The modern age of electricity was
ushered in during Mr. Coffin’s early manhood.
The telegraph, which has given the world a new nervous
system, being less an invention than an evolution,
had from the labors of Prof. Joseph Henry, in
Albany, and of Wheatstone, of England, become, by
Morse’s invention of the dot-and-line alphabet,
a far-off writer by which men could annihilate time
and distance. One of the first to experiment
with the new power old as eternity, but
only slowly revealed to man was Carleton’s
brother-in-law, Prof. Moses G. Farmer, whose
services to science have never yet been adequately
set forth.
This inventor in 1851 invited Mr.
Coffin to leave the farm temporarily, to construct
a line of wire connecting the telegraphs of Boston
with the Cambridge observatory, for the purpose of
giving uniform time to the railroads. In this
Carleton was so successful that, in the winter and
spring of 1852, he was employed by Mr. Moses Farmer
to construct the telegraph fire alarm, which had been
invented by his brother-in-law. The work was
completed in the month of May, and Charles Carleton
Coffin gave the first alarm of fire ever transmitted
by the electric apparatus. The system was a great
curiosity, and many distinguished men of this country,
and from Europe, especially from Russia and France,
came to inspect its working.
Commodore Charles Wilkes, of the United
States Navy, who had returned from his brilliant expedition
in Antarctic regions, but who had not yet made himself
notorious by a capture of the Confederate commissioners,
proposed to use this electric system in ascertaining
the velocity of sound. Cannon were stationed at
various points, the Navy Yard, Fort Constitution,
South Boston, and at the Observatory, in front of
which was an apparatus and telegraph connecting with
the central office. Each cannon, when fired,
heated the circuit. Each listener at the various
points was to snap a circuit key the moment the sound
reached him. In the central office was a chronograph
which registered each discharge in succession.
The distances from each cannon muzzle had been obtained
by triangulation. In the calm, still night, Commodore
Wilkes and Professor Farmer stood in the cupola of
the State House with the chronograph, holding their
watches, and noting the successive flashes.
The experiments were not very satisfactory.
Mr. Coffin, perhaps, possibly, because he was not
a skilled artillerist, had the mortifying experience
of seeing the apparatus in front of his cannon blown
into fragments, but he made notes of the other reports.
After a series of trials, the approximate result was
obtained, that in a moderately humid atmosphere the
velocity of sound was a little under nine hundred
feet per second.
The exactions of the fire alarm service,
owing to its crude construction, which compelled the
attendants to be ever on the alert, told severely
on Carleton’s’ nervous system. He
therefore resigned in October, and went to Cincinnati
to get the system introduced there. Herds of
hogs then roamed the streets, picking up their living
around the grain houses, and in the gutters.
After three weeks of exhibition and canvassing, he
found that Cincinnati was not yet ready for such a
novelty, and so he returned to Boston.
The following winter was passed in
Boscawen without financially remunerative employment,
but in earnest study, though in the spring a supply
of money came pleasantly and unexpectedly. He
undertook to negotiate a patent for an invention of
Professor Farmer’s, and after considerable time
disposed of it to a New York gentleman. Carleton’s
net profits were $1,850.
This was an immense sum to him, and
he once more resolved to try Boston, and did so.
He made his home, however, in Malden, renting half
of a small house on Washington Street. Having
inked his pen on agricultural subjects, descriptive
pieces, and even on a few poems, he took up newspaper
work. Entering the office of the Boston Journal
he worked without pay, giving the Journal three
months’ service in writing editorials, and reporting
meetings. This was simply to educate himself
as a journalist. At that time very few reporters
were employed on the daily papers. What he says
of this work had better be told in his own words:
“It was three months of hard
study and work. I saw that what the public wanted
was news in condensed form; that the day for stately
editorials was passing away; that short statements
and arguments, which went like an arrow straight to
the mark, were what the public would be likely to
read. I formed my style of writing with that in
view. I avoided long sentences. I thought
that I went too far in the other direction and clipped
my sentences too short, and did not give sufficient
ornamentation, but I determined to use words of Saxon
rather than of Latin or Norman origin, to use ‘begin,’
instead of ‘commence,’ as stronger and
more forcible.
“I selected the speeches of
Webster, Lord Erskine, Burke, and other English writers,
for careful analysis, but soon discarded Brougham and
Burke. I derived great benefit from Erskine and
Webster, for incisive and strong statement, also
Shakespeare and Milton. At that time I read again
and again the rhapsodies of Christopher North,
Professor Wilson, and the ‘Noctes Ambrosianae,’
and found great delight, also, in reading Bryant’s
poems.
“It was the period of white heat in the anti-slavery
struggle, when the public heard the keenest debates, the sharpest invective. At
an anti-slavery meeting the red-hot lava was always on the flow. The
anti-slavery men were like anthracite in the furnace, red hot, white hot, clear
through. I have little doubt that the sharpness and ruggedness of my writing is
due, in some degree, to the curt, sharp statements of that period. When men were
feeling so intensely, and speaking with a force and earnestness unknown in these
later years, a reporter would insensibly take on something of the spirit of the
hour, otherwise his reports would be limp and lifeless. I was induced to study
stenography, but the system then in use was complex and inadequate, hard to
learn. I was informed by several stenographers that if I wanted a condensed
report it would be far better to give the spirit, rather than attempt the
letter.”
