28 June 1689: Joyful News! Horse-Leeches in Byfield’s Account of Edmund Andros

From the Diary of Samuel Sewall 28 June 1689

Between 1688 and 1690, Samuel Sewall visited England. Had there been a phone book in his day, he might have visited everyone in it—and probably purchased something from every merchant in the yellow pages, too. Upon return to Boston in November 1689, he was hauling trunk after trunk of books, clothes, liquors, foodstuffs, hardware and myriad other items, some for personal use, some for resale.

Edmund Andros as a Prisoner in Boston

Sewall’s travels involved more than business and pleasure, however. He is never out of touch with politics. While in England, Sewall tried to help his friend Increase Mather secure Massachusetts a Charter to replace the original. The conflicts involving the Dominion of New England and its impact on the daily lives and intellectual climate of the colonists weighed heavily upon Sewall.

His diary entry for 28 June 1689 reflects a heady mix of business, pleasure and politics. Sewall is in Cambridge, visiting the College and Catherine Hall, waxing gently on about its gardens and sundials and the little mill tucked in a grove of trees over by a good strong stream. We know where he ate: Saffron Walden, the saffron growing and trading centre. A merchant to the core, Sewall practically calculates his return on investment, noting that saffron roots can fetch “Ten Shillings a Bushel- about an Acre might yield an hundred pounds and more.”

By the end of the 28 June entry, Sewall’s mind is on politics: on the Glorious Revolution, the ouster of Edmund Andros from Boston, on the repudiation of the Dominion of New England. Over coffee, Sewall and Samuel Mather learned of the final days of the Dominion of New England. The two were “surpris’d with joy.”

Boston Demanded that Edmund Andros Surrender

On 27 June, Nathanial Byfield was licensed to publish his pamphlet, “An Account of the Late Revolutions in New England,” describing the Andros regime. The pamphlet was printed and distributed as rapidly as possible in London.

Byfield’s “Account” became a benchmark of historical perspective regarding the Dominion of New England and Edmund Andros’ regime. Sewall and Mather read that:

“Care was taken to load Preferments upon such Men as were strangers to, and haters of the People. . . . ; nor could a small Volume contain the Illegalities done by these Horse-Leeches in the two or three Years that they have been sucking of us;

“and what Laws they made it was as impossible for us to know, as dangerous for us to break. … It was now plainly affirmed … by some in open Council . . . that the people in New England were all Slaves. . . . Persons who did but peaceably object against the raising of Taxes without an Assembly, have been for it fined. . . . Without a Jury . . . some . . . have been kept in Imprisonment. . . .

“Because these things could not make us miserable fast enough, there was a notable Discovery made of . . . flaw in all our Titles to our Lands . . . and besides what Wrong hath been done in our Civil Concerns . . . the Churches everywhere have seen our Sacred Concerns apace going after them.”

Perhaps Sewall and Mather nodded in agreement with Byfield’s closing: “We commit our Enterprise unto the Blessing of Him, who hears the cry of the oppressed, and advise all our Neighbours, to joyn with us in prayers and all just actions, for the Defence of the Land.”

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John Quincy Adams on the New England Confederation

King Phillip’s War temporarily revitalized commitment to the New England Confederation and, early on, put the pact to its greatest test. For roughly the first six months of King Phillip’s War, the Confederation provided organization to the war efforts but, as skirmishes grew smaller, more isolated, the impact of the Confederation diminished.

Signing the New England Confederation

During the phase of the war in which tiny bands of soldiers engaged in impromptu, isolated battles, the colonies required less cooperation at the supervisory level. The benefits of the alliance faded though disuse. The New England Confederation collapsed ultimately in 1684, when British courts vacated Massachusetts’ corporate charter.

John Quincy Adams spoke about the New England Confederation on several occasions. He clearly revered the agreement. It did not escape Adam’s notice that the colonies not only came to their Confederation without the King’s approval, they did not even seek it. The King had failed them. The colonists were beginning to think that what they did was no longer any of the King’s business.

