fellow and has done good work for me. The pursuit of infantry ceased soon after leaving town, and, except a few shells thrown at random and an occasional shot from the skirts of woods on our flanks, we were let alone. My mouth was dry like a sponge; and about three miles out, I met Stephen Perkins' in a house by the road side over a bowl of pickled beets, the vinegar of which went to my soul. I did not learn of my Lieut.'s fate till late in the day, and thought him lost till I saw him jogging along in a horse cart he had pressed by the way. It was a small one and then contained six beside guns and equipments. Our brave Major was missing, but we hear to-day (Monday 2nd) that he is safe, a prisoner in Winchester. My Sergeant Thurston I fear was wounded and taken. Corporals Woodward, Cleves and Anderson and 10 privates are still among the missing. Private Colvin was shot through

the bowels, but lived until he reached Williamsport, and had only been dead ten minutes when I saw him. He is buried in the graveyard here. My company from its position suffered more than the others on Sunday. I myself did not get into our place of bivouac on Sunday night till half past ten, and then I crawled under a friendly blanket, and with an old boot for a pillow slept until we were called just before dawn, to cross the river. No food nor sleep the night before and a march of 25 miles, then a disastrous battle and a flight of 35 miles, and you see me pretty well used up. Now I am as well as ever after a week's rest, and we are all longing to enter Winchester again with fair chances allowed us.

We are encamped in a beautiful oak grove not far from the river and have a most lovely country all about us. The weather grows warm to-day and we have had constant thunder the last day or two, suggestive of Lunenburg.2

In the absence of Mr. EDWARD STANWOOD, Mr. Smith communicated for him by title the following paper:

1 Stephen G. Perkins, son of Stephen H. Perkins, was born in Boston September 18, 1835, and received a careful preparatory education. He entered Harvard College with the Class of 1855, but was obliged to leave it on account of the weakness of his eyes, and graduated with the Class of 1856. After graduating he spent a year in the Law School, and subsequently joined the Lawrence Scientific School. In July, 1861, he was commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the Second Massachusetts Volunteers, and in the following month was promoted First Lieutenant. He was killed shortly afterward in the battle of Cedar Mountain, August 9, 1862. See Harvard Memorial Biographies, vol. i. pp. 373-381; Brown's Harvard University in the War, p. 97. - EDS.

2 During the latter years of his life Hon. James Savage spent his summers at Lunenburg. See 2 Proceedings, vol. xvi pp. 142, 143; vol. xx. pp. 240, 241.-EDS.

THE SEPARATION OF MAINE FROM MASSACHUSETTS.

The claim of Massachusetts to jurisdiction over the territory now constituting the State of Maine dates from the middle of the seventeenth century. The long and not always peaceable controversy between the Massachusetts Colony and Ferdinando Gorges, grandson of the famous lord-proprietor Sir Ferdinando Gorges, which extended over the years from 1652 to 1677, was ended by the sale of the patent and all the rights appertaining thereto for £1250. Gorges's patent covered the whole of the territory of Maine. King Charles II. was displeased by the transfer, and some writers who have been more inclined to score a point in subsequent controversies between Maine and Massachusetts than to adhere to historical fact have misrepresented the transaction; but Williamson, in his History of Maine, says that "the purchase was fair and open-made at the desire of the provincials themselves, when they were driven to extremities by an Indian war, and when nearly all the assistance and protection they were receiving proceeded from Massachusetts."

It

It is impossible to ascertain when the movement originated for a separation of Maine from Massachusetts. No evidence has ever been presented, so far as I am aware, that a sentiment in favor of separation existed before the close of the Revolutionary War. It may be taken as probable that during that great struggle a suggestion of division would have found few people in Maine to support it. But a movement began and attained formidable proportions one year after the Treaty of Peace in 1783. The separation was not accomplished until thirty-six years later, in 1820. is a singular fact that no full account of this movement, so important to two States of the Union, has ever been prepared. A brief account of the agitation which began in 1784 and came to an end in 1787, or later, is contained in a paper by Daniel Davis in the fourth volume of the first series of the Collections of this Society. Mr. Davis was a member of the second convention in Portland, held in September, 1786. There was a revival of this movement in 1792, of which, I think, no account whatever has been published. For many

1 Mr. Davis was a native of the District of Maine, born in 1762, died in 1835. He was elected a member of this Society in 1792.

years after that time nothing was heard of a separation, but the agitation was renewed in 1815 and continued active until, by the wish of the Maine people, the consent of Massachusetts, and the act of Congress, the new State was organized and admitted to the Union. Many partial accounts of the unsuccessful campaign of 1816 have been prepared, but none of the successful movement in 1819. Moreover, while as to these several attempts some writers have undertaken to represent the situation as it regards the sentiments of the inhabitants of Maine, they have usually done so from a partisan point of view, and have not seen much below the surface. No one, so far as I can discover, has ever considered the question from the Massachusetts end, or taken pains to inquire how the people of this part of the State regarded the matter. It is with a purpose to study these two questions, the motives of the people of Maine, and the attitude of the people of the Commonwealth proper, that I have prepared this paper. In so doing it seems proper to present a connected history of the whole movement, although some of the matter is familiar, and a large part of it is to be found in published essays which are not accessible to the general reader.

