In brief, John Chambers possessed15 in person, bearing, and characteristics, the noble heritages of that Scottish race which settled in north Ireland, and which has shown itself, especially in America, one of the most distinctive16 of stocks,[8] rich in mental initiative and nervous energy, with power of manifold adaptation and persistency17. In America the Scotch-Irish have certainly influenced, with power second to that of no other strain or nationality, the making of the American republic.
The people of north Ireland were noted18 for their Calvinism, which in practice is only another word for an inextinguishable love of freedom and democracy. Their faith fruited in free schools, popular education, family worship, familiarity with the Bible, hatred19 of priest-craft, Romanism, and British cruelty and oppression. In their Christianity, some Jewish notions in survival were perhaps put on a level with the teachings of Jesus, and their passionate20 devotion to Sabbath-keeping seemed sometimes to run into idolatry. They were not at all disinclined to controversy21, and many of them were rather fond of a bit of a fight. Among the less sanctified, religion of a certain narrow sort and the contents of the whiskey bottle were very much in demand.
Naturally the British government with its aristocracy and political church, its absentee-landlordism and its corrupt22 parliament—which in the eighteenth century represented land rather than people—had much trouble with this insular23 people of many virtues24 and some glaring defects. The more oppressive measures of the first half and middle of the eighteenth century sent tens of thousands of emigrants25 to America, where they settled, especially in New Hampshire, the Carolinas, and western Pennsylvania. Only too glad to take up arms against the British, they furnished from their ranks for the Continental26 army and patriot27 partisan28 bodies, probably a larger proportion of soldiers than those of any other nationality among the colonists29.[1] Many thousands of the "Yankees" of New England were Irishmen. In North Carolina they were the Regulators whom[9] "Bloody30 Billy" Tryon slaughtered31. In Sullivan's Expedition of 1779, one of the most important campaigns of the Revolution, four of the five generals, and possibly a majority of the rank and file, were born in Ireland, or were of Irish stock. At the banquet held in the forest, on the Chemung River on the site of Elmira, N. Y., on Saturday September 25, 1779, in the pavilion of greenery, one of the thirteen toasts drunk was this,—"May Ireland merit a stripe in the American standard."[2]
[1] See Romance of American Colonization32. Boston, 1898, p. 272.
[2] See the Pathfinders of the Revolution. Boston, 1900, p. 296.
The general dissatisfaction in Ireland, not only among the Catholics who suffered from oppressive penal33 statutes34, but also among the Protestants, broke out in 1798 into a rebellion fomented35 by the numerous secret societies then in the island. To read this page of history brings us to the parentage and birth of John Chambers, who sprung not from "illiterate36" folk, as some have ignorantly imagined, but from intelligent and educated as well as patriotic37 parentage and ancestry38.
William Chambers, the father of our American John, was born in 1768 of fairly well-to-do parents, and had a good education. One of his ancestors was an officer in the British navy. When about twenty-seven years of age, he married a Miss Smythe, or Smith, who was traditionally descended39 from Robert the Bruce, being one of a family which has furnished a long succession of Presbyterian ministers in Scotland, Ireland, and the United States. Their first son and eldest40 child, they named James. Their second son, John, is the subject of our biography. John Chambers was born on September 19, 1797 in Stewartstown, Tyrone county, Ireland.
There are four towns of this name in the United States, settled probably by Irishmen, and the original place in Ireland, in 1880, contained 931 souls.
[10]
William Chambers was a hot-headed, impulsive41 man of great physical vigor42, a superb horseman, and a leader in athletic43 sports. In early manhood he was powerfully influenced in his political opinions and action by the ideas exploited in both the American and the French Revolutions. A fierce patriot, he became a follower44 of the famous Wolf Tone, and in their ups and downs on the wheel of politics, both master and disciple45 found themselves in prison within a few days of each other. William Chambers by some means escaped, but was soon involved in trouble with the British authorities, and so engaged passage to America.
Theobald Wolf Tone (1763-1798), orator46 and advocate of the freedom of Ireland, was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He wrote pamphlets exposing British misgovernment, joined Protestants and Catholics in political fraternity, and founded at Belfast the first Society of United Irishmen, which William Chambers promptly47 joined. It is believed that at this time the green flag of Ireland was adopted, by uniting the orange and the blue. It is certain that at this time, green became the national color, although an emerald green standard was used in the sixteenth century.
