Chatham, Massachusetts

“ A man of charm and culture, reared in the days and traditions of the great planters, he kept open house at Chatham, near Fredericksburg, the year around. Travelers en route to and from Williamsburg and Richmond were entertained in a lavish fashion. With the formation of the new government, the stream of visitors increased to such an extent that the Fitzhughs were being eaten out of house and home, and found it necessary to escape from their friends. They selected Alexandria as a place of domicile. Chatham was placed on the market in 1796. ”

“ The lofty and spirit-stirring eloquence which had made him supreme in the House of Commons often fell dead on the House of Lords. Chatham was only the ruin of Pitt, but an awful and majestic ruin, not to be contemplated by any man of sense and feeling without emotions resembling those which are excited by the remains of the Parthenon and of the Colosseum. In one respect the old statesman was eminently happy. Whatever might be the vicissitudes of his public life, he never failed to find peace and love by his own hearth. ”

“ During the greater part of this year and throughout 1776 an illness, apparently similar to that which had befallen him during his last administration, prevented Chatham from attending parliament. Though in a state of great weakness, he went down to the house on 30 May 1777, and unsuccessfully moved an address to the crown for the stoppage of hostilities in America. 'You may ravage,' he said ; 'you cannot conquer. It is impossible. You cannot conquer the Americans. ”

“ The hostility of its founders to the Massachusetts Society—the difference it had made as to the fundamental principles, the exclusiveness of its foundation—its mathematical position, working the same derangement in the anti-slavery system as a new planet in the orbit of the earth might do in the solar system,—all forbade it fraternal greeting or long life.
The course the New York Committee should take in action, would be the measure of their own worth to the cause. So opposite were these two Societies, that one or the other must needs be unworthy of the affiliation. ”

“ In their progress through the country on anti-slavery missions, the agents of the Massachusetts [Pg 57] Society never failed, from the beginning, to learn how hard it is to be reproached for a righteous man’s name’s sake. To appreciate the force of their temptation, let the beholder, for a moment, place himself in their situation. It is in the power of the minister in almost every parish, to procure them a hearing,—but he is in combination with his brethren to “put down Garrison.” ”

“ State Societies in the New England States, which has been already accomplished in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, the operations of the New England Society during the past year have been very much confined to Massachusetts, and hereafter it will be only a State Society. ”

“ There little Charles passed some of the happiest years of his childhood, and received the most durable of his early impressions.
Chatham, on the river Medway, derives its name from the Saxon word Ceteham or Cættham, meaning “village of cottages.” It is anything but a “village” now, having since that remote age developed into a river port and a populous fortified town. Remains of Roman villas have been found in the neighbourhood, thus testifying to its antiquity. Chatham is one of the principal royal shipbuilding establishments in the kingdom. ”

“ Association of Americans, for the redemption of our country from slavery, the grace to see, that, as we can never give what we cease to possess, so our labors for the emancipation of the slave must be in vain, after the insulted angel of freedom has departed.
The Massachusetts Board of Officers met immediately after this meeting, and decided to raise five thousand dollars, for the year 1839-40, as the proportion which ought to be borne by their State, of the thirty-five thousand dollars specified by the Financial Committee, as the proper appropriation to the central treasury. ”

“ CHATHAM, a port and municipal and parliamentary borough of Kent, England, on the right bank of the Medway, 34 m. E.S.E. of London by the South-Eastern & Chatham railway. Pop. (1891) 31,657; (1901) 37,057. Though a distinct borough it is united on the west with Rochester and on the east with Gillingham, so that the three boroughs form, in appearance, a single town with a population which in 1901 exceeded 110,000. With the exception of the dockyards and fortifications there are few objects of interest. ”

“ During the succeeding meetings, the Anti-Slavery spirit swelled high and strong. The Liberator was warmly sustained by all the friends present, among whom were Messrs. Chaplin, Walker, May, and Stanton. “The inquiry is often made of me,” said Mr. Stanton, “why does not the American Society sustain it? The answer is, Let Massachusetts sustain it, as she ought.” Mr. St. Clair, in particular, expressed the warmest eulogy on the Liberator. Mr. Garrison spoke as one knowing the folly of being elevated by human applause, or depressed by human censure ”

“ At the appointed time he repaired to the city of Philadelphia and took his seat in that assemblage of sages whose wisdom has been sung by the ablest poets, applauded by the most eloquent orators, and admired by the most sagacious statesmen of the two hemispheres. On reading the proceedings of the American Congress of 1774, Lord Chatham remarked, “that he had studied and admired the free states of antiquity, the master spirits of the world—but that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity and wisdom of conclusion, no body of men could stand in preference to this congress.” ”

“ Up to the year 1774 he lived on his father’s estates at Hayes and Burton Pynsent, amidst some of the choicest scenery in the south of England. The land overflowed with prosperity, which was rightly ascribed in large measure to the genius of Chatham. Until the shadow of the American War of Independence fell on the youth, in his seventeenth year, he was the favourite son of a father44 whom all men revered ”

“ From Newmarket, White's, and the opposition, he gave you to the world with an air of popularity, which young men usually set out with and seldom preserve:—grave and plausible enough to be thought fit for business; too young for treachery; and, in short, a patriot of no unpromising expectations. Lord Chatham was the earliest object of your political wonder and attachment ”

“ His labors were unremitting to weaken the bonds of relationship between the County Society and the State Society. The abolitionists of Essex, generally, saw not the tendency and design of these efforts. They could be made without suspicion, as the National Society had ever been a favorite with Massachusetts men, with whom it originated, and who constitute the largest portion of its efficient members. Such men could not readily conceive of the possibility of acting in their County capacity or their National capacity, in opposition to themselves in their State [Pg 61] capacity. ”

