ILLIAM GOODELL 
 
 BORN IN COVENTRY, N. Y. 
 
 October 23 1 //, 1792. 
 
 DIED IN JANESVILLE, WIS. 
 
 February ijth, i8f8. 
 
 ve fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith : hence- 
 forth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, 
 . '.- me at that day : and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing." 
 
 CHICAGO:
 
 UCSB LIBRARY 
 
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 7 
 
 ; aneJvte, 
 
 a
 
 IN MEMORIAM, 
 
 WILLIAM GOODELL 
 
 BORN IN COVENTRY, N. Y. 
 
 October l^iti, 2792. 
 
 DIED IN JANESVILLE. WIS., 
 
 February i^t/t, 1878. 
 
 " I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course. I have kept the faith : hence- 
 forth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, 
 shall give me at that day : and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.' 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 
 GlILBERT & WlNtHELL, PRINTERS, 164 CLARK ST. 
 1879.
 
 WILLIAM GOODELL 
 
 William Goodell, for half a century a zealous laborer in the 
 anti-slavery, temperance, and kindred reforms, was the son of 
 Frederic and Rhoda (Guernsey) Goodell, and was born in Cov- 
 entry, Chenango County, N. Y., Oct. 25, 1792. The place of 
 his birth is situated in what is now a part of Broome County, 
 and was at the time a pioneer settlement in the then " far west." 
 He is supposed to have been the first white child born in that 
 vicinity. He was a lineal descendant of Robert Goodell, one of 
 the early settlers of Danvers, then Salem, Mass., where some of 
 his descendants still live. Robert came from Ipswich, England, 
 in 1634, with a wife and three children. 
 
 Among the heir-looms of some of Robert Goodell's de- 
 scendants is found a coat of arms, granted to " Goodell, Earl 
 Stonham, County Suffolk, March i, 1612," which gives a slight 
 indication of the rank of his remoter ancestors, though none of 
 their character. This latter, however, is indicated by the char- 
 acter of Robert's descendants in this country, who have been 
 noted for sobriety and integrity. In their ranks have been 
 clergymen who preached temperance, and laymen who practiced 
 it, at a time when drinking customs were all but universal in 
 even the most intellectual and religious circles. We have record 
 of one John Goodell of Worcester, a descendant of Robert, but 
 belonging to another branch of the family from that of the sub- 
 ject of this sketch, who died in 1827, aged 82 years, leaving a 
 bequest of $1,000 to a temperance society founded in part by 
 himself. 
 
 The name was formerly spelled variously; as Goodell, 
 Goodall, Goodale, Godall, and even Goodie, according to the 
 the taste or judgment of the writer. Robert spelled his name 
 Goodell, as do most of his descendants. It is worthy of remark 
 that a family noted for exceptional sobriety and abstinence from 
 intoxicating liquors, was also noted for longevity, many of its 
 members living till past their Soth year. 
 
 Of other of Robert Goodell's descendants may be mentioned 
 the late Rev. Wm. Goodell, D. D., missionary to Constantinople 
 and translator of the Scriptures; Capt. Silas Goodell of the
 
 Revolutionary War, referred to in the history of Norwich, 
 Conn.; the late Judge Richard Goodell. Jr., of Jefferson, N. Y., 
 speaker of the N. V. Assembly, afterwards keeper of Auburn 
 State Prison, a pioneer of prison reform, and much beloved for 
 his kindness to the prisoners under his charge; and A. C. 
 Goodell, Esq., clerk of the court at Salem, Mass., distinguished 
 as an antiquarian scholar and a geneologist, particularly of tht- 
 Goodell and Putnam families. 
 
 Of Daniel Goodell, a member of this family, who flourished 
 more than a century ago, and who was a member of the Colonial 
 Legislature of Mass., where his stern morality and inflexibility 
 of purpose marked him as one of the "Last of the Puritans," 
 the following anecdote is told : 
 
 "On an annual election day, after the customary election 
 sermon had been preached, and the assembled representatives 
 and 'standing order' clergy of the commonwealth, with the 
 governor elect, had been dining together, they were seated in 
 social converse, smoking their long pipes. Daniel Goodell, alone 
 in his singularity, had no pipe, a silent rebuke amid the clouds of 
 degeneracy around him. A servant, supposing he had been 
 omitted in the distribution, hastened before him with a waiter 
 laden with pipe and tobacco. Daniel shook his head, silently 
 but sternly. ' Mr. Goodell, don't you smoke, sir?' enquired a 
 venerable D. D. who was puffing by his side. 'No, sir!" said 
 Daniel, with an emphasis and solemnity that riveted all eyes upon 
 him. 'No, sir! I have ways enough of serving the devil with- 
 out smoking tobacco!' The shock was electric. No one 
 answered ; no one smiled. Clerical faces looked blank perhaps 
 blushed for tobacco smoking had always been held a heresy 
 and a scandal in the better days of the commonwealth. Puffing 
 became laborious, and, after a few faint whiffs, the ashes were 
 knocked out and the pipes laid aside." 
 
 Thomas Goodell, a grandson of Robert of Salem, was 
 among the earliest settlers of Pomfret, Conn. He married 
 Sarah Horrell, a young lady of Irish origin, noted for her self- 
 reliance, independence, energy and perseverance. Leaving his 
 wife behind him, in Roxbury, Mass., until he could build a log 
 house in Pomfret and return for her, she became impatient of 
 the delay and set out on foot to join him, walking seventv miles 
 or more through the woods, checkered here and there with a 
 new settlement, till the end of the third day rewarded her effort, 
 and she found her unfinished home, and a sick husband only too
 
 glad to receive the administrations of his energetic spouse. 
 
 A son of this Thos. Goodell, named Zechariah, married Han- 
 nah Cheney. Among their children was a second Zechariah, who 
 also married a Hannah Cheney, his cousin. The second Zech- 
 ariah and Hannah were the grandparents of William Goodell, 
 the suhject of this memoir. The junior Hannah was the 
 daughter of Henry Cheney of Roxbury, Mass. The Cheney 
 family was connected with the Bryants, the Fessendens, and the 
 Sumners of that period. Hannah spent her youthful days with 
 an uncle in Boston, where she enjoyed high intellectual and 
 social advantages. She attended the ministry of the Rev. 
 Thomas Prince, A. M., of the old South Church. She was a 
 convert of Whitefield's, and had heard President Edwards 
 preach. Samuel Adams was a friend and frequent guest of her 
 uncle. She was a woman of exceptional strength of mind and 
 character, and improved her advantages to the utmost, so that 
 all through her life, and in her old age, she was respected and 
 venerated by all who knew her, for her rare intelligence and 
 sound judgment. A leading statesman of Connecticut, after 
 conversing with her, said (and this was in pre-" woman's rights 1 ' 
 days ! ) " she ought to have been in Congress." Even her min- 
 ister, in the days when the clergy formed a sort of intellectual 
 aristocracy, deferred to her on difficult ecclesiastical questions, 
 and deep points of metaphysics and polemics. Her powers of 
 memory made her a kind of living encyclopedia of the litera- 
 ture of the times. English history and literature were as famil- 
 iar to her as her Bible. In describing her, as he remembered 
 her, the subject of this sketch said : " Her acquaintance with the 
 biographies of the principal colonists, and the political and 
 ecclesiastical history of the colonies, was more extensive and 
 minute than that of any other person I ever knew." She is 
 supposed to have been married in Boston, and bits of her wedding 
 dress, a heavy white figured silk, preserved by her grand- 
 children, serve to indicate the wealth and social standing of her 
 family. But she left all these fascinating surroundings cheerfully, 
 to become the wife of a plain country farmer from Connecticut, 
 and entered into rural life with zest and enthusiasm, combining 
 household cares with intellectual pursuits in such a manner as to 
 secure the well being of both the body and soul of herself and 
 family. Her society was always sought and prized by the most 
 intelligent and literary portion of the surrounding community. 
 
 Zechariah Goodell, Jr., stood high in the community, holding
 
 various offices of public trust, and was at one time a lieutenant 
 in the- Ke\olutiouary War. Of the nine children of Zechariah, 
 Jr., and Hannah Goodell, Frederic, the eldest, was among the 
 lirst settlers of Coventry, Chenango County, N. Y. He had> 
 however, previously served in the Revolutionary War, and had 
 taught school several terms in Pomfret, and afterward in Dutch ess 
 County, N. Y. In the latter place he found and married Rhoda 
 ( iuernsev. 
 
 The Guernsey family was of English (some say parti v of 
 French) origin, and came from Litchfield, Conn., to Dutchess 
 Co., N. Y., some time hefore the Revolution. A distinguishing 
 trait of the family was a fondness for arguing upon political and 
 theological suhjects, upon which there was considerable differ- 
 ence of opinion among them. John Guernsey, the father of 
 Rhoda, and his brother Peter, disagreed on the then exciting 
 topic of the Revolutionary War. Peter was ripe for revolu- 
 tion; John inclined to peace. Many and long protracted were 
 the discussions which took place between these two brothers, 
 drawing together large audiences of all the farmers around them. 
 They lived about seven miles apart. Whenever either of them 
 was seen on horseback, "going over the mountain" to his 
 brother's, the watchword went out, " Now for a debate of the 
 Guernseys on the war question!" The hoe or the scythe was 
 dropped in the field; the plow was stopped in the new furrow; 
 all hastened to the arena of discussion, where for hours, some- 
 times for a day or two, the facts and argument, pro and con 
 were presented. For some months the voice of the neighbor- 
 hood was divided between them, but the prevailing vote was at 
 last on the side of "old uncle Peter." But John Guernsey was 
 never stigmatized as a tory; he advocated the rights of the col- 
 onies, only maintaining that they could be preserved without 
 bloodshed. Rhoda Guernsey was one of fifteen children, all of 
 whom had large families, numbering ninety-one grand-children 
 of John Guernsey. Peter B., a brother of Rhoda, settled Nor- 
 wich, N. Y. 
 
 Frederic Goodell and Rhoda Guernsey were married in the 
 fall of 1788, and, 'sometime after, removed to Coventry, where 
 they lived a pioneer life of great privation and hardship, from 
 the effects of which both died at a comparatively early period. 
 
 Of their six sons, William, the third, the subject of this 
 sketch, was born Oct. 25, 1792, in a log house in the woods. 
 Being in delicate health in his early childhood, he was kept much
 
 within doors, with his motherland her scanty library, consisting 
 of the Bible, Watts' Psalms and Hymns, Hart's Hymns, the 
 Methodist Pocket Hymn Book, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 
 the writings of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe, Wesley's Sermons, 
 Fletcher's Appeal, and a volume or two of the Spectator and 
 Guardian, as his early companions. Hjs feebleness and long 
 confinement, during these forming yeai's of his life, fostered his 
 taste for thought and study, and even for composition, which he 
 commenced before he was eight years old; his first efforts being, 
 as was natural under the circumstances, the scribbling of religious 
 verses on bits of bark. Religious impressions were then made, 
 and aspirations kindled which moulded his character for life. 
 His parents were both devoted Christians, and he dated his own 
 conversion from his seventh year. Church privileges were scanty 
 and highly prized in that new settlement; families trudged afoot, 
 or were drawn on ox-sleds, through the woods for miles, to re- 
 ligious meetings held in log school houses or dwellings. Metho- 
 dist circuits were early established in the neighborhood; a "class" 
 was formed, and joined by Frederic Goodell, who was educated 
 a Presbyterian, and by his wife, who had been a Baptist. This 
 fact indicates little sectarian prejudice on their part. The name 
 of William was soon added. This was the beginning of a " So- 
 ciety " which is still in existence, with a church near the Goodell 
 homestead, where still resides Rev. Ezekiel Goodell, a local 
 preacher, the only surviving son of Frederic and Rhoda Goodell. 
 Here, in the dense forests, amid the howling of wolves (where 
 now is heard the car- whistle) were laid, in a degree, the moral 
 foundations of whatever has been of value in the life and labors 
 of William Goodell. 
 
 Of his parents, as they impressed him in his childhood, he 
 wrote years afterward,, thus : 
 
 " I seem to see my mother as she then was somewhat tall 
 and slender, with fair complexion, light blue eyes, but glossy 
 black hair; her voice was singularly soft and musical, her motions 
 easy and graceful, her manners gentle, her bearing sedate, calm, 
 thoughtful ; her smile sweet. She was in every way a superior 
 woman. During my feeble childhood I experienced, from her, 
 unusual attention and tenderness, and enjoyed the advantage of 
 that instruction with which her own mind was richly stored, and 
 which she had a peculiar faculty of imparting with ease. I never 
 knew any other person with such an exquisite sensibilitv, with 
 such a perfect equanimity. Nature had given her the most lively
 
 8 
 
 feelings, hut Christian meekness had endued her with a patient 
 fortitude 1 more noble and unconquerable than stoical firmness. 
 My father too had hi IK- eyes and brown hair; his air somewhat 
 stern, hut not rough. His countenance was cheerful and pleasant, 
 
 though: IBS brows were knit with habitual meditation, delibera- 
 tion, and care. Sometimes pla\ fill with his children, he main- 
 tained his parental authority. Manlv in his deportment, he was 
 never frivolous, never acted a boyish part among men. To my 
 father and mother, human life and its responsibilities were no 
 pastime amusements, no vain parade of appearances, no idle 
 Chains. They had to do with sober realties in the life thev were 
 then living, and in the life to which thev were looking forward. 
 Sincerity, earnestness, activity, forecast, conscientiousness, were 
 the outstanding and deep seated traits of their characters." 
 
 Of his early recollections he writes: 
 
 " It has been a matter of inquiry with some, at how earlv 
 an age children may so take notice of objects and incidents as to 
 remember them distinctly in after years. Perhaps I can not do 
 much toward determining that question, but I can certainlv re- 
 member some things that must have taken place before I was 
 much accustomed to walking, perhaps before I had commenced. 
 I very well remember having been wrapped up in a blanket and 
 carried out, in the evening, b\ mv father, in company with my 
 mother, to our neighbor Newton's. Peeping out of the blanket, 
 I saw the nearly round moon in the east, one edge of it slowly 
 coming out from behind a dark cloud. I knew not what it was, 
 or could be, and a sensation of delight, awe, and \\onder, crept 
 over me, which I have never forgotten. The sight of a partly 
 concealed moon never fails to renew, vividly, the same feeling, 
 and to carrv my mind back to my first view of it. 
 
