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For some time previous to this episode in our family history, the war clouds had been gathering in the usually peaceful sky, and a rupture between England and the United States became more and more probable as the weeks and months went by. The early part of the year 1812 was replete with martial excitement throughout the land. The crisis came on June 18, when war was declared by the United States government against the mother country. Hostile operations were soon after begun and continued through the year with varying results.

The press teemed with the reports of what was going on; the Republican and Federal parties were in bitter contention for and against the war, and all classes of the people were greatly agitated. Military companies of volunteers were formed all over the land, and our own neighborhood and family were not disposed to shirk any duty in the existing emergency. My two oldest brothers became lieutenants in their country’s service, and I, silly child, regretted that I was not old enough to be in the ranks. As the young duck takes to water at the first opportunity, so was I predisposed to patriotism, politics, and war, from the start.

My father took the leading Republican paper of the state, published at Providence, and I read it with eagerness and delight. It was my oracle. The then Republican and Federal parties were hot and violent against each other, and, in our town, nearly balanced. My father had gone over from the latter to the former during the contest between Adams and Jefferson, and it was natural that I should be of the same political faith.

As the Republicans went all lengths for Madison and the war, also for Bonaparte and the French as against the British and their allies, my boyish sympathies ran strongly in the same direction. I not only read all I could find in the papers that related to the existing conflict, but the few books I could get hold of containing information upon the French Revolution, the rise of Bonaparte, his campaigns and strangely varying fortunes.

For some years my young head was as well filled with these and similar themes, as, in my obscure position, it well could be. Still there was room for religion, as I shall presently relate; but my dreamy reveries of political and military glory were legion. I always contrived in my surmisings to have a good cause and a brave army. Then such grand battles were fought, such victories achieved, and such a noble use was made of success, as never took place outside of a prolific imagination. It is well that they all originated, were carried through, and had their historic fame wholly within my own boyish mind. Doubtless some will query how it came to pass that a rustic farmer lad of my age should occupy himself with matters usually entertained only by those more advanced in life. I was undoubtedly unlike others in some respects. My mental as well as physical development was early and rapid in a marked degree, even though external incentives were comparatively few, and opportunities small. I was held closely to the ordinary routine of useful industry, according to my capability.

I had barely common school advantages in winter, the weekly paper, and a very few books of any sort. To be sure, my father was a proprietor with others of a small library several miles distant which his family sometimes patronized; he had also a few volumes at home, and I could now and then borrow one of a neighbor. But the stock to which I had access was, all told, very scanty. Moreover, I was seldom brought into contact with persons above the common grade of country people. There were a few "Revolutionaries," as they were called, in our neighborhood, to whose stories of adventure and perilous experience I delighted to listen. I was allowed to go to one or two town meetings a year and to general muster if not too far away; also, occasionally, to a Fourth of July celebration. These were about all the opportunities for self-improvement I enjoyed.

But of these I made the most, getting out of them everything that one intensely interested could. Every school privilege, every newspaper, every book, every story, every town meeting, muster, or public celebration, was eagerly grasped, sedulously improved, remembered, and turned to good account. I went nowhere to play or kill time. At town meeting, for instance, I was not among the boys, engaged in or witnessing the sports, but with the men where business was going on, scrutinizing all that transpired. In this way I was continuously gathering facts, suggestions, items of information, sufficient to keep my intellect, ambition, and imagination always active. I have learned by experience as well as observation that small resources and opportunities, made the most of, produce greater results than an amplitude, indifferently improved. It is not so much what we have as how we use it that determines attainment. When the old domestic lights were not available to read by in the evening, I could and did read by firelight rather than not read at all. I made good use of what I read by thoroughness and fertile reflection upon it. The text might be brief, the suggestions few, but the comments and amplifications of thought were manifold.

