Jeremiah Evarts was never healthy; portraits show him as frail and skeletal, with prominent nose and ears, his hair combed forward to conceal a receding hairline. His doctors recommended travelling south for his health, and his evangelical interests drew him towards the Cherokee and Choctaw, so he was in South Carolina on a mission when his wife Mehetabal bore his fifth child Billy in Boston in 1818. Jeremiah didn’t sound too hopeful when he wrote in his journal, “I commend the babe to protection of Heaven, and pray that its soul may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus, however it may please God to dispose of its temporal estate.”
Jeremiah was corresponding secretary for the ABCFM, and travelled a great deal on behalf of the society. The pressure from white settlers on the Indian tribes which occupied lands in the southeast was intense, and Evarts worked to help the Indians integrate into white society through conversion and education. His 1818 trip took him to Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In 1822 he visited Georgia, eastern Tennessee and Virginia. In 1823, after he visited western Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire, then New York, Philadelphia, Princeton, and Washington, he continued southward through Virginia, Tennessee and Mississippi, spending several weeks visiting missionary stations among the Cherokees and Choctaw and continuing to New Orleans from where he sailed back to New York.
When Jeremiah was at home in Boston, John Jay, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William Ellery Channing regularly came to call. Lafayette visited Boston in 1824 and when he reviewed schoolboys lined up on the Boston Common, the Marquis made sure to personally shake the hand of six year old Billy, the grandson of his old compatriot Roger Sherman.
Billy entered Boston Latin School, which at that time stood opposite King’s chapel on School Street, and where his school mates included Henry Ward Beecher and John Lathrop Motley. He particularly excelled at reciting Latin and won the school prize for elocution.
“I certainly was taught to say in the most perfect manner the longest list of Latin nouns and prepositions that I did not want to learn at all, became intimately acquainted with their whole pedigree and relations with large sums and words that I never expected to meet in my subsequent life at all; but having learned that, I could learn other things very easily."
The ABCFM missionaries helped bring printing presses to the Cherokee, who developed their own alphabet and had fonts of type cast in their alphabet. In 1827 the Cherokee adopted a written constitution, modeled on the Constitution of the United States, which declared the Cherokee to be a sovereign nation with complete jurisdiction over their territory, and they had a national newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, published in both English and Cherokee using the syllabary developed by Sequoyah. The Cherokee had no intentions of moving.
In 1827 Jeremiah travelled to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, where he lobbied Congress to retain funding for civilizing efforts. In 1828 Jeremiah took Billy along with him to Washington and introduced him to John C. Calhoun, who was a great admirer of Evarts’ grandfather Roger Sherman. Calhoun took a liking to Billy and introduced him to the president, John Quincy Adams.
~
In the fall of 1829, Jeremiah, writing as "William Penn", wrote twenty-four essays in the National Intelligencer, which blasted the new Jackson administration and its proposed Indian removal policy.
"Most certainly an indelible stigma will be fixed upon us, if, in the plenitude of our power, and in the pride of our superiority, we shall be guilty of manifest injustice to our weak and defenseless neighbors." If the Indians were driven from their homes to destruction, "then the sentence of an indignant world will be uttered in thunders, which will roll and reverberate for ages after the present actors in human affairs shall have passed away."
Was this to be a nation of law or of men?
Jeremiah was corresponding secretary for the ABCFM, and travelled a great deal on behalf of the society. The pressure from white settlers on the Indian tribes which occupied lands in the southeast was intense, and Evarts worked to help the Indians integrate into white society through conversion and education. His 1818 trip took him to Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In 1822 he visited Georgia, eastern Tennessee and Virginia. In 1823, after he visited western Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire, then New York, Philadelphia, Princeton, and Washington, he continued southward through Virginia, Tennessee and Mississippi, spending several weeks visiting missionary stations among the Cherokees and Choctaw and continuing to New Orleans from where he sailed back to New York.
When Jeremiah was at home in Boston, John Jay, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William Ellery Channing regularly came to call. Lafayette visited Boston in 1824 and when he reviewed schoolboys lined up on the Boston Common, the Marquis made sure to personally shake the hand of six year old Billy, the grandson of his old compatriot Roger Sherman.
Billy entered Boston Latin School, which at that time stood opposite King’s chapel on School Street, and where his school mates included Henry Ward Beecher and John Lathrop Motley. He particularly excelled at reciting Latin and won the school prize for elocution.
“I certainly was taught to say in the most perfect manner the longest list of Latin nouns and prepositions that I did not want to learn at all, became intimately acquainted with their whole pedigree and relations with large sums and words that I never expected to meet in my subsequent life at all; but having learned that, I could learn other things very easily."
The ABCFM missionaries helped bring printing presses to the Cherokee, who developed their own alphabet and had fonts of type cast in their alphabet. In 1827 the Cherokee adopted a written constitution, modeled on the Constitution of the United States, which declared the Cherokee to be a sovereign nation with complete jurisdiction over their territory, and they had a national newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, published in both English and Cherokee using the syllabary developed by Sequoyah. The Cherokee had no intentions of moving.
