The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1

Various

The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1

CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN

Among the emigrants from England to the western world in the great Puritan exodus was Joanna Thember Coffin, widow, and her son Tristram, and her two daughters, Mary and Eunice. Their home was in Brixton, two miles from Plymouth, in Devonshire. Tristram was entering manhood's prime—thirty-three years of age. He had a family of five children. Quite likely the political troubles between the King and Parliament, the rising war cloud, was the impelling motive that induced the family to leave country, home, friends, and all dear old things, and become emigrants to the New World. Quite likely Tristram, when a youth, in 1620, may have seen the Mayflower spread her white sails to the breeze and fade away in the western horizon, for the departure of that company of pilgrims must have been the theme of conversation in and around Plymouth. Without doubt it set the young man to thinking of the unexplored continent beyond the stormy Atlantic. In 1632 his neighbors and friends began to leave, and in 1642 he, too, bade farewell to dear old England, to become a citizen of Massachusetts Bay.

He landed at Newbury, settled first in Salisbury, and ferried people across the Merrimack between Salisbury and Newbury. His wife, Dionis, brewed beer for thirsty travellers. The Sheriff had her up before the courts for charging more per mug than the price fixed by law, but she went scot free on proving that she put in an extra amount of malt. We may think of the grave and reverend Justices ordering the beer into court and settling the question by personal examination of the foaming mugs,—smacking their lips satisfactorily, quite likely testing it a second time.

Tristram Coffin became a citizen of Newbury and built a house, which is still standing. In 1660 he removed with a portion of his family to Nantucket, dying there in 1681, leaving two sons, from whom have descended all the Coffins of the country—a numerous and widespread family.

One of Tristram's decendants, Peter, moved from Newbury to Boscawen, New Hampshire, in 1766, building a large two-storied house. He became a prominent citizen of the town—a Captain of the militia company, was quick and prompt in all his actions. The news of the affair at Lexington and Concord April 19,1775, reached Boscawen on the afternoon of the next day. On the twenty-first Peter Coffin was in Exeter answering the roll call in the Provincial assembly—to take measures for the public safety.

His wife, Rebecca Hazelton Coffin, was as energetic and patriotic as he. In August, 1777, everybody, old and young, turned out to defeat Burgoyne. One soldier could not go, because he had no shirt. It was this energetic woman, with a babe but three weeks old, who cut a web from the loom and sat up all night to make a shirt for the soldier. August came, the wheat was ripe for the sickle. Her husband was gone, the neighbors also. Six miles away was a family where she thought it possible she might obtain a harvest hand. Mounting the mare, taking the babe in her arms, she rode through the forest only to find that all the able-bodied young men had gone to the war. The only help to be had was a barefoot, hatless, coatless boy of fourteen.

"He can go but he has no coat," said the mother of the boy.

"I can make him a coat," was the reply.

The boy leaped upon the pillion, rode home with the woman—went out with his sickle to reap the bearded grain, while the house wife, taking a meal bag for want of other material, cutting a hole in the bottom, two holes in the sides, sewing a pair of her own stockings on for sleeves, fulfilled her promise of providing a coat, then laid her babe beneath the shade of a tree and bound the sheaves.

It is a picture of the trials, hardships and patriotism of the people in the most trying hour of the revolutionary struggle.

The babe was Thomas Coffin—father of the subject of this sketch, Charles Carleton Coffin, who was born on the old homestead in Boscawen, July 26, 1823,—the youngest of nine children, three of whom died in infancy.

The boyhood of the future journalist, correspondent and author was one of toil rather than recreation. The maxims of Benjamin Franklin in regard to idleness, thrift and prosperity were household words.

"He who would thrive must rise at five."

In most farm-houses the fire was kindled on the old stone hearth before that hour. The cows were to be milked and driven to the pasture to crop the green grass before the sun dispatched the beaded drops of dew. They must be brought home at night.

