Part 48 (2/2)
In these symbols we get all the religion of the place, and Death is robbed of half his repulsiveness.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PERRY'S MONUMENT.[293]]
On a gra.s.sy knoll in Rhode Island Cemetery the visitor sees the granite obelisk, erected by the State to the memory of the victorious young captain who, at twenty-seven, gained imperishable renown. Ardent, chivalrous, and brave, Perry showed the true inspiration of battle in taking his flag to a s.h.i.+p still able to fight. His laconic dispatch, ”We have met the enemy, and they are ours,” is modestly exultant. The marble tablet of the monument's east face has the words,
OLIVER HAZARD PERRY.
At the Age of Twenty-seven Years, He Achieved The Victory of Lake Erie, September 10, 1813.
[Ill.u.s.tration: OLIVER HAZARD PERRY.]
Within the neat iron fence that surrounds the monument are also the graves of Perry's widow, Elizabeth Champlin, and of his eldest son, Christopher Grant Perry, with the fresher one of Rev. Francis Vinton, whose wife was a daughter of the naval hero. From this spot the bay and all ancient Newport are visible. Another monument in the cemetery is in memory of General Isaac Ingalls Stevens, ”dead on the field of honor.”
A prevailing ingredient of Newport society in the olden days was, doubtless, the Quaker element. As the religious asylum of New England, it alike received Jew and Gentile, Quaker and Anabaptist, followers of the Church of England and of Rome. Its complexion at the beginning of the eighteenth century might be in harmony with religious freedom, though little h.o.m.ogeneous; and although there was plenty of toleration, its religious character has been vaunted overmuch. It commands a pa.s.sing thought that all these human components intermingling and a.s.similating in the active duties of life, separate in death. Their burial must be distinct.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FRIENDS' MEETING-HOUSE.]
The Quaker-meeting has contributed to our vocabulary a synonym for dullness. Old England and New were in accord in persecuting the sect. It is related of a number under sentence of banishment to America, that soldiers from the Tower carried them on board the s.h.i.+ps, the Friends refusing to walk and the sailors to hoist them on board. In the year 1662 Hannah Wright came from Long Island, several hundred miles to the ”b.l.o.o.d.y town of Boston,” into the court, and warned the magistrates to spill no more innocent blood. They were at first abashed by the solemn fervor of their accuser, until Rawson, the secretary, exclaimed, ”What!
Shall we be baffled by such a one as this? Come, let us drink a dram.”
The sufferings of the Friends in New England were heightened, no doubt, by the zeal of some to embrace martyrdom, who, in giving way to the promptings of religious fanaticism, outraged public decency, and shamed the name of modesty in woman. Deborah Wilson went through the streets of Salem naked as she came into the world, for which she was well whipped.
Two other Quaker women, says Mather, were whipped in Boston, ”who came as stark naked as ever they were born into our public a.s.semblies.” This exhibition was meant to be a sign of religious nakedness in others; but the Puritans preferred to consider it an offense against good morals, and not a G.o.diva-like penance for the general sinfulness.[294]
[Ill.u.s.tration: GEORGE FOX.]
The Society of Friends is the youngest of the four surviving societies which date from the Reformation, and is, without doubt, the sternest protest against the ceremonial religion of Rome. George Fox, who preached at Newport,[295] was the son of a Leicesters.h.i.+re weaver, beginning his public a.s.sertion of religious sentiments at the age of twenty-two. The pillory sometimes served him for a pulpit. He once preached with such power to the populace that they rescued him ”in a tumultuous manner,” setting a clergy-man who had been instrumental in his punishment upon the same pillory.
Pagan superst.i.tion having originated most of the names bestowed by custom on the days and months, the Friends ignore them, subst.i.tuting in their place ”first day” and ”first month,” ”second day” and ”second month” for those occurring at the beginning of our calendar. The Society does not sanction appeals by its members to courts of law, but refers disputes to arbitration, a practice well worthy imitation.
George Fox mentions in his ”Journal” his interview in England with Simon Bradstreet and Rev. John Norton, the agents whom Ma.s.sachusetts had sent over in answer to the command of Charles II. Says Fox, ”We had several discourses with them concerning their murdering our friends, but they were ashamed to stand to their b.l.o.o.d.y actions. I asked Simon Bradstreet, one of the New England magistrates, whether he had not an hand in putting to death these four whom they hanged for being Quakers? He confessed he had. I then demanded of him and his a.s.sociates then present if they acknowledged themselves subject to the laws of England? They said they did. I then said by what law do you put our friends to death?
They answered, By the same law as the Jesuits were put to death in England. I then asked if those Friends were Jesuits? They said nay.
Then, said I, ye have murdered them.”[296]
The first Quakers came to Rhode Island in 1656. Roger Williams, in his ”George Fox digged out of his Burrowes,” shows that tolerance did not go so far with him as the Quaker fas.h.i.+on of wearing the hair long and flowing. Speaking of one he met who accosted him with the salutation, ”Fear the Lord G.o.d,” Williams says he retorted, ”What G.o.d dost thou mean--a ruffian's G.o.d?” Through Fox's preaching some of Cromwell's soldiers became converted, and would not fight. He lies in the old London burying-ground of Bunhill Fields, among the Dissenters.
The objection of the sect to sepulchral stones leaves little to be remarked of the Quaker burying-ground in Newport.[297] Notwithstanding the non-resistant principles of the Friends, it stands in strong light that Nathaniel Greene, a Quaker, and Oliver Hazard Perry, the descendant of a Quaker, were conspicuous figures in two of our wars. Few innovations have appeared in the manners, customs, or dress of the followers of George Fox.[298] Their broad-brims, sober garb, and sedate carriage, their ”thee” and ”thou,” may still occasionally be seen and heard in Newport streets.
Newport contains several widely scattered burial-places, some of them hardly more in appearance than family groups of graves. Not all exhibit the care bestowed upon such as are more prominently before the public eye. The little Clifton cemetery, at the head of Golden Hill Street, was in a wretched plight. A crazy wooden paling afforded little or no protection from intrusion. But there was no incentive to linger among its few corroded monuments and acc.u.mulated rubbish. Here are buried the Wantons, of whom Edward, the ancestor of the name in Newport, fled from Scituate, Ma.s.sachusetts, during the Quaker persecutions.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES LEE.]
When Was.h.i.+ngton was at Cambridge, besieging Boston, he sent Charles Lee to look after ”those of Rhode Island” who were still for King George.
Lee administered to the Tories who would take it an oath as whimsical as characteristic. He knew the fondness of these old royalists for old wine, good dinners, and fine raiment. They were required to swear fidelity to the Whig cause ”by their hope of present ease and comfort, as well as the dread hereafter.” Colonel Wanton refused the oath, and was, I presume, of those whom Lee had taken to Providence with the threat of forwarding them to the American camp.
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