The New England Confederation grew organically from

Edward Winslow signed the New England Confederation

American soil, seeded and shaped by forces and needs with which England was out of touch, and for which she could provide scant help. Noting that, John Quincy Adams tacked the New England Confederation on the family tree of colonial agreements extending from the Mayflower Compact to the US Constitution.

Go here for my article addressing John Quincy Adam’s take on the New England Confederation.

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25 June 1685: “A ship comes to Marble Head, and brings news of the King’s coronation.”

From the Diary of Samuel Sewall 25 June 1685

Four and a half months after King James II was crowned leader of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the news reached Marblehead, Massachusetts, a fishing town about 17 miles north of Boston. Sewall’s entry is a tad terse. All of it’s been quoted. It’s pretty much a 1685 Tweet from a guy who might otherwise blog at length;)

Sewall’s silence is loud. James II was Anglican. His predecessor, just eight months prior, revoked the Massachusetts Charter. Boston was under pressure to adhere to the Navigation Acts. The pro-French, pro-Catholic, absolute monarchist King was, to say the least, not popular in Massachusetts at this time.

As for Marblehead: the town was settled by the late 1620’s. By 1629, local natable Isaac Allerton had established an excellent fishing business. British agents declared Marblehead the finest fishing port in the land.

Marblehead Massachusetts, by Maurice Predergast

Prior to the British arrival, the Naumkeag, a clan of Algonquin, were the main inhabitants of the area. They were lead by Nanepashemet, among the greatest of New England Sachems.

Nanepashemet, like many today, loved to summer in Marblehead.

The Naumkeag and the early Salem ex-pats who ventured to Marblehead shared the area well. Trouble reared in the area only after Nanepashemet sent warriers north to assist the Penobscots in their battles with the Tarratines, who retaliated with ferocity against the Naumkeag, forcing Nanepashemet and his men to retreat south and west, all the way to the Mystic River.

Smallpox Plague Hit the Naumkeag

During the same time frame, roughly 1615-1619, smallpox ravaged the native population near Marblehead, killing as many as 80% or more of the remaining Naumkeag. The British largely escaped the plague.

In 1636, Marblehead was proposed as a construction for a new college- the first on these shores. The proposal fell through. Harvard was built at Cambridge instead.

On a darker note, during the same year, the first slave ship constructed in the colonies was made in the yard at Marblehead. Later, through the Revolution and even during the War of 1812, Marblehead provided an excellent port from which to privateer. Naval historians often talk of Marblehead as the birthplace of the navy in America..

Marblehead is also the home port of “Joe Froggers,” a spicy cookie sweetened with molasses and, traditionally, salted with sea water. Mystic Seaport summarizes their legend: “A couple known as Aunt Crease and Black Joe lived at the edge of a pond in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Joe had fought in the Revolution as a young man. On election night, they would open their house, which on occasion was also a local tavern, and serve grog. Joe would play the fiddle and Aunt Crease would cook.

“One of her specialties was a molasses cookie the size of a salad plate. She made them for fishermen, who found they stored well in barrels during long sea voyages.”

The cliffs at Marblehead’s shore? They’re not marble. They’re primarily granite.

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24 June 1700- Abolition and the Selling of Joseph

From the Diary of Samuel Sewall 24 June 1700

June 24th was quite a day for Judge Samuel Sewall. Too many only recall his name in connection with the Salem Witch Trials. Sewall’s diary is packed full of essential and interesting colonial history.

Samuel Sewall, author, The Selling of Joseph

Within entries relating to 24 June, his diary addresses not only the ship Charles, John Quelch, and the Trial of the Pirates, but also his publication of the seminal American abolitionist tract, The Selling of Joseph, on 24 June 1700.

Sewall’s diary indicates that, following a funeral, his thoughts turned to the issue of slavery. “Having been long and much dissatisfied,” he writes,

“With the Trade of fetching Negros from Guinea; at last I had a strong Inclination to Write something about it; but it wore off. At last-reading [Paul Bayne’s commentary on the Ephesians] about servants, who mentions Blackamoors; I began to be uneasy that I had so long neglected doing any thing. When I was thus thinking, in came Brother Belknap to shew me a Petition he intended to present to the General Court for the freeing of a Negro and his wife, who were unjustly held in Bondage.