 "Education begins with the beginning of conscious existence, 
 and the influences first exerted upon us, though we may forget 
 them, have an important bearing upon our development and our 
 destiny. On thing to which I am much indebted I do not forget, 
 and that is, the quiet way in which my mother imprinted upon 
 my mind and memory, I know not how mam beautiful verses 
 and hymns, chiefly Watts' Divine Songs for Children. When- 
 ever anything troubled me, she would call me to her, and begin 
 to repeat to me a hymn, line by line, or a half a line at a time, 
 which I was expected to lisp after her. This she would do as 
 if conferring some privilege upon me, or as if comforting or con- 
 soling me, under my little troubles, and so I can remember having
 
 regarded it. Whatever the matter was, a line or two of a hymn 
 would turn my attention from it, and a new train of ideas, how- 
 ever imperfect or indistinct, had taken the place of my former 
 ones. 'Prettv verses' were the sugar plums with which mv 
 mother was wont to quiet me. At other times I would ask her 
 to 'tell me some verses;' and I would follow her wherever she 
 went, in her work, in doors or out about the house, to the out- 
 door oven, to the spring, or to the garden spot, repeating verses 
 after her. In this way I learned many hymns, probably before 
 I knew my letters; and though I could have said them without a 
 prompter, I took it for granted that my mother must first say 
 them to me, and that I must say them after her. I remember 
 how delighted I was some years afterwards, when my father 
 brought home the little book that contained most of them, with 
 some others, which I was then able to read. The relish for re- 
 ligious poetry, thus earlv awakened, has remained with me ever 
 since. I have lived the better portion of my life in the atmos- 
 phere of sweet psalms and hymns." 
 
 The youthful William early attracted attention for his faculty 
 for "making verses," and his singing; his childish voice being un- 
 usually sweet and clear. These gifts earned for him the soubri- 
 quet of "nightingale," and were encouraged by his parents and 
 relatives, who united to the practical caste of character which 
 their lives of toil had imparted, a taste for the refinements of 
 intellectual and moral culture. 
 
 In his eleventh year came his first great sorrow, the loss of 
 his mother, who died of a slow nervous fever, brought on by 
 toil and privations. A comfortable frame house had succeeded 
 the log hut of her earlier wedded life, but she only entered it to 
 die, at the early age of thirty-seven, leaving five sons surviving 
 her. The children never forgot their mother and her teachings. 
 When long past his three score and ten years, William Goodell 
 would mention the anniversary of his mother's death and say : 
 "A deep depression always comes over me at this time of the 
 year." After her death his grief became almost morbid. Writ- 
 ing, in 1820, to the friend who afterward became his wife, he 
 said: "You know there is a veil of melancholy in my composi- 
 tion; whether constitutional, or contracted by early sorrows, 
 formed into a habit, I cannot say; one thing is certain; the death 
 of my mother, when I was about eleven years old, made an im- 
 pression on me that time has not yet effaced. The autumn after 
 her decease I used to steal away daily, wet or dry, and walk
 
 10 
 
 through the woods a mile and a half", to her grave; it was on a 
 little spot of cleared ground, surrounded entirely hy a thick wood; 
 and there I used to sit muring, hours and hours, to the neglect of" 
 mv meals, holding a kind of" imaginar\ converse with the departed 
 spirit, till I almost fancied I could hear her speak. The- winds 
 of Novemher that swept the forest, furnished me with a soft 
 conch of fallen leaves, upon which I would recline and wateh 
 the hroken clouds that passed suddenlv over the sun, and check- 
 ered the landscape with gleams of light and spots of shade, 
 following each other in quick succession, like the comforts and 
 the griefs of this changeful life. * * * Kvcn now there art- 
 times when the form and countenance, the motion, and even the 
 very dress of my mother, are so perfectly impressed on mv 
 imagination, by the force of memory, that it seems as though 
 she stood before me; and when anything interrupts my reverie? 
 I start, as though a spectre had vanished." 
 
 In 1804, William was sent to his uncle, John Guernsey, in 
 Amenia, Dutchess County. He was at this time a pale, deli- 
 cate, thoughtful hoy, small for his age, shy, fond of books, 
 studious and industrious. Here he attended the common school, 
 and assisted some in the light labors of the farm. He joined the 
 Methodist "class," though his uncle was a Baptist. A yeai 
 later, his father sent him to the old Goodell homestead, in Pom- 
 fret, Conn., to live with his widowed grandmother Goodell, and 
 several uncles and aunts, her children. Here his father once 
 visited him, during the first year of his stay; and this was the 
 last time he ever saw his father. 
 
 Frederic Goodell died of paralvsis, at the age of forty-live. 
 He had, meantime, re-married, and left a daughter Rhoda, the 
 child of his second wife, surviving him. This half-sister William 
 never saw but once, when he sought her out, and found her a 
 wife and mother. She died earlv. With her children ke always 
 kept up a pleasant acquaintance. William's four brothers \\ere 
 scattered among their relatives, and saw each other seldom, though 
 maintaining a friendly acquaintance, bv means of correspondence 
 and occasional visits, through life. 
 
 William resided in Pomfret nearly five year-, attending 
 the common school winters; working on the farm sum- 
 mers, gradually improving in health and strength. Here he 
 attended the Congregational Church, and enjoyed the advan- 
 tages of two good libraries, the contents of which he eagerly 
 devoured during the long winter evenings. But among his
 
 II 
 
 most valued literary and religious privileges he numbered the 
 society of his grandmother, the Hannah Cheney whom we have 
 described ; " one of the strong minded women of her times." As 
 an illustration if one were needed that women of a century 
 ago had their thoughts on questions of public interest, we give 
 an extract from William's reminiscences of his grandmother, 
 written in mature life : "My grandmother, who long survived 
 Continental money, never ceased to lament that the people could 
 not have learned from their calamities to discard all paper cur- 
 rencies. She had the past history of them at her tongue's end, 
 and entered deep into the philosophy, and (as she believed) the 
 necessary operations of them. She spoke as confidently of the 
 future as of the past; foretold the breaking of paper money 
 banks; their alternate expansions and contractions; their suspen- 
 sions of specie payments; their liberal loans, when the people 
 would be better off without them; the ruthless calling of them 
 in, when the people most needed them. She saw, as already 
 present, the facilities they would afford to speculators and 
 gamblers in the 'whole staff of bread,' who would amass for- 
 tunes by creating artificial famines in times of plenty. She fore- 
 told the excessive importations of foreign goods, resulting from 
 an inflated currency, giving to all commodities a deceptive valu- 
 ation; she deprecated their deleterious and corrupting influence 
 on politics, the connection of the paper banks with the govern- 
 ment, the fluctuations of a currency depending on popular 
 elections, the expedients that would be resorted to, either to 
 bolster up rotten paper corporations, or else to counteract the 
 effects of excessive importations induced by them. Among 
 these, she even particularized high duties on imports, in my 
 hearing, in 1806, ten years before the measure was resorted to; 
 but this, she said, would only complicate, not remedy, the evil. 
 When the first National Bank was chartered, she predicted the 
 repeal or non-extension of the charter, but said there would 
 probably be another, and if so, ' it would turn out worse than the 
 first.' And finally, she predicted the ultimate explosion of the 
 entire paper money system, 'some time or other." 1 
 Of New England life in olden times, he writes: 
 " The diet of our New England ancestors was frugal and 
 simple. Brown bread, made of rye and Indian meal, and un- 
 bolted, was in common use. The_ soil did not produce much 
 wheat, and it was not good economy to buy much of it; its use 
 was reserved for particular occasions. Bean porridge, or what
 
 12 
 
 we would now call bean soup, has been called the '.Spartan 
 broth' of' New Kngland. Tea was little used except by the 
 ladies, and by them chiefly when they had company; bo\ s and 
 girls seldom tasted it; their chief diet was bean porridge, or, at 
 a later date, bread and milk. .Salted beef and pork, as well as 
 codfish and potatoes mid greens, were in general use. C'oH'ce 
 was hardly in general use in my boyhood. Toasted bread or 
 burnt rye, under the name 1 of coffee, answered the purpose. 
 Men. in my grandfather's time, yielded both tea and coffee to the 
 women. Perhaps this was partly because they preferred cider, 
 which was making a bad choice. * * * As a cause of the 
 general intelligence of those days, may be mentioned the arrange- 
 ment (at least in Connecticut) by which official and legal business 
 was transacted in the towns, parishes, and school districts, which 
 in other states is done only at the county seat, by a few persons, sus- 
 tained by high fees, or large salaries. In Connecticut, deeds are 
 recorded by the town clerk ; estates are settled in the probate dis- 
 trict, comprising one or two townships. Everything is done in the 
 rural neighborhood, and the whole rural neighborhood learns 
 how to do it. You wish a deed i - ecorded; you find the town 
 clerk with his hoe among the corn, or on his bench with his 
 last; he drops his tool, records your deed, pockets his two or 
 three shillings, and goes about his work again. So, perhaps, 
 of the judge of the probate and his clerk; or you may find one 
 or both of them behind the counter of the village store; or 
 holding their probate court in their counting-room. No marvel 
 that the son of the Yankee farmer or mechanic, go where he may 
 so readily adapts himself to all sorts of business teaches school, 
 turns merchant, enters the counting-house, and is soon ready to 
 transact all sorts of business on a smaller or on a larger scale. 
 The rudiments of it all have been learned in the business-like 
 training he has had at home, in addition to the common school. 
 Rural life in Connecticut, in the days of my father and grand- 
 father, was itself the common school of its successive generations; 
 a school in which study, business, and manual labor, were con- 
 tinually alternated with the rolling seasons, and most effectually 
 combined." 
 
 The young William ardently longed for a collegiate educa- 
 tion, but in this hope he was disappointed, and at the age of 
 eighteen accepted a mercantile opening in Providence, R. I. 
 Later, he returned to his Pomfret home to teach a winter school; 
 but we soon find him again in Providence, an active, energetic,
 
 '3 
 
 hopeful young man of twenty, a clerk in a store, an officer among 
 the "cadets," who were training for possible militaiy duty, 
 rendered imminent by the War of 1812; and a boarder in the 
 family of deacon Josiah Cady, with whose blue-eyed daughter 
 of sixteen he found it the most natural thing in the world to walk 
 home from church. About this time we find him writing a 
 breezy, cheerful letter to one of his Connecticut aunts, com- 
 mencing 
 
 "From the noisy wharves and dusty streets of Providence, 
 to the retired and peaceful valley of Abington, William Goodell 
 sendeth greeting." 
 
 With the aunts still living in his old Pom fret home, he 
 kept up a brisk correspondence for those times, and appears to 
 have acted as their agent for the sale of various farm products, 
 and the purchase of household commodities. In 1815 he appears 
 to have been in business for himself, for he speaks of having 
 suffered much loss by the terrible inundations of that year. 
 " The water," he says, " was about four feet deep in my store, 
 and the whole building must have been crushed to atoms, but 
 for two small trees that warded off the ships. I remained in my 
 store as long as possible, securing my goods to the best advan- 
 tage, and then, with some difficulty, retreated to a building oppo- 
 site. 
 
 In 1816 he writes: "The honorable legislature of Rhode 
 Island convenes in town to-day; a circumstance, the recurrence 
 of which I have learned to di'ead, as they are in the regular habit 
 of extending the 'benefit of the act of insolvency ' to about half 
 of my delinquent customers at every session, not at all to my 
 benefit or convenience." 
 
 " In December he accepted an offer from Cyrus Butler and 
 E. Carrington & Co., to act as super-cargo of one of their ships, 
 bound to the East Indies, China and the European markets. He 
 accordingly embarked on a sloop at Providence, Dec. 21, and 
 reached New York the 26th; sailing in the Integrity from N. 
 Y. Jan. i, 1817. He returned to America in May, 1819, after a 
 long, but prosperous and instructive voyage. Of this voyage he 
 kept a journal which is still in existence, and from which we 
 make a few brief extracts, as indicative of his character at that 
 time. 
 
 " Feb. 5, 1817. Saw, for the first time, a poor jack tar hand- 
 cuffed and whipped with a rope's end, for disrespectful treatment 
 of an officer of the deck. Which of them were free from blame
 
 '1 
 
 hca\en knows or whether either; but to me tin- sight was very 
 disgusting and mortifying. I )isgusting, because I thought I saw 
 revenge disguising herself under tin- garb of' justice for e\eii 
 supposing the culprit had merited all the punishment he received, 
 the feelings of the executioner should have been calm, or at least 
 his manner. Mortifying, because I blushed for human nature. 
 * * * If the pens of Kdwards and of Paul had not failed to 
 convince mankind of their degraded and depraved state, I might 
 he tempted to write an essav upon the subject here. And, if 
 Rush had not written in vain, an illiterate youth might be excu- 
 sable in penning a lew inquiries respecting the- nature and effi- 
 ciency of corporal punishments. Some little scenes in the drama 
 of life speak volumes of instruction; but common occurrences 
 are seldom subjects of much reflection." 
 
 " Whoever hath the misfortune to travel bv sea, should take 
 care that delicacy of feeling form no part of his cargo." 
 
 " Commerce owes to literature a debt so infinite that she can 
 never fully liquidate it. Yet commerce verv ostentatiously pre- 
 tends to generosity toward literature; whenevershesqueex.es her 
 out a scanty moity of her just due in the occasional endowment 
 of a college, or the preservation of the life of a starving genius.' 11 
 
 "May 26, 1817. At Penang. Went on shore earlv in the 
 morning to attend to getting our bread on board from the fish- 
 eries. Spent some time with my Chinese friend Ticcow ; he had 
 many inquiries to make respecting America, and made me leave 
 my name on a card, that he might find me if he should ever 
 come to Rhode Island. I believe he seriously thinks of visiting 
 America; and many others of his nation here are verv particular 
 in their enquiries respecting the emoluments of their respective 
 occupations in my country. Chinese emigration is a new thing, 
 the hounds are broken through, and who knows how much the 
 outlet may widen, and how copious a stream may issue! That 
 curiously insulated empire is immensely over-peopled. If North 
 America, in the year 1875, should contain thousands of Chinese, 
 it would be no miracle. They are verv industrious and enter- 
 prising here, and in fact the very life of this Island." Speaking 
 of the young ladies of Penang, he says: " They are uneducated, 
 but I must confess that the absence of affectation almost atoned 
 (with me, at least), for the absence of accomplishments" 
 
 During this voyage he both studied and taught navigation, 
 some of his pupils afterwards becoming captains of ships them- 
 selves. He kept a journal, with copious notes of all lie saw,
 
 '5 
 
 pen and ink sketches of scenery, and jottings of literary and 
 scientific study. He also wrote occasional bits of poetry, of 
 which the following is perhaps a fair sample: 
 
 THE ORPHAN'S DREAM AT SEA. 
 
