andthink with me, very well. If otherwise, if they will haveterritory and add new States to the Union, let them do so; andlet them be the artificers of their own fortune, for good or forevil.But, Sir, we tremble before executive power. The truth cannotbe concealed. We tremble before executive power! Mr. Polk willtake no less than this. If we do not take this, the king’s angermay kindle, and he will give us what is worse.But now, Sir, who and what is Mr. Polk? I speak of him with nomanner of disrespect. I mean, thereby, only to ask who and whatis the President of the United States for the current moment.He is in the last year of his administration. Formally,officially, it can only be drawn out till the fourth of March,while really and substantially we know that two short monthswill, or may, produce events that will render the duration ofthat official term of very little importance. We are on the eveof a Presidential election. That machinery which is employed tocollect public opinion or party opinion will be put in operationtwo months hence. We shall see its result. It may be that thepresent incumbent of the Presidential office will be again






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presented to his party friends and admirers for their suffragesfor the next Presidential term. I do not say how probable orimprobable this is. Perhaps it is not entirely probable. Supposethis not to be the result, what then? Why, then Mr. Polk becomesas absolutely insignificant as any respectable man among thepublic men of the United States. Honored in private life, valuedfor his private character, respectable, never eminent, in publiclife, he will, from the moment a new star arises, have just aslittle influence as you or I; and, so far as I am concerned,that certainly is little enough.Sir, political partisans, and aspirants, and office-seekers, arenot sunflowers. They do not

“turn to their god when he setsThe same look which they turned when he rose.”

No, Sir, if the respectable gentleman now at the head of thegovernment be nominated, there will be those who will commendhis consistency, who will be bound to maintain it, for theinterest of his party friends will require it. It will be done.If otherwise, who is there in the whole length and breadth ofthe land that will care for the consistency of the presentincumbent of the office? There will then be new objects.“Manifest destiny” will have pointed out some other man. Sir,the eulogies are now written, the commendations are alreadyelaborated. I do not say every thing fulsome, but every thingpanegyrical, has already been written out, with blanks fornames, to be filled when the convention shall adjourn. When“manifest destiny” shall be unrolled, all these strongpanegyrics, wherever they may light, made beforehand, laid upin pigeon-holes, studied, framed, emblazoned, and embossed, willall come out; and then there will be found to be somebody in theUnited States whose merits have been strangely overlooked,marked out by Providence, a kind of miracle, while all willwonder that nobody ever thought of him before, as a fit, and theonly fit, man to be at the head of this great republic!I shrink not, therefore, from any thing that I feel to be myduty, from any apprehension of the importance and imposingdignity, and the power of will, ascribed to the presentincumbent of office. But I wish we possessed that power of will.I wish we had that firmness. Yes, Sir, I wish we had adherence.I wish we could gather something from the spirit of our braveforces, who have met the enemy under circumstances most adverseand have stood the shock. I wish we could imitate Zachary Taylorin his bivouac on the field of Buena Vista. He said he “wouldremain for the night; he would feel the enemy in the morning,and try his position.” I wish, before we surrender, we couldmake up our minds to “feel the enemy, and try his position,” andI think we should find him, as Taylor did, under the early sun,on his way to San Luis Potosi. That is my judgment.But, Sir, I come to the all-absorbing question, moreparticularly, of the creation of New States.Some years before I entered public life, Louisiana had beenobtained under the treaty with France. Shortly after, Floridawas obtained under the treaty with Spain. These two countrieswere situated on our frontier, and commanded the outlets of the






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great rivers which flow into the Gulf. As I have had occasionto say, in the first of these instances, the President of theUnited States [Mr. Jefferson] supposed that an amendment of theConstitution was required. He acted upon that supposition. Mr.Madison was Secretary of State, and, upon the suggestion of thePresident, proposed that the proper amendment to theConstitution should be submitted, to bring Louisiana into theUnion. Mr. Madison drew it, and submitted it to Mr. Adams, as Ihave understood. Mr. Madison did not go upon any general ideathat new States might be admitted; he did not proceed to ageneral amendment of the Constitution in that respect. Theamendment which he proposed and submitted to Mr. Adams was asimple declaration, by a new article, that “the Province ofLouisiana is hereby declared to be part and parcel of the UnitedStates.” But public opinion, seeing the great importance of theacquisition, took a turn favorable to the affirmation of thepower. The act was acquiesced in, and Louisiana became a partof the Union, without any amendment of the Constitution.On the example of Louisiana, Florida was admitted.Now, Sir, I consider those transactions as passed, settled,legalized. There they stand as matters of political history.They are facts against which it would be idle at this day tocontend.My first agency in matters of this kind was upon the propositionfor admitting Texas into this Union. That I thought it my dutyto oppose, upon the general ground of opposing all formation ofnew States out of foreign territory, and, I may add, and I oughtto add in justice, of States in which slaves were to berepresented in the Congress of the United States. I was opposedto this on the ground of its inequality. It happened to me, Sir,to be called upon to address a political meeting in New York,in 1837, soon after the recognition of Texan Independence. Istate now, Sir, what I have often stated before, that no man,from the first, has been a more sincere well-wisher to thegovernment and the people of Texas than myself. I looked uponthe achievement of their independence in the battle of SanJacinto as an extraordinary, almost a marvellous, incident inthe affairs of mankind. I was among the first disposed toacknowledge her independence. But from the first, down to thismoment, I have opposed, as far as I was able, the annexation ofnew States to this Union. I stated my reasons on the occasionnow referred to, in language which I have now before me, andwhich I beg to present to the Senate.

Mr. Webster here read the passage from his speech atNiblo’s Saloon, New York, which will be found in aprevious part of this work, pages 429, 430, beginning,“But it cannot be disguised, Gentlemen, that a desire,or an intention, is already manifested to annex Texasto the United States.”

