Devils and Rebels: The Making of Hawthorne's Damned Politics by Larry J. Reynolds

Author:Larry J. Reynolds
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press

Decapitated Surveyor

Despite his aversion to war, Hawthorne at times expressed admiration for those who approached battle reluctantly, dispassionately, and with kindness in their hearts, as if that were possible. In “The Custom-House,” he describes the old general James Miller in such terms. In the War of 1812, among other feats, Miller led a charge on the hill at Lundy's Lane and, in intense and deadly fighting, captured the British battery there. Hawthorne writes,

What I saw in him—as evidently as the indestructible ramparts of Old Ticonderoga, already cited as the most appropriate simile—were the features of stubborn and ponderous endurance, … and of benevolence, which, fiercely as he had led the bayonets on at Chippewa or Fort Erie, I take to be of quite as genuine a stamp as what actuates any or all the polemical philanthropists of the age. He had slain men with his own hand, for aught I know;—certainly they had fallen, like blades of grass at the sweep of a scythe, before the charge to which his spirit imparted its triumphant energy;—but, be that as it might, there was never in his heart so much cruelty as would have brushed the down off a butterfly's wing. (1:22)

Ironically, the political manipulation of this old warrior by Hawthorne's allies became the primary reason Hawthorne lost his own job as surveyor.

According to the Salem Whigs, the old general faced “privation and suffering”27 because of the machinations of Hawthorne and his fellow Salem Democrats, who apparently persuaded the general to step down from his job as collector before Taylor took office. With the post vacated, Polk replaced the general with his son Colonel Ephraim Miller (a friend of Hawthorne and other Democrats), who, as a nominal Whig, did not face removal by Taylor. In exchange for his appointment, the younger Miller secretly agreed not to replace the Democrats in the customhouse with Whigs.28 Hawthorne participated in this intrigue in December 1848 by sending to his new acquaintance Senator Atherton the petition calling for Ephraim Miller's appointment, asking him to take “the trouble of laying it before the President.” Hawthorne attached a note declaring, “I certify that the gentlemen, whose signatures are contained in the within list, are persons known to me, & that they comprise to the best of my recollection all the leading merchants & importers of this district” (16:253 n. 1). According to Sophia Hawthorne, Charles Upham, leader of the Salem Whigs, having read the petition in Washington in the summer of the following year, copied it incorrectly to use against Hawthorne.

He left out “to the best of his recollection,” and made it read that these were all the merchants of Salem. Stephen C. Phillips's name was not signed. And so Mr. U. brings this to prove that Mr. Hawthorne is impeachable for want of veracity! He tried hard to find that my husband acted politically with regard to Colonel Miller's appointment; and as this was impossible, he thought he would try to prove him a false witness…. He

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