 " The sea was smooth, the moon shone bright; 
 The breeze was gently blowing; 
 Silent our vessel moved, and light, 
 With sails all full and flowing. 
 
 " When fondly musing on the past, 
 Pensive I sought my pillow, 
 And sleep o'ercame my cares at last, 
 Lulled by the rippling billow. 
 
 " And then a dream so grandly wild, 
 So sweetly calm, came o : er me, 
 That, still entranced enwrapt, beguiled 
 The vision floats before me. 
 
 " Methought I saw an angel bright 
 Come walking on the ocean, 
 Beauty around her shone like light, 
 And God-like was her motion. 
 
 " Her voice was like the rising breath 
 Of music's loftiest measures: 
 She sang the Victory over Death; 
 She spake of heavenly pleasures. 
 
 ' ' Why, mortal, in this sea of tears 
 Why would'st thou wander longer? 
 Increasing, with increasing years, 
 The bonds of. flesh grow stronger; 
 
 ' 'The bonds that still confine thee down; 
 Some who have gone before thee 
 Inherit an unfading crown, 
 And oft are hovering o'er thee. 
 
 ' ' Even now is near to thee, once dear, 
 A friend enthron'd above thee! 
 Say, would'st thou brave the clay-cold grave, 
 To rest with those that love thee ? ' 
 
 " She paus'd, a moonbeam cross'd her face 
 A sigh she seem'd to smother 
 Then beckoned me to her embrace 
 ' O, God ! ' I cried ' My mother.' 
 
 ' I come! I come! O, take me home! ' 
 And sprang with exultation 
 The vision broke, and I awoke 
 To mourn the separation."'
 
 i6 
 
 In 1818 he wrote from Amsterdam, to a friend: 
 
 " I have been to-day in the Royal Palace, and was shown 
 to every part of it. Splendid, indeed; the walls of marble. * * * 
 The building is just now unoccupied, the king having left this 
 city a few days since for the Hague. So we, a party of Yankees, 
 made ourselves quite at home there; left nothing unexplored 
 not even the bed chambers of the Princess; walked in the grand 
 hall where a splendid ball was given, not long since, to the Em- 
 peror Alexander, of Russia; and not content with all these 
 high honors, aspired so high as to take our seats, by turns, upon 
 the Throne of Holland very much to the diversion of the at- 
 tendants! Point me not to the ruins of Carthage, to the moul- 
 dering towers of Palmyra, or the tombs of the Ca-sars, for 
 proofs of the vanity of human grandeur. There is enough of 
 littleness stamped, methinks, upon all the cob-web greatness of 
 man, even in its very perfection and completeness, to make one 
 say to himself, as he views it ' And is this all? ' 
 
 Returning to Providence in 1819, he entered the counting 
 house of Cyrus Butler, where, with the exception of a winter of 
 commercial life in Wilmington, N. C., he remained until he 
 formed a partnership with William Butler, nephew and pros- 
 pective heir of Cyrus Butler, and engaged in the flour trade in 
 Alexandria, Va. 
 
 On the 4th of July, 1823, the long attachment between him- 
 self and Miss Clarissa Cady, of Providence, culminated in mar- 
 riage, and his first home, since that of his early childhood in the 
 forest cabin of N. Y., was made in Alexandria, amid far different 
 scenes; for he was now a successful merchant, and able to sur- 
 round himself with comforts and luxuries. Of the numerous 
 letters which passed between the young couple before their mar- 
 riage, we are tempted to quote from one of William's written in 
 rhyme, showing that the prose of a business drill did not quite 
 efface all love of literature and poetry. It is dated at Wilming- 
 ton, N. C., March, 1821. 
 
 E'en here, a hermit 'mid a crowd. 
 
 Too proud to herd with nabobs proud 
 
 Who crack their whips, and swear, and rave, 
 
 And count themselves most wondr'us brave, 
 
 That they can boldly lash a sla\ r ! 
 
 Where faint-warm days, and cold-damp nights, 
 
 The rose of health and beauty blights,
 
 7 
 
 Ev'n midst this Carolinian fen 
 
 I pluck some flowers; I find some men ! 
 
 * * * 
 
 " Yet converse sweet e'en here I've known; 
 Quite intimate with Cowper grown. 
 He'll tell me all about the preacher, 
 And mimic every air and feature. 
 From Baxter next I have a 'call,' 
 Over against me by the wall ; 
 His reverend form methinks I see, 
 His every word addressed to me ; 
 And thus a preacher oft I gain 
 After I've searched the Church in vain. 
 Columbia's giant next appears 
 Edwards the Paul of later years; 
 And still a mightier form glides by 
 Prophetic light illumes his eye 
 With lips that glow with hallow'd fire 
 Lo! 'tis Isaiah strikes the lyre! 
 In strains angelic o'er the chords, 
 He hymns the Incarnate Lord of Lords. 
 ' And while his music rolls along,' 
 ' Raised by the magic of his song,' 
 Awhile I soar upon his wings, 
 And half aspire to touch the strings 
 Of David's harp that long has slept, 
 By mortal fingers seldom swept. 
 But themes so sacred, so sublime, 
 Out soar the feeble sons of Time. 
 The flame that should ascend on high 
 Expires an ineffectual sigh ! " 
 
 In Alexandria was horn their first daughter, Clarissa Virginia, 
 who died in infancy. Owing to unexpected fluctuations in trade, 
 the firm of Wm. Butler & Co., for a time successful, lost heavily; 
 and Wm. Goodell returned to Providence. Wm. Butler died 
 young, lie was the uncle of Wm. Butler Duncan, the New 
 York hanker and capitalist. Soon after Mr. Goodell found em- 
 ployment as hook-keeper in the counting house of Phelps & 
 Peck, of New York; the same firm afterwards known as Phelps, 
 Dodge & Co., and later as Wm. E. Dodge & Co. While in New 
 York at this time he aided in forming and conducting the pre- 
 sent Mercantile Library Association of New York, of which in 
 1826, he was chosen a Director, and office which he held till his 
 removal from the city. 
 
 But Wm. Goodell grew restive over his day book and 
 ledger. To his vision a terrible conflict was being waged be- 
 tween the Hosts of Heaven and the Powers of Darkness, and he
 
 i8 
 
 longed to plunge into the thickest of the tight. What to him 
 were tlu- d:iily balancing of profit :m<l loss <>\er palm hales <>f 
 cotton, when sla\crv \v;is creeping stealthily onward, threatening 
 
 to enchain the nation; when the- Drink Demon \v;is ~-la\ing its 
 thousands yearly ; when lottery gambling w;is ;it its height, un- 
 rchuked hv Church or State ; and when fraudulent schemes of 
 banking and insuranee institutions, skillfully adapted and notori- 
 ously designed to amass fortunes hy swindling the people were 
 rife, and predecessors of Tweed and Credit Mohelier operators 
 controlled judges and legislators, till even the Senate of the State 
 of New York, acting as a high Court of Appeal, declared that 
 "a conspiracy to defraud is no indictable ollense." 
 
 Already he had taken up that little weapon "mightier than 
 the sword," and wielded it with telling effect against the great 
 sin of slavery. While in the counting house of Cyrus 1 hitler, 
 in 1820, moved by the then pending " Missouri Compromise" 
 which gave the new State of Missouri to slavery, and especially 
 by the vote of a favorite representative from Rhode Island in its 
 favor, he wrote, over the signature of " Edgar," the following 
 poem, which appeared in the Providence Gazette: 
 
 " High on her snow-white cloud enthron'd, 
 Fair Freedom, like a Goddess rode; 
 Columbia's realms her sceptre own'd; 
 Columbia was her chos'n abode. 
 
 " There all beneath her eagle eye 
 Confess'd her fire in every vein, 
 Save where beneath the southern sky 
 The helpless A trie clank'd his chain. 
 
 " The Goddess long had view'd with pain 
 That blot of trans-atlantic guilt; 
 Nor could she purge away the stain 
 With all the blood her sons hail >pilt. 
 
 " That monument of Britain's shame 
 Britania's shameless sons had spied, 
 And, hissing at Columbia's name, 
 With taunting voice to Freedom cried ; 
 
 " 'From Albion's isle, o'er waters wide 
 And didst thou flee to lodge with slaves? 
 Go! driv'n from all the world beside, 
 Go! skulk in Tell's and Cato's graves! ' 
 
 " Columbia's chiefs in council met, 
 And Freedom, sighing, bent to hear,
 
 With drops of grief her locks were wet, 
 Her bosom heav'd, with hope and fear. 
 
 " Full well she knew her wily foe, 
 But more she fear'd her treacherous friends, 
 Whose hollow words, and vaporous show 
 But ill disguised their selfish ends. 
 
 " L'o! with their shout the welkin rings 
 ' All men are equal all are free! ' 
 The lash resounds the groan ascends, 
 Commingling ! horrid harmony ! 
 
 " The vaunting Fiend of Slavery rose, 
 Besmear'd and drunk with human blood, 
 And swore to extend her cup of woes 
 Far onward to the western flood. 
 
 " My country ! heards't thou not the storm 
 That menaced ev ? n the Eternal Throne? 
 Coulds't thou embrace that grizzly form 
 That hell herself would fain disown? 
 
 " Fair Freedom saw, with angel smile, 
 Her chosen few stand firm and fast; 
 But some she knew might fight awhile, 
 And shrink, and basely yield at last. 
 
 " Of patriots, prompt at duty's call, 
 How few she found, or dared to trust! 
 Expediency was all in all ; 
 Their virtue, gain ; their treasure, dust. 
 
 " Christians could 'compromise' with crime, 
 The path King Saul and Judas trod; 
 Could balance dollar, cent, and dime, 
 Against the changeless laws of God! 
 
 ' With pencil, scale, and chart in hand, 
 Her sons she saw, absorb'd in pelf, 
 Coolly divide their native land 
 Between the Demon and herself! 
 
 " The towering Andes caught her view, 
 She stretched her pinions to depart, 
 Her faltering tongue delay'd the adieu 
 That trembled in her broken heart; 
 
 " When lo! beneath the eastern sky, 
 A dawn of glory seemed to ope, 
 A svell known voice was heard to cry 
 Stay, Freedom stay! " In God we hope." * 
 
 * The motto of Rhode Island.
 
 20 
 
 " Lo! in tlic east one cloudless star, 
 A little jjfin, but rich and bright, 
 In hrauty twinkling from afar, 
 
 Like Mercury on tin- brow of ni^lit! 
 
 '. in the east an unMain'd soil, 
 One little spot \vhcre man is free, 
 Where outcast patriarchs, worn with toil, 
 O, Freedom! found a rest for thce! 
 
 " Where first upon this earthly clod, 
 Serenely firm and safely bold, 
 The pure in heart ador'd their God, 
 Bv fellow mortals uncontroll'd. 
 
 " The land whose banners still upborne, 
 Protect th' oppressed of ev'ry clime; 
 Whose Perry's and whose Greene's have sworn 
 To guard her rights to latest time. 
 
 " Lo! where they come, her chosen band, 
 Unbought by gold, unaw'd by pow'r, 
 Though myriad's fall, shall they not stand, 
 The Abdiels* of an evil hour? 
 
 " The lingering Goddess in the sky, 
 Listen'd and watch'd with changeful cheek, 
 A ray of hope illumed her eye, 
 But soon was heard her swooning shriek. 
 
 " Spirits infernal were at prayer, 
 A deathly smoke was in the air, 
 Rhode Island's guardian genius slept, 
 Kddy revolted angels wept!" 
 
 The publication of this poem excited a good deal of 
 discussion in prose. "Edgar" followed it up with a series of 
 vigorous and telling articles replete' with the close logic, sound 
 Statesmanship, and high moral tone for which he afterwanK he- 
 ramc distinguished. In the course of these articles, among other 
 things, he predicted the subsequent repeal of the act, and the 
 further extension of slavery. 
 
 After going to New York, he had sent occasional articles 
 to the Providence papers; usually in poetry. Among these the 
 " Harp of Zion," and the "Christian Warfare" attracted par- 
 ticular attention. The closing verse of a poem which he pub- 
 lished about the same time, expresses so well his feeling, that we 
 cannot forbear to quote it here: 
 
 -' The seraph Ahdicl, 
 
 Faithful found amoiiu tin- t~.iithl.-ss.' MII.TON.
 
 21 
 
 " Daughter of Zion! once so fair, 
 With joy and gladness crown'd; 
 Well inayst thou hang thy harp in air, 
 And weep upon the ground: 
 Who shall arise and plead thy cause 
 Avenge thy wrongs support thy larvs 
 Where shall the men be found? 
 Jerusalem! while thou'rt distress'd, 
 I cannot no! I will not rest! " 
 
 In 1827 he returned to Providence and commenced his week- 
 ly " Investigator," determined to lift up a standard against the 
 tide of demoralization. This was at about the same time that 
 Arthur Tappan, afterwards his co-laborer, started the Journal of 
 Commerce, in New York, with the same end in view. Here it 
 was, at the age of thirty-five, that William Goodell, ever after 
 dated the commencement of his life-work. Writing of it, years 
 afterward, he said : 
 
 " All my previous life was preparatory to this. When 
 providentially debarred from acquiring a Collegiate education, I 
 had cheerfully acquiesced, trusting that my life and destiny were 
 under the oversight and direction of a wisdom high above my 
 own. When and how this should appear I could not foresee. It 
 might be by the early acquisition of means sufficient to carry me 
 through College, or it might be by the accumulation of ample 
 wealth, which, contributed to religious and benevolent enter- 
 prises, then just coming into existence, might effect more good 
 than I could expect to accomplish by learning. These dreams 
 were dispelled. Evidently I was not destined to be rich. What 
 good could I, then, do in the world? Was there not much need- 
 ing to be done, which colleges, with all their important uses and 
 benefits, could not do; which the college-learned in Church and 
 State, with all their indispensable services, had scarcely, or rarely, 
 thought of attempting? Nothing that needed processes of edu- 
 cation widely diverse from those with which they were familiar? 
 Had I received no educational training for a much needed work? 
 For seventeen years I had been mingling in the busy scenes of 
 active life, where men are ever acting out themselves, and betray- 
 ing the moral or immoral maxims by which they are really gov- 
 erned. In America, in Europe, and in Asia, the map of com- 
 mercial life, usages, and maxims had passed under my inspection, 
 Intellectually, if I had lost much that is taught in colleges, I had 
 gained much that is not taught in them; nautical astronomy; theo- 
 retical and practical navigation, and seamanship; and, in the count-
 
 ing house, finances, accbuntancy by double entry, in itself a science 
 comparable, fir mental training, with most of the demonstrative 
 sciences. Long sea passages of ninety t<> o\er one hundred da\s 
 each, had afforded me enviable opportunities, not unimproved, 
 for miscellaneous reading, and secluded meditation andstud\ ; in 
 which the pen \\ as not idle." 
 