“ Subsequent improvements included dredging operations in the Medway to improve the approach, and the provision of extra dry-dock accommodation under the Naval Works Acts.
The parliamentary borough returns one member. The town was incorporated in 1890, and is governed by a mayor, six aldermen and eighteen councillors. Area, 4355 acres. The borough includes the suburb (an ecclesiastical parish) of Luton, in which are the waterworks of Chatham and the adjoining towns. ”

“ It mattered but little that cities were taken, when the great body of the people resided in the country, and were willing to make sacrifices, and were commanded by such generals as Washington, Gates, Greene, Putnam, and Lee. The English ministry ought to have seen the nature of the contest; but a strange infatuation blinded the nation. There were some, however, whom no national pride could blind. Lord Chatham was one of these men. "No man," said this veteran statesman, "thinks more highly of the virtues and valor of British troops than I do. ”

“ Meanwhile, the claims of this clerical exclusiveness were adjudged by the great body of abolitionists, to be in an attitude of antagonism with the principles of Freedom. How can he free the slave, they argued, who is occupied in imposing fetters upon the free? How can he love liberty, who is acting in defiance of her first principles? [Pg 38] Are not things which are equal to the same things equal to one another?
The Massachusetts Society met at Worcester, to take action upon this attempt to destroy its broad foundation of religious freedom and toleration ”

“ It was necessary to cast about for some plausible ground on which to create division of feeling, and to proceed upon it with the utmost caution.
Public sentiment had become so far changed in Massachusetts by the eight years’ warfare of abolitionists, that ministers were almost as liable to public censure for an open pro-slavery course, as for an open advocacy of Freedom. They, of all [Pg 62] men, were, in one sense, justified in the customary declaration that they were “as much anti-slavery as others;” for they kept careful watch of the times, that they might not vary from them materially. ”

“ Troubles, however different in their nature, always seem to have fellowship with each other. At this juncture, while the Anti-Slavery community in Massachusetts were laboring under the pain and astonishment of the recent development, came a Sub-Committee, consisting of Mr. Leavitt and Mr. Stanton, from New York, to say that, as the stated payments due to the National Treasury [Pg 90] were unpaid, the contract became null and void. ”

“ The political campaign in the Fourth District is at an end, and will no longer absorb the funds, or the energies of the agents. We are stronger as a Board; we have a new General Agent; we are awake, throughout the State, to the emergency.”
Mr. Stanton seemed to suppose that membership in the Massachusetts Society implied an obligation never to change one’s views on other subjects; for he read extracts from the Liberator, proving that Mr. Garrison had changed his opinions as to the principles of civil government, since the first establishment of that paper. ”

“ Handsome is that handsome does. What they did for shade here, in warm weather, we did not know, though we read that “fogs are more frequent in Chatham than in any other part of the country; and they serve in summer, instead of trees, to shelter the houses against the heat of the sun. To those who delight in extensive vision,”—is it to be inferred that the inhabitants of Chatham do not?—“they are unpleasant, but they are not found to be unhealthful.” ”

“ At the State gatherings and New England Conventions, these agents were wont to take donations and pledges, which Massachusetts abolitionists, with their characteristic disinterestedness, were anxious to make, that the central committee might be supplied, even though it drained the State Society of its resources.
A practical difficulty soon became obvious. Some, meaning to pledge money to the State Society, found their pledge received as to the National Society—others, meaning to sustain the National, found their pledge recorded as to the State ”

“ I will not say the king is betrayed, but I will pronounce the kingdom undone.” Chatham’s motion was supported by the Duke of Richmond, the Marquess of Rockingham, the Earl of Shelburne, and Lord Camden, who were, however, not fully agreed as to the propriety of recalling the troops, and who seem to have considered that proper concessions had not been made by the people of Boston, and that concessions made on the part of the British government on previous occasions had been misinterpreted in America, and had told to our disadvantage. ”

“ In 1770 Grafton resigned, and Lord North became prime minister. The king, through his influence over North, now had everything as he wished, and pushed on the measures that drove the Americans to armed resistance. In these critical times Chatham was the steadfast and eloquent defender of the liberties of America. ”

“ Here he indulged in his favourite pursuit of landscape-gardening, sometimes even 'planting by torchlight, as his peremptory and impatient temper could brook no delay' (Walpole Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iii. 30) . From 1759 to 1761 Chatham lived in the house (now numbered 10) in St. James's Square which was occupied by Mr. Gladstone in the parliamentary session of 1890. On resigning office in October 1761 Chatham gave up his town house in St. James's Square, and resolved to live entirely at Hayes. Sir William Pynsent, an eccentric Somersetshire baronet, who died on 12 Jan. ”

“ During the debate on the bill of indemnity on 10 Dec. 1766, Richmond called Chatham ‘an insolent minister,’ and when called to order replied that he ‘was sensible truth was not to be spoken at all times and in all places’ (ib. ii. 410; see also Grenville Papers, iii. 396–7) . Both lords were required to promise that the matter should go no further (Journals of the House of Lords, xxxi. 448) . After this quarrel Chatham ‘during the whole of the remainder of his administration appeared no more in the House of Lords’ (Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III, ii. 411) . ”

“ The Duke of Richmond had given notice of an address to the throne, against the further prosecution of hostilities with America. Chatham had, during some time, absented himself from Parliament, in consequence of his growing infirmities. He determined to appear in his place on this occasion, and to declare that his opinions were decidedly at variance with those of the Rockingham party. He was in a state of great excitement. His medical attendants were uneasy, and strongly advised him to calm himself, and to remain at home. ”