One of these United Irishmen was Samuel Brown Wylie, who became the celebrated48 pastor, preacher, and Doctor of Divinity in Philadelphia. He left Ireland in 1797. In God's providence49, exactly one century afterwards, the names of Chambers and Wylie were united in Philadelphia in that of a memorial church.
Wolf Tone, as secretary of the Roman Catholic committee, had already entered into secret negotiations50 with France and had to fly to the United States in 1795. He was afterwards captured on one of the ships of the French squadron, which was to invade Ireland.
The French having occupied Holland, had had a great fleet built in the Zuyder Zee to co-operate with the United[11] Irishmen, but at the battle of Camperduin, off the coast of North Holland, October 11th, 1797, the British Admiral Duncan destroyed the French and Dutch fleet, and the high hopes of those who looked for Irish independence were dashed to the ground. Hundreds of them fled.
Tried and sentenced to death, Wolf Tone committed suicide in his cell, November 19th, 1798. His son afterwards served in the armies of France and the United States and wrote the biography of his father. Ever since 1797, the British navy has had a ship named "Camperdown".
In Scotland I have had the pleasure of visiting the Duncan estate near Dundee, and in Holland of seeing Camperduin and its vicinity, both of land and water.
The defeat of the French fleet and the imprisonment51, trial, and sentence of their leader, Wolf Tone, drove the United Irishmen into an insurrection of despair. At the battle of Vinegar Hill, in May, 1798, the revolt was crushed and the French general Humbert surrendered. Forthwith the British constables52 began their hunt for each one and all of the United Irishmen to land them in prison.
William Chambers was, as we have seen, arrested and thrown into prison at Stewartstown. In some way he escaped and eluded53 those who were seeking him, until he made his way down to the ship, on which his family was leaving Ireland for America. Besides his wife with her little boys, James and John, the latter an infant of three months at the breast, were other emigrants on board. In the hold, there was a stock of cabbages and down among these vegetables the refugee father hid himself. The British officers came on board and searched the ship from stem to stern to find their man, but his wife had encouraged him to get so deeply under the material for sauerkraut, and had covered him up so well, that, unable to find him, they[12] imagined he must have fled elsewhere. It was not until the ship was well out at sea that William Chambers rose up from among the cabbages and made himself visible. In later years, John Chambers visited the Stewartstown prison in which his father had been incarcerated54.
In the slow ship they were knocked about on the wintry Atlantic during a stormy voyage of fourteen weeks, but happily arrived in the Delaware Bay, just when the buds were bursting, and the landscape of spring time putting on its fresh mantle55 of green. After their sea weariness the peach-orchards of Delaware must have looked as "fair as a garden of the Lord."
The Mayflower, which in 1620 bore the Pilgrims to America, was bound for the same beautiful region, then vaguely56 called "Virginia" but these people in 1799 were pilgrims bound to the forests of Ohio, the first of the Pilgrim states beyond the Alleghenies.[3]
[3] See the Pilgrims in their Three Homes, Boston, 1898.
Landing at Newcastle, William Chambers and his little family soon joined a great party of emigrants who were turning their faces westward57. Ohio was then, except for the river valleys and old maize58 lands of the Indians, an almost unbroken forest. In those days, when there was neither canal, railway nor trolley59, such roads as existed, traversed chiefly the long stretches of dark woods. They were made of corduroy, or logs laid crosswise, with a surface covering of earth. Very few counties were as yet named or laid out in the Buckeye State, for it was only five years after General Anthony Wayne's great victory at Maumee Rapids over the Indians, and many of the red men were still in the land. Frontier life was still very rough, both as respects material comfort and the relations of the settlers with the Indians. The second stage of territorial60 life was entered upon in this[13] same year, 1799, and the State Legislature had met for the first time in Cincinnati.
Slowly and painfully the caravan61 of home seekers made its way through Pennsylvania over the great road through Harrisburg and the Juniata valley, Hollidaysburg and Pittsburg, where Scotchmen and Irishmen were still very numerous. Thence floating down the Ohio River, they reached the first county on the western side, which was later named after Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States. The Irish pioneer from Stewartstown helped to lay out the original townships of the county, in which Warren Ridge62 was situated63, often going ahead to blaze some trees along the future road. Later, in 1799, he settled at Smithfield, and ultimately at Mount Pleasant. It was to this last named place that the visits of John Chambers, notably64 in 1843 and 1861, were made.