It was during the year 1813, if my memory is not at fault, that an extensive "Reformation," as it was called, or revival of religion, commenced in our vicinity. Elder Zephaniah S. Crossman of the Christian Connexion was the pioneer preacher and for a time almost sole manager of the movement. It spread over a region of country not less than fifty miles square, of which the Ballou neighborhood might be considered the center. My father, mother, brothers Cyrus and Alfred, and finally myself, became converts and were baptized by immersion. A large number of persons, nearly a hundred I should think, professed to have "experienced religion" during the three years of continued excitement. A church of the order named was formed, of which my father was an active member and deacon. For a time it prospered wonderfully. Elder Crossman was not a profound man, but impulsive, magnetic, and insinuating. He did not deal so much in the terrific as in the pathetic and sentimental. He was full of touching anecdotes, illustrations, and appeals to the emotions of his hearers. He could sing, pray, exhort, in a manner well calculated to enlist the sympathies and move the feelings of those who had been living in comparative indifference to spiritual things, and had little intellectual discipline or insight. His matter, manner, and measures were novel and temporarily effective, but wore out with familiarity. Hence the period of his success, remarkable while it lasted, was brief, like that of most sensationalists in any one locality. After a few years he lost his influence and finally abandoned the ministry. Many of his converts fell away and even the church he had established in our midst ere long began to decline, becoming finally extinct.

The "Reformation" took deep and lasting hold of my father, who, from the time of his baptism through several succeeding years, devoted his personal efforts and property with almost Pentecostal zeal to the cause he had espoused. He kept a sort of Ministers’ Tavern, not only opening his house for meetings at all times, but furnishing free entertainment for itinerant preachers, friends from a distance, etc., who flocked in to help on the "work of the Lord," as was claimed, or, as one might be tempted to say, to obtain their full share of "the loaves and the fishes." For it is a fact which gradually became stereotyped on my mind that religion and moral reform are not apt to spoil people’s appetites when hospitality is offered them without cost, however eminent they may be as saints, or contrite and under "deep concern of mind as sinners," or devoted to the good of humanity. At length my father’s patience with this kind of visitors gave out, as his resources were likely to do, and he rebelled, shutting down almost entirely the gates of his long-continued, lavish generosity. This phase of the great revival is, one might say, a ludicrous picture to look back upon with experienced and critical eyes, but one of not infrequent occurrence in the history of religious excitements in this country.

But there is a better side to the movement which must not be ignored. Many persons who had been living on in ignorance and sin, regardless of all obligation to God and their fellow men, were arrested in their worldly, carnal career and converted to a better life. A few, possibly, were disgusted with what was said and done, and hardened into scorners. Some, as stated, started off with good resolutions, but afterward fell back into their old ways. Yet a considerable number were really and lastingly benefited. Of these, I was one. True it is, we made a very crude beginning in what I now understand to be the real Christian life. But it was a beginning and one in my case, without which, I fear, I never should have been on my present religious plane. It was wrought out by solemn and rich spiritual experiences to which I look back with reverential gratitude to my Heavenly Father.

In another respect the revival was productive of good to the people affected by it. It was a wholesome agitation of thought. It moved the mental, as well as moral waters of the community. It awakened inquiry, investigation, and a progressive exercise of the understanding. It left people somewhat in advance, intellectually, of what they were before or probably would have been without it. This is undoubtedly true of all religious and moral excitements, none of them being utterly useless - all dross - though many of them have deplorable drawbacks and imperfections.

Seeing and hearing so much of what deeply impressed others around me, and especially those in my father’s family, it was impossible for me not to become seriously affected. I was too young, however, to have it suspected in those days that I could be converted like older persons. Children of my age were then regarded by many as incapable of being religious in the deeper, experimental sense of the word. Therefore, little notice was taken of me in relation to the matter at first, and no one seemed to think I was a proper subject of conviction, repentance, and faith. Yet I felt that I was so, and it grieved me that I was not treated accordingly. How often I longed to have some minister or church member say something to me which would open the way for me to make known my feelings and desires! Nevertheless, I gave close attention to the meetings, watched the proceedings, heard the preaching, praying, singing, etc., and noted carefully every form of religious demonstration that was made.