In the planting season, corn and potatoes must be put in the hill. The youngest boy must ride the horse in furrowing, spread the new-mown grass, stow away the hay high up under the roof of the barn, gather stones in heaps after the wheat was reaped, or pick the apples in the orchard. Each member of the family must commit to memory the verses of Dr. Watts:

"Then what my hands shall find to doLet me with all my might pursue,For no device nor work is foundBeneath the surface of the ground."

The great end of life was to do something. There was a gospel of work, thrift and economy continually preached. To be idle was to serve the devil.

"The devil finds some mischief still for idle hands to do."

Such teaching had its legitimate effect, and the subject of this sketch in common with the boys and girls of his generation made work a duty. What was accepted as duty became pleasure.

Aside from the district school he attended Boscawen Academy a few terms. The teaching could not be called first-class instruction. The instructors were students just out of college, who taught for the stipend received rather than with any high ideal of teaching as a profession. A term at Pembroke Academy in 1843 completed his acquisition of knowledge, so far as obtained in the schools.

The future journalist was an omnivorous reader. Everything was fish that came to the dragnet of this New Hampshire boy—from "Sinbad" to "Milton's Paradise Lost," which was read before he was eleven years old.

The household to which he belonged had ever a goodly supply of weekly papers, the New Hampshire Statesman, the Herald of Freedom, the New Hampshire Observer, all published at Concord; the first political, the second devoted to anti-slavery, the third a religious weekly. In the westerly part of the town was a circulating library of some one hundred and fifty volumes, gathered about 1816—the books were dog-eared, soiled and torn. Among them was the "History of the Expedition of Lewis and Clark up the Missouri and down the Columbia to the Pacific Ocean," which was read and re-read by the future correspondent, till every scene and incident was impressed upon his memory as distinctly as that of the die upon the coin. Another volume was a historical novel entitled "A Peep at the Pilgrims," which awakened a love for historical literature. Books of the Indian Wars, Stories of the Revolution, were read and re-read with increasing delight. Even the Federalist, that series of papers elucidating the principles of Republican government, was read before he was fourteen. There was no pleasure to be compared with that of visiting Concord, and looking at the books in the store of Marsh, Capen and Lyon, who kept a bookstore in that, then, town of four thousand inhabitants—the only one in central New Hampshire.

Without doubt the love for historical literature was quickened by the kind patronage of John Farmer, the genial historian, who was a visitor at the Boscawen farm-house, and who had delightful stories to tell of the exploits of Robert Rogers and John Stark during the French and Indian wars.

Soldiers of the Revolution were living in 1830. Eliphalet Kilburn, the grandfather of Charles Carleton Coffin on the maternal side, was in the thick of battle at Saratoga and Rhode Island, and there was no greater pleasure to the old blind pensioner than to narrate the stories of the Revolution to his listening grandchild. Near neighbors to the Coffin homestead were Eliakim Walker, Nathaniel Atkinson and David Flanders, all of whom were at Bunker Hill—Walker in the redoubt under Prescott; Atkinson and Flanders in Captain Abbott's company, under Stark, by the rail fence, confronting the Welch fusileers.

The vivid description of that battle which Mr. Coffin has given in the "Boys of '76," is doubtless due in a great measure to the stories of these pensioners, who often sat by the old fire-place in that farm-house and fought their battles over again to the intense delight of their white-haired auditor.

Ill health, inability for prolonged mental application, shut out the future correspondent, to his great grief, from all thoughts of attempting a collegiate course. While incapacitated from mental or physical labor he obtained a surveyor's compass, and more for pastime than any thought of becoming a surveyor, he studied the elements of surveying.

There were fewer civil engineers in the country in 1845 than now. It was a period when engineers were wanted—when the demand was greater than the supply, and anyone who had a smattering of engineering could find employment. Mr. Coffin accepted a position in the engineering corps of the Northern Railroad, and was subsequently employed on the Concord and Portsmouth, and Concord and Claremont Railroad.

In 1846 he was married to Sallie R. Farmer of Boscawen. Not wishing to make civil engineering a profession for life he purchased a farm in his native town; but health gave way and he was forced to seek other pursuits.

He early began to write articles for the Concord newspapers, and some of his fugitive political contributions were re-published in Littell's Living Age.