In 1827 Jeremiah travelled to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, where he lobbied Congress to retain funding for civilizing efforts. In 1828 Jeremiah took Billy along with him to Washington and introduced him to John C. Calhoun, who was a great admirer of Evarts’ grandfather Roger Sherman. Calhoun took a liking to Billy and introduced him to the president, John Quincy Adams.
Samuel T. Armstrong printed the Panoplist at 50 Cornhill Street in Boston. Cornhill Street, near Faneuil Hall and Scollay Square, was the center of Boston’s book trade and home to printers, engravers, bookbinders and booksellers. Paul Revere had had his engraving shop at Cornhill after the revolution. Armstrong printed a stereotyped Bible and sold books by Martin Luther, Calvin, Cotton Mather and the like.
At this time in Boston steam and horse powered presses were just starting to be put into use, rollers were replacing ink balls, type was being founded and stereotyping was being employed. There were numerous daily newspapers, and book publishing was on the rise. With so many presses in operation and so many skilled craftsmen, there were more authors publishing their work in Boston than anywhere else in the country.
Armstrong was a member of the first Boston society of printers (43 members) which set prices for composition and presswork and rules for apprentices and journeymen. It worked to secure improvements in the manufacture of paper, ink and type. Armstrong left his printing establishment in 1825 (its successors would eventually merge into Houghton Mifflin) to enter politics, and later became mayor, lieutenant governor and acting governor of the state.
In 1829 Armstrong and Mayor Harrison Gray Otis visited the colored students’ school in the Belknap Street
church. In grammar school Billy Evarts received one of the medals which Benjamin Franklin had endowed to be awarded annually to the most deserving student in each school. At the Belknap Street School, three colored students, Charles Battiste, Nancy Woodson and William Nell were pronounced the most deserving scholars. In lieu of the Franklin Medals given to white scholars such as Billy Evarts, Mr. Armstrong gave each colored scholar a gift certificate to Loring’s Bookstore for the Life of Benjamin Franklin.
Billy and the rest of the white medalists were invited to an awards banquet at Faneuil Hall, but the colored scholars were not. William Nell, however, decided to go anyway, and got in with one of the waiters and pretended to wait on tables. While he watched the honors awarded to the white scholars Mr. Armstrong caught sight of him and whispered to him, “You ought to be here with the other boys.” Of course, Nell thought the same idea. Twenty-five years later, the remark still rankled as he recalled his thought at the time: “If you think so, why have you not taken steps to bring it about?”
At this time in Boston steam and horse powered presses were just starting to be put into use, rollers were replacing ink balls, type was being founded and stereotyping was being employed. There were numerous daily newspapers, and book publishing was on the rise. With so many presses in operation and so many skilled craftsmen, there were more authors publishing their work in Boston than anywhere else in the country.
Armstrong was a member of the first Boston society of printers (43 members) which set prices for composition and presswork and rules for apprentices and journeymen. It worked to secure improvements in the manufacture of paper, ink and type. Armstrong left his printing establishment in 1825 (its successors would eventually merge into Houghton Mifflin) to enter politics, and later became mayor, lieutenant governor and acting governor of the state.
In 1829 Armstrong and Mayor Harrison Gray Otis visited the colored students’ school in the Belknap Street
church. In grammar school Billy Evarts received one of the medals which Benjamin Franklin had endowed to be awarded annually to the most deserving student in each school. At the Belknap Street School, three colored students, Charles Battiste, Nancy Woodson and William Nell were pronounced the most deserving scholars. In lieu of the Franklin Medals given to white scholars such as Billy Evarts, Mr. Armstrong gave each colored scholar a gift certificate to Loring’s Bookstore for the Life of Benjamin Franklin.Billy and the rest of the white medalists were invited to an awards banquet at Faneuil Hall, but the colored scholars were not. William Nell, however, decided to go anyway, and got in with one of the waiters and pretended to wait on tables. While he watched the honors awarded to the white scholars Mr. Armstrong caught sight of him and whispered to him, “You ought to be here with the other boys.” Of course, Nell thought the same idea. Twenty-five years later, the remark still rankled as he recalled his thought at the time: “If you think so, why have you not taken steps to bring it about?”
~
In the fall of 1829, Jeremiah, writing as "William Penn", wrote twenty-four essays in the National Intelligencer, which blasted the new Jackson administration and its proposed Indian removal policy.
"Most certainly an indelible stigma will be fixed upon us, if, in the plenitude of our power, and in the pride of our superiority, we shall be guilty of manifest injustice to our weak and defenseless neighbors." If the Indians were driven from their homes to destruction, "then the sentence of an indignant world will be uttered in thunders, which will roll and reverberate for ages after the present actors in human affairs shall have passed away."
Was this to be a nation of law or of men?
No comments:
Post a Comment