“And there is a Motion by a Boston Committee to get a Law that all Importers of Negros shall pay 40s per head, to discourage the bringing of them. And Mr. C. Mather resolves to publish a sheet to exhort Masters to labour their Conversion. Which makes me hope that I was call’d of God to Write this Apology for them; Let his Blessing accompany the same.”

The Selling of Joseph clearly reveals Sewall’s mounting abhorrence of the slave trade. Citing passages from the Bible, he states his case; in the subsequent section of the tract, judge Sewall raises, and answers, hypothetical objections to his verdict condemning the practice of slavery.

Answering the objections, he inadvertently attests the prejudices of his era. Sewall was enlightened relative to his time, bold enough to condemn slavery, but the answers to his objections betray him as, regrettably, still a racist. One could argue that, just perhaps, Sewall, after first offering Biblical proof of the evils of slavery, proceeded to offer more practical, secular proofs of those evils, adopting something of the contemptible thought processes of the day solely for the sake of exposing their weakness and refuting them. Unfortunately, the supposition rings hollow, as soon as Sewall notes, “they can never embody with us, and grow up into orderly Families, to the Peopling of the Land.”

Although he condemned slave holders and traders, he would rather not have Blacks in Boston. Although an abolitionist, he remained a segregationist.

Nevertheless, The Selling of Joseph represents an essential element in the study of the abolitionist movements on US soil.

Sewall’s tract was, in part, inspired by a slave, Adam, who was held by John Saffin, one of Sewall’s legal colleagues in Boston and, like Sewall, a respected merchant. Unlike Sewall, Saffin trafficked in slaves; particularly galling to Sewall, Saffin reneged on a deal to manumit Adam. Sewall and Saffin argued over the issue. Sewall criticized Saffin in private, but Saffin went public and issued his defense of slavery in his A Brief Candid Answer to a Late Printed Sheet Entitled, The Selling of Joseph in 1701. The “Sewall-Saffin Dialog” represents the roots of the antebellum slavery debates in America.

The Selling of Joseph gets right to its point. Here is an excerpt, reformatted for enhanced web readability, but with few further textual alterations.

Samuel Sewall, author, The Selling of Joseph. Illustration by Dore

FORASMUCH as Liberty is in real value next unto Life: None ought to part with it themselves, or deprive others of it, but upon most mature Consideration.

The Numerousness of Slaves at this day in the Province, and the Uneasiness of them under their Slavery, hath put many upon thinking whether the Foundation of it be firmly and well laid; so as to sustain the Vast Weight that is built upon it.
It is most certain that all Men, as they are the Sons of Adam, are Coheirs; and have equal Right unto Liberty, and all other outward Comforts of Life.

GOD hath given the Earth [with all its Commodities] unto the Sons of Adam, Psal 115. 16. And hath made of One Blood, all Nations of Men, for to dwell on all the face of the Earth; and hath determined the Times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation: That they should seek the Lord. Forasmuch then as we are the Offspring of GOD &c. Act 17.26, 27, 29.

Now although the Title given by the last ADAM, doth infinitely better Mens Estates, respecting GOD and themselves; and grants them a most beneficial and inviolable Lease under the Broad Seal of Heaven, who were before only Tenants at Will: Yet through the Indulgence of GOD to our First Parents after the Fall, the outward Estate of all and every of the Children, remains the same, as to one another. So that Originally, and Naturally, there is no such thing as Slavery.

Joseph was rightfully no more a Slave to his Brethren, then they were to him: and they had no more Authority to Sell him, than they had to Slay him. And if they had nothing to do to Sell him; the Ishmaelites bargaining with them, and paying down Twenty pieces of Silver, could not make a Title. Neither could Potiphar have any better Interest in him than the Ishmaelites had. Gen. 37. 20, 27, 28.

