The Forgotten Founding Father- Noah Webster, page 17
The statistical impulses run amok reflected Webster’s sadness and loneliness. The months he had spent with Rebecca the previous spring had given him a taste of a whole new way of being in the world, which he sorely missed. As he wrote to her in February, “I sometimes enjoy your company in dreams; a few nights past, I was with you and passt a few happy hours with your smiles and your conversation. Would to heaven every night might be so happy.” With Rebecca back in Boston, his courtship had to take place exclusively through the mail. In New York, he did, however, see a lot of her brother James, whom he soon considered a trusted friend. And James Greenleaf was, in turn, grateful to Webster for introducing him to his new business partner, James Watson. The prospect of a future with the Greenleafs kept him from disintegrating. In early 1788, he wrote Rebecca: “You will see by the tenor of this letter that I am in the dumps a little. . . . Well, I wish everybody were as good as James Greenleaf and his sister, Becca. I should then be a much happier man, but as it is, I shall not be unhappy. I am as patient as possible waiting for the sun to disperse the clouds that hang over the head of your cordial friend and admirer.” But the wait to marry his beloved Becca would repeatedly try his patience. Over the next year and a half, an overworked and anxious Webster would come close to a nervous breakdown. In the words of Ebenezer Hazard, he was as “unstable as water.” And as his magazine faltered, Webster was prepared to do whatever it took to marry Rebecca—even renounce all his literary activities. Summing up his first three decades in 1788, Webster confided to his diary, “I have read much, written much. . . . I will now leave writing & do more lucrative business. . . . But I am a bachelor and want the happiness of a friend whose interest and feelings should be mine.”
6
Marriage and a Turn Away from Words
MARRIAGE, n. The act of uniting a man and woman for life; wedlock; the legal union of a man and woman for life. Marriage is a contract both civil and religious, by which the parties engage to live together in mutual affection and fidelity, till death shall separate them. Marriage was instituted by God himself for the purpose of preventing the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, for promoting domestic felicity, and for securing the maintenance and education of children.
In the summer of 1788, as Webster worried about whether his marriage with Rebecca Greenleaf would ever take place, there was another union that he could celebrate. On June 25, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution. Webster’s dream of a Federalist United States of America was now a reality. That night, he wrote in his diary, “Great joy at the ninth.”
Webster had just returned to New York City after attending the opening of the New York State ratifying convention in its capital, Poughkeepsie. While upstate, he took a brief excursion to see Cohoes Falls, the waterfall on the Mohawk River, where he couldn’t resist doing a little quantifying. “I measure,” he recorded in his diary, “the banks of the river, 100 feet, the falls more than half that distance.” By the time he left Poughkeepsie on June 20, the anti-Federalists, led by Governor George Clinton of Albany, still outnumbered the Federalists—mostly based in the city—by a margin of more than two to one.
To mark the ratification of the Constitution, New York had hoped to join other cities such as Philadelphia and New Haven that were scheduling parades for July Fourth. But with the state convention still deadlocked, the city put its plans on hold. After a series of postponements, the Revolutionary War hero Colonel Richard Platt, the chairman of the Committee of Arrangements for the New York Procession, settled on Wednesday, July 23. This majestic display of support for America’s founding document, Platt figured, could perhaps sway the votes of some upstate delegates.
A fierce advocate of national unity and an arranger extraordinaire, Noah Webster, Jr., quickly became Platt’s right-hand man. On July 17, Webster wrote in his diary, “Meet the Committee of Arrangement . . . and order the procession for the 23rd.” In the end, Webster would not only organize the parade, he would also become its chief chronicler. Generations of historians have turned to the definitive account, which he “arranged for the public,” published under Richard Platt’s byline in New York’s leading paper, The Daily Advertiser. Four decades later, to illustrate the verb “witness” in his dictionary, Webster would note, “I witnessed the ceremonies in New York, with which the ratification of the constitution was celebrated, in 1788.” But this statement downplays the full extent of his involvement.
Platt recruited Webster because he was the driving force behind the New York Philological Society, an influential coterie of literary scholars, which would be one of roughly seventy trade associations marching in the parade. Besides Webster, who was officially its secretary, this group included the lawyer Josiah Hoffmann, its titular president; the play-wright William Dunlap, its treasurer; and the naturalist Samuel Latham Mitchill, then a newly minted doctor. (A future congressman, Mitchill, who shared Webster’s obsession with classifying and arranging, was later nicknamed “the Congressional Dictionary” by Thomas Jefferson.) In April, Webster had written the Philological Society’s constitution; dedicated “to the investigation upon which language is founded,” the organization aimed “to ascertain and improve the American tongue.” And to achieve this goal, as Webster confided to publisher Isaiah Thomas in June, the society initially planned to produce a dictionary. Though this massive undertaking never got underway, that spring Webster gave a series of lectures during the group’s Monday night meetings in which he put his stamp on all its activities. As Ebenezer Hazard observed, “I do not know all the members of the Philological Society, though I have understood that they are not numerous. The Monarch reigns supreme . . . [over] . . . his subjects.”