Well, Sir, for a few years I held a position in the executiveadministration of the government. I left the Department of Statein 1843, in the month of May. Within a month after, another (anintelligent gentleman, for whom I cherished a high respect, andwho came to a sad and untimely end) had taken my place, I had






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occasion to know, not officially, but from circumstances, thatthe annexation of Texas was taken up by Mr. Tyler’sadministration as an administration measure. It was pushed,pressed, insisted on; and I believe the honorable gentleman towhom I have referred [Mr. Upshur] had something like a passionfor the accomplishment of this purpose. And I am afraid that thePresident of the United States [Mr. Tyler] at that time sufferedhis ardent feelings not a little to control his more prudentjudgment. At any rate, I saw, in 1843, that annexation had becomea purpose of the administration. I was not in Congress nor inpublic life. But, seeing this state of things, I thought it myduty to admonish the country, so far as I could, of the existenceof that purpose. There are gentlemen at the North, many of them,there are gentlemen now in the Capitol, who know that, in thesummer of 1843, being fully persuaded that this purpose wasembraced with zeal and determination by the executive departmentof the government of the United States, I thought it my duty,and asked them to concur with me in the attempt, to make thatpurpose known to the country. I conferred with gentlemen ofdistinction and influence. I proposed means for exciting publicattention to the question of annexation, before it should havebecome a party question; for I had learned that, when any topicbecomes a party question, it is in vain to argue upon it.But the optimists and the quietists, and those who said, Allthings are well, and let all things alone, discouraged,discountenanced, and repressed any such effort. The North, theysaid, could take care of itself; the country could take care ofitself, and would not sustain Mr. Tyler in his project ofannexation. When the time should come, they said, the power ofthe North would be felt, and would be found sufficient to resistand prevent the consummation of the measure. And I could nowrefer to paragraphs and articles in the most respectable andleading journals of the North, in which it was attempted toproduce the impression that there was no danger; there could beno addition of new States, and men need not alarm themselvesabout that.I was not in Congress, Sir, when the preliminary resolutions,providing for the annexation of Texas, passed. I only know that,up to a very short period before the passage of thoseresolutions, the impression in that part of the country of whichI have spoken was, that no such measure could be adopted. But Ihave found, in the course of thirty years’ experience, thatwhatever measures the executive government may embrace and pushare quite likely to succeed in the end. There is always a givingway somewhere. The executive government acts with uniformity,with steadiness, with entire unity of purpose. And sooner orlater, often enough, and, according to my construction of ourhistory, quite too often, it effects its purposes. In this wayit becomes the predominating power of the government.Well, Sir, just before the commencement of the presentadministration, the resolutions for the annexation of Texas werepassed in Congress. Texas complied with the provisions of thoseresolutions, and was here, or the case was here, on the 22d dayof December, 1845, for her final admission into the Union, asone of the States. I took occasion then to say, that I hoped I






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had shown all proper regard for Texas; that I had been certainlyopposed to annexation; that, if I should go over the whole matteragain, I should have nothing new to add; that I had acted, allalong, under the unanimous declaration of all parties, and ofthe legislature of Massachusetts; that I thought there must besome limit to the extent of our territories, and that I wishedthis country should exhibit to the world the example of apowerful republic, without greediness and hunger of empire. AndI added, that while I held, with as much faithfulness as anycitizen of the country, to all the original arrangements andcompromises of the Constitution under which we live, I nevercould, and I never should, bring myself to be in favor of theadmission of any States into the Union as slave-holding States;and I might have added, any States at all, to be formed out ofterritories not now belonging to us.Now, as I have said, in all this I acted under the resolutionsof the State of Massachusetts, certainly concurrent with my ownjudgment, so often repeated, and reaffirmed by the unanimousconsent of all men of all parties, that I could not well gothrough the series, pointing out, not only the impolicy, but theunconstitutionality, of such annexation. If a State proposes tocome into the Union, and to come in as a slave State, then thereis an augmentation of the inequality in the representation ofthe people; an inequality already existing, with which I do notquarrel, and which I never will attempt to alter, but shallpreserve as long as I have a vote to give, or any voice in thisgovernment, because it is a part of the original compact. Letit stand. But then there is another consideration of vastly moregeneral importance even than that; more general, because itaffects all the States, free and slave-holding; and it is, that,if States formed out of territories thus thinly populated comeinto the Union, they necessarily and inevitably break up therelation existing between the two branches of the government,and destroy its balance. They break up the intended relationbetween the Senate and the House of Representatives. If youbring in new States, any State that comes in must have twoSenators. She may come in with fifty or sixty thousand people,or more. You may have, from a particular State, more Senatorsthan you have Representatives. Can any thing occur to disfigureand derange the form of government under which we live moresignally than that? Here would be a Senate bearing no proportionto the people, out of all relation to them, by the addition ofnew States; from some of them only one Representative, perhaps,and two Senators, whereas the larger States may have ten,fifteen, or even thirty Representatives, and but two Senators.The Senate, augmented by these new Senators coming from Stateswhere there are few people, becomes an odious oligarchy. Itholds power without any adequate constituency. Sir, it is but“borough-mongering” upon a large scale. Now, I do not dependupon theory; I ask the Senate and the country to look at facts,to see where we were when we made our departure three years ago,and where we now are; and I leave it to the imagination toconjecture where we shall be.We admitted Texas,—one State for the present; but, Sir, if yourefer to the resolutions providing for the annexation of Texas,






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you find a provision that it shall be in the power of Congresshereafter to make four new States out of Texan territory.Present and prospectively, five new States, with ten Senators,may come into the Union out of Texas. Three years ago we didthis; we now propose to make two States. Undoubtedly, if we take,as the President recommends, New Mexico and California, theremust then be four new Senators. We shall then have provided, inthese territories out of the United States along our southernborders, for the creation of States enough to send fourteenSenators into this chamber. Now, what will be the relationbetween these Senators and the people they represent, or theStates from which they come? I do not understand that there isany very accurate census of Texas. It is generally supposed tocontain one hundred and fifty thousand persons. I doubt whetherit contains above one hundred thousand.

MR. MANGUM. It contains one hundred and forty-ninethousand.