 Nor, from this date, was his pen ever idle till he dropped it 
 over an unfinished article in his eighty-sixth year, just one \\eek 
 before he breathed his last. 
 
 From the prospectus of the Investigator, we <|iiote a feu 
 sentences, to give an idea of its tone: 
 
 " Considering, as we do, that political science should he- 
 based on moral principle, and that no scheme of morals lias ever 
 appeared among men so pure, so salutary, so mild, or so ellicicnt 
 as that furnished by Christianity, we shall endeavor to conform 
 our political maxims to its precepts. * * * Relieving, as we do 
 that no free State was ever wholly upheld by its own coersive 
 power, and with Montesquieu, that 'free States have oftener 
 perished through corruption of manners, than violation of laws;' 
 we shall regard the education, manners, and morals of the com- 
 munity as matters of primary interest to the commonwealth. 
 But from this it will not follow that the State, as such, must do 
 nothing towards its own preservation. Civil liberty we consi- 
 der to be founded on law, not on the absence of it. Salntarv 
 restraint is its basis. And if civil government may not require 
 its own foundation, it ceases to be a government at all. * * ' 
 On all questions involving moral principle, we hope to stand 
 aloof from unrighteous compromise. Here we hope to be inflex- 
 ible, and expect to be accorded stubborn. We must contend that 
 utility neither constitutes virtue, nor can supply its place. In 
 opposition to prevalent error we must maintain that virtue is the 
 only true expediency, to which all specious plans of iniquitv 
 must be made to bend. Schemes of national aggrandizement, 
 fancied insults, or hereditary antipathies, we hope will not in- 
 spire us with the war-song; nor move us to excite in the com- 
 munity a spirit of revenge. On the contrary, we hope to see 
 among all nations an increasing spirit of equity and aversion to 
 war. We shall take a deep interest in all judicious measures fur 
 the final emancipation of the oppressed and enslaved, wherever 
 they exist. We shall watch with an anxious scrutiny the devel- 
 opments of those phenomena of moral enterprise which charac- 
 terize the present age, with the view of ascertaining from prin-
 
 3 3 
 
 ciples and from facts their probable or actual bearing upon the 
 interests of virtue and humanity, and with the determination of 
 awarding to each of them the censure or the praise we believe 
 them to deserve. * * * We cannot drag the car of party, nor 
 of personal ambition. We will never consent to thrive by in- 
 flaming groundless jealousies, by flattering the vicious, or by 
 courting the profligate. * * * Truth and Righteousness is the 
 motto of our flag, and we nail it to the mast head, content to sink 
 or swim beneath it, as an all wise- Providence may determine." 
 The Investigator drifted so largely into temperance work 
 that in 1829 it was removed to Boston and connected with the 
 " National Philanthropist." Here Mr. Goodell attended the 
 preaching of Dr. Lyman Beecher, then in his prime. A year 
 later his paper was again removed to New York, where it was 
 continued under the name of the " Genius of Temperance." As 
 is usual with all papers of which the first aim is a moral and not 
 a financial one, this periodical had a hard struggle for existence. 
 Again and again its indefatigable editor was forced into the lec- 
 ture field to awaken or keep alive the popular interest in the re- 
 forms advocated, and obtain subscribers, and donations, to keep it 
 afloat. Bitterly disappointed, at times, in the apathy of professed 
 Christian men from whom he had a right to expect aid and sym- 
 pathy, he was well nigh despairing, but never quite willing to 
 give up. To one who hinted that he was in danger of neglecting 
 his family, in his zeal for the public good, he wrote: " I know I 
 have a duty to my family and friends, as well as to my country; 
 and that there may be danger of my neglecting the former in my 
 zeal for the latter. But the q*uestion is how I shall better dis- 
 charge my duty to my family and friends, and to myself by re- 
 linquishing this business? Providence, indeed, seems to have 
 closed up every other avenue to have thwarted me on every 
 other course, and to have driven me and confined me to this 
 work, which has been pent up as a fire in my bones for a quar- 
 ter of a century. Jonah declined his embassy and fled to Tar- 
 shish, but the winds and the waves, and the monsters of the 
 deep, saw well to it that he returned and accomplished his task. 
 And the winds and the waves of adversity, since Sept. 1815, 
 have been against me. Not once to Tarshish, but ttvicc to ut- 
 most India, (4,000 miles beyond Tarshish) have I vainly fled. 
 And if the gourd which has sheltered my head while delivering 
 my message, and watching the results, should wither and lea\e 
 me defenseless, I ought not to murmur, nor to pray that Nineveh
 
 24 
 m;iv be spared, though she ill requites my labors, and quotes her 
 
 ini|iuiiit\ tn proclaim nit- a false alarmist lor warning her. * * * 
 I rejoice to know that my last year's labor has not been in vain, 
 though the unworthy instrument should he thrown aside, either 
 in mercy or in judgment to this people-. I have prayed ' send, 
 I .old, by iv horn thou wilt send, vet command deliverances for 
 Jacob;' and I have staved myself on the promise 'Trust in tin- 
 Lord and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land; vea, verily, 
 thou shalt be fed.' ' Though there he no herd in the stall, and tin- 
 flock he cutoff from the fold,' yea, 'though He slay me, vet 
 will I trust in Him.' * * * For the sake of 1113 wife and child, 
 and friends, I will do what will add to their comfort, if I can 
 know what it is. But for myself, ' I count not my life dear unto 
 me,' so that I can ' fulfil as an hireling my day.' There will he 
 rest enough in the grave. And ' what mean ye to weep and to 
 break my heart, for I am ready not only to labor and suffer per- 
 plexity and want, but indeed to wear my life out ' in this cause, 
 if I may be instrumental in saving my country." 
 
 Six years of severe labor in the city of New York followed, 
 including the terrible cholera summer of 1832, when William 
 Goodell was of the few who did not leave the city, but sending 
 bis family to a place of safety, boarded at the Graham boarding 
 house, and toiled early and late in his editorial office, scarcely 
 stopping to eat his meals, but munching his Graham crackers 
 while his pen sped rapidly over his paper, warning the people 
 against the terrible effects of liquor drinking, especially at that 
 trying time. Nor were intemperance and slavery the only vices 
 assailed. Lottery gambling, masonry, political corruption and 
 immorality were severely attacked by his active pen. The new 
 movement for "moral reform," inaugurated by Rev. J. R. 
 McDowall, and opposed incredible as it may seem not only 
 by the ignorant or indifferent multitude, but by a majority of 
 professing Christians, was warmly espoused by him. The move- 
 ment of McDowall, briefly explained, was this; the reformation 
 of fallen women, a severer condemnation of vice in men, placing 
 the sin in either sex upon the same moral plane, and labor for 
 the eradication of the social evil. The persecutions of the de- 
 voted and self-denying McDowall in the inauguration of this 
 new reform would hardly be accredited if told to-dav. Mr. 
 Goodell not only warmly defended him, and heartily espoused 
 his cause, but besides advocating his principles in the " Genius 
 of Temperance," published for two years a small semi-monthly
 
 2 5 
 
 paper, the " Female Advocate," of which moral reform, as well 
 as temperance, was an important feature. He also published dur- 
 ing a portion of this time, the " Youth's Temperance Lecturer," 
 probably the first child's temperance paper ever published. 
 
 It was at this time that Mr. Goodell, together with Lewis 
 and Arthur Tappan, and other temperance reformers, became 
 interested in the lectures of Sylvester Graham, and partially 
 followed his teachings, giving up tea and coffee, meats, and high 
 seasoning, and using the unbolted (or Graham) flour bread. 
 They boarded for a considerable time at the Graham boarding 
 house kept by Mrs. Nicholson, at which Horace Greeley, then a 
 bashful young man, saying little or nothing, imbibed anti-slavery 
 principles from the conversation of those around him at the table. 
 Mr. Goodell adhered to the simple diet adopted at this time? 
 through life, excepting that he never strictly abstained from 
 meats. 
 
 More and more the question of slavery loomed up, over- 
 shadowing every other. In December, 1833, the American 
 Anti-Slavery Society was formed in Philadelphia. Mr. Goodell 
 attended, and assisted in organizing it. In 1834, the " Genius 
 of Temperance" was succeeded by the "Emancipator," of 
 which, as its name indicated, opposition to slavery was the lead- 
 ing feature. At this time the feeling on both sides of the slavery 
 question was at a white heat. Abolitionists were persecuted, 
 mobbed, their lives threatened, and their names cast out as evil. 
 
 Mr. Goodell was at one time obliged to leave his home in 
 Brooklyn, with his family, and seek shelter in an obscure locality 
 of New York, till the fury of the mob-oligarchy had spent 
 itself ; at another time he barely escaped the grasp of an in- 
 coming mob, who clamorously offered a price for his head, as 
 they put to rout an anti-slavery meeting being quietly held in a pub- 
 lic hall in New York. In 1836, the Legislatures of several of 
 the Southern States sent communications to the northern Leg- 
 islatures, desiring them to enact laws, prohibiting the formation 
 of anti-slavery societies, or the expression of anti-slavery senti- 
 ments, under severe penalties. The governor of Massachusetts^ 
 in his inaugural address, took occasion to severely censure the 
 abolitionists, intimating that they were guilty of an offense 
 punishable at common law. In view of these facts, the Massa- 
 chusetts anti-slavery society requested a hearing before the 
 Legislature, which was granted. Mr. Goodell was one of the 
 speakers on this occasion, and the red-hot-lava of his indignation 
 4
 
 26 
 
 poured forth in a torrent of burning logic and fiery eloquence, 
 under which the Legislative Committee, to whom tin- ((motion 
 had been referred, sat uneasily, till he eharaeteri/ed the com- 
 munications of the Southern States as " fetters for northern free- 
 men;"' and turning to the chairman of the committee, demanded 
 "Sir: Are you prepared to attempt putting them on?" when 
 he was peremtorily ordered to sit down, and no further hearing 
 \\ as allowed. Writing almost night and day, Mr. Goodell was 
 able, three days later, to put the plea of the abolitionists, in pam- 
 phlet form, into the hands of every member of the Legislature, 
 and to circulate it broadcast through the country. The Legis- 
 lature took no action on the subject. 
 
 But it is impossible, in these few brief pages, to give any 
 adequate idea of the severe labors of Mr. Goodell in this excit- 
 ing moral warfare. We must pass on. 
 
 In 1836 he was strongly urged, by the Executive Commit- 
 tee of the N. Y. State Anti-Slavery Society, and personally by 
 Alvan Stewart, Beriah Green, and Theodore D. Weld, to come 
 to Utica and take charge of a weekly anti-slavery paper to be 
 called " The Friend of Man." This offer he accepted, and edited 
 the "The Friend of Man" in Utica and Whitesboro, six years. 
 Here also he issued his monthly "Anti-Slavery Lecturer" for 
 one year, and commenced his " Christian Investigator" for dis- 
 cussing the religious and ecclesiastical questions involved in the 
 moral struggles before the country. During these years he 
 labored by voice as well as pen; frequently making lecturing 
 tours through New York and the New England States. Nor 
 were his labors confined to the enunciation of general princi- 
 ples. He took a sympathetic personal interest in the humblest 
 being who needed his help. His home was not only open to the 
 intellectual, the cultured, and the philanthropic, but to the rag- 
 ged fugitive slave hiding from his pursuers; or the robbed and 
 bewildered traveler without money, friends, or credit. The out- 
 cast, the suffering, even the sinning, but repentant, found a friend 
 in him. 
 
 He bore a prominent part in the formation of the Liberty 
 Party in Albany in the spring of 1840, a party which the year of 
 its formation polled 7,000 votes for James G. Birney for Presi- 
 dent, and four years later gave the same candidate 60,000 votes, 
 which later lowered its standard and became the " Free-Soil," 
 and finally the Republican Party. 
 
 During the winter of 1843, he lectured on Church reform,
 
 2 7 
 
 endeavoring to induce churches in complicity with slavery to 
 take action against it, and advocating other reforms in church 
 organizations. A convention was held in Whitesboro to con- 
 sider the duty of the churches in relation to slavery. Two del- 
 egates attended from Honeoye, Ontario County, who brought 
 with them a cordial and pressing invitation to Mr. Goodell 
 to take up his abode with them, and found a church upon the 
 basis of the principles he advocated. This he decided to do, and 
 when past his fiftieth year entered upon his labors as a minister, 
 without seeking or desiring human ordination, and rejecting to 
 the last all titles indicative of the profession. His church was 
 organized on temperance, anti-slavery, and church union princi- 
 ples, and was composed of seceders from the Presbyterian and 
 Methodist churches of the town of Richmond. Later it re- 
 ceived further accessions by profession of faith. Among the 
 distinctive features of this church was the fact that its members 
 subscribed to no creed but the Bible, and that the afternoon ser- 
 vice was devoted to a discussion of the subject of the morning's 
 discourse, in which every variety of honest conviction was al- 
 lowed free expression, and which proved a wonderful stimulus to 
 thought. In these meetings there was "neither bond nor free, 
 male nor female." As an example of the character of these dis- 
 cussions might be mentioned one on " Christian perfection," 
 which was under consideration during six or eight successive 
 Sabbaths, and was divided by the pastor into the following heads: 
 
 1. What is it to be perfectly holy ? Or, what is the stan- 
 dard of Christian perfection ? Are we now under the same law 
 that Adam was under before the fall ? The moral law ? The 
 law given on Sinai ? Or, has the gospel revealed an easier law ? 
 
