CHAPTER XIII.

BLACKSTONE.


The town of Burton was one of the oldest in the county. It was the
residence of many wealthy men, the seat of Judge Hitchcock, Chief
Justice of the State, as well as the home of Seabury Ford, a rising
young politician, just commencing a most useful and honorable career,
which was to conduct him to the Chief Magistracy of the State.

The young Whig party had failed to elect Gen. Harrison, but the result
of the contest assured it of success in the campaign of 1840, for
which a vast magazine was rapidly and silently accumulating. The
monetary and credit disasters of '36-'37, occurring in the third term
of uninterrupted party rule, would of themselves have overthrown a
wiser and better administration than that of Mr. Van Buren, patriotic
and enlightened as that was, contrasted with some which followed.

Men, too, were beginning to examine and analyze the nature and designs
of slavery; and already Theodore Weld had traversed the northern and
middle States, and with his marvellous eloquence and logic, second
to none of those who followed him, had stirred to their profoundest
depths the cool, strong, intellectual souls of the New Englanders of
those regions.

One early October morning, as Gen. Ford, then commander of a brigade