However, Webster’s decision to shepherd the Philological Society wasn’t motivated purely by patriotism. He was also looking for more publicity for his speller. On July Fourth, President Hoffmann wrote an endorsement on behalf of the society, in which he stated that Webster’s book was “calculated to destroy the various false dialects in the several states . . . an object very desirable in a federal republic.” By establishing the norms of a new federal language, the group could also, so Webster hoped, give his textbooks a virtual monopoly in the nation’s school systems. That summer, he wrote to his publisher: “When you advertise the improved editions of the Institute, something like the following may be published. . . . The Philological Society in New York recommend this work with a view to make it the federal school book. The University of Georgia, preferring this to Dilworth . . . or any other . . . have determined that this alone shall be used in all the schools in that state. The publishers flatter themselves that the northern states will heartily concur in the design of a federal language.”
Webster thus was counting on the Philological Society to help him cash in on the passage of the Constitution, which suddenly improved the commercial prospects for his books.
For the nearly thirty-year-old Webster, the New York procession represented the triumph of everything he stood for—patriotism, national unity and order. He felt a sudden surge of optimism, noting in his August piece in The Daily Advertiser, “the great object of exultation . . . was . . . an era in the liberty of man, great glorious and unparalleled, which opens a variety of new sources of happiness and unbounded prospects of national prosperity.” In a life filled with anxiety and toil, it would be a rare day of pure exhilaration, which he would share with the rest of a thoroughly delirious and united Manhattan Island.
ON THE MORNING OF JULY 23, Webster, dressed in the black uniform of the Philological Society, left his Maiden Lane residence and walked up to the area then known as “the Fields” (today City Hall Park). He soon joined a throng of some five thousand working men, who had been gathering since eight o’clock. Thousands more started lining up on the spotless streets along the parade route, which had been swept and watered both earlier that morning and the night before. The city’s ladies, preferring to avoid the crowds, stationed themselves in doorways and at windowsills.
Just as red, white and blue were the procession’s predominant colors, ten and thirteen were its operative numbers. That’s because at the beginning of July, Virginia had become the tenth of the thirteen states to approve ratification.
At exactly ten o’clock, thirteen guns from the federal ship Hamilton, built especially for the occasion, announced that the procession was to begin. Horsemen with trumpets started down Broadway, along with a company of artillery. Then came Grand Marshal Richard Platt, dressed in a blue coat, red sash and white feather, followed by his thirteen deputy marshals.
Finally, the ten divisions of artisans fell into line, each one led by a man carrying a white banner. The workers, forming a mile-and-a-half retinue, came from all walks of life. In this day of unity, the young, the old, the rich, the poor, the learned and the uneducated were all marching as one.
The first division consisted largely of artisans whose work had something to do with the land or its by-products: farmers, foresters, gardeners, millers, distillers and bakers. As the new United States of America was largely an agrarian nation, this contingent was the longest, containing fourteen subdivisions. Wit and ingenuity were everywhere on display. The bakers featured four masters who carried a ten-foot-long “federal loaf” upon which was emblazoned the names of the ten ratifying states and the initials of the three holdouts: N.Y., N.C. and R.I.
Coopers (makers and repairers of wooden barrels) led the second division. As Webster would later describe their arithmetically appropriate tribute: “Thirteen apprentice boys, 13 years of age, dressed in white shirts, trowsers, and stockings. . . . their hats ornamented with 13 pillars, colored green and white, with ten branches springing from them.”
A few hundred yards in front of Webster paraded the chocolate makers, who were grouped with the blacksmiths and instrument makers in the eighth division. Their float captured graphically what he had been writing about for the past half-dozen years. To represent the powerless Congress under the Articles of Confederation, they carried a picture of a naked man, whose thirteen heads were all looking in different directions, upon which was written:
When each head thus directing,
The body naught pursues;
But when in one uniting
Then energy ensues.
Led by Webster, the Philological Society, subdivision 69, marched right behind the “Gentlemen of the Bar” who headed the ninth division. This contingent of the city’s intelligentsia also featured subdivisions 70 and 71: students and professors from Columbia, including the college’s president, William Samuel Johnson, as well as traders and merchants.
Webster carried a scroll containing the principles of a federal language. Behind him walked President Josiah Hoffmann in a sash of blue and white ribbons, and Treasurer William Dunlap carrying the society’s highly intricate coat of arms, which Webster had helped to design two weeks earlier. Its major elements included three tongues, a chevron and an eye over a monument sculpted with Gothic, Hebrew and Greek letters. Its crest, whose symbolism no doubt was understood only by its creators, consisted of a cluster of cohering magnets attracted by a large key, meant to highlight that language was a unifying principle of knowledge. The flag was embellished with the phrase “the Genius of America” and crowned with a wreath of thirteen plumes, ten of them starred. While her right hand pointed to the Philological Society, in her left was a pendant with the word “CONSTITUTION.”