Mr. Coffin's studies in engineering led him towards scientific culture. In 1849 he constructed the telegraph line between Harvard Observatory and Boston, by which uniform time was first given to the railroads leading from Boston. He had charge of the construction of the Telegraphic Fire Alarm in Boston, under the direction of Professor Moses G. Farmer, his brother-in-law, and gave the first alarm ever given by that system April 29, 1852.

Mr. Coffin's tastes led him toward journalism. From 1850 to 1854 he was a constant contributor to the press, sending articles to the Transcript, the Boston Journal, Congregationalist, and New York Tribune. He was also a contributor to the Student and Schoolmate, a small magazine then conducted by Mr. Adams (Oliver Optic).

He was for a short time assistant editor of the Practical Farmer, an agricultural and literary weekly newspaper. In 1854 he was employed on the Boston Journal. Many of the editorials upon the Kansas-Nebraska struggle were from his pen. His style of composition was developed during these years when great events were agitating the public mind. It was a period which demanded clear, comprehensive, concise, statements, and words that meant something. His articles upon the questions of the hour were able and trenchant. One of the leading newspapers of Boston down to 1856 was the Atlas—the organ of the anti-slavery wing of the Whig party, of the men who laid the foundation of the Republican party. Its chief editorial writer was the brilliant Charles T. Congdon, with whom Mr. Coffin was associated as assistant editor till the paper was merged into the Atlas and Bee.

During the year 1858 he became again assistant on the Journal. He wrote a series of letters from Canada in connection with the visit of the Prince of Wales. He was deputed, as correspondent, to attend the opening of several of the great western railroads, which were attended by many men in public life. He was present at the Baltimore Convention which nominated Bell and Everett as candidates for the Presidency and Vice Presidency in 1860. He travelled west through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, before the assembling of the Republican Convention at Chicago, conversing with public men, and in a private letter predicted the nomination of Abraham Lincoln, who, up to the assembling of the convention, had hardly been regarded as a possible candidate.

He accompanied the committee appointed to apprise Mr. Lincoln of his nomination to Springfield, spent several weeks in the vicinity—making Mr. Lincoln's acquaintance, and obtaining information in regard to him, which was turned to proper advantage during the campaign.

In the winter of 1860-61, Mr. Coffin held the position of night editor of the Journal. The Southern States were then seceding. It was the most exciting period in the history of the republic. There was turmoil in Congress. Public affairs were drifting with no arm at the helm. There was no leadership in Congress or out of it. The position occupied by Mr. Coffin was one requiring discrimination and judgment. The Peace Congress was in session. During the long nights while waiting for despatches, which often did not arrive till well toward morning, he had time to study the situation of public affairs, and saw, what all men did not see, that a conflict of arms was approaching. He was at that time residing in Maiden, and on the morning after the surrender of Sumter took measures for the calling of a public meeting of the citizens of that town to sustain the government. It was one of the first—if not the first of the many, held throughout the country.

Upon the breaking out of the war in 1861 Mr. Coffin left the editorial department of the Journal and became a correspondent in the field, writing his first letter from Baltimore, June 15, over the signature of "Carleton"—selecting his middle name for a nom de plume.

He accompanied the right wing under General Tyler, which had the advance in the movement to Bull Run, and witnessed the first encounter at Blackburn's Ford, July 18. He returned to Washington the next morning with the account, and was back again on the succeeding morning in season to witness the battle of Bull Run, narrowly escaping capture when the Confederate cavalry dashed upon the panic-stricken Union troops. He reached Washington during the night, and sent a full account of the action the following morning.

During the autumn he made frequent trips from the army around Washington to Eastern Maryland, and the upper Potomac, making long rides upon the least sign of action. Becoming convinced, in December, that the Army of the Potomac was doomed to inaction during the winter, the correspondent, furnished with letters of introduction to Generals Grant and Buell from the Secretary of War, proceeded west. Arriving at Louisville he found that General Buell had expelled all correspondents from the army. The letter from the Secretary of War vouching for the loyalty and integrity of the correspondent was read and tossed aside with the remark that correspondents could not be permitted in an army which he had the honor to command.