During the summer of 1854, Mrs. Coffin
being in poor health, they visited Saratoga together,
passed several weeks at the Springs, and visited the
battle-field where his grandfather, Eliphalet Kilborn,
had fought. Carleton picked up a bullet just uncovered
by the plow, and in that bright and beautiful summer’s
day the whole scene of 1777 came back before him.
From the author’s map in “Burgoyne’s
Defence,” giving a meagre sketch of the battle,
he was able to retrace the general lines of the American
breastworks. This was the first of scores of
careful study on the spot and reproduction in imagination
of famous battles, which Carleton made and enjoyed
during his life.
He was also present at the International
Exhibition in New York, seeing, on the opening day,
President Franklin Pierce and his Cabinet. The
popular idol of the hour was General Winfield Scott,
of an imposing personal appearance which was set off
by a showy uniform. He was the hero of the two
wars, and expected to be President. In personal
vanity, in bravery, and in military science, Scott
was without a superior, one of the ablest officers
whose names adorn the long and brilliant roll of the
United States regular army.
Carleton wrote of General Scott: “A man of great egotism, an
able general, but who never had any chance of an election. He was the last
candidate of a dying political party which never was aggressive and which was
going down under the slave power, to which it had allied itself.”
Mr. Coffin writes further: “The passage of the Compromise
Measures of 1850 gave great offence to the radical wing of the anti-slavery
party. The members of that wing were very bitter towards Daniel Webster for his
part in its passage. I was heart and soul in sympathy with the grand idea of
anti-slavery, but did not believe in fierce denunciation as the best argument. I
did not like the compromise, and hated the odious fugitive slave law, but I
nevertheless believed that Mr. Webster was sincere in his desire to avert
impending trouble. I learned from Hon. G. W. Nesmith, of Franklin, president of
the Northern railroad, that Mr. Webster felt very keenly the assaults upon him,
and the manifest alienation of his old friends. Mr. Nesmith suggested that his
old-time neighbors in Boscawen and Salisbury should send him a letter expressive
of their appreciation of his efforts to harmonize the country, and that the
proper person to write the letter was the Rev. Mr. Price, ex-pastor of the
Congregational church in West Boscawen, in whom the county had great confidence.
A few days later, at the invitation of Mr. Price, I went over the rough draft
with him in his study. The letter was circulated for signatures by Worcester
Webster, of Boscawen, distantly related to Daniel. It is in the published works
of the great statesman, edited by Mr. Everett, together with his reply.”
In May, 1854, Carleton saw the Potomac
and the Capitol at Washington for the first time.
The enlargement of the house of the National Legislature
had not yet begun. He studied the paintings in
the rotunda, which were to him a revelation of artistic
power. He spent a long time before Prof.
Robert W. Weir’s picture of the departure of
the Pilgrims for Delfshaven.
Here are some of his impressions of
the overgrown village and of the characters he met:
“Washington was a straggling
city, thoroughly Southern. There was not a decent
hotel. The National was regarded as the best.
Nearly all the public men were in boarding-houses.
I stopped at the Kirkwood, then regarded as very good.
The furniture was old; there was scarcely a whole
chair in the parlor or dining-room. It was the
period of the Kansas struggle. The passions of
men were at a white heat. The typical Southern
man wore a broad-brimmed felt hat. Many had long
hair and loose flowing neckties. There was insolence
and swagger in their deportment towards Northern men.
“I spent much time in the gallery of the Senate. Thomas
Benton, of Missouri, was perhaps the most notable man in the Senate. Slidell, of
Louisiana, whom I had seen in New Hampshire the winter before, speaking for the
Democracy, and Toombs, of Georgia, were strongly marked characters. Toombs made
a speech doubling up his fists as if about to knock some one down.”
From Washington, Carleton went to
Harrisburg, noticing, as he passed over the railway,
the difference between free and slave territory.
“A half dozen miles from the boundary between
Maryland and Pennsylvania was sufficient to change
the characteristics of the country.” The
Pennsylvania railway had just been opened, and Altoona
was just starting. Carleton visited the iron
and other industries at Pittsburg, and described his
journey and impressions in a series of letters to
the Boston Journal. Having inherited from
his father eighty acres of land in Central Illinois,
near the town of Lincoln, he went out to visit it.
At Chicago, a bustling place of 25,000 inhabitants,
he found the mud knee-deep. Great crowds of emigrants
were arriving and departing. Going south to La
Salle he took steamer on the Illinois River to Peoria,
reaching there Saturday night. Not willing to
travel on Sunday, he went ashore. After attending
service at church, he asked the privilege of playing
on the organ. A few minutes later, he found a
large audience listening with apparent pleasure.