Beginning some time in the latter part of 1784, numerous addresses and communications appeared in the Falmouth (now Portland) "Gazette" upon the subject of a separation of the three Eastern counties" of York, Cumberland, and Lincoln, comprising the entire territory of the District of Maine, from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The discussion was temperate. The advocates of separation indulged sparingly if at all in criticism or complaint of the treatment the District received from Massachusetts. They maintained that the District was naturally separated geographically from Massachusetts, and that many hardships naturally resulted from the distance of the community from the capital. They were convinced that economy and convenience demanded a separate government, which they felt competent to organize and to support.

It was about a year after this agitation began when the first active step was taken to make it effective. The Falmouth "Gazette" of the 17th September and 1st October, 1785, printed the following notice:

"Agreeably to a request made and signed by a large and respectable number of persons to the printer of this 'Gazette,' the inhabitants of the three Counties of York, Cumberland, and Lincoln are hereby notified that so many of them as are inclined or can conveniently attend, are requested to meet at the Meeting House of the Revd. Messrs. Smith and Deane in Falmouth on Wednesday, the fifth day of October next, to join in a conference then and there to be held on the proposal of having the said counties erected into a separate government; and, if it should be thought best, to form some plan for collecting the sentiments of the people on the subject and pursue some orderly and regular method of carrying the same into effect."

In accordance with this notice thirty-three gentlemen assembled at the time and place mentioned, in numbers almost equally divided between the three counties. They organized by the choice of William Gorham as President and Stephen Longfellow as secretary. After the occasion which had called. them together had been discussed and the movement justified, it was voted that a committee of seven, of which Peleg Wadsworth was chairman, chairman, "should apply to the several towns and plantations in said counties, requesting them to send delegates to meet" at Falmouth on the first Wednesday in January, 1786, for the purpose of considering the expediency of the separation proposed.

This movement attracted the attention of the government of Massachusetts. By advice of the Council Governor James Bowdoin brought it to the notice of the General Court in his address on October 20, 1785. "There is another matter, gentlemen," he said, "essentially important to the well-being of the Commonwealth which claims your most serious attention, and which, by the unanimous advice of the Council, I now lay before you. It refers to a design against the Commonwealth of very evil tendency, being calculated for the purpose of effecting the dismemberment of it. That design has been for some months evident by a great number of publications in the Falmouth Gazette' calling upon the people of the Counties of York, Cumberland, and Lincoln to assemble together for the purpose of separating themselves from the government of this Commonwealth and of withdrawing from the duty and allegiance they owe to it. In consequence of these calls about thirty persons, as I am informed, assembled on the 5th instant at the Meeting House in Falmouth, and voted to choose a com

mittee to draft a circular letter to the several towns and plantations in those three counties, requesting them to meet in convention by their delegates on the first Wednesday of January next to consider the expediency of the said counties being formed into a separate State. The duty I owe to the Commonwealth in general and to the people of those counties in particular, indispensably obliges me to lay this matter before you, that you may take such measures regarding it as your regard for the collective body of the Commonwealth shall dictate."

The reply of the General Court was, as usual, an echo of the address. It declared "that attempts by individuals, or bodies of men, to dismember the State are fraught with improprieties and danger." The matter was not allowed to rest there, for the journal of the House of Representatives for November 11 mentions a report of the committee to which the above passage from the governor's address was referred, presented by Mr. Baker of Worcester, recommending "that a committee of both Houses be appointed to bring in a bill declaratory of the allegiance which all the inhabitants of the territory of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts owe to the government of the same agreeably to the Constitution, and descriptive of those (particulars)1 [acts and proceedings] which shall amount to a renunciation of allegiance, and so constructed as most effectively to secure the Commonwealth against the ill consequences of any (dismemberment whatever) [attempts to dismember the same]." The report was amended and adopted. The Senate members of the committee appointed in accordance with the recommendation were John Sprague and John Lowell. The journals of the two Houses do not make it appear that the committee ever reported.

Notwithstanding executive and legislative disapproval, the convention was held on January 4, 1786. A committee of nine members was appointed to prepare a statement of the evils and grievances under which the people of the District labored, and an estimate of the cost of a separate government as compared with the amount the people of Maine paid to Massachusetts. The grievances reported by the committee were nine in number: (1) that the interests of the two communities were different, and that Massachusetts did not under

1 Original report in parenthesis, amendments in brackets.