Mr. Coffin proceeded to St. Louis, took a look at the army then at Rolla, in Central Missouri, but discovering no signs of action in that direction made his way to Cairo where General Grant was in command. General Grant's headquarters were in the second story of a tumble-down building.

No sentinel paced before the door. Ascending the stairs and knocking, Mr. Coffin heard the answer, "Come in." Entering, he saw a man in a blue blouse sitting upon a nail-keg at a rude desk smoking a cigar.

"Is General Grant in?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

Supposing the man on the nail keg with no straps upon his shoulder to be only a clerk or orderly, he presented his letter from the Secretary of War, with the remark, "Will you please present this to General Grant?" whereupon the supposed clerk glanced over the lines, rose, extended his hand and said, "I am right glad to see you. Please take a nail keg!"

There were several empty nail kegs in the apartment, but not a chair. The contrast to what he had experienced with General Buell was so great that the correspondent could hardly realize that he was in the presence of General Grant, who at once gave him the needed facilities for attaining information.

The rapidity of the correspondent's movements—the quickness with which he took in the military situation, may be inferred from the dates of his letters. On January 6, 1862, he wrote a letter detailing affairs at St. Louis. On the eighth, he described affairs at Rolla in Central Missouri. On the eleventh, he was writing from Cairo. The gunboats under Commodore Foot were at Cairo, and the correspondent was received with the utmost hospitality, not only by the Commodore, but by all the officers.

Upon the movement of General Zolicoffer into Kentucky, Mr. Coffin hastened to Louisville, Lexington, and Central Kentucky, but finding affairs had settled down, hastened down the Ohio River on a steamboat, reaching the mouth of the Tennessee just as the fleet under Commodore Foot was entering the Ohio after capturing Fort Henry. Commodore Foot narrated the events of the engagement, and Mr. Coffin, learning that no correspondent had returned from Fort Henry, stimulated by the thought of giving the Boston Journal the first information, jumped on board the cars, wrote his account on the train, and had the satisfaction of knowing that it was the first one published.

Returning to Cairo by the next train, he proceeded to Fort Donelson and was present in the cabin of the steamer "Uncle Sam" when General Buckner turned over the Fort, the Artillery, and 15,000 prisoners to General Grant. He hastened to Cairo, wrote his account on the cars, riding eastward, till it was complete, then returning, and arriving in season to jump on board the gunboat Boston for a reconnoissanceof Columbus.

Mr. Coffin continued with the fleet during the operation at Island No. 10. His knowledge of civil engineering enabled him to assist Captain Maynadier of the engineers in directing the mortar firing. On one occasion while mounted on a corn crib near a farm-house to note the direction of the bombs, the Confederate artillerists sent a shell which demolished a pig-pen but a few feet distant.

While at Island No. 10, the battle of Pittsburg Landing was fought. Leaving the fleet he hastened thither, accompanied the army in its slow advance upon Corinth, was present at the battle of Farmington and the occupation of Corinth.

General Halleck, smarting under the criticism of the press, ordered all correspondents to leave, and Mr. Coffin once more joined the fleet, descending the Mississippi. During the engagement with the Confederate fleet at Memphis, he stood upon the deck of the Admiral's despatch boat with note-book and watch in hand—noting every movement. He was fully exposed, aided in hauling down the flag of the Confederate ship, "Little Rebel," and assisted in rescuing some of the wounded Confederates from the sinking vessels.

He accepted an invitation from Captain Phelps of the Benton to accompany him on shore when the city was surrendered, and saw the stars and strips go up upon the flag-staff in the public square and over the Court House.

The Army of the Potamac was in front of Richmond, and he returned east in season to chronicle the seven day's engagement on the Peninsular. The constant exposure to malaria brought on sickness, which prevented his being with the army in the engagement at the second Bull Run, but he was on the field of Antietam throughout the entire contest, and wrote an account which was published in the Baltimore American, of which an enormous edition was disposed of in the army—and was commended for its accuracy.