My honorable friend on my left says, a hundred and forty-ninethousand. I put it down, then, one hundred and fifty thousand.Well, Sir, Texas is not destined, probably, to be a country ofdense population. We will suppose it to have at the present timea population of near one hundred and fifty thousand. New Mexicomay have sixty or seventy thousand inhabitants; say seventythousand. In California, there are not supposed to be abovetwenty-five thousand men; but undoubtedly, if this territoryshould become ours, persons from Oregon, and from our WesternStates, will find their way to San Francisco, where there issome good land, and we may suppose they will shortly amount tosixty or seventy thousand. We will put them down at seventythousand. Then the whole territory in this estimate, which isas high as any man puts it, will contain two hundred and ninetythousand persons, and they will send us, whenever we ask forthem, fourteen Senators; a population less than that of theState of Vermont, and not the eighth part of that of New York.Fourteen Senators, and not as many people as Vermont, and nomore people than New Hampshire! and not so many people as thegood State of New Jersey!But then, Sir, Texas claims to the line of the Rio Grande, andif it be her true line, why then of course she absorbs aconsiderable part, nay, the greater part, of the population ofwhat is now called New Mexico. I do not argue the question ofthe true southern or western line of Texas; I only say, that itis apparent to everybody who will look at the map, and learn anything of the matter, that New Mexico cannot be divided by thisriver, the Rio Grande, which is a shallow, fordable,insignificant stream, creeping along through a narrow valley,at the base of enormous mountains. New Mexico must remaintogether; it must be a State, with its seventy thousand people,and so it will be; and so will California.But then, Sir, suppose Texas to remain a unit, and but one Statefor the present; still we shall have three States, Texas, NewMexico, and California. We shall have six Senators, then, forless than three hundred thousand people. We shall have as manySenators for three hundred thousand people in that region as we






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have for New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, with four or fivemillions of people; and that is what we call an equalrepresentation! Is not this enormous? Have gentlemen consideredthis? Have they looked at it? Are they willing to look it in theface, and then say they embrace it? I trust, Sir, the peoplewill look at it and consider it. And now let me add, that thisdisproportion can never be diminished; it must remain for ever.How are you going to diminish it? Why, here is Texas, with ahundred and forty-nine thousand people, with one State. Supposethat population should flow into Texas, where will it go? Notto any dense point, but to be spread over all that region, inplaces remote from the Gulf, in places remote from what is nowthe capital of Texas; and therefore, as soon as there are inother portions of Texas people enough within our commonconstruction of the Constitution and our practice in respect tothe admission of States, my honorable friend from Texas [Mr.Rusk] will have a new State, and I have no doubt he has chalkedit out already.As to New Mexico, its population is not likely to increase. Itis a settled country; the people living along in the bottom ofthe valley on the sides of a little stream, a garter of landonly on one side and the other, filled by coarse landholders andmiserable peons. It can sustain, not only under thiscultivation, but under any cultivation that our American racewould ever submit to, no more people than are there now. Therewill, then, be two Senators for sixty thousand inhabitants inNew Mexico to the end of our lives and to the end of the livesof our children.And how is it with California? We propose to take California,from the forty-second degree of north latitude down to thethirty-second. We propose to take ten degrees along the coastof the Pacific. Scattered along the coast for that greatdistance are settlements and villages and ports; and in the rearall is wilderness and barrenness, and Indian country. But if,just about San Francisco, and perhaps Monterey, emigrants enoughshould settle to make up one State, then the people five hundredmiles off would have another State. And so this disproportionof the Senate to the people will go on, and must go on, and wecannot prevent it.I say, Sir, that, according to my conscientious conviction, weare now fixing on the Constitution of the United States, and itsframe of government, a monstrosity, a disfiguration, anenormity! Sir, I hardly dare trust myself. I don’t know but Imay be under some delusion. It may be the weakness of my eyesthat forms this monstrous apparition. But, if I may trustmyself, if I can persuade myself that I am in my right mind,then it does appear to me that we in this Senate have been andare acting, and are likely to be acting hereafter, andimmediately, a part which will form the most remarkable epochin the history of our country. I hold it to be enormous,flagrant, an outrage upon all the principles of popularrepublican government, and on the elementary provisions of theConstitution under which we live, and which we have sworn tosupport.But then, Sir, what relieves the case from this enormity? What






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is our reliance? Why, it is that we stipulate that these newStates shall only be brought in at a suitable time. And pray,what is to constitute the suitableness of time? Who is to judgeof it? I tell you, Sir, that suitable time will come when thepreponderance of party power here makes it necessary to bringin new States. Be assured it will be a suitable time when votesare wanted in this Senate. We have had some little experienceof that. Texas came in at a “suitable time,” a very suitabletime! Texas was finally admitted in December, 1845. My friendnear me here, for whom I have a great regard, and whoseacquaintance I have cultivated with pleasure [Mr. Rusk], tookhis seat in March, 1846, with his colleague. In July, 1846, thesetwo Texan votes turned the balance in the Senate, and overthrewthe tariff of 1842, in my judgment the best system of revenueever established in this country. Gentlemen on the opposite sidethink otherwise. They think it fortunate. They think that was asuitable time, and they mean to take care that other times shallbe equally suitable. I understand it perfectly well. That is thedifference of opinion between me and these honorable gentlemen.To their policy, their objects, and their purposes the time wassuitable, and the aid was efficient and decisive.Sir, in 1850 perhaps a similar question may be agitated here.It is not likely to be before that time, but agitated it willbe then, unless a change in the administration of the governmentshall take place. According to my apprehension, looking atgeneral results as flowing from our established system ofcommerce and revenue, in two years from this time we shallprobably be engaged in a new revision of our system: in the workof establishing, if we can, a tariff of specific duties; ofprotecting, if we can, our domestic industry and themanufactures of the country; in the work of preventing, if wecan, the overwhelming flood of foreign importations. Supposethat to be part of the future: that would be exactly the“suitable time,” if necessary, for two Senators from New Mexicoto make their appearance here!But, again, we hear another halcyon, soothing tone, which quietsnone of my alarms, assuages none of my apprehensions, commendsme to my nightly rest with no more resignation. And that is, theplea that we may trust the popular branch of the legislature,we may look to the House of Representatives, to the Northern andMiddle States and even the sound men of the South, and trustthem to take care that States be not admitted sooner than theyshould be, or for party purposes. I am compelled, by experience,to distrust all such reliances. If we cannot rely on ourselves,when we have the clear constitutional authority competent tocarry us through, and the motives intensely powerful, I beg toknow how we can rely on others. Have we more reliance on thepatriotism, the firmness, of others, than on our own?Besides, experience shows us that things of this sort may besprung upon Congress and the people. It was so in the case ofTexas. It was so in the Twenty-eighth Congress. The members ofthat Congress were not chosen to decide the question ofannexation or no annexation. They came in on other grounds,political and party, and were supported for reasons notconnected with that question. What then? The administration