For he that shall in this case plead Alteration of Property, seems to have forfeited a great part of his own claim to Humanity.

There is no proportion between Twenty Pieces of Silver, and LIBERTY. The Commodity it self is the Claimer. If Arabian Gold be imported in any quantities, most are afraid to meddle with it, though they might have it at easy rates; lest if it should have been wrongfully taken from the Owners, it should kindle a fire to the Consumption of their whole Estate.

’Tis pity there should be more Caution used in buying a Horse, or a little lifeless dust; than there is in purchasing Men and Women : Whenas they are the Offspring of GOD, and their Liberty is,

Auro pretiosior Omni.

And seeing GOD hath said, He that Stealeth a Man and Selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to Death. Exod. 12.16.

This Law being of Everlasting Equity, wherein Man Stealing is ranked amongst the most atrocious of Capital Crimes : What louder Cry can there be made of the Celebrated Warning,

Caveat Emptor !

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In Bordentown, You Could Marry the Dead

Tom Paine loved his home in bucolic, cozy Bordentown. Fellow patrons of The Washington House, Paine’s favorite local tavern, recalled, “Nothing but brandy and atheism ever passed his lips.” Had religious radical Tom still been around in 1856, he likely would have knocked a few back with his neighbors, but the topic of conversation would have veered from atheism towards what the newspapers denounced as “the blackest paganism.”

A story carried by the New York Times asked:

“Could the annals of middle-African fetish worship- could the darkest pollutions of Oriental Devil-worship- could the gloomiest delusions of the middle ages…show a more horrible picture of human madness and hallucination?”

Over 2000 residents of Bordentown and its vicinity attended the ceremony, quite likely making it the largest ceremony ever seen in the small town. The bride, just seventeen, was presumably lovely and the ceremony proceeded in the usual manner of the day, provided, of course, that you overlook the fact that the groom was a corpse.

The young man was dead before his wedding day began. To the “spiritualist” couple, the groom’s father, and a medium, the well-boxed groom presented but minor impediment, although the story is unclear about the manner in which the couple exchanged rings and vows.

Neither groom nor wedding guests who gave witness to this short circuit in the cycle of Bordentown life had to answer the question of whether they were wearing their “buryin’ or marryin’ suits.” The funeral for the groom took place immediately following his wedding.

The bride “raved and flung herself into the grave like one possessed by an evil spirit” during the funeral. She was “with great difficulty borne” from the spot, but shortly composed herself for the reception at her father-in-law’s home.

The “victims of demonism” set the groom’s spiritual body a chair at table, where he was remembered with a full place setting and all pertinent condiments.

Some time after the wedding, the bride left Bordentown. She moved to California.

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New Footnotes: Joseph Bonaparte and John Cleves Symmes

Two new pieces I’ve published at Suite101, but which qualify as Footnotes Since the Wilderness.

• Joseph Bonaparte’s Place in the History of New Jersey
  

  Joseph Bonaparte Loved New Jersey

  The Bonaparte family tree and the history of New Jersey merged when Joseph Bonaparte built an estate at Point Breeze, near Bordentown, on the Delaware River. Look for more about early Bordentown in an upcoming post at FSTW. Tom Paine loved the place.

• John Cleves Symmes, Hollow Earth Theory, and Edmond Halley

  The Hollow Earth Theory, an idea shared by John Cleves Symmes and Edmond Halley, was the basis of the first proposal for the US to mount a polar expedition.

  

  The Hollow Earth Globe

  The concept behind the first proposal for the US to fund a polar expedition was full of holes, but so was some work by Edmond Halley.

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Henry Howgate’s Polar Colonization Plan

Howgate’s Preliminary Arctic Expedition and Polar Colonization

The Howgate Polar Colonization Plan featured two phases, the first of which was the Preliminary Arctic Expedition.

The ultimate goal of the Polar Colonization Plan was to establish a sustainable base from which to voyage even farther north—indeed, as far north as possible, across the hypothesized open polar sea to the geographic North Pole itself.