I was intensely interested in all these things. I longed to be a Christian, and prayed and wept in secret places, seeking to be humble and penitent enough to receive some heavenly assurance of acceptance with God. I felt the same sense of imperfection and sinfulness which others described in narrating their experiences, but still no sense of divine pardon or approval was realized by me. Neither had I any human advisor or comforter. At length, when only about eleven years old, I retired one day, deeply distressed in mind, to my chamber and threw myself on my knees, in agonizing prayer. I gave myself up to the All-Father in the name of my Savior with the profoundest consciousness of submission, to be dealt with and disposed of as divine wisdom and love should determine. That moment my burden was removed; a heavenly light beamed upon me, and an inexpressible peace was diffused through my soul. I arose from my knees, believing that I was approved by Christ as one of his disciples. I rejoiced with exceeding joy and felt that I was entering upon a new life. I have ever recurred to that blessed hour as the decisive beginning of my Christian pilgrimage. It gave bent and direction to my character and career thenceforward to the present time.

It was not long before the matter began to be known to the church, and I received the sympathy I had so longed to enjoy. The result was that I was recognized as a true convert to Christ when about twelve years of age, was baptized by Elder Crossman, May 21, 1815, and registered as a member of the church in regular standing. My case called out divers comments from those who knew me, many deeming me too young to know what I was about, or to have any proper understanding of religious experiences, obligations, and professions. No doubt I was ignorant and of crude judgment, yet, I am sure, I was not far beneath the majority of those who have made a public profession of religion. I certainly knew that I was committing myself to Christian discipleship, and I think few of my seniors at the time acted more intelligently than myself.

If it be said that, according to my own showing, I mixed up my religion with politics, patriotism, and warlike reveries, it was in the same way that nominal Christians have been doing for sixteen hundred years - in the same way that a vast majority of them are doing now. My theology and ethics were not clear and consistent, but quite as much so as is the case with most members of the so-called Christian Church today, even in the most enlightened denominations. Whatever my folly or imperfection, I have never regretted the step I then took, but have been devoutly thankful to the author of all good that thus early in life I committed myself to his service under the leadership of Jesus Christ.

For a year or two after uniting with the church, I was a constant attendant upon its meetings and established ordinances, and in a few instances ventured to take part in some of the more private and social gatherings, but was usually a silent listener and learner. As time went on and the enthusiasm began to abate, I was gradually brought to realize that I had undertaken a more difficult task than at first appeared obvious. I had pledged myself to a Christian life without counting the cost. I had presumed that my "change of heart" went a great deal further than was actually the case. This arose partly from my own ignorance and partly from the extravagant representations of the older professors and of my religious teachers generally. The notion that "experiencing religion" was a miraculously radical change led me, as it has others, to conclude that if the conversion was genuine the natural propensities and passions would either be eradicated or so neutralized as to be harmless. The truth slowly forced itself upon me that the animal nature in my constitution remained essentially unchanged, and that what had been wrought in me was chiefly the germination of the spiritual element as a contestant against that nature for the throne of my being. Between these two forces or agencies there was to be a long and severe conflict - a warfare of many battles and of fluctuating successes and defeats. But it was a grand gain that the spiritual and divine had been born in my heart and had been unequivocally acknowledged as rightful heir to the kingdom.

The war indicated was not long in coming on. I had the same propensities and passions as before my conversion. If temporarily silenced by strong religious inspirations, they were awake and ready for action as soon as those influences subsided. This was proved in my subsequent experience. First, I was astonished at the strange coldness that crept over me - a sort of spiritual inertia, languor, listlessness, whereby I could neither pray fervently nor watch vigilantly. Then I was grieved to find my quick, irritable temper awake again and as sensitive and imperious as ever, gaining by degrees the mastery over me. It was a sad mystery how I, who had passed through such purifying seasons of thought, feeling, emotion, amounting almost to transfiguration, could be plunged into such depths of an opposite character.

As time passed by, all my natural propensities took their turns at tantalization and taught me of what stuff I was made. In manifold forms each asserted its claim, and in every direction some sort of battle seemed inevitable between the contending forces within. The good and the evil alternately prevailed for a season and the warfare of a long life was inaugurated, as described by the Apostle Paul, in Galatians 5:17 and Romans 7:18-24.

The year 1815 was one of memorable events in the affairs of the world. Peace was restored between the United States and Great Britain. Bonaparte was decisively crushed at Waterloo, and the old order of things was reinstated, as far as possible, on the continent of Europe. A thousand prophecies and interpretations of prophecy that had dazzled ardent, fanatical minds from the commencement of the French Revolution, vanished away or were indefinitely postponed, while the mysteries of Daniel’s vision and the Apocalypse were bequeathed to another generation of expounders. Princes and nobles went into exile and those previously sent into retirement returned to the estates of their ancestors. Republican dreamers of equality and fraternity hid from the tempest of monarchical reaction and almost cursed their brilliant visions, so long cherished and now so apparently falsified. And yet there had been undoubtedly some progress made, some gain realized in behalf of justice and humanity. But at what cost of life, suffering, and treasure!