 2. Are men commanded to be perfect ? And what is the 
 import of that command ? Does the law, and does the gospel, 
 require absolute perfection ? 
 
 3. Are men naturally able to be perfect ? Have they such 
 an ability as lays a foundation for the obligation to be perfect ? 
 
 4. Has the gospel made adequate provision for the restora- 
 tion of men to a state of perfection ? 
 
 5. Ought Christians to strive after absolute perfection ? 
 
 6. Has perfection ever been fully attained in the present 
 life ? 
 
 Most zealously and faithfully did William Goodell labor for 
 the intellectual and spiritual welfare of this church. He aimed 
 to cultivate a high type of piety, and an enlarged benevolence.
 
 28 
 
 He wrote a course of sermons on spirituality and the higher life. 
 1 Ie preached a course also to children and youth. During this 
 time he held a series of discussions with one of the most intel- 
 lectual physicians of the town, on the medical branch of the 
 temperance question, which called out large and delighted 
 Audiences. 
 
 Earnest Christians from the neighboring towns of Livonia, 
 Lima, and Bloomfield, came often on the Sabbath to hear him 
 preach, and return to their homes refreshed and enobled by his 
 ministrations. Now was the dream of his life rcali/ed in a most 
 unexpected and remarkable manner. Often, in the earlier years 
 of his life, had he exclaimed "O that I could preach the 
 gospel of Jesus Christ as it ought to be preached, to the saving 
 of souls ! " " If I were but ten years younger," he said at thirty- 
 five, "I would commence the study of the languages, that I might 
 read the Bible in the original, so as properly to discharge the 
 duties of the ministry." But God had other methods of di- 
 cipline by which to fit him for his peculiar work ; and when in 
 His providence the way was made manifest, he accepted it with 
 joy. Never had he seemed so happy as in fulfilling this obliga- 
 tion. His growth in grace at this period was so evident as to be 
 a subject of remark in his family circle. Nor was the influence 
 of his ministry less beneficial to the community for which he 
 labored. A member of his church, writing years afterwards, said : 
 " We rejoice in the goodness of our Heavenly Father in giving to 
 this people a pastor whose life was so devoted to carrying out the 
 principles of truth and right; his influence is still felt, and will 
 be for a long time to come. The character given to Zechariah 
 and Elizabeth, might truly be applied to William Goodell and 
 his wife. "And they were both righteous before God, walking 
 in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless." 
 Another adds: "We have never known a life so fully con- 
 formed to the Divine requirements. Well do we remember his 
 energy and x.eal in laboring for the spiritual welfare of this little 
 church." Not an individual was so obscure as to be considered 
 unworthy of his Christian regard and kind consideration. 
 
 He was peculiarly adapted to conduct funeral services, as his 
 tenderness, and exquisitely sympathetic nature solemnixed and 
 deepened the impressions of religious truth left upon every mind. 
 These ministrations never failed to touch the heart, and leave an 
 abiding sense of eternal realities. This peculiar gift, in contrast 
 with his stern denunciations of sin, combined to render him em- 
 inently Christ like.
 
 2 9 
 
 During the greater portion of this time he continued to pub- 
 lish his Christian Investigator. The idea of this publication 
 may perhaps be better conveyed by some extracts from its first 
 number, than by any description. The first article 'is entitled 
 "Acceptable Worship; its Nature and Effects." In it he says: 
 "To worship God is to love Him. To love Him is to love moral,, 
 beauty. It is to be enamored with spotless purity; to be de- 
 lighted with infinite excellence. But truly to love virtue is to be 
 virtuous. To adore purity is to pant after it; to attain it! To be 
 delighted with moral excellence is to seize upon and possess it. 
 What a man loves he imitates. What a man loves he becomes. 
 What an immortal spirit loves he himself is, and determines to be. 
 * * * The worshiper of God becomes God-like. The wor- 
 shiper of Christ becomes Christ-like. * * * Thus it is that 
 Christ becomes the all-sufficient Savior, the true God and eternal 
 life, to those who truly adore Him. To trust in Him, to have 
 faith in Him, to adore Him, to choose Him as the everlasting por- 
 tion of the soul these are 'only different modes of expi'essing 
 the same thing. To worship Him is to behold and appreciate 
 the image of the invisible God. It is to be changed into the same 
 image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of God." 
 
 In the next article, entitled " The Church a Reformatory 
 Association," he lays down as a foundation principle, " that the 
 true people of God are reformers, and that the true church of 
 Jesus Christ, as He constituted and designed it, is a REFORMA- 
 TORY CHURCH; that its legitimate business is warfare without 
 compromise, against every possible description of sin, and especi- 
 ally against the prominent sins of the age and nation where its 
 lot is cast, and to the influence of which it is exposed; a warfare 
 with sin in the outward act and habit, as well as with sin in the 
 inward motive, affection and temper; a warfare against sin in the 
 detail, as well as against sin in the aggregate; sin in the concrete 
 as well as sin in the abstract." It concludes with this paragraph: 
 "Reformation must begin at the house of God. Until THIS 
 work is attempted, all our other attempts at reformation will 
 prove futile." Other articles discussed practical methods of carry- 
 ing out these principles, and reviewed objections. In writing to a 
 friend at the time of starting the "Investigator," he said: "What 
 we most need is a reformation in the ministry and churches. 
 To this object the new paper will be devoted. This department 
 of effort has been neglected too long, and the uncultivated ground 
 is growing up with rank weeds. Witness the anti-church move-
 
 3 
 
 merits in Massachusetts and this State! What else could be ex- 
 pei-tedr If the church will not carry on the work of reform, 
 \\liat marvel that the 'world should attempt it? And what mar- 
 \el if the attempt should bear marks of its worldly origin? 
 Christianity embodies the only true' principles and measures <>f 
 reform, and who should wield these hut the ministry and the 
 churches ~'. 
 
 During his residence in Honeoye, Mr. Goodell made fre- 
 quent short lecturing tours through neighboring towns and 
 counties; sometimes speaking every evening during the week- 
 lie occasionally went further, attending conventions at a distance- 
 In 1846 he bore a prominent part in forming the American Mis- 
 sionary Association, at Albany, and wrote the "Address" issued 
 by the Convention there assembled, which Win. W. Patton, 
 D. D., has since characterized as " full of seed-thoughts on every 
 part of the Missionary work." It was about this time that he 
 wrote his argument on the unconstitutionally of slavery, writing 
 in the heat of summer, in feeble health, sitting at the bedside of 
 a sick child, whom he fanned, or soothed, with one hand, while 
 he wrote with the other. The argument has been pronounced 
 unanswerable by some of the best minds in the country. For 
 the purpose of writing on the legal aspect of the slavery ques- 
 tion, he read elementary law works carefully, till he became so 
 well versed in the science, that he was urged to apply for admis- 
 sion to the bar, being assured that there would be no difficulty in 
 securing admission. But he cared too little for the empty honor 
 to make the attempt. 
 
 It was during his residence in Honeoye that he wrote his 
 "Democracy of Christianity," in two volumes; his history of 
 " Slavery and Anti-Slavery," in the United States, and his 
 " American Slave Code," which described the tenor and effects 
 of the slavery legislation of the South. 
 
 In 1851 he made a lecturing tour through the Western States 
 as far as Chicago. 
 
 In 1852 he went to New York to attend to the publication 
 of his books, and was induced by friends to remain there perma- 
 nently and edit an anti-slavery paper. This seemed the then 
 most needed work, as the aggressions of slavery, by the repeal of 
 the Missouri compromise, were threatening to inundate the en- 
 tire country. He edited a monthly paper entitled the " Radical 
 Abolitionist," in which he advocated the ability, duty, and neces- 
 sity of the Federal Government to abolish slavery in the South-
 
 3 1 
 
 ern States. He also wrote a series of able and masterly articles 
 on the " Legal Tenure of Slavery," for the National Era, in 
 which he showed conclusively that slavery, being contrary to the 
 common law, and never legalized by statutory enactment in this 
 country, (though statutes had been enacted recognizing and up- 
 holding it ) was absolutely illegal, as well as unconstitutional. 
 His paper was, after a time, enlarged, converted into a weekly, 
 and called the "Principia;" Dr. Geo. B. Cheever being, during 
 a portion of the time, his associate in editorial labor. This paper 
 was continued during the war, and until after the abolition of 
 slavery, for which object it earnestly and unceasingly labored. 
 The evening before the issuing of the Emancipation Proclama- 
 tion, Mr. Goodell, Dr. Cheever, and Dr. Brown of New York 
 were with President Lincoln until midnight, urging the measure 
 upon him, lest, as some feared, his resolution might falter. They 
 went to him with the fervor and enthusiasm, one might almost 
 say with the inspiration of the Old Testament prophets; and a 
 " Thus saith the Lord," rang through all their utterances, till the 
 President remarked, with the dry humor for which he was dis- 
 tinguished, "Really, gentlemen, this is the first time that I ever 
 had the honor of being waited on by a delegation from the 
 Lord ! " Mr. Goodell quickly responded, " President Lincoln, 
 believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest!" and 
 proceeded to quote passage after passage of the Old Testament 
 denunciations of oppi'ession, and commands to let the oppressed 
 go free, to execute justice, aud to show mercy. He afterwards 
 had the satisfaction of seeing some of his own expressions em- 
 bodied in the Proclamation, which was issued the next day at 
 noon. 
 
 During his residence in New York, or rather in the eastern 
 district of Brooklyn, where his home was situated, he was a mem- 
 ber of a small Congregational Church of radical anti-slavery 
 and temperance principles, of which Rev. S. S. Jocelyn, of the 
 American Missionary Association, was pastor. He preached fre- 
 quently, though not statedly, in this and other pulpits; atone 
 time supplying the pulpit of Dr. Cheever. during his absence. 
 He made occasional lecturing tours through New York and New 
 England; one of marked success through Vermont, in 1858, 
 under the leadership of Governor Fletcher of that State. 
 
 In the spring of 1865 he removed, in feeble health, to the 
 town of Lebanon, in Connecticut, where he and his wife boarded 
 in the family of a relative. Here the fresh country air and farm
 
 living, together with the quiet and freedom from care, restored 
 him to vigorous health, for a man of his years. He had ever 
 heen an ardent lover of nature, and greatly enjoyed his long 
 country rambles, gathering berries and wild flowers, and \ery 
 probably composing, as he strolled along, the article which he 
 dashed oil" so rapidly on his return. For he did not drop his pen 
 with the abolition of slavery, but wielded it vigorously in favor 
 of total abstinence and prohibition, woman suffrage, and religion. 
 During his five vears residence in Connecticut he was a frequent 
 contributor to the National Temperance Advocate, and many 
 other temperance and some local papers; also to the Hartford 
 Religious Herald, the "Panoplist" of Boston, and "Good News" 
 of New York. 
 
 He also wrote a theological work entitled "The Highest 
 Good ;" re-wrote and enlarged the poem of his youth, " The 
 Christian Warfare;" and commenced a work on the " Life and 
 teachings of Christ." He filled the pulpit of the Congregational 
 Church at Bozrahville for more than a year, and was a frequent 
 supply in other pulpits. He attended various temperance con- 
 ventions at easy distances, in which he participated; and in Sep- 
 tember, 1869, went to Chicago, by pressing invitation of prom- 
 inent temperance workers, where he aided in forming the National 
 Prohibition Party. 
 
 In June, 1870, he removed, with his wife, to Janesville, Wis- 
 consin, where his daughter, Mrs. Frost, resided; and where he 
 was joined in the fall of 1871, by his younger daughter. Here 
 he took great pleasure in the society of his daughters and grand- 
 sons, and entered as heartily into the passing events of the city 
 and State, as in his younger days in the East; frequently attend- 
 ing conventions and ministers' meetings in different localities. 
 He was a constant attendant of the Y. M. C. A. morning prayer 
 meetings, through summer's heat and winter's cold, frequently 
 leading the meetings. He occasionally supplied the Congrega- 
 tional pulpit, and spoke at public temperance and religious meet- 
 ings. Here he finished his voluminous work on the Life and 
 Teachings of Christ, and wrote a prize essay on the social as- 
 pect of the temperance question. He wrote for the local papers, 
 and continued his contributions to temperance and religious jour- 
 nals; besides contributing occasional articles to the literary clubs 
 of Janesville. 
 
 On the 4th of July, 1873, he and his faithful and devoted 
 wife celebrated their golden wedding; their two daughters and
 
 33 
 
 three of their grandsons being present; the eldest sending, from 
 Oberlin College, a poem for the occasion. The wedded life thus 
 celebrated had been one of rare harmony and beauty. Theirs 
 was one of the few marriages in which the illusion of first love 
 is never dispelled. It is difficult to tell which was most devoted 
 to the other. The marriage was one in which were recognized 
 equal rights and mutual obligations, and the harmony was a har- 
 mony of liberty and not of subjugation. The movement for the 
 equal rights of woman had Mr. Goodell's hearty sympathy. It 
 was at his suggestion that his youngest daughter studied law, 
 and one of his last expressed wishes was that she should make 
 the profession her life-work. 
 
 He attended the re-union of Abolitionists in Chicago, in 
 June, 1874, and participated in the proceedings; but came home 
 quite fatigued from the exertion and excitement, and never left 
 Janesville again. His mind remained active to the last, and he 
 continued to write for the press to within a week of his death, 
 being engaged in a series of articles on the history and results of 
 the Maine law, which he had nearly completed. He was inter- 
 ested in every new reform, and ever hopeful for the future, hav- 
 ing a firm faith in the coming of that day when " the kingdoms 
 of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his 
 Christ." The proper treatment of the Indian and the Chinese, 
 the questions of prison reform, and of peace and international 
 arbitration, of free- trade, and civil service reform, all received 
 his hearty interest and sympathy. 
 