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sprung upon them the question of annexation. It obtained a snapjudgment upon it, and carried the measure of annexation. Thatis indubitable, as I could show by many instances, of which Ishall state only one.Four gentlemen from the State of Connecticut were elected beforethe question arose, belonging to the dominant party. They hadnot been here long before they were committed to annexation; andwhen it was known in Connecticut that annexation was incontemplation, remonstrances, private, public, and legislative,were uttered, in tones that any one could hear who could hearthunder. Did they move them? Not at all. Every one of them votedfor annexation! The election came on, and they were turned out,to a man. But what did those care who had had the benefit oftheir votes? Such agencies, if it be not more proper to callthem such instrumentalities, retain respect no longer than theycontinue to be useful.Sir, we take New Mexico and California; who is weak enough tosuppose that there is an end? Don’t we hear it avowed every day,that it would be proper also to take Sonora, Tamaulipas, andother provinces of Northern Mexico? Who thinks that the hungerfor dominion will stop here of itself? It is said, to be sure,that our present acquisitions will prove so lean andunsatisfactory, that we shall seek no further. In my judgment,we may as well say of a rapacious animal, that, if he has madeone unproductive hunt, he will not try for a better foray.But further. There are some things one can argue against withtemper, and submit to, if overruled, without mortification.There are other things that seem to affect one’s consciousnessof being a sensible man, and to imply a disposition to imposeupon his common sense. And of this class of topics, or pretences,I have never heard of any thing, and I cannot conceive of anything, more ridiculous in itself, more absurd, and moreaffrontive to all sober judgment, than the cry that we aregetting indemnity by the acquisition of New Mexico andCalifornia. I hold they are not worth a dollar; and we pay forthem vast sums of money! We have expended, as everybody knows,large treasures in the prosecution of the war; and now what isto constitute this indemnity? What do gentlemen mean by it? Letus see a little how this stands. We get a country; we get, inthe first instance, a cession, or an acknowledgment of boundary,(I care not which way you state it,) of the country between theNueces and the Rio Grande. What this country is appears from apublication made by a gentleman in the other house [MajorGaines]. He speaks of the country in the following manner:—

“The country from the Nueces to the valley of the RioGrande is poor, sterile, sandy, and barren, with not asingle tree of any size or value on our whole route. Theonly tree which we saw was the musquit-tree, and veryfew of these. The musquit is a small tree, resemblingan old and decayed peach-tree. The whole country may betruly called a perfect waste, uninhabited anduninhabitable. There is not a drop of running waterbetween the two rivers, except in the two small streamsof San Salvador and Santa Gertrudis, and these only






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contain water in the rainy season. Neither of them hadrunning water when we passed them. The chaparralcommences within forty or fifty miles of the Rio Grande.This is poor, rocky, and sandy; covered with prickly-pear, thistles, and almost every sticking thing,constituting a thick and perfectly impenetrableundergrowth. For any useful or agricultural purpose,the country is not worth a sous.“So far as we were able to form any opinion of thisdesert upon the other routes which had been travelled,its character, everywhere between the two rivers, ispretty much the same. We learned that the route pursuedby General Taylor, south of ours, was through a countrysimilar to that through which we passed; as also wasthat travelled by General Wool from San Antonio toPresidio on the Rio Grande. From what we both saw andheard, the whole command came to the conclusion which Ihave already expressed, that it was worth nothing. Ihave no hesitation in saying, that I would not hazardthe life of one valuable and useful man for every footof land between San Patricio and the valley of the RioGrande. The country is not now, and can never be, of theslightest value.”

Major Gaines has been there lately. He is a competent observer.He is contradicted by nobody. And so far as that country isconcerned, I take it for granted that it is not worth a dollar.Now of New Mexico, what of that! Forty-nine fiftieths, at least,of the whole of New Mexico, are a barren waste, a desert plainof mountain, with no wood, no timber. Little fagots for lightinga fire are carried thirty or forty miles on mules. There is nofall of rain there, as in temperate climates. It is Asiatic inscenery altogether: enormously high mountains, running up someof them ten thousand feet, with narrow valleys at their bases,through which streams sometimes trickle along. A strip, agarter, winds along, through which runs the Rio Grande, from faraway up in the Rocky Mountains to latitude 33°, a distance ofthree or four hundred miles. There these sixty thousand personsreside. In the mountains on the right and left are streams which,obeying the natural tendency as tributaries, should flow intothe Rio Grande, and which, in certain seasons, when rains areabundant, do, some of them, actually reach the Rio Grande; whilethe greater part always, and all for the greater part of theyear, never reach an outlet to the sea, but are absorbed in thesands and desert plains of the country. There is no cultivationthere. There is cultivation where there is artificial wateringor irrigation, and nowhere else. Men can live only in the narrowvalley, and in the gorges of the mountains which rise round it,and not along the course of the streams which lose themselvesin the sands.Now there is no public domain in New Mexico, not a foot of land,to the soil of which we shall obtain title. Not an acre becomesours when the country becomes ours. More than that, the countryis as full of people, such as they are, as it is likely to be.There is not the least thing in it to invite settlement from the






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fertile valley of the Mississippi. And I undertake to say, therewould not be two hundred families of persons who would emigratefrom the United States to New Mexico, for agricultural purposes,in fifty years. They could not live there. Suppose they were tocultivate the lands; they could only make them productive in aslight degree by irrigation or artificial watering. The peoplethere produce little, and live on little. That is not thecharacteristic, I take it, of the people of the Eastern or ofthe Middle States, or of the Valley of the Mississippi. Theyproduce a good deal, and they consume a good deal.Again, Sir, New Mexico is not like Texas. I have hoped, and Istill hope, that Texas will be filled up from among ourselves,not with Spaniards, not with peons; that its inhabitants willnot be Mexican landlords, with troops of slaves, predial orotherwise.