Among the more eventful local occurrences of the year was the Great Gale, as it is called in New England annals, which swept through Rhode Island and Massachusetts with terrific force at the time of the autumnal equinox, September 23. I recollect being engaged near my father’s sawmill handling lumber with my brothers when the stocks of boards around us, piled up to season, began to be caught away by the rising wind and blown about strangely. We endeavored to pick them up and replace them for a while, but found ourselves borne along and almost lifted from the ground in spite of our utmost exertions. We were soon in danger of limb and life from the flying rubbish and lumber, and betook ourselves to a place of safety at the substantial farmhouse, which was built heavily and strong enough to resist the stoutest storm. The wind increasing, buildings began to be unroofed, smaller structures were moved out of place or completely demolished, apple and forest trees were upturned by the roots, and even the stoutest dwellings creaked and trembled before the mighty gusts that seemed to threaten destruction to everything that happened to be in their way.

The tempest, which began about seven o’clock in the morning, reached its height at noon, when it was little else than a hurricane. Multitudes of people were filled with terror and consternation. I confess that I was, and hastening to my chamber, obtained what relief and composure I could from the unseen world by earnest supplication. I gained something of trust and calmness, but hardly enough to overcome all my fearful apprehensions, for there seemed to be no place of refuge from impending danger and my faith was not of the surest type.

When the storm subsided, the inhabitants of southern New England looked with amazement on the devastations it had caused. Inland the noblest timber lots were covered with prostrate trees and upturned earth, the finest orchards were laid waste, rail fences, wood, and lumber were scattered far and wide, roads were rendered impassable by accumulated debris, and incalculable damage had been done to buildings on every hand, many of the lighter ones being wholly destroyed. In seaport towns and along the shore, still greater havoc, if possible, had been wrought. The ocean rolled in upon the coast its mountainous waves, which, in thickly settled localities, inundated the wharves, streets, and exposed places of business, filled the cellars and lower stories of dwellings and warehouses near the water line, causing the occupants to flee for their lives, and destroying immense amounts of property that chanced to be within reach. The wind drove before it all sorts of sea craft, even the largest vessels, sinking some, wrecking others, and landing many high on the beach, far away from tidewater. The remains of sloops and schooners, gradually dismantled and abandoned, appeared on the sand banks and along the coast for years, victims of the Storm King’s insatiate power. Such was the Great Gale of 1815, the like whereof has never been seen by New Englanders since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock.

Soon after this gale occurred, the Christian Connexion held one of their General Meetings at Assonet, in Freetown, Massachusetts. Thither my father and other members of our church, including myself, went. The convocation continued for several days and was replete with religious interest and edification. Elders Abner Jones and Elias Smith, then at the head of the denomination were present, as were also Elder Frederick Plummer, an eloquent revivalist; Elder Daniel Hix, the solid farmer preacher; Elder Benjamin Taylor, the John-like apostle; and a host of other zealous evangelists of that distinctive faith. Those were the palmy days of the "Christian" order in this section of the country, and we had much stirring exhortation, preaching, and other religious demonstration. Enthusiasm ran high and hopes of a good time coming were in the ascendant. The gathering was refreshing to the assembled hosts and passed off, as a kind of Pentecost, to general satisfaction.

About this time the health of my brother Cyrus began to decline and in spite of all efforts to restore it he gradually sank into an incurable consumption. He was failing during the entire winter following and died on March 7, 1816. This was the first event of the kind in our family after I was old enough to remember it, the one last preceding having been the decease of a sister in 1803, the year of my birth. My brother was deeply religious and had been much exercised by impressions that it was his duty to enter the gospel ministry. But fatal illness ended all expectations in that direction. He departed in sweet hope of a blessed future and with the most perfect composure.

I did not witness the closing scene, but my father, who was with him during the night of his departure, perceiving a change in the countenance of the sick man indicating that death was at hand, said to him as he lay quietly before him, "Cyrus, do you know that you are dying?"