 He passed gently away, like a tired child falling asleep, on 
 the evening of the I4th of .February, 1878. His faithful and be- 
 loved wife followed him a few weeks later. They left two child- 
 ren, Mrs. Maria G. Frost, now of Michigan, the author of some 
 Sunday-School books of note, and Lavinia Goodell, attorney, 
 Janesville, Wis. ; and four grand-children, the sons of Mrs. Frost, 
 viz: William Goodell Frost, teacher of Greek at Oberlin Col- 
 lege, Ohio, and Lewis C., Nelson A., and Willard J. Frost, now 
 with their parents in Michigan. 
 
 Of his published works, the principal are: "The Democracy 
 of Christianity," in two volumes, 770 pages, published in 1852; 
 " .Slavery and Anti-Slavery, a History of the Great Struggle in 
 both Hemispheres," 600 pages, 1855; "The American Slave 
 Code, in Theory and Practice," 400 pages, 1853. Smaller works 
 are: "Views of American Constitutional Law in its bearings 
 upon American Slavery," a good sized pamphlet of over 150 
 
 5
 
 34 
 
 pages, line print, published in 1^15; "Our National Charters, 
 embracing the I'Ydcral Constitution, the Articles of Confedcra- 
 tion, tlu- Declaration of Independence, and the Articles of Asso- 
 ciation, with notes .showing their hearing on the question of 
 Slavery, iS^; "American Slavery a foniiidahle ohstacle to the 
 conversion of tin- World," a pri/e pamphlet of 2| pages, pub- 
 lished by the American and Foreign Anti-Slav -ery Socictv, in 
 1854; "The Rights and Wrongs of Klx.de Island," i&p; "The 
 Kansas Struggle of lS^6 in Congress and in the Presidential 
 Campaign, with Suggestions for the Future," 1857; "Slavery 
 Limitation Abandoned, in Theory and Practice, by the- Defend- 
 ers of the Crittenden Lecomption Compromise," i8yS. 
 
 He left unpublished his " Life and Teachings of Christ," 
 " The Highest Good," and " The Christian Warfare," a poem, 
 besides several minor poems and fragments. His earlv literary 
 taste was for poetry, but his earnest battles with evil left him 
 little leisure to indulge and cultivate this taste. Of his unpub- 
 lished poems we give a few. The first bears no date, but is 
 written on paper yellow and crumbling with age, and in the 
 firm, clear hand of youth. 
 
 "THE MINSTREL. 
 
 " He had a lyre, once, and its tones were sweet 
 
 As evening's passing breath, yet strangely wild; 
 And oft as morn the dewy hills did greet, 
 Or evening in the valleys lingered mild, 
 
 " And from the joyous east the moonbeam smiled, 
 
 He touched in secret, soft, the magic strings; 
 And as the sound his youthful soul beguiled, 
 Swift Fancy bore him on her airy wings. 
 
 " And then he dreamed of strange, unnatural things, 
 Of friendships that outrode misfortune's storms; 
 Of worth and merit in the courts of kings ; 
 Of noble souls that dwelt in manly forms. 
 
 " Of honesty he dreamed, that gathered gold ; 
 
 Of thrifty villainy that was despised ; 
 Of patriots honored, when grown poor and old ; 
 Of sages by their country known and prized. 
 
 " Of Justice, too, he dreamed, that ruled the State, 
 
 Of laws that bound th' oppressor not th' oppressed ; 
 Of innocence protected by the great; 
 
 Of genius with the smiles of Fortune blessed.
 
 35 
 
 " Of hopes, he dreamed, that warmed the guileless breast, 
 
 Nor gleam'd their hapless votaries to enthrall ; 
 Of pleasures that composed the heart to rest, 
 Nor tinged the cup of life with bitter gall. 
 
 "Ah! idle dreams! illusive transient all! 
 
 When years had waked him into real life, 
 Listless he heard Ambition's rousing call, 
 
 And rather shunned than sought the mad'ning strife. 
 
 " 'And thou, false lyre,' he said, ' whose siren sound 
 Inspired the hopes that hath my bosom wrung, 
 Sink, with thine own fallen phantoms to the ground, 
 And there forever lie thy chords unstrung!' 
 
 " Years rolled the breath of heaven was in that lyre, 
 
 Though doomed neglected in the dust to sleep; 
 While from the minstrel's heart an unblown fire 
 Kindled his blood-shot eye that could not weep. 
 
 " Calm with the apathy of hopeless woe, 
 
 A seeming stoic, from despair suppressed 
 He stood; like Heckla, crowned with ice and snow, 
 Mocking the burning lava in her breast." 
 
 Although he was of a rarely sensitive and refined nature, and 
 had to contend with much that was coarse, hard and bitter, this 
 is the only writing he has left in which there is a tinge of cyni- 
 cism ; and it is one which, so far as the writer knows, he never 
 published, never alluded to, and never showed to any one. Since 
 it ranks amongst the finest of his poems in poetic merit, he prob- 
 ably withheld it as not breathing the Christian hope and faith 
 which characterize most of his writings. Of different tone is the 
 following, marked 1853. 
 
 "MY THREE-SCORE YEARS. 
 
 " My three-score years ! my three-score years ! 
 
 Ah! whither have ye fled? 
 'Mid sunny smiles, and rain-drop tears, 
 How swiftly have ye sped ! 
 
 " O'er graves of friends I seem to tread, 
 
 Their forms before me rise; 
 I hear their voices 'round my head, 
 When darkness seals my eyes.
 
 36 
 
 "The winds that kiss the ancient trees, 
 
 And lift my whiten'd hair, 
 The music of the evening breeze, 
 The morning's balmy air, 
 
 " Or winters wild, or summers fair, 
 
 Or sleet or whirlwind blast, 
 Alike the flight of years declare, 
 Pains pleasures conflicts, past. 
 
 " My childhood's glee, my youth's fond plan, 
 
 My manhood's ardent chase, 
 The labors of my narrow span 
 Before me rise apace, 
 
 " To tell me of my lengthened race, 
 
 My struggle almost o'er, 
 The hour when I must yield my place, 
 Nor plan, nor purpose more. 
 
 " To Thee, O God, the deep resolve 
 
 The prayer, the midnight sigh 
 Was breathed, that bade my years revolve 
 To aims and efforts high. 
 
 " To break Oppression's iron chain, 
 And Pleasure's madd'ning bowl, 
 Imbruted man to raise again 
 To manliness of soul. 
 
 " With holy Law's benign control, 
 
 The violent to bind ; 
 From Error's bond to loose the soul, 
 To free the imprisoned mind. 
 
 " TAese, that my early thoughts designed, 
 
 My labors still engage, 
 A lengthen'd chain that serves to bind 
 My youth and hoary age. 
 
 " The wint'ry blasts that round me rage, 
 
 And life's warm current chill, 
 My early ardor scarce assuage 
 My mission to fulfill. 
 
 " Father ! submissive to Thy will, 
 
 I wait Thy high behest; 
 With feeble powers to labor still, 
 Or lay me down to rest. 
 
 " But, O ! be mine the portion, blest, ' 
 
 Rich fruits of toil to see! 
 Some sunlit spot, no more oppress'd, 
 Restor'd to *, and THEE!
 
 "The leper cleans'd the slave set free 
 
 And Babel's tott'ring towers ; 
 Be these the scenes reserv'd for me 
 In life's declining hours: 
 
 " Or, on some Pisgah's lofty height, 
 
 The promis'd land lo view, 
 With Zion's pearly gates in sight, 
 And glories rich and new. 
 
 " Not in my strength, O Lord, but Thine, 
 
 The warfare was begun, 
 Not on my brow, but at Thy shrine, 
 Be all the garlands won. 
 
 " No merit, when my work is done, 
 
 Nor honor would I claim ; 
 But plead for mercy, through Thy Son, 
 And pardon in His name." 
 
 We give entire a poem written by him twenty years later, 
 in 1873, on the 5oth anniversary of the marriage of intimate 
 friends and family relatives, whose golden wedding occurred 
 within a few months of his own. 
 
 POEM, 
 
 DEDICATED TO 
 
 JOHN W. AND MIRA C. HILL, 
 
 ON THE CELEBRATION OF THEIR 
 
 GOLDEN WEDDING, 
 
 A t Green Point, Sept. 30, 1813. 
 
 " Friends and kindred, well beloved, 
 
 'In the days of Auld Lang Syne,' 
 Oft your friendship have we proved, 
 Often seen your good works shine. 
 With congratulations sweet, 
 You, once more, we gladly greet. 
 
 ' Fifty years have rolled away, 
 Since your youthful nuptial day; 
 Still we seem to see you stand, 
 Heart in heart, and hand in hand, 
 Each to each in fealty true, 
 Yielding mutual service due.
 
 38 
 
 " Fifty years of wedded life, 
 Without jealousy or strife, 
 In a feverish, fickle age, 
 When divorces are the rage. 
 
 "While foul Treason's traitorous band 
 Threatened severance of the land, 
 Loyal still ye steadfast stood, 
 To your own and country's good. 
 Truthful fealty, well ye saw, 
 Links true Liberty with Law; 
 And the love that's pure and free 
 Lives through all eternity. 
 
 " While King Alcohol bears sway 
 O'er the statesmen of to-day, 
 Scattering wide with murderous hand, 
 Maddening poisons through the land, 
 Severing holiest marriage ties, 
 And the arm of Law defies, 
 Yours', dear friends,, the work has been 
 To confront this ' Man of Sin.' 
 Would all Christians do the same, 
 Soon would cease this crime and shame: 
 Truth should reign, her sway be owned, - 
 Tyrant Alcohol dethroned. 
 
 "Fifty years! with record bright, 
 Era of increasing light, 
 Rushing on with light'ning speed 
 Helps for many a human need. 
 Triumphs new, for rights of man ; 
 Telegraphs, the world to span ; 
 Contests sharp of Right with Wrong ; 
 Weak ones struggling with the strong. 
 Age of action, age of thought, 
 Age when noble deeds are wrought, 
 Age when bubbles come to naught, 
 Age with nameless dangers fraught, 
 Age of wonders your's and our's, 
 Well it tasked our feeble powers, 
 While together we have stood, 
 Laboring for our Countr\'s good. 
 Age, instructive to review, 
 Gathering truths both old and new, 
 Truths from falsehoods to disixrn, 
 Those to cherish, these to spurn. 
 
 "Fifty years! Alas! how few 
 Now remain, whom onee we knew.
 
 39 
 
 Other actors tread the stage, 
 
 Other cares their thoughts engage ; 
 
 Yet the world's affairs go on, 
 
 Missing not the millions gone. 
 
 Light with darkness still contends, 
 
 Christ His Kingdom still extends; 
 
 Changes great our eves have seen, 
 
 Greater change those changes mean. 
 
 Works of Providence, begun, 
 
 Die not with our setting sun. 
 
 Other laborers throng the field ; 
 
 Seed we've sown their harvests yield, 
 
 Even as seed our sires had sown, 
 
 For our hands have harvests grown. 
 
 Implements, adapted well, 
 
 Future uses may foretell; 
 
 Ploughs, well-shaped to turn the soil, 
 
 Antedate the tiller's toil; 
 
 Free sojourn free thought free speech, 
 
 Steam proclaims, and light'nings preach. 
 
 Ne'er as now, since time began, 
 
 Man could converse hold with man. 
 
 Words that burn, and thoughts that soar, 
 
 Glide beneath old Ocean's roar; 
 
 Famished nations questions send 
 
 To the earth's remotest end; 
 
 Instant answers promise bread, 
 
 'Speedily shall ye be fed.' 
 
 Commerce, science, truths divine, 
 
 Round the globe their cords entwine; 
 
 Distance vanishes a dream, 
 
 Realms remote our neighbors seem; 
 
 Once neglected, but no more, 
 
 Lo! they crowd our opened door, 
 
 Light and knowledge to implore. 
 
 " Fifty years are gone and past, 
 Dying on the autumnal blast; 
 Wondrous years of thought and strife, 
 Nations struggling into life, 
 Slavery banished in a day, 
 Heathen idols cast away, 
 Isles of the Pacific Sea, 
 Won, O, Prince of Peace, for Thee. 
 
 " Fifty years have run their race ; 
 Other fifty claim their place, 
 To complete what these began, 
 For the rising race of man.
 
 4 
 
 What their mighty deeds shall be, 
 A-i^ that succeed shall see : 
 Yet the vhadims of the Past 
 Well the Future might foreeast. 
 Backward roll not Nature's wheels, 
 Onward strides their task reveals; 
 I'ast and Present, well combined, 
 Form the warp that Heaven designed 
 For the woof of future years, 
 'Till the finished web appears. 
 Revolutions once begun 
 Show their course as rivers run. 
 
 " Thus interpreted, our Age 
 Promise gives of widening gauge. 
 While the wheels of Progress roll 
 Forward to their destined goal, 
 Mark we not the "rights of man," 
 Widened from a narrow span? 
 For companionship designed, 
 Say, shall Woman wait behind? 
 While he reigns upon the throne, 
 ' Good ' were it ' to be alone? ' 
 Through his empire must he ride, 
 Without woman at his side? 
 Rising with him to her 'sphere,' 
 Shall she not herself appear? 
 Queenly help for kingly man ! 
 Was not this bright Eden's plan? 
 Is not now the curse removed, 
 Promised boon, by Heaven approved,- 
 Since upon the Serpent's head 
 Woman's seed has come to tread ? 
 
 " Friends beloved, your loving life, 
 Free from tyranny and strife, 
 Lively illustrations lend 
 To the thougets we here have penn'd. 
 Equal burdens, equal cares, 
 Mutual counsels, aids and prayers, 
 Equal interests, duties, rights, 
 Each with each in love unites. 
 Thus forever may it be, 
 Now and in Eternity. 
 On -your fiftieth nuptial day, 
 Now, as ever, thus we pray. 
 