Howgate’s Preliminary Arctic Expedition can be seen as the first step to US participation in the First International Polar Year.

………the rest of the article is here.
For the intrigue surrounding Henry Howgate, please see my related article,

Captain Henry Howgate – Embezzler, Forger, US Army Signal Corps

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Captain Henry Howgate- Embezzler, Forger, US Army Signal Corps

Howgate planned to colonize above the Arctic Circle and reach farthest north, but he also embezzled, forged, and evaded Pinkertons.

Captain Henry W. Howgate, an officer of the US Army Signal Corps, the man officially entrusted to plan US polar expeditions in the 1870’s, may be the most colorful character in the race to the pole.

Captain Henry Howgate- Embezzler, Forger, US Army Signal Corps.

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Samuel Mitchell, Expert Witness to Trance Preacher Rachel Baker

When he wasn’t busy giving speeches celebrating the opening of the Erie Canal, classifying fish, or founding colleges, polymath Samuel Mitchell, a senator from New York, spent time in the field in which he received University training: medicine.

Samuel Mitchell was graduated from Scotland’s prestigious University of Edinburgh. Among virtually innumerable pursuits, he saw patients, at least early in his career, but his lasting recognition as a man of medicine has more to do with research than practice, as attested by his contributions to the development of anesthesiology, or his founding of The Medical Repository, the first medical journal first published in the United States.

Mitchell was routinely consulted on a wide range of matters of science. The groundbreaking pamphlet, The Surprising Case of Rachel Baker, Who Prays and Preaches in her Sleep, finds the eminent Samuel Mitchell on a panel of five physicians called as informal expert witnesses to Baker’s somnambulist sermons.

Although the stenographer Mais’ role in writing the book outweighed that of Mitchell, who contributed the introduction, the publication of Baker’s performance positions Mitchell as a bit player in a groundbreaking, and trendsetting, piece of work. Mitchell’s primary role was to lend credence to the recording of the events, and only secondarily, if appropriate, reflect upon the substance of the events, or contribute medical diagnosis.

That being said, Mitchell, who never wasted an opportunity to expound- and usually at some length- wrote an introduction to the book that “evinced psychological views of original combination,” per the New York Journal of Medicine, and drew parallels between Baker’s symptoms and those of one suffering from epilepsy or hysteria. He concluded that Baker’s state of consciousness was between waking and sleep.

Mitchell studied neither somnambulism nor multiple personality disorder after observing Baker in 1814. As the century rolled on, however, somnambulism, more specifically in the context of the trance speakers and writers, would come to play a substantial role in popular culture, science and, perhaps most importantly, the women’s movement and other aspects of political reform. The psychology of multiple personality disorder continues to evolve.

The Surprising Case of Rachel Baker, Who Prays and Preaches in her Sleep is important as an early contribution to both fields.

See also A Chaos of Knowledge, Samuel Latham Mitchell

 

For further reading:

Mais, Charles and Samuel Mitchill. The Surprising Case Of Rachel Baker, Who Prays And Preaches In Her Sleep: With Specimens Of Her Extraordinary Performances Taken Down Accurately In Short Hand At The Time …: The Whole Authenticated By The Most Respectable Testimony Of Living Witnesses.

 

Rieber, Robert W. The Bifurcation of the Self: the History and Theory of Disassociation and its Disorders.

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Joshua Huddy versus Colonel Tye

Colonel Tye, the Black Loyalist, famed for his role in the Battle of Monmouth, locked horns with Joshua Huddy, the “Martyr of Old Monmouth,” at least once.

Colonel Tye, or Titus Cornelius, commanded the Black Brigade in support of the British during the Revolutionary War. Tye, a runaway slave, wielded an extraordinary knowledge of the Monmouth, New Jersey environs, where Joshua Huddy, formerly a petty criminal, was a Captain in the rebel Militia in

The Battle of Monmouth

1779. Both men combined a superior understanding of skirmish strategy with rage; ruthlessly combative, their intent to kill was likely mutual.