Mr. Rusk here rose, and said that he disliked tointerrupt the Senator, and therefore he had said nothingwhile he was describing the country between the Nuecesand the Rio Grande; but he wished now to say, that, whenthat country comes to be known, it will be found to beas valuable as any part of Texas. The valley of the RioGrande is valuable from its source to its mouth. But hedid not look upon that as indemnity; he claimed that asthe right of Texas. So far as the Mexican population isconcerned, there is a good deal of it in Texas; and itcomprises many respectable persons, wealthy,intelligent, and distinguished. A good many are nowmoving in from New Mexico, and settling in Texas.

I take what I say from Major Gaines. But I am glad to hear thatany part of New Mexico is fit for the foot of civilized man. AndI am glad, moreover, that there are some persons in New Mexicowho are not so blindly attached to their miserable condition asnot to make an effort to come out of their country, and get intoa better.Sir, I would, if I had time, call the attention of the Senateto an instructive speech made in the other house by Mr. Smithof Connecticut. He seems to have examined all the authorities,to have conversed with all the travellers, to have correspondedwith all our agents. His speech contains communications from allof them; and I commend it to every man in the United States whowishes to know what we are about to acquire by the annexationof New Mexico.New Mexico is secluded, isolated, a place by itself, in the midstand at the foot of vast mountains, five hundred miles from thesettled part of Texas, and as far from anywhere else! It doesnot belong anywhere! It has no belongings about it! At thismoment it is absolutely more retired and shut out fromcommunication with the civilized world than Hawaii or any of theother islands of the Pacific sea. In seclusion and remoteness,New Mexico may press hard on the character and condition ofTypee. And its people are infinitely less elevated, in moralsand condition, than the people of the Sandwich Islands. We hadmuch better have Senators from Oahu. They are far lessintelligent than the better class of our Indian neighbors.






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Commend me to the Cherokees, to the Choctaws; if you please,speak of the Pawnees, of the Snakes, the Flatfeet, of any thingbut the Digging Indians, and I will be satisfied not to take thepeople of New Mexico. Have they any notion of our institutions,or of any free institutions? Have they any notion of populargovernment? Not the slightest! Not the slightest on earth! Whenthe question is asked, What will be their constitution? it isfarcical to talk of such people making a constitution forthemselves. They do not know the meaning of the term, they donot know its import. They know nothing at all about it; and Ican tell you, Sir, that when they are made a Territory, and areto be made a State, such a constitution as the executive powerof this government may think fit to send them will be sent, andwill be adopted. The constitution of our fellow citizens of NewMexico will be framed in the city of Washington.Now what says in regard to all Mexico Colonel Hardin, that mostlamented and distinguished officer, honorably known as a memberof the other house, and who has fallen gallantly fighting in theservice of his country? Here is his description:—

“The whole country is miserably watered. Largedistricts have no water at all. The streams are small,and at great distances apart. One day we marched on theroad from Monclova to Parras thirty-five miles withoutwater, a pretty severe day’s marching for infantry.“Grass is very scarce, and indeed there is none at allin many regions for miles square. Its place is suppliedwith prickly-pear and thorny bushes. There is not oneacre in two hundred, more probably not one in fivehundred, of all the land we have seen in Mexico, whichcan ever be cultivated; the greater portion of it is themost desolate region I could ever have imagined. Thepure granite hills of New England are a paradise to it,for they are without the thorny briers and venomousreptiles which infest the barbed barrenness of Mexico.The good land and cultivated spots in Mexico are butdots on the map. Were it not that it takes so very littleto support a Mexican, and that the land which iscultivated yields its produce with little labor, itwould be surprising how its sparse population issustained. All the towns we have visited, with perhapsthe exception of Parras, are depopulating, as is alsothe whole country.“The people are on a par with their land. One in twohundred or five hundred is rich, and lives like a nabob;the rest are peons, or servants sold for debt, who workfor their masters, and are as subservient as the slavesof the South, and look like Indians, and, indeed, arenot more capable of self-government. One man, JacobusSanchez, owns three fourths of all the land our columnhas passed over in Mexico. We are told we have seen thebest part of Northern Mexico; if so, the whole of it isnot worth much.“I came to Mexico in favor of getting or taking enoughof it to pay the expenses of the war. I now doubt whether






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all Northern Mexico is worth the expenses of our columnof three thousand men. The expenses of the war must beenormous; we have paid enormous prices for every thing,much beyond the usual prices of the country.”

There it is. That’s all North Mexico; and New Mexico is not thebetter part of it.Sir, there is a recent traveller, not unfriendly to the UnitedStates, if we may judge from his work, for he speaks well of useverywhere; an Englishman, named Ruxton. He gives an account ofthe morals and the manners of the population of New Mexico. And,Mr. President and Senators, I shall take leave to introduce youto these soon to be your respected fellow-citizens of NewMexico:—

“It is remarkable that, although existing from theearliest times of the colonization of New Mexico, aperiod of two centuries, in a state of continualhostility with the numerous savage tribes of Indians whosurround their territory, and in constant insecurity oflife and property from their attacks, being also farremoved from the enervating influences of large cities,and, in their isolated situation, entirely dependentupon their own resources, the inhabitants are totallydestitute of those qualities which, for the abovereasons, we might naturally have expected todistinguish them, and are as deficient in energy ofcharacter and physical courage as they are in all themoral and intellectual qualities. In their social statebut one degree removed from the veriest savages, theymight take a lesson even from these in morality and theconventional decencies of life. Imposing no restrainton their passions, a shameless and universalconcubinage exists, and a total disregard of morality,to which it would be impossible to find a parallel inany country calling itself civilized. A want ofhonorable principle, and consummate duplicity andtreachery, characterize all their dealings. Liars bynature, they are treacherous and faithless to theirfriends, cowardly and cringing to their enemies; cruel,as all cowards are, they unite savage ferocity withtheir want of animal courage; as an example of which,their recent massacre of Governor Bent, and otherAmericans, may be given, one of a hundred instances.”