He answered distinctly, "No. Do you think I am?"

"Yes," father responded, "it seems so to me."

For a few moments the invalid was still; then of his own accord, said; "I believe I am dying. I feel differently from what I ever did before."

"Are you afraid to die?" he was asked.

"Oh, no!" was his reply. "I long to go and be with Christ; I am happy." He expressed a wish to be turned upon his other side, when, without a sign of pain, he breathed his last before the summoned family could reach the room.

This event could not fail to make a deep impression on us all. But to his youthful widow, left with two little boys, it was one of the heaviest of bereavements. My brother lacked a few days only of his twenty-seventh birthday, she being somewhat younger. Not many years afterward she married a second husband, who died in 1862, leaving her the second time a widow. She is still living in Franklin, Massachusetts. Thus roll on the ceaseless wheels of time, bringing changes to all human fortunes, but the divine providence faileth not.

This year, 1816, was one of sore visitation to our family, inasmuch as death invaded it a second time before its close. My next older brother, Arnold, an intelligent, amiable young man in the twenty-fifth year of his age, was summoned hence before winter set in. He was not a professor of religion, though always reverential towards it. In comeliness of person, sedateness of mind, urbanity of disposition, and propriety of deportment, he was the flower of our domestic circle. Wherever known, he was universally respected and loved. I had a strong and peculiar affection for him, though he was eleven years older than I. My father, who was beginning to feel that it was desirable to arrange his temporal affairs for old age and death, leaned confidently on this son. His plan was to settle one-half of his real estate on him and the other half on me when I should become of age, himself and my mother to be amply provided for by us, and suitable legacies to be paid in due time to the other children.

With this in view, Arnold, having married in April, brought home his young wife and entered at once upon the management of affairs. But in the autumn he was attacked by a fever which took on dangerous complications, and finally, in defiance of all medical skill, terminated his life on November 27. He passed away in comparative unconsciousness and gave forth no memorable religious manifestations like those of Cyrus just recorded. And so another young heart was widowed, parental bosoms were deeply wounded, and the remaining family circle filled with mourning and distress. A posthumous daughter was born the following spring. By this second bereavement, my father’s cherished plans and fond hopes went down to the dust.

The time passed over by the foregoing narrative brings me to the fifteenth year of my age. It will naturally be imagined what the general routine of my employment and experience was during this period. In the summer I was at work, as a lad in my circumstances might be expected to be, and indeed all through the year, except so much of the winter as I spent in school. And even while attending my usual three months’ school, my time was much broken in upon by a variety of calls at home and abroad, incident to life on a large farm in those days, which, however necessary and unavoidable, resulted in serious hindrances to my educational progress.

Nevertheless, I made up, as far as I could, for deficiency of opportunities and systematic means of mental improvement in every possible way; so that I ripened in scholarship, such as mine was, every year, and stored up for future use all the fragments of general information that came within my reach. My thirst for learning grew with my growth, and before I was fifteen became intense, as is illustrated in the following incident of my experience.

My father had in Providence a considerable number of special customers for butter and other products of his farm which he marketed there from year to year. Among these was Rev. Dr. Messer, president of Brown University, who would occasionally ask him as he went his rounds when he was going to send one of his sons to college, repeatedly urging him to do so. Upon his return home with reports of what Dr. Messer had said to him, I could not help having awakened in me the hope that somehow or other such a lot as was indicated might be mine. At length the hope became so strong and my desire in that direction so great that I begged my father to give me a collegiate education, proposing that the three or four hundred dollars it would cost in those days should be my sole inheritance out of his quite large estate, and confessing myself ready to quitclaim any right or title I might have to what might remain, for the sake of having this grand privilege granted me. So earnest was I in this matter that I believe I would have undertaken to crawl on my hands and knees to Providence, fifteen miles, if by so doing I could have secured my coveted object. My father was often moved in my behalf for the moment when I made my appeals to him, and would say he wished he was able to gratify me, but usually wound up with, "I am too much in debt." If I plead my case with great persistency and zeal, telling him how much better it would be for me to have the knowledge I would acquire than many times what it would cost in money, he would refer me to a distant kinsman who spent his little patrimony in getting a liberal education, but had been unsuccessful and poor all his days. In vain I endeavored to unclinch this nail; for the inexorable conclusion was, "I cannot send you to college as your all and have you basking about in learned poverty." And so all my aspirations of this sort perished in the bud.