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1 chambers | |
n.房间( chamber的名词复数 );(议会的)议院;卧室;会议厅 | |
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2 magnetism | |
n.磁性,吸引力,磁学 | |
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3 illustrates | |
给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 ); 说明; 表明; (用示例、图画等)说明 | |
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4 imposing | |
adj.使人难忘的,壮丽的,堂皇的,雄伟的 | |
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5 clan | |
n.氏族,部落,宗族,家族,宗派 | |
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6 illuminated | |
adj.被照明的;受启迪的 | |
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7 penetrated | |
adj. 击穿的,鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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8 loyalty | |
n.忠诚,忠心 | |
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9 immortality | |
n.不死,不朽 | |
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10 mien | |
n.风采;态度 | |
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11 countenance | |
n.脸色,面容;面部表情;vt.支持,赞同 | |
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12 majestic | |
adj.雄伟的,壮丽的,庄严的,威严的,崇高的 | |
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13 pastor | |
n.牧师,牧人 | |
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14 clarion | |
n.尖音小号声;尖音小号 | |
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15 possessed | |
adj.疯狂的;拥有的,占有的 | |
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16 distinctive | |
adj.特别的,有特色的,与众不同的 | |
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17 persistency | |
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18 noted | |
adj.著名的,知名的 | |
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19 hatred | |
n.憎恶,憎恨,仇恨 | |
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20 passionate | |
adj.热情的,热烈的,激昂的,易动情的,易怒的,性情暴躁的 | |
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21 controversy | |
n.争论,辩论,争吵 | |
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22 corrupt | |
v.贿赂,收买;adj.腐败的,贪污的 | |
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23 insular | |
adj.岛屿的,心胸狭窄的 | |
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24 virtues | |
美德( virtue的名词复数 ); 德行; 优点; 长处 | |
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25 emigrants | |
n.(从本国移往他国的)移民( emigrant的名词复数 ) | |
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26 continental | |
adj.大陆的,大陆性的,欧洲大陆的 | |
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27 patriot | |
n.爱国者,爱国主义者 | |
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28 partisan | |
adj.党派性的;游击队的;n.游击队员;党徒 | |
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29 colonists | |
n.殖民地开拓者,移民,殖民地居民( colonist的名词复数 ) | |
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30 bloody | |
adj.非常的的;流血的;残忍的;adv.很;vt.血染 | |
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31 slaughtered | |
v.屠杀,杀戮,屠宰( slaughter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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32 colonization | |
殖民地的开拓,殖民,殖民地化; 移殖 | |
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33 penal | |
adj.刑罚的;刑法上的 | |
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34 statutes | |
成文法( statute的名词复数 ); 法令; 法规; 章程 | |
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35 fomented | |
v.激起,煽动(麻烦等)( foment的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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36 illiterate | |
adj.文盲的;无知的;n.文盲 | |
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37 patriotic | |
adj.爱国的,有爱国心的 | |
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38 ancestry | |
n.祖先,家世 | |
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39 descended | |
a.为...后裔的,出身于...的 | |
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40 eldest | |
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41 impulsive | |
adj.冲动的,刺激的;有推动力的 | |
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42 vigor | |
n.活力,精力,元气 | |
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43 athletic | |
adj.擅长运动的,强健的;活跃的,体格健壮的 | |
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44 follower | |
n.跟随者;随员;门徒;信徒 | |
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45 disciple | |
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46 orator | |
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47 promptly | |
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48 celebrated | |
adj.有名的,声誉卓著的 | |
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49 providence | |
n.深谋远虑,天道,天意;远见;节约;上帝 | |
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50 negotiations | |
协商( negotiation的名词复数 ); 谈判; 完成(难事); 通过 | |
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51 imprisonment | |
n.关押,监禁,坐牢 | |
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52 constables | |
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53 eluded | |
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54 incarcerated | |
钳闭的 | |
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55 mantle | |
n.斗篷,覆罩之物,罩子;v.罩住,覆盖,脸红 | |
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56 vaguely | |
adv.含糊地,暖昧地 | |
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57 westward | |
n.西方,西部;adj.西方的,向西的;adv.向西 | |
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58 maize | |
n.玉米 | |
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59 trolley | |
n.手推车,台车;无轨电车;有轨电车 | |
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60 territorial | |
adj.领土的,领地的 | |
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61 caravan | |
n.大蓬车;活动房屋 | |
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62 ridge | |
n.山脊;鼻梁;分水岭 | |
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63 situated | |
adj.坐落在...的,处于某种境地的 | |
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64 notably | |
adv.值得注意地,显著地,尤其地,特别地 | |
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