Huddy led numerous, lethal guerrilla raids against the British, and Tye did the same against the Continental Army. Known for their unflinching, quick and bloody executions of the enemy, feared and hated by the opposition, rising to local infamy at the same time, Tye and Huddy were bound to meet on the field.

In September, 1780, Colonel Tye and over two dozen of his brigade attacked Huddy’s house in Colt’s Neck, New Jersey. With help from a servant, Huddy held Tye and the raiders at bay for two hours but, fed up, Tye had his men set fire to the house. Huddy agreed to surrender if the fires were put out. They closed the deal.

Colonel Tye took Huddy as prisoner, and intended to ship his captive out to the Loyalists in New York, who would presumably have either killed, or tortured and then killed, the dangerous Huddy. Patriots interrupted the plan, however, firing on the boat. It capsized. Although wounded in the fray, Huddy escaped with minor leg injuries.

Colonel Tye had been hit in the wrist with a musket ball during the raid on Huddy’s house. It may have seemed like a relatively minor injury at the time, but tetanus and gangrene from the untreated wound shortly killed him.

_________________________________________

• Joshua Huddy was compared to Nathan Hale by the New York
  

  Joshua Huddy on the Way to Prison

  Times. Both Patriots mustered bravery in the face of execution by the British. Hale, of course, uttered the legendary “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” Joshua Huddy’s final words were less memorable, but the gist was that he “would die innocent and in good cause.”

• Tye, too, was acknowledged as a hero, even by the opposition. Many think of Colonel Tye as a “brave and courageous man whose generous actions placed him well above his white counterparts.”
  _________________________________________

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Joshua Huddy, George Washington, and the Asgill Affair

A Continental Army hero and privateer with a petty criminal past, Joshua Huddy’s lynching – some say by Colonel Tye- precipitated the Asgill Affair, arguably the first ‘international incident’ in colonial America.

George Washington, Marie Antoinette, and King Louis XVI all got involved.

Read the whole article!

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Margaret Fuller’s Conversations

“Very early I knew that the only object in life was to grow.” – Margaret Fuller

  

 Seminal American feminist and influential Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller was born May 23, 1810, in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts. 

Margaret Fuller

By her mid-twenties, Fuller had developed a list of friends and collaborators that reads like a Who’s Who of the United States in the early to mid nineteenth century, covering Thoreau, Emerson, Horace Greeley, and Bronson Alcott.  

Intellectually aggressive, persuasive and charismatic, Fuller’s trailblazing spirit established her among the pantheon of notable teachers, thinkers, and writers of her era. She forced Harvard University to evolve, and grant her access to the library stacks. Attuned to inequality and social injustices, Fuller relentlessly exposed and addressed aspects of culture and society in deep need of reform. Passionate in support of women’s suffrage and rights to an education, she was just as tenacious a proponent of the abolition of slavery and prison reform.  

Following her tenure replacing Elizabeth Peabody as a teacher at Boston’s Temple School, organized by Bronson Alcott, whose “controversial” pedagogical methods were steeped in the belief that all children were cable of learning well, and responded better to dialog rather than rote learning, Fuller initiated a series of philosophy workshops for women, conducted in the Socratic style.  

Fuller referred to these neo-Platonic workshops as “Conversations.” Enormously popular among educators, authors, the wives of politicians, and future luminaries of the women’s civil rights movement, the series ran for five years, during which she edited Emerson’s Transcendentalist periodical, The Dial. Her Conversations provided an unprecedented forum for women to discuss politics, morality, philosophy, and theories of social justice, topics of conversations to which women had not been previously invited as active participants.  

Margaret Fuller’s groundbreaking Feminist study, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, represents an embellished record of one of her Conversations.  

Just forty years after her birth in May 1810, Margaret Fuller drowned on June 19, 1850, with her husband and young son, following a shipwreck off the coast of Fire Island, New York.  

For Further Reading:  

Dickenson, Donna. Margaret Fuller: Writing a Woman’s Life.  

Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century.  

Von Mehren, Joan. Minerva and the Muse: A Life of Margaret Fuller.

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