I have often in my later years pondered seriously over this matter and wondered what would have been my course and position in life if my ardent longing for a collegiate education had been gratified. In all probability they would have been radically different from what they have been and are. I should have been placed under influences quite dissimilar to those that have been brought to bear upon me, and at a period of life when I was supple and plastic and likely to yield to them. With my natural worldly inclinations and ambitions, the chances are that I should have chosen the profession of law as most likely to open promising avenues to distinction and so-called success. Religion might have possibly become of chief importance to me; possibly literature. This would have depended much on my teachers and patrons, for I should have been easily led and molded by them. I should not have been drawn readily into the medical or clerical professions, as I had no natural inclination for either of them.

But whatever course or calling I had been persuaded to pursue, I should have become so trained and committed to it, as probably never to have broken away from its complicated attachments. In some popular, time-worn channel of respectability and renown, the current of my personal energies would very likely have flowed through life. The independent convictions, principles, and aims now so sacred to me, though so unpopular and, in worldly parlance, impracticable, if not contemptible, would either have found no welcome to my mind or been suppressed within it by the imperious dictates of a temporizing policy. I have hardly a doubt of this. Was it then a blessing or a bane that I was denied the training and culture I so longed to secure? Thousands would doubtless deem it a great misfortune. But I have come to regard it a benefit to myself and mankind. At any rate it was ordered or permitted by Him who overrules all things that my most earnest youthful wishes should not be gratified, nor the crowning ambition of my early years be encouraged. And if there reigns a God worthy to be reverenced and loved by his rational creatures, it was somehow all for the best.

When I was about fourteen years old, one Samuel Forest opened a singing school in our neighborhood - a rather uncommon event in that locality. The young people generally were delighted with the innovation and I hailed it as offering me a desirable privilege. I was gifted with not more than ordinary musical capability and could hope for only moderate attainments in that department of culture, even by dint of proper training. I had learned to sing many current tunes by rote, imperfectly, but greatly needed tuition in the principles and rules of rhythm and vocalization. In this, again, I was completely thwarted. My father was conscientiously opposed to choir singing as a part of divine worship, especially by the "unconverted" or "world’s people." A singing school led directly to this "public mockery," as he called it. If he allowed me to join such a school, he would be an encourager and partaker of the assumed sin. So he peremptorily forbade my attending it. I quietly yielded but with great regret, and never afterward found a favorable opportunity to acquire even the rudiments of a musical education. My two brothers were less submissive and went to the school in spite of the same paternal prohibition. But I never regretted my filial obedience, though I deplored my loss and could not quite endorse my father’s scruples or prejudices, as some would call them. Yet when I have witnessed the levity and almost impiety of some talented occupants of singing galleries, I have been compelled to think their performances were little better than public mockeries. But how much worse the shortcomings of the choir are in the sight of God than those of the pulpit and the press, I will not presume to judge. True worship is more sacred and rare by far than common minds have yet dreamed.

The winter before I was fifteen, Mr. Noah Cook, a young man from Mendon, Massachusetts, taught our school and I attended for the last time in our own neighborhood. He was a live, ambitious teacher and succeeded well. I liked him and made commendable improvement in my several studies. He thought well of me, and amid the rivalries of the schools on different sides of the state line, offered to present me as a grammarian against some that boasted much greater privileges than I enjoyed, and were prone to speak of those less favored than themselves with contempt. Nothing, however, came of it except a little sharpshooting to and fro across the border with the pen.

Mr. Cook was not a religious man and my own spiritual tone was somewhat in decadence, for the revival had burnt out and the zeal of many waxed cold. In this state of things, the influence of Mr. Cook over me was not of the best, since he introduced me to pleasure parties and social gatherings where, though nothing vicious or immoral occurred, there was little to stimulate the better purpose and higher life of the soul. I soon, under some compunction, abandoned these assemblages and devoted much of my spare time to religious study, meditation, and prayer until I reached the anniversary of my birth, April 23, 1818.