These, Sir, are soon to be our beloved countrymen!Mr. President, for a good many years I have struggled inopposition to every thing which I thought tended to strengthenthe arm of executive power. I think it is growing more and moreformidable every day. And I think that by yielding to it in this,as in other instances, we give it a strength which it will bedifficult hereafter to resist. I think that it is nothing lessthan the fear of executive power which induces us to acquiescein the acquisition of territory; fear, fear, and nothing else.In the little part which I have acted in public life, it hasbeen my purpose to maintain the people of the United States,






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what the Constitution designed to make them, one people, one ininterest, one in character, and one in political feeling. If wedepart from that, we break it all up. What sympathy can therebe between the people of Mexico and California and theinhabitants of the Valley of the Mississippi and the EasternStates in the choice of a President? Do they know the same man?Do they concur in any general constitutional principles? Not atall.Arbitrary governments may have territories and distantpossessions, because arbitrary governments may rule them bydifferent laws and different systems. Russia may rule in theUkraine and the provinces of the Caucasus and Kamtschatka bydifferent codes, ordinances, or ukases. We can do no such thing.They must be of us, part of us, or else strangers.I think I see that in progress which will disfigure and deformthe Constitution. While these territories remain territories,they will be a trouble and an annoyance; they will draw afterthem vast expenses; they will probably require as many troopsas we have maintained during the last twenty years to defendthem against the Indian tribes. We must maintain an army at thatimmense distance. When they shall become States, they will bestill more likely to give us trouble.I think I see a course adopted which is likely to turn theConstitution of the land into a deformed monster, into a curserather than a blessing; in fact, a frame of an unequalgovernment, not founded on popular representation, not foundedon equality, but on the grossest inequality; and I think thatthis process will go on, or that there is danger that it willgo on, until this Union shall fall to pieces. I resist it, to-day and always! Whoever falters or whoever flies, I continue thecontest!I know, Sir, that all the portents are discouraging. Would toGod I could auspicate good influences! Would to God that thosewho think with me, and myself, could hope for stronger support!Would that we could stand where we desire to stand! I see thesigns are sinister. But with few, or alone, my position is fixed.If there were time, I would gladly awaken the country. I believethe country might be awakened, although it may be too late. Formyself, supported or unsupported, by the blessing of God, Ishall do my duty. I see well enough all the adverse indications.But I am sustained by a deep and a conscientious sense of duty;and while supported by that feeling, and while such greatinterests are at stake, I defy auguries, and ask no omen but mycountry’s cause!






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January 5, Saturday: Henry Thoreau visited the Beech Spring on the farm of Jacob Baker in Lincoln, known as “Pleasant Meadow” or “Pleasant Acres,” near Flint’s Pond or Sandy Pond, for the first time. This spring is situated in what was a glacial channel between Pine Hill and Bare Hill, the spillway by which Glacial Lake Concord fed into Glacial Lake Sudbury. The channel runs for about half a mile on a northeast-to-southwest gradient from Sandy Pond Road to the Adams impoundment above the meadows and fields of the old Jacob Baker Farm.10

January 5: Discovered a small grove of beeches [Fagus grandifolia or American Beech] to day –between Walden & Flints Ponds –standing by a little run which –at length makes its way through JacobBaker’s meadow and a deep broad ditch which he has dug –& emptied in to the River– A tree which has almostdisappeared from Conc woods, though once plentyIt is worth the while to go some mile only to see a single beech tree. So fine a bole it has so perfect in all itsdetails– So fair & smooth its bark –as if painted with a brush –and fringed with lichens I could stand an hourand look at one.

1850

10. Jacob Baker lived near Flint’s Pond or Sandy Pond, from which Thoreau as a youth had collected sand for his family’s sandpaper business (since sandpaper had not been invented until 1834, Henry would have needed to have been at least in his late teens before collecting this sand), which in 1849 he had considered accepting under the name “God’s Drop” (rather than Walden Pond!) “since the railroad & the Irish have prophaned Walden,” and it was his brother James Baker who had the other more famous “Baker Farm” (Gleason K7) nearer Walden Pond which is described in WALDEN.

The farms of the Baker boys were close but we do not know that they were contiguous — perhaps a plot map can show us.

WALDEN: In the deepest snows, the path which I used fromthe highway to my house, about half a mile long, might have beenrepresented by a meandering dotted line, with wide intervalsbetween the dots. For a week of even weather I took exactly thesame number of steps, and of the same length, coming and going,stepping deliberately and with the precision of a pairof dividers in my own deep tracks, –to such routine the winterreduces us,– yet often they were filled with heaven’s own blue.But no weather interfered fatally with my walks, or rather mygoing abroad, for I frequently tramped eight or ten miles throughthe deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree,or a yellow-birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines; whenthe ice and snow causing their limbs to droop, and so sharpeningtheir tops, had changed the pines into fir-trees; wading to thetops of the highest hills when the snow was nearly two feet deepon a level, and shaking down another snow storm on my head atevery step; or sometimes creeping and floundering thither on myhands and knees, when the hunters had gone into winter quarters.