 WILLIAM GOODELL, 
 
 Janesville, Wis., Sejt. 20, 1873,
 
 4 1 
 
 His funeral took place from the Congregational Church ot 
 Janesville, Wis., of which he was a member, on Sabbath after- 
 noon, Feb. 17, 1878, and was largely attended by his friends both 
 in Janesville and from a distance. From the discourse of the pas- 
 tor, Rev. T. P. Sawin, on the occasion, we give some extracts: 
 
 " I am speaking within bounds when I say that the length 
 of his service in the cause of temperance and anti-slavery exceeds 
 that of any living man, and that its influence and power rank 
 second with none. I am aware of names which have shone with 
 greater brilliancy, and have had a wider fame; but I know of 
 none that can point to greater or more enduring results. * * * 
 
 "Above all things, he trusted in God. Herein lies the secret 
 of his ministerial success. That little church in Honeoye, N. 
 Y., to which he preached, and for which he labored eight suc- 
 cessive years, was clearly built upon the foundation of the Pro- 
 phets and Apostles, Jesus Christ being the chief corner stone. 
 It was independent as the church at Corinth, or the one in 
 Galatia or Ephesus. He received no human ordination, or 
 earthly imposition of hands. Like Paul, he was called to be an 
 apostle, ' not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and 
 God the Father.' He had such implicit faith in the Bible, as 
 God's word, such magnificent trust in its wholeness, and in its 
 sufticiencv, that it alone was his creed; and it alone the creed of 
 his church. Other churches, at that time, with their creeds and 
 confessions, did not keep from their communion slave-holders 
 and wine-bibbers; yet that Independent Reform Church, stand- 
 ing alone and exclusively on the revealed Word, never once fel- 
 lowshipped the man who sold his brother men either to the 
 bondage of unrequited toil, or the slavery of strong drink. 
 
 " For himself and for his church, he believed in freedom of 
 thought and freedom of speech. When the morning sermon 
 was over, the people gathered in the afternoon, took up the 
 theme, and freely discussed it. So they grew strong in the faith, 
 and equipped themselves with the weapons of warfare in the 
 fight against sin. In the meantime he crowded his hours with 
 work. The King's call was urgent, and he could not delay or 
 loiter. From the editorial chair, he went to the lecture platform 
 and the preacher's desk. Without a college training, he became 
 skilled in the arts of the dialectician, and practiced in all the de- 
 vices of logic. Unlearned in professional schools, he mastered 
 the sciences of law and theology. His 'American Slave Code' 
 was re-published in England; and 'Our National Charters' pre- 
 6
 
 4 3 
 
 seated an argument which Ottf best constitutional lawyers treated 
 with the respect due to a 'foeman worthy of their steel;' while 
 his 'Democracy of Christianity' stands as a monument not only 
 of his genius as a critical theologian, but it exhibits his broad 
 catholic spirit, and his unwavering adhesion to that thorough- 
 going evangelical Christianity which is first pure, then peaceable, 
 but at all times sound, and clear, and strong. 
 
 "As an illustration of his faith in the purposes of God, and 
 the constant spirit in which he labored, take this extract from the 
 work I have just mentioned. The theme of the chapter is the 
 Scripture prophecies. 
 
 "'Here, then,' he says, ' is matter and occasion of devout grat- 
 itude, profound adoration, fraternal and filial affection, unshaken 
 confidence, sublime faith, unwearied endeavor, patient endurance 
 triumphant anticipation, and serene hope. The statesman, the 
 patriot, the philanthrophist, the moralist, the reformer, the ex- 
 plorer of nature, the investigator of arts, the teacher of science, 
 the poet, the logician, these, as well as the theologian, the mis- 
 sionary, the preacher of the gospel, if they rightly understand 
 themselves, and each other, and the work to which they are 
 called, may find themselves co-operating, each in his own chosen 
 field of labor, for the ultimate restoration of the species to the 
 high station in reserve for them under the moral and providen- 
 tial government of God, and in fulfillment of His purposes of 
 mercy revealed in the gospel of His Son Jesus Christ. And this 
 must of necessity involve the practical recognition of their com- 
 mon brotherhood, and the security of their inherent and inalien- 
 able rights. Christianity can be satisfied with nothing less ; 
 Democracy can demand nothing more. The single assurance 
 that the Saviour shall "see of the travail of his soul, and shall be 
 satisfied," if we rightly understand its wide scope and bearing, 
 may suffice to relieve us of doubts in respect to the enterprise in 
 which those are engaged who labor wisely for the emancipation 
 of humanity, and the overthrow of despotic power. It is a 
 democratic Christianity, it is a Christian democracy, that must 
 emancipate and save men. Mere names and forms, cither of 
 Christianity or of democracy, will avail nothing. When t la- 
 precepts of Christianity are reduced to practice, when its princi- 
 ples are honored, when its living spirit inspires men, then the 
 nations will be truly and permanently disenthralled. If the Son 
 of Man make them free, they shall be free indeed.' 
 
 " This is strong writing; it is forcible; it is calm. But did he
 
 43 
 
 dream, when he wrote it, that emancipation was hardly a dozen 
 years away? I know not; but I do know that he fully believed 
 that slavery was doomed, and that the day-star of freedom had 
 already arisen. 
 
 "1 have scarcely spoken of his personal traits; his strong 
 and persevering will; his indomitable and unflinching purposes, 
 his well defined convictions, his large charity, in word and deed 
 and thought, and his wonderful tenderness, that made him so 
 thoroughly loved and so truly reverenced in his family, and in 
 the communities where he has dwelt. These things add to the 
 sweetness and charm of his memory, more even than the great 
 things he has accomplished. Yet they were the King's thread 
 that ran through all his life, and characterized all his actions. He 
 thought not of himself, but of others; and when one of his 
 great objects in life came to a successful consummation, then he 
 turned to another with unflagging zeal and industry. It is chiefly 
 as a laborer in the cause of temperance that we have known him; 
 though there are those here who have been his fellow acquaint- 
 ances and helpers for half a century; some even have shared 
 with him in the perils of his work. When, however, the Eman- 
 cipation Proclamation, and the Constitutional amendments guar- 
 anteeing its provisions had become history, he turned all the 
 force of his intellect and heart into the work of saving men from 
 the intoxicating cup. The story of that work cannot be told 
 here. Time would fail me to recount his Herculean labors in 
 thi* direction; but almost the last words of his life were a regret 
 that he had not been able to finish a series of articles on this 
 subject. But what he has done has been well done, and his re- 
 ward will be commensurate with his intention. 
 
 " Yet I must not fail to notice distinctly what I have implied 
 all the way through, that he was emphatically a Christian man. 
 We have known him as such, and heartily bear witness to his 
 own declaration made in his eighty-third year: ' My religious, 
 theological, and ethical views remain substantially what they 
 were at the beginning, distinctly evangelical, intensified rather 
 than diluted or modified. J^kesc, as foundation principles, have 
 been the inspiration and guide of my activities and measures, in 
 opposition to antagonizing influences of worldly utilitarian ex- 
 pediency, and consequent compromise of moral right. My life- 
 long experiences have illustrated the efficacy of prayer, as an 
 instrumentality of accomplishment; all skeptical doubts, objec- 
 tions, and incredulity to the contrary notwithstanding.'
 
 44 
 
 " This, then, is the crowning glory of the man, that in all 
 things he based his actions on Christian principles; and after 
 eighty years of trial, in the full vigor of his manhood, with a 
 conscience unsullied by falsehood, and with the certain knowl- 
 edge that he was soon going hence, he declared that the convic- 
 tions of his youth were the strength of his manhood, and the 
 stay of his old age. Doubtless he saw as much, and had as 
 much reason for distrusting the progress of good as any man, 
 yet such was his confidence in God as a Soverign Ruler, and 
 such his belief in the omnipotence of righteousness, that he fully 
 trusted to its victory in this world. He had no patience with 
 those who go about prophecying ruin, ruin and devastation, and 
 catastrophic destructions; but he looked forward and abroad over 
 the world, and shared the larger hope that ' good should full, at 
 last to all ;' and that on this earth, the kingdom which is not of 
 this world should be fully and triumphantly set up within it, and 
 Jesus should reign, not by any temporal exhibition of authority, 
 but by the unfleeting and immortal authority of an inward rule 
 in the hearts of all men. 
 
 " But what more should I say on an occasion like this ? 
 Words would fail me, were they winged with the eloquence of 
 angels. Insufficient and unsatisfactory are all utterances made in 
 behalf of the memory of the good. But I have dared to come 
 up on the high plane of retrospect, feeling and believing that in 
 the midst of this somewhat triumphant and joyous strain you 
 would clearly detect the consolation of God, wherewith He 
 would console you in your suffering. 
 
 " ' Uplifted high, in heart and hope, are we, 
 Until we doubt not that for one so true 
 Still nobler work remains for him to do.' 
 
 " Bear now his body away to its last resting place, there to 
 remain till the heavens be no more. His spirit already mingles 
 with the brave and good of all ages ; for he has gone over to 
 the majority. Let the bells toll out their solemn farewell, while 
 we march on to the grave that bears no token of victory. In our 
 hearts there come the words, slightly changed, but fitly spoken, 
 concerning one of England's worthies, and which are no less 
 fitting for him. 
 
 " ' His voice is silent in our house and church 
 Forever, and, whatever tempests lower, 
 Forever silent ; even if they broke 
 In thunder, silent ; yet remember all 
 He spoke among you, and the man who spoke,
 
 45 
 
 Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, 
 Nor faltered with the eternal God for power; 
 Whose life was work, whose language rife 
 With rugged maxims hewn from life ; 
 Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke 
 All great self-seekers trampling on the Right. 
 Not once or twice in our far-famed history 
 The path of duty was the way to glory. 
 He that ever following her commands, 
 On, with toil of heart, and knees and hands 
 Thro" the long gorge to the far light has won 
 His path upward, and prevailed, 
 Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled, 
 Are close upon the shining table lands 
 To which our God Himself is moon and sun. 
 Such was he ; his work is done ; , 
 
 He is gone, who seemed so great ; 
 Gone ; but nothing can bereave him 
 Of the force he made his own 
 Being here and we believe him 
 Something far advanced in state ; 
 And that he wears a truer crown, 
 Than any wealth that man can weave him. 
 But speak no more of his renown 
 Lay your earthly fancies down- 
 God accept him ; Christ receive him.' " 
 
 We cannot close this memorial without making brief men- 
 tion of a fondly cherished project of its subject, which he left 
 unfulfilled. It has been remarked that poetry was his favorite 
 department of literature, and one which he would fain have fol- 
 lowed had not the exigencies of the times forced him to choose 
 whether he would live poetry rather than -write it. He possessed, 
 in a remarkable degree, that unusual combination of qualities, a 
 highly poetic nature, combined with a strictly, even severely 
 logical cast of mind. Of the latter, his contemporaries were 
 well aware; the former was hidden from most of them. Yet so. 
 intensely did it struggle to assert itself, that .during the brief in- 
 tervals which he could snatch from his busy, active warfare 
 with evil, during middle life, he projected and commenced to 
 write an epic poem, entitled, "Redemption; or Human Progress; 
 a Song of the Ages." He sketched a "plan" of this, from which 
 we quote enough to convey his leading idea. 
 
 " An epic or heroic poem celebrates an arduous enterprise, 
 terminating in a memorable event, and accomplished by an illus- 
 trious hero. The more magnificent the enterprise, the greater 
 the obstacles surmounted, the more glorious the consummation, 
 the more illustrious and mighty the hero, the more grand will be 
 the plan or design of the epic by which these are celebrated. 
 
 " In all these particulars there is no existing or conceivable
 
 4 6 
 
 epic, or plan or design of an epic, that compares with that of an 
 epic which should celebrate the work of Human Redemption, 
 and the process of human recovery, past, present, and future, 
 to the final consummation of all things. No enterprise can he 
 so magnificent; no event or consummation so glorious; no hero 
 comparable to the Author and Finisher the Captain of human 
 salvation. 
 
 "That exposition of the Christian theology which makes 
 most of this work of Redemption, which presents the greatest 
 obstacles to its accomplishment, in the character of man, and in 
 the nature of the Divine government, which at the same time 
 makes most of the original dignity of human nature, and its 
 capacities of affinity to Deity, which makes most of the solemnity 
 of human conduct, responsibility, and destiny, which presents 
 the strongest contrasts of human character and destiny, which 
 most highly exalts the Messiah, and therefore most magnifies the 
 condescension of His humiliation that exposition of Christian- 
 ity is best adapted to the purpose of a sublime epic. And the 
 very consideration that this is so, furnishes a presumptive evidence 
 that that exposition is the legitimate and true one. For it were 
 absurd and impious to suppose that the human imagination is 
 capable of conceiving a more sublime and interesting scheme of 
 the universe, and of the Divine operations, than that which al- 
 ready exists, and of which God is the Subject and Author. 
 
 "Compare the gods of heathenism with Jehovah; and com- 
 pare the wars and voyages of Ulysses, Hector, yEneas, and the 
 founding of the Roman Empire, after the burning of Troy, with 
 the plan of Divine and human operations involved in the work 
 of Redemption. Compare the heroes of those heathen wars 
 with the Messiah, and you will have the contrast (I will not call 
 it the comparison) between the celebrated heathen epics, and the 
 epic that should be composed from the Bible. 
 
 " Milton and Pollock have done much for the honor of 
 Christian poetry, and had their plans equalled their execution, 
 they would have thrown the heathen poets immeasureably into 
 the background. Indeed they have done so, as it is; but neither 
 Milton nor Pollock were sufficiently comprehensive in their plans. 
 
 "Many important objects would be accomplished by present- 
 ing a Christian epic which should properly celebrate the work of 
 human redemption, and the fact of human progress. It would 
 present the Christian theology in an attractive and impressive 
 view. It would awaken new interest, and inspire new hopes of
 
 47 
 
 the progressive elevation of man. It would accordingly stimu- 
 late to holier and more consistent efforts for the elevation of hu- 
 manity. * * * 
 
 " The connection of Christian theology with Christian ethics, 
 should be apparent. A spirit of brotherly love, and tender re- 
 gard for humanity, should pervade the whole work, and it should 
 be so planned and executed as to inspire and foster that spirit. 
 
 " The fact of human progress and amelioration should be 
 made apparent. The Christian millennium should occupy a prom- 
 inent place, and be shown to be both scriptural and rational the 
 consummation, without which the enterprise should be a failure. 
 This would give an air of hope and triumph to the poem. 
 
 " The moral and the poetical effect should, at every step, be 
 combined, and become identical. Christianity furnishes the best 
 possible field, materials, and opportunity for this. 
 
 " The truly poetic of Christianity is spiritual; and its spirit- 
 uality is poetic. 
 
 " The heathen epics are histories of bloody wars, and the 
 events and results connected with them. The Christian epic 
 should record the great moral and intellectual conflicts and tri- 
 umphs of the world all that pertains to the moral and intellec- 
 tual elevation of man." 
 
