Two Wars: An Autobiography of General Samuel G. French. French Samuel Gibbs
produce for sale. There was no stint to these superabundant supplies, and they were yearly consumed. Rabbits, pheasants, partridges, and woodcock were abundant, and often were secured by trapping; and the ponds and streams were filled with fish. I might perhaps convey to you a better idea of the abundance of fruit and its cheapness by stating that I have seen wagons come to the farm for peaches, and they were told to go into the orchard and get as many as they wanted, and on coming out an estimate would be made of the number of bushels gathered, and they were charged ten cents per bushel. Apples, the finest of varieties, were unsalable, and were hauled to the great public cider mill, ground up for cider, and that distilled into brandy on shares – that is, the mills allowed the farmer a certain number of gallons of brandy for every hundred bushels of apples delivered. And as numerous as were these great cider mills, I have seen the gates locked and teams turned away because of the supply exceeding the capacity of the presses.
There were Germans who wove carpets, and mills that converted the wool into cloth. All along the king's highway, which was marked with granite shafts for milestones, each one denoting, in carved letters, how many miles it was to Camden (Cooper's Ferry), there were smith's shops, wheelwrights, cabinetmakers, and country shoemakers, and taverns for entertainment of "man and beasts."
Daily, four-horse stagecoaches, carrying the mail and passengers, passed over the road, and, by common consent, I suppose, they were granted the right of way, or it may have been the last lingering observance of respect to kingly prerogative.
Now somewhere in this part of the country there lived an old and very polite Frenchman. He possessed a pony and a little wagon, and in that wagon he carried a bench, his lasts, and his tools, for he was a shoemaker, and went the rounds of the neighborhood to make, yearly, the family shoes. Out of morocco imported from Barbary, calfskin from France, and leather from the village tannery he fashioned most beautiful boots and shoes for male and female; yes, neat and befitting they were; and how long they lasted! Wonder not that I have introduced you to this polite and kind old Frenchman. He belonged to the Emperor's old guard, and after Waterloo he came to this country. Young as I was, many times and oft would I persuade him to tell me of "the battles, sieges, fortunes he had passed, of moving incidents of flood and field, of hairbreadth escapes," and grand charges he had made under the eye of the Emperor, how he detested England and loved the vine-clad hills and pleasant fields of France. At our house he would fix himself up in the loft over the carriage house, and then while at work he would tell us boys so much about the "Little Corporal" and the grand marshals of France.
His abiding faith in and admiration for the Emperor passed all bounds. When it was known to all the world that Napoleon was dead, sleeping in a lone grave in a far distant island, guarded by English bayonets, as though he might "awake to glory again" and make the little monarchs tremble once more even at his name, this devoted soldier of the old guard would not believe it, and swore it was an English lie.
I have given these minute details of the manner in which the people lived in New Jersey and adjoining States in the olden times, "when the richest were poor and the poorest had abundance," to show you how well they lived, how comfortably clad, and how content they were in the days when trusts, combines, and protective tariffs were unknown, and no great corporations existed. To-day (1895) these great combines have destroyed individual competition, and impoverished more than half the entire population of the country and reduced it to rigidity of hours and the slavery of wages. They control legislation, corrupt the courts, subsidize the press, maintain advocates in the pulpits, and this will estrange the poor from the rich more widely than the peasant from the prince; and, continued, may implant an unkindly feeling, which, if not placated, may have to be settled by a resort to arms.
What a change has sixty-five years wrought! The stagecoach has disappeared on the advent of railroads, steam will be displaced by electricity as the candle and lamp have been, and as the friction match has banished the flint and steel and tinder box, the scythe and sickle have been superseded by the mower, the magnificent sailing ships have given way to the ocean racers. Ere long we will see the wind pass by as we see the streams of water now. "The cloud of witnesses around that hold us in full survey" may themselves be seen, for we are discovering the secrets of Arcana every day; the source of life and the mystery of death will soon be discovered.
When I was a boy the habitat of the Yankee did not extend south of Connecticut, as bounded by that elegant writer, Washington Irving, in his veritable history of New York. In that Knickerbocker history you will find the southern limit of the Yankee. Is it possible to conceive that Wouter van Twiller, Rip van Winkle, William the Testy, or Peter the Headstrong, and the drowsy, dreamy Dutch people of New Amsterdam were Yankees? No! they dwelt farther north; yet they might have overrun and subdued New Amsterdam had not their minds been diverted by a sudden outbreak of witchcraft, that afforded these saints infinite amusement in a pious way, which saved New Amsterdam. When I was young it was not considered complimentary or prudent to call a boy of your own size a "Yankee."
My first recollection of seeing a real Yankee was connected with a clock. At home there stood in the hall an eight-day clock, nearly eight feet high, and it is to-day in the city of Woodbury, N. J., in possession of my sister, Mrs. John G. Whitall. On its face are the words, "Hollingshead, Woodstown, N. J., 1776." I infer that it might have commenced recording time about the hour that the liberty bell in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, on a certain fourth of July rang out the Bible proclamation of liberty to all the land, and the "inhabitants thereof."2 It is a clock of some repute. It has Arabic numerals to express the hours. The pendulum was adjusted in length to the latitude, and vibrated every second and recorded it. It marked the day of the month, and the month itself, and a picture of a round-faced female would peep up from behind the scenes just as the moon rose, and veiled her face when she set. In the absence of the moon a ship sailed slowly on.
It had another accomplishment: an alarm that was worse than a Chinese gong. I should think that handsome clock, which has been recording time now for one hundred and nineteen years, would have sufficed; but no! One bright May morning, when all the fruit trees were in bloom, and the white-faced bumblebees were buzzing around, and the air was redolent with perfume, a wagon stopped at the gate, and a tall, lean individual came to the door and wished to see the mistress of the house. Said he was "a stranger in these parts, that his load was too heavy for his horse, and that he had clocks and other notions." Father was not in, so my mother gave him permission to leave a clock until such time as he would call for it. So he brought in an eight-day clock about three feet high and adjusted it on the mantel in the dining room. It was rather ornamental, and instead of the common, everyday figures such as were in the multiplication table, it had an I for one, and II for two, and so on, which was the Roman style; and then when it struck the hours, instead of ringing a bell, the hammer fell on a coil of wire, producing a cathedral sound that died away far off.
We all soon got used to the clock, and some three months after when the man called to take his clock away mother said she was attached to it and would keep it. It was all a Yankee trick to sell the clock, for he disposed of many others in the same way. The Yankee clock has ticked its last tick, but the old eight-day clock may outlive the nation whose hours from its birth it has, by seconds, recorded. All your life you have heard the people of this country north of the slave States called Yankees, and the people south Confederates, which is not true, but only an incident of the war.
In Philadelphia I was present at the dedication of Pennsylvania Hall, May 15, 1838, an abolition edifice. It was announced that David Paul Brown would officiate at the dedication. His reputation as a lawyer and an orator was well known, and on this occasion he did some stage acting with fine effect. He was hidden away from the surging audience in some manner, and after the chairman had stated the object of the meeting he closed his remarks by saying that David Paul Brown had promised to be present to deliver the address. Presto! From concealment he rose to his full height and exclaimed: "And I am here to fulfill that promise, a promise as freely given as it shall be fearlessly performed, and as high priest of this day's sacrifice I dedicate this hall to freedom," etc. A short time after, in the presence of some ten thousand spectators, I saw about twenty persons, unmolested, batter down the doors and destroy the building by fire; and from its ashes sprung up the free soil party.
As fashion plates of dress worn sixty years ago are not plentiful,
"Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." (Lev. xxv. 10.)