BAKER FARM






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One of the old hunters mentioned in WALDEN, Sam “Old Fox” Nutting, lived on this Baker homesite in Lincoln (next screen):






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WALDEN: One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to come to bathe inWalden once every year when the water was warmest, and at such times lookedin upon me, told me, that many years ago he took his gun one afternoon andwent out for a cruise in Walden Wood; and as he walked the Wayland road heheard the cry of hounds approaching, and ere long a fox leaped the wall intothe road, and as quick as thought leaped the other wall out of the road, andhis swift bullet had not touched him. Some way behind came an old hound andher three pups in full pursuit, hunting on their own account, and disappearedagain in the woods. Late in the afternoon, as he was resting in the thickwoods south of Walden, he heard the voice of the hounds far over toward FairHaven still pursuing the fox; and on they came; their hounding cry which madeall the woods ring sounding nearer and nearer, now from Well-Meadow, now fromthe Baker Farm. For a long time he stood still and listened to their music,so sweet to a hunter’s ear, when suddenly the fox appeared, threading thesolemn aisles with an easy coursing pace, whose sound was concealed by asympathetic rustle of the leaves, swift and still, keeping the ground,leaving his pursuers far behind; and, leaping upon a rock amid the woods, hesat erect and listening, with his back to the hunter. For a moment compassionrestrained the latter’s arm; but that was a short-lived mood, and as quickas thought can follow though his piece was levelled, and whang! –the foxrolling over the rock lay dead on the ground. The hunter still kept his placeand listened to the hounds. Still on they came, and now the near woodsresounded through all their aisles with their demoniac cry. At length theold hound burst into view with muzzle to the ground, and snapping the air asif possessed, and ran directly to the rock; but spying the dead fox shesuddenly ceased her hounding, as if struck dumb with amazement, and walkedround and round him in silence; and one by one her pups arrived, and, liketheir mother, were sobered into silence by the mystery. Then the hunter cameforward and stood in their midst, and the mystery was solved. They waited insilence while he skinned the fox, then followed the brush a while, and atlength turned off into the woods again. That evening a Weston Squire came tothe Concord hunter’s cottage to inquire for his hounds, and told how for aweek they had been hunting on their own account from Weston woods. TheConcord hunter told him what he knew and offered him the skin; but the otherdeclined it and departed. He did not find his hounds that night, but the nextday learned that they had crossed the river and put up at a farm-house forthe night, whence, having been well fed, they took their departure early inthe morning.The hunter who told me this could remember one Sam Nutting, who used to huntbears on Fair Haven Ledges, and exchange their skins for rum in Concordvillage; who told him, even, that he had seen a moose there. Nutting had afamous fox-hound named Burgoyne, –he pronounced it Bugine,– which myinformant used to borrow. In the “Wast Book” of an old trader of this town,who was also a captain, town-clerk, and representative, I find the followingentry. Jan. 18th, 1742-3, “John Melven Cr. by 1 Grey Fox 0-2-3;” they arenot now found here; and in his ledger, Feb. 7th, 1743, Hezekiah Stratton hascredit “by 1/2 a Catt skin 0-1-41/2;” of course, a wild-cat, for Strattonwas a sergeant in the old French war, and would not have got credit forhunting less noble game. Credit is given for deer skins also, and they weredaily sold. One man still preserves the horns of the last deer that was killedin this vicinity, and another has told me the particulars of the hunt inwhich his uncle was engaged. The hunters were formerly a numerous and merrycrew here. I remember well one gaunt Nimrod who would catch up a leaf by theroad-side and play a strain on it wilder and more melodious, if my memoryserves me, than any hunting horn.






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April 19, Friday: Lexington and Concord staged a joint celebration at the site of the former Old North Bridge. There were special trains from Boston, and an enormous pavilion had been erected in the center of Concord. The orator Robert Rantoul reminded the attenders at this celebration “how delightful is the duty which devolves on us to guard the beacon-fire of liberty whose flames our fathers kindled” in the process of “occupying such a continent.”

Amos Baker was celebrated as the “last surviving” veteran of this fateful skirmish (of course, no-one has ever thought to ask whether at this point there still remained any survivors, in England).

In the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty Convention Between the United States and Her Britannic Majesty, Great Britain and the United States of America agreed that they would not obtain exclusive control of any Central American ship canal between the two oceans.

(They had consulted with no Central Americans about this. In the initial phase US investors would begin the construction of a single-track railroad across the isthmus, and this would require 5 years for completion and occasion the deaths of approximately 6,000 workers.)

19th April Gathered May-Flowers in Acton Dry leaf flowers singularly concealed under the leaves.Our earliest flower.The Jenny Dugan quarter produces May flowers –Mountain Cranberries & yellow violetsThe time when the peach trees are in blossom is well marked.In April the turtle dove is again met in the woodland path–barely getting out of your way. It is the best way togo across the fields.The smallest hill is worth climbing It is worth the while to know the names of the brooks & ponds and hills –a name enriches your associations wonderfullyA man can never say of any landscape that he has exhausted it.When you can put up at a private house not at a tavern.Walk in the morning.The pleasantest part of a winter day is the fore part.A few spruce trees there are in the swamps –with which the shop-keepers decoratd their shops on gala days –with evergreen For which purpose methinks we can ill afford themThe pagoda hemlocks which stand here and there a pyramid of verdure.

PATRIOTS’ DAY

READ THE FULL TEXT

AMANAPLANACANALPANAMA

Whenever and wherever you see this little pencil icon in the pages of this Kouroo Contexture, it is marking an extract from the journal of Henry David Thoreau. OK?

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/br1850.asp






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View of a pond as Heywoods pond through its outlet –a low light –fallen sky in the woods,– You can doanything with water.The epigaea repens would be better called the April-flower than the May since it is remarkable for blooming inApril –earlier than any other flower.– Creeping on the ground– Its lilack scentIn the spring of the year June the high grounds in Lincoln–Sudbury and acton around Concord tinted with thepeach blossoms–the delicate pink blossom.In April the pigeons are seen again –flying express in small flocks–

July: There was an epidemic of the small pox in Boston, and Bronson Alcott, who probably alone in the Alcott family had never been vaccinated, had it last and experienced it in its worst form. For three weeks he was very gravely ill while he battled this “hideous” and “obscene” enemy which had inflicted upon him a “leprosy” that rendered his unshaven, variola-laden face “frightful to behold.”

Amos Baker died at the age of 94 (his remains are presumed to be in the Baker tomb in Concord’s Town Hill Cemetery, behind Bemis Hall).

