Lydia Bailey [antikvár]

JLor their generous and unfailing help, the author is profoundly grateful to Major A. Hamilton Gibbs, Middleboro, Mass.; Mrs. Elizabeth C. Moore, New York City; Major John Houston Craige, Philadelphia; Clara Claasen, Doubleday Co.; Marjorie Mosser, Kennebunkport, Maine; P. M. Hamer, National Archives, Washington; Robert C. Gooch, Elsie Rackstraw, Colonel Lawrence Martin and Harold W. Glidden, Library of Congress; Lt. Com. M. V. Brewington, Office of Naval Records Library, Washington; Milton Lord and John J. Connolly, Boston Public Library; Clarence S. Brigham and Clifford K. Shipton, American Antiquarian Society; E. N. Brandt, Saturday Evening Post; Coert Du Bois, Ruth B. Shipley and E. Wilder Spauld-ing, Department of State; Sylvester Vigilante, New York Public Library; R. W. G. Vail and Dorothy Barck, New York Historical Society; Charles K. Bolton, Shirley, Mass.; Edwin J. Hipkiss, Boston Art Museum; John Oliver LaGorce, National Geographic Society; Rupert Hughes, Los Angeles; Dean Harry J. Carman, Columbia University; Grace Trappan and Mrs. George Mer-riam, Portland Public Library; Charles Wellington Furlong, Cohasset, Mass.; Everett E. Edwards, Department of Agriculture; Charles S. O'Connor, Clerk, Supreme Judicial Court, Boston; Mrs. Alexander Burr, Kenne-bunk, Maine; Newman F. McGirr, Columbia Historical Society, Washington; Elinor Gregory Metcalf, Boston Athenaeum; Florence M. Osborne, Essex Institute, Salem; Atty-Gen. Frank I. Cowan, Portland, Maine; Professor William Thomson, Harvard University; George Graves, Massachusetts Horticultural Society; B. Y. Morrison and S. F. Sherwood, Bureau of Plant Industry, Beltsville, Md.; James S. Allen, Clerk, U.S. District Court, Boston; Bruce Chapman, New York City; Walter G. Davis, Maine Historical Society; W. J. Eckert, Navy Department, Washington; Robert Hale, House of Representatives; Philip G. Hodge, U.S. Information Service; Senator Wallace H. White. FOREWORD T _L'm not over-enthusiastic about books that teach or preach, but I may as well admit in the beginning that my primary reason for writing this book was to teach as many as possible of those who come after me how much hell and ruin are inevitably brought on innocent people and innocent countries by men who make a virtue of consistency. All the great villains and small villains whom I met so frequently in the events I'm about to set down were consistent men—unimaginative men who consistently believed in war as a means of settling disputes between nations; equally misguided men who consistently believed that war must be avoided at all hazards, no matter what the provocation; narrow men who consistently upheld the beliefs and acts of one political party and saw no good in any other; shortsighted men who consistently refused to see that the welfare of their own nation was dependent upon the welfare of every other nation; ignorant men who consistently thought that the policies of their own government should be supported and followed, whether those policies were right or wrong; dangerous men who consistently thought that all people with black skins are inferior to those with white skins; intolerant men who consistently believed that all people with white skins should be forced to accept all people with black skins as equals. And I know that any nation that cannot or will not avoid the dreadful pitfalls of consistency will be one with the dead empires whose crumbling monuments studded our battlegrounds in Haiti and in Africa. My first great lesson in the perils of consistency came from my uncle, who was Colonel William Tyng of Falmouth in the Province of Maine—the town whose name was later changed to Portland. He was a lawyer and shipowner, patron and erector of St. Paul's Church, First Master of the Falmouth Lodge of Free Masons, Sheriff of Cumberland County, and colonel by virtue of a commission from Governor Gage. Prior to the Revolution, he had taken repeated oaths of allegiance to the King and Government of Great Britain, and, since 2 LYDIA BAILEY he had a low opinion of men who refused to fulfill their obligations or their oaths of allegiance, he remained loyal to the King when the Revolution broke out in 1775. As a result he was branded as a Tory, his home was plundered of its plate and valuables, and he and his family —with the exception of his mother-in-law—took refuge with the English in New York. His family consisted of his wife, his wife's sister (who was my mother), and my father, Albion Hamlin, for whom I was named. My father was Colonel Tyng's cousin, and had gone to sea as a cabin boy in one of the colonel's ships, had captained that same ship at the age of nineteen, and had then been put in charge of all my uncle's shipping interests, not only the building of the ships, but planning their voyages and cargoes. After he moved to New York he became an officer in De-Lancey's Third Battalion, a Loyalist regiment, and I always think of him as dressed in that uniform of green faced with orange, smart-look-ing in spite of being patched, darned, and faded from innumerable marches and battles. All my uncle's property was confiscated by the Portland rebels, of course; but since he had befriended many Portland men during his life in New York—among other things effecting the release of Edward Preble from the Jersey prison ship—he held the affection and regard of those in high places. Consequently his lands were sold for a nominal sum to his mother-in-law, Madam Ross, who continued to live undisturbed on the family farm in Gorham. They even allowed Madam Ross to buy my uncle's three slaves as well; for in spite of all their consistent preaching about Liberty, Freedom, and Equality, the rebels thought slavery was a good thing under certain circumstances for certain sorts of people. At the end of the Revolution, when Loyalists by the thousand left New York and New England to take refuge in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Canada, my uncle went with them; and my father, my mother, and I went too, in the transport Martha, which carried the officers, men, and families of DeLancey's Third Battalion and Maryland Loyalists. On the voyage the Martha struck an uncharted rock off the southern tip of Nova Scotia; and, since there were only enough boats for the women and children, the two regiments were drawn up in company formation on the deck of the sinking vessel while the women and children were handed into the boats. All but three of the men were drowned. I think of those regiments whenever those who 'consistently call themselves Liberal speak contemptuously—as they »consistently do—of Tories. I was ten years old at the time, but I can see my father now, on the deck of the Martha in his old green-and-orange uniform, walking up and down along the front of his company. We were lying off in a longboat, and the Martha was rammed high up on the sunken rock with