 Some seventy-five pages in manuscript are all that we find 
 written of this projected poem. From the fragment we make a 
 few brief extracts. 
 
 The second book opens thus: 
 
 " Harp of the rolling ages! Thou whose song 
 Unceasing, notes the measur'd march of Time, 
 Thyself, thy flowing numbers, to the years 
 Yielding their cadence, evermore attun'd 
 To harmony with Heav'n's eternal plan; 
 Thine is the music of the circling spheres, 
 And thine the song, still varying, and yet one, 
 Of long revolving cent'ries. When thy notes 
 Fall scattered on the untun'd and transcient ears 
 Of heedless mortals, jarring dissonance 
 Disturbs them; but thy voice is music sweet 
 To him whose faith seraphic, list'ning long, 
 Catches and holds thy glorious symphonies, 
 As heard in Heav'n, or at the final close, 
 Where, like the rays of light, that travel down 
 For centuries, to visit this dark earth, 
 From suns thus distant, all thy tones arriv'd, 
 Arc all, at length, in fit proportion heard, 
 And God's harmonious Providence expressed."
 
 4 8 
 
 In the first book is described a conference of the Powers of 
 Darkness, in which Satan and his minions discuss how they shall 
 proceed to conquer the human race to evil, which we would 
 gladly quote did space permit. They are described as celebrat- 
 ing, 
 
 " 'Mid horrid orgies, and demonial feast," 
 
 the recent murder of Abel, and and their conquest of Cain and 
 his posterity. Moloch advises war as the best means of accom- 
 plishing the ruin of man; Mammon would substitute wealth; 
 Belial suggests pleasure as preferable to either of the others, 
 both which would develope the virtues of industry and thrift. 
 Satan decides upon a union of the three. The scene closes thus: 
 
 "He ceas'd, mid earthquake thund'rings of acclaim 
 From all that dismal conclave, with one shout 
 That shook the firmament, and echo'd back 
 From deep perdition ; then, the dense dark cloud 
 That did enclose them, burst with sudden shock, 
 And a sulph'rous show'r; as ^tna ashes sheds 
 At times, o'er Sicily, sure presage found 
 Of quick eruption, and the baleful flood 
 Of burning lava pour'd impetuous forth 
 Upon the plains and villages below ; 
 So from that high volcano's cloudy womb 
 Forth issuing, legions upon legions roll'd 
 Downward towards earth, a cataract huge 
 And horrible ; thence spreading far and wide 
 On plain etherial, while their dragon wings, 
 Like hast'ning hail-storms urged by tempests, roar'd, 
 And all the o'ercast horizon with them lower'd. 
 Then soon was witness'd in the darkling west, 
 What seem'd a warrior's standard, high uprear'd, 
 Beside an altar smear'd with clotted gore. 
 There grisly Moloch, as with beat of drum, 
 Loud sounding timbrel, and with trumpet blast, 
 Summon'd his armies, gath'ring there, apace, 
 From all that multitude who sought renown, 
 By deeds of slaughter, and the trade of blood 
 Fit spirits to inflame that thirst on earth. 
 Far distant, in the bright and gorgeous east, 
 O'er spicy groves that lent their rich perfumes, 
 Belial, his brow with rosy garlands deck'd, 
 On silken clouds with graceful ease reclined, 
 And with sweet sounds of dulcimer and lute, 
 And show of sorc'ress sylphs that round him whirl'd 
 In mazy dance, lascivious, dissolute,
 
 49 
 
 His vot'ries gather'd ; pleasure their employ, 
 
 And all'the arts seductive Pleasure plies, 
 
 Her cheated victims to decoy and slay ; 
 
 Thus train'd to play their part in scenes of earth. 
 
 In midway zenith, on his golden throne, 
 
 With splendor shining, like meridian sun, 
 
 Sat Mammon, and with proffer'd prizes bought 
 
 The crowds that drew around him, bent on gain. 
 
 Ready, in turn, with gold, to purchase men, 
 
 Seduc'd to sell themselves, and thence prepar'd 
 
 To purchase one another, as brute beasts, 
 
 Traffic abhor'd, in blood and human souls ; 
 
 Th' assembly thus assorted, marshall'd train'd, 
 
 And sub-divided, under diverse chiefs 
 
 Subordinate, in order fitly rang'd, 
 
 Yet separate, th' infernal armies stood; 
 
 Each individual knew his rank and post, 
 
 The work assigned him on the earth below. 
 
 Silence prevailed ; and curious, secret arts, 
 
 Signals, and pass-words, grips, and counter-signs, 
 
 Wink of the eye, position of the foot, 
 
 And lesson of the fingers, were enjoined, 
 
 Devise of craft, to cover dev'lish deeds, 
 
 First taught by Belial. Then, at signal giv'n, 
 
 In silence, one by one, in order strict, 
 
 Drop'd singly down, in quiet, gentle fall, 
 
 Like snow-flakes, fading slowly as they fell, 
 
 To shadowy dimness first, like phantoms frail, 
 
 Vaguely discern'd, impalpable as mist, 
 
 Then vanishing, invisible as air, 
 
 And standing unperceiv'd in haunts of men, 
 
 All unsuspiciously inhal'd as breath, 
 
 Or, through the ear, unheard, suggesting dreams, 
 
 In sleep, or waking; springs of fancy touch'd, 
 
 Nerve sympathetic, or evolving brain, 
 
 Or mystic fluid magnetic, seat of life 
 
 Perhaps, or undiscoverable link 
 
 'Twixt mind and matter, these in turn assail'd 
 
 As best might suit their purpose, dark and foul. 
 
 Satan, meantime, among them, gliding swift, 
 
 And passing to and fro through all the earth, 
 
 Like roaring lion, seeking to devour." 
 
 Various types of human character, before the flood, are de- 
 scribed. Among them this: 
 
 " In those days, he who walked by Virtue's side 
 Thus walked because he loved her loveliness,
 
 50 
 
 And drank the sweetness of her angel smile 
 
 EmptarMj and desir'd no other lot, 
 
 No other recompense ; conceiving \vell 
 
 That love of Holiness is love of God, 
 
 And love of God is hlessedness and Heaven. 
 
 He walked not thus with Holiness and God 
 
 At bidding of the statutes man had frum'd, 
 
 Or lest the State should low'r, or Church should chide 
 
 Or hurl anathemas, or solemn vote 
 
 Of Sanhedrims exclude him from their pale; 
 
 Or lest Society from her warm lap 
 
 Should cast him out, an heretic abhor'd ; 
 
 Nor yet because Philosophy, exact, 
 
 With line and plummet sounding at the base 
 
 Of human-nature, guaging well its depths, 
 
 Its just dimensions, and its kindred ties, 
 
 Had drawn up data for a diagram 
 
 On which to demonstrate the certain hold 
 
 That Virtue has on Pleasure, Vice on Pain 
 
 Fit exercise for reason, in its place, 
 
 Revealing wisdom in the Great First Cause, 
 
 Yet reaching not the grounds of holy love, 
 
 Obedience, faith, fruition, firm repose, 
 
 Resting in truth and righteousness divine, 
 
 The holy beauty of the Lord our God. 
 
 Nor yet because, by process less exact, 
 
 Yielding assurance with more caution giv'n, 
 
 Sagacity, with wise and studious mien, 
 
 O'er statesman-like statistics ling'ring long, 
 
 And interest tables, carefully compil'd 
 
 For counting-house convenience, doctrines deep 
 
 Of varying chances, permutations vast, 
 
 With logarithmetie industry pursu'd 
 
 Through all their changes, intricate and coy, 
 
 Mocking detection, save by practic'd skill, 
 
 With decimated fractions, by whose help 
 
 Approximation toward the truth is reached, 
 
 Had calculated probable results 
 
 Of human actions, and had found the chance 
 
 As av'raged from experience of the past, 
 
 Upon the whole, to lie on Virtue's side, 
 
 And Honesty, compared with Knavery, 
 
 The better policy, for lengthen'd thrift, 
 
 Of better credit on th' Exchange, at Bank, 
 
 And wheresoever merchants shrewd are found ; 
 
 Virtue expedient, therefore gainful, wise, 
 
 And hence as valid law to be received, 
 
 Of binding obligation weight, and force 
 
 Upon the conscience ; or, at least, the purse !
 
 5 1 
 
 Such potent aids of virtue, now so rife, 
 
 And taught laboriously in public schools, 
 
 As science, moral, economic, deep, 
 
 Quoted in Senates, and in pulpits preach'd, 
 
 (And better preached, perhaps, than ethics worse,) 
 
 Useful, 'tis thought, in modern times, to some 
 
 Whose eye-sight moral beauty never bless'd, 
 
 Thus saved, through selfish hope or servile fear, 
 
 From infamy, or gibbets, here on earth ; 
 
 Whom holy love of duty, and of God, 
 
 Saves never, upon earth, nor yet in heav'n. 
 
 Such science flourished not, to aid the saints 
 
 In paths of holiness, before the flood; 
 
 Or, if it did, no 'trophy left behind 
 
 That has survived the deluge, or was deem'd 
 
 Demanding record on the page inspired, 
 
 As having lit the fires of sacrifice 
 
 On Abel's altar, or afforded light 
 
 To Enoch, while with God on earth he walked." 
 
 We will conclude these quotations with one from the last 
 words of Adam: 
 
 " Take courage, then, my children, and be strong ; 
 Resist the Serpent, whom the Lord shall bruise 
 Under your feet; and put his hosts to flight. 
 Yet not without sore conflict, patient faith, 
 And firm endurance. Cherish well the tie 
 That binds you to each other, to the race 
 Of man upon the earth, wherever found, 
 Howe'er debas'd, despoil'd, forlorn and crush'd, 
 Howe'er polluted, dark, beguil'd, ensnar'd 
 And wayward ; yet beware the witching lure 
 Of bad example, and the taint of sin, 
 And warn the wicked of their evil ways, 
 That God may give them penitence and faith, 
 And knowledge of His counsels, as ye know 
 He has already, unto some of you 
 Who once were lost, but now are saved and cleans'd. 
 Thou well rememb'rest, Enos, when, in crowds 
 Thy listening neighbors gather'd round thy bow'r 
 To hear the voice of prayer, and kind reproof, 
 And list'ning wept, and weeping learn'd to pray, 
 And praying turned their feet from paths of sin, 
 To serve the Lord their Maker. Enoch, thou, 
 Though young in years, wast then by Heav'n inspir'd 
 To raise thy voice a witness to the Truth, 
 And many heard thee, and thy words received ; 
 Thus do: fulfill thy work, and reap thy sheaves;
 
 Souls rescued shall be giv'n thee, for thy hire. 
 
 Such seasons, still returning, as for prayer 
 
 The faithful come together, God shall send 
 
 In future ages, and a seed preserve, 
 
 'Till He, the mighty Prophet, be reveal'd, 
 
 The Prince, th' atoning Priest, the Sacrifice, 
 
 Whom, lo! through vistas long, of distant years, 
 
 With dazz'ling brightness bursts upon my sight! 
 
 But who? Or man? Or God? With glorious march, 
 
 With sorrows drench'd, with blood his raiment stain'd; 
 
 Methought I saw him pierc'd, and heard him groan, 
 
 While nature fainted, and the sun was lost! 
 
 But lo! he rises heav'nward, and in chains 
 
 Captivity leads captive! Death and Hell 
 
 All vanquish'd, and Destruction all destroy 'd! 
 
 O'erpow'ring vision! Who this conqu'ring Prince? 
 
 This King of Glory who? My eyes grow dim, 
 
 And roll in darkness. Seth! Where is thy hand? 
 
 Enos ! thy shoulder ! Hark ! Upon mine ear 
 
 There comes the sound of music, like the notes 
 
 I heard in Paradise; or Eve's sweet voice. 
 
 Again! It is the minstrelsy of heav'n, 
 
 Accents of Raphael, mingling with the song; 
 
 To me he speaks, and bids me hence away, 
 
 To mansions high above the stars prepar'd. 
 
 I come ! I come ! My children, all, farewell !" 
 
 It can be truly said of William Goodell that he " lived as 
 seeing Him who is invisible." His character was all that might 
 be inferred from his writings, and more. Of rare and wonderful 
 elevation and purity of thought and motive, high purpose, un- 
 daunted courage, unwavering faith in the Infinite Goodness, he 
 was an inspiration to all who knew him and were capable of 
 understanding and appreciating his character. No public man 
 was ever less actuated by ambition, or any form of self-seeking, 
 than he. Modest, almost to diffidence, yet fearless in battling for 
 the Right; strong, yet tender; his character bore the scrutiny of 
 familiar and long continued intimacy, and those who knew him 
 best loved and admired him most. As a reformer, he was radical, 
 and in advance of the thought of the masses; he was pre-emi- 
 nently a leader of thought. He taught the necessity of total 
 abstinence at a time when moderate drinking was considered good 
 temperance doctrine; and was among the first to advocate prohib- 
 itory legislation. He was among the earliest, if not the very 
 earliest, to advance the theory of the right and duty of the Fed- 
 eral Government to abolish slavery in the States, and to claim
 
 53 
 
 that slavery was both illegal and unconstitutional, that its speedy 
 abolition was intended by the framers of the Constitution, and was 
 authorized by the words, " Congress shall guarantee to every 
 State in the Union a republican form of Government." These 
 theories he argued in the works which we have already named, 
 and which were read and privately concurred in by such men 
 as Charles Sumner, S. P. Chase, and Abraham Lincoln. In this 
 view he differed from Wm. Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, 
 his early co-laborers, who, regarding the Federal Constitution as 
 pro-slavery, denounced it as a "covenant with death and an agree- 
 ment with hell," and advocated a dissolution of the Union as the 
 only consistent course for conscientious northerners opposed to 
 slavery. His co-adjutors in the work of advocating the abolition 
 of slavery by the Federal Government, under the Constitution, 
 were Gerrit Smith, Alvan Stewart, Beriah Green, Arthur and 
 Lewis Tappan, and their associates. Yet while differing with 
 abolitionists of the Garrisonian school in methods, his personal 
 friendship with them continued through life. 
 
 He was a courageous leader, a tender friend, a devoted Chris- 
 tian. Those who knew him were made better and happier, the 
 world was made richer, for his life.
 
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