April 23-24: On this Friday and Saturday Henry Thoreau surveyed for Jacob Baker, whose Lincoln farm, called “Pleasant Meadow” or “Pleasant Acres,” contained 8 acres of chestnut woodlot (Castanea dentata or American chestnut) located near Flint’s Pond, plus the home of Nathaniel and John Billings on Old Concord Road. This woodlot would be cut later in 1852.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library:

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail:

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/3.htm

1852

BAKER FARM




http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/3.htm



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May: Henry Thoreau visited the Beech Spring “which is a copious one” which he cleaned out once, “a wet and muddy job,” feeling that thereby he had “done some service” as it had been “filled and covered with a great mass of beech leaves.” The spring exists today in much the same condition, on the Jacob Baker Farm in Lincoln. The grove now consists of seven mature old Fagus grandifolia or American Beech trees and, since these have been regenerating as is their wont from their roots rather than by seedlings, this may perhaps be the oldest station of such beech in the region of Concord.

1856

WALDEN: In the deepest snows, the path which I used fromthe highway to my house, about half a mile long, might have beenrepresented by a meandering dotted line, with wide intervalsbetween the dots. For a week of even weather I took exactly thesame number of steps, and of the same length, coming and going,stepping deliberately and with the precision of a pairof dividers in my own deep tracks, –to such routine the winterreduces us,– yet often they were filled with heaven’s own blue.But no weather interfered fatally with my walks, or rather mygoing abroad, for I frequently tramped eight or ten miles throughthe deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree,or a yellow-birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines; whenthe ice and snow causing their limbs to droop, and so sharpeningtheir tops, had changed the pines into fir-trees; wading to thetops of the highest hills when the snow was nearly two feet deepon a level, and shaking down another snow storm on my head atevery step; or sometimes creeping and floundering thither on myhands and knees, when the hunters had gone into winter quarters.






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In this year and the next Henry Lee Higginson (or was it Alexander Henry Higginson??), a Boston stockbroker, was having constructed for him on what had been the farm of one of the Baker brothers, just south of Goose Pond in Lincoln, a Tudor-style mansion, to function not only as his own point d’appui but also as the seat of his Middlesex Hunt Club. (Sit!)11

1904

11. This had not been the “Baker Farm” made famous by Henry Thoreau, which was the one owned in Concord by the other Baker brother, James Baker, but the one owned in Lincoln by Jacob Baker. This would be the structure purchased with Don Henley funding in 1995 by The Walden Woods Project.

WALDEN: When the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only newand shorter routes to many points, but new views from their surfaces ofthe familiar landscape around them. When I crossed Flint’s Pond, afterit was covered with new snow, though I had often paddled about and skatedover it, it was so unexpectedly wide and so strange that I could thinkof nothing but Baffin’s Bay. The Lincoln hills rose up around me at theextremity of a snowy plain, in which I did not remember to have stoodbefore; and the fishermen, at an indeterminable distance over the ice,moving slowly about with their wolfish dogs, passed for sealers orEsquimaux, or in misty weather loomed like fabulous creatures, and I didnot know whether they were giants or pygmies. I took this course when Iwent to lecture in Lincoln in the evening, travelling in no road andpassing no house between my own hut and lecture room. In Goose Pond,which lay in my way, a colony of muskrats dwelt, and raised their cabinshigh above the ice, though none could be seen abroad when I crossed it.Walden, being like the rest usually bare of snow, or with only shallowand interrupted drifts on it, was my yard, where I could walk freelywhen the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level elsewhere and thevillagers were confined to their streets. There, far from the villagestreet, and except at very long intervals, from the jingle of sleigh-bells, I slid and skated, as in a vast moose-yard well trodden, over-hung by oak woods and solemn pines bent down with snow or bristling withicicles.

GOOSE POND

LINCOLN






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July 7, Monday: Baker Farm received some attention on this date on the editorial page of The Times of London (page A11, a clipping of which has been collected by an amused reader in Italy, Manuela Federella). Specifically, the editorial attention the Thoreau Institute received amounted to a sob and a giggle. One wonders who it is who talks to them, and who it is who writes their stuff:

Thoreau’s Walden — Lite

IT WAS ONE OF THOSE little news items about which you don’t know whether to sob or giggle. First, you should know about Henry David Thoreau (1817-62). And if you know Thoreau, the American writer, philosopher and naturalist, you will automatically think of Walden

Pond. Then, naturally, the crude hut on the edge of the pond comes to mind where Thoreau holed up for a couple of years between 1845 and 1847.

It was a spare job for a spare man. He supported himself by doing odd jobs such as carpentry, gardening and land surveying. The major part of his time, however, was spent studying nature he lived so close to, meditating on philosophical problems, reading Greek, Latin and English literature and talking his plain talk with his plain-speaking neighbors on the outskirts of Concord, Mass.

Thoreau wrote about his time in the hut on the edge of the pond in his most popular work, “Walden,” telling his reasons for adopting the contemplative life.

1997






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So what about that puzzling little news story? According to The Wall Street Journal, this fall 15 students from Salisbury State University in Maryland, in conjunction with the Thoreau Institute, will study and live in Walden Woods, the site where Thoreau lived and wrote. Not in the hut, though, now a somewhat unconvincing replica. Unlike Thoreau, they will live in a Tudor-style house.

Sob? Giggle?

(Read not the times. Read the eternities. :-)

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 20 Miles Avenue, Providence RI 02906. Pleasecontact the project at <[email protected]>.

Prepared: July 12, 2013

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST




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Well, tomorrow is such and such a date and so it began on that date in like 8000BC? Why 8000BC, because it was the beginning of the current interglacial -- or what?

Bearing in mind that this is America, "where everything belongs," the primary intent of such a notice is to prevent some person or corporate entity from misappropriating the materials and sequestering them as property for censorship or for profit.



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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone’s request wehave pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out ofthe shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). Whatthese chronological lists are: they are research reportscompiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data moduleswhich we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining.To respond to such a request for information, we merely push abutton.






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Commonly, the first output of the program has obviousdeficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modulesstored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, andthen we need to punch that button again and do a recompile ofthe chronology — but there is nothing here that remotelyresembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know andlove. As the contents of this originating contexture improve,and as the programming improves, and as funding becomesavailable (to date no funding whatever has been needed in thecreation of this facility, the entire operation being run outof pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweakingand recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation ofa generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward andupward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place your requests with <[email protected]>.Arrgh.




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