In October Mr. Coffin was once more in Kentucky, but did not reach the army in season to see the battle of Perrysville. Comprehending the situation of affairs there, that there could be no movement until the entire army was re-organized under a new commander, he returned to Virginia, accompanying the army in its march from the Potomac to Fredericksburg, and witnessed that disastrous battle. A month later he was with the fleet off Charleston and saw the attack on Sumter by the Monitor, and the bombardment of Fort McAllister.

In April he was once more with the Army of the Potomac, arriving just as the troops were getting back to their quarters after Chancellorsville to hear the stories and collect an account of that battle.

When the Confederate army began the Gettysburg Campaign Mr. Coffin watched every movement. He was with the cavalry during the first day's struggle on that field, but was an eyewitness of the second and third days' engagement. His account was re-published in nearly every one of the large cities, was translated and re-published in France and Germany. While the armies east and west were preparing for the campaign of 1864 Mr. Coffin made an extended tour through the border states—Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, to ascertain what changes had taken place in public opinion. In May he was once more with the Army of the Potomac under its great leader, Lieutenant General Grant, and saw all the conflicts of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, North Anna, around Hanover, Cold Harbor, the struggles in front of Petersburg through '64. Upon the occupation of Savannah by General Sherman he hastened south, having an ardent desire to enter Charleston, whenever it should be occupied by Union troops. He was successful in carrying out his desires, and with James Redpath of the New York Tribune leaped on shore from the deck of General Gilmore's steamer when he steamed up to take possession of the city.

Mr. Coffin's despatch announcing the evacuation and occupation of Sumter, owing to his indefatigable energy, was published in Boston, telegraphed to Washington, and read in the House of Representatives before any other account appeared, causing a great sensation.

Thus read the opening sentence:

"Off Charleston, February 18, 2 P.M. The old flag waves over Sumter and Moultrie, and the city of Charleston. I can see its crimson stripes and fadeless stars waving in the warm sunlight of this glorious day. Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory."

In March the correspondent was again with the Army of the Potomac, witnessing the last battles—Fort Steadman—Hatcher's Run—and the last grand sweep at Five Forks. He entered Petersburg in the morning—rode alone at a breakneck pace to Richmond, entering it while the city was a sea of flame, entered the Spottsville hotel while the fire was raging on three sides—wrote his name large on the register—the first to succeed a long line of Confederate Generals and Colonels. When President Lincoln arrived to enter the city, he had the good fortune to be down by the river bank, and to him was accorded the honor of escorting the party to General Weitzel's headquarters in the mansion from which Jefferson Davis had fled without standing upon the order of departure.

With the fall of Richmond, and the surrender of Appomattox, Mr. Coffin's occupation as an army correspondent ended. During these long years he found time to write three volumes for juveniles—"Days and Nights on the Battle Field," "Following the Flag," and "Winning his Way."

On July 25, 1866, Mr. Coffin sailed from New York for Europe, accompanied by Mrs. Coffin, as correspondent of the Boston Journal. War had broken out between Austria on the one side and Italy and Germany on the other. It was of short duration; there was the battle of Custozza in Italy and Konnigratz in Germany, followed by the retirement of Austria from Italy, and the ascendency of Bismarck over Baron Von Beust in the diplomacy of Europe. It was a favorable period for a correspondent and Mr. Coffin's letters were regularly looked for by the public. The agitation for the extension of the franchise was beginning in England. Bearing personal letters from Senator Sumner, Chief Justice Chase, General Grant, and other public men, the correspondent had no difficulty in making the accquaintance of the men prominent in the management of affairs on the other side of the water. Through the courtesy of John Bright, who at once extended to Mr. Coffin every hospitality, he occupied a chair in the speaker's gallery of the House of Commons on the grand field night when Disraelli, then Prime Minister, brought in the suffrage bill. While in Great Britain Mr. Coffin made the acquaintance not only of men in public life, but many of the scientists,—Huxley, Tyndal, Lyell, Sir William Thompson. At the social Science Congress held in Belfast, Ireland, presided over by Lord Dufferin, he gave an address upon American Common Schools which was warmly commended by the London Times.