After reaching the bottom of Broadway, the procession looped around and headed back north via Queen and Arundel streets. Webster was energized by occasionally glancing over at the ladies, those “fair daughters of Columbia whose animated smiles and satisfaction,” he would later write, “contributed not a little to complete the general joy.” There was no music and the solemnity of the event precluded cheering: “No noise was heard but the deep rumbling of carriage wheels, with the necessary salutes and signals. A glad serenity enlivened every countenance.”
As the marchers arrived at City Alderman Nicholas Bayard’s farm, which bordered on the upper reaches of Broadway, they were reviewed by Grand Marshal Richard Platt before dispersing. Leaving their signs on the fields, they headed to dining tables located in the three pavilions built by the architect Pierre L’Enfant (whom Washington would later commission to design the new federal city on the Potomac), in just five days. The banquet area, which was some 600 by 900 feet, featured ten colonnades festooned with wreaths. Under the dome of the middle pavilion—topped by the figure of Fame, carrying a parchment alluding to the three phases of the late war (Independence, Alliance with France, Peace)—sat members of Congress, foreign dignitaries and the city’s clergy.
Along with some six thousand other revelers, Webster feasted on roasted mutton and ham and imbibed abundant amounts of beer. At the end of the meal, he raised his glass to thirteen toasts—the last one being “May the union of the United States be perpetual”—each of which was marked by shots from ten cannons.
In this celebration of unity, no New Yorkers would be left out. Afterward, the same repast was passed on to all the city’s prisoners.
At five thirty, the marchers returned to their original stations and were dismissed.
That night, just as Webster was describing the procession in his diary as “very brilliant, but fatiguing,” Richard Platt wrote to the Poughkeepsie delegates that “the most remarkable regularity and decorum prevailed during the whole day.”
Platt, Webster and their fellow arrangers soon achieved their primary political objective. At nine o’clock on Saturday evening, July 26, as Webster was working away at his newspaper account of the event, he heard shouting in the streets; Poughkeepsie had rendered its final verdict. “News of the Convention’s adopting the Constitution received,” he wrote in his diary, “& great joy testified.”
ON AUGUST 2, Ebenezer Hazard wrote to the Boston pastor Jeremy Belknap, “I hear the Monarch (not of France) intends to honour this town with a visit.”
Webster was indeed heading north to see Rebecca for the first time in more than a year. On Sunday, August 10, along with Hazard and Rhode Island’s congressional delegation, he sailed to Providence. Two days later, he waited on “the dear girl” at her home in Dorchester. And on the fourteenth, he officially asked for her hand in marriage. “Ask consent of Mr. Greenleaf,” he noted in his diary, “& am happy in receiving it.” However, to reassure the Greenleafs of his suitability as a breadwinner, Webster had to promise to give up his literary career and return to law. This decision would soon become a source of constant anguish.
Once back in New York, Webster made plans to dispose of his magazine. In November, he negotiated a deal with both Hazard and another New York publisher, Francis Childs, who planned to revive it the following year under the title The American Magazine and Universal Register. Under this proposal, the magazine would be expanded to a hundred pages, and the second half of each issue would feature key documents from American history. “It has been . . . frequently lamented by the lovers of useful license that no particular account of the origin and complete establishment of this rising empire hath yet been given to the world,” ran the announcement in New York’s Daily Advertiser. Webster had hoped to print, for example, John Winthrop’s journal, which he had recently discovered at the house of former Connecticut governor Jonathan Trumbull. But nothing came of it. With circulation down to just two hundred, the magazine ceased publication after its one-year run. Rather than adding anything to his coffers, this venture had ended up costing him about two hundred and fifty pounds (five hundred dollars).
That fall, Webster’s future in-laws sent him congratulatory notes on his engagement. Writing from Amsterdam, where he had gone to pursue various business opportunities, James Greenleaf assured him, “As you have gained the consent of my parents & friends, if mine is either necessary or acceptable, you have it in the fullest manner.” Greenleaf also offered to help Webster financially, though he didn’t specify exactly how much money he could provide. In late November, Dr. Nathaniel Appleton of Boston, who had known Rebecca for a decade, observed, “If you make this girl your partner for life, you will have acquired the most amiable and all accomplished lady for a man of sentiment and taste for domestic life, which this metropolis affords. You cannot prize her too highly.” With Webster deciding to move to Boston, Appleton found him temporary lodgings: the best room at Mrs. Archibald’s, the Court Street residence where he had lived the summer before, for twenty-four pence a week. Webster was looking forward to living near all the Greenleafs.
On December 20, Webster was “happy to quit New York.” He spent Christmas with his parents in the West Division. On New Year’s Eve, Webster arrived in Boston, where he soon enjoyed frequent visits with his “agreeable new friends.” On those evenings when he wasn’t having dinner with Rebecca or other members of the extended family, he was socializing with the city’s elite. On January 28, 1789, he met the incoming vice president, John Adams, at the home of former governor James Bowdoin.
