The Year Without Summer (29 page)

Some farmers did not stop with selling their livestock; they sold their entire farm
and headed west. Pressures for emigration from New England had been building: a growing
population in a region where all the fertile land already was under cultivation, and
where generations of wasteful agricultural practices had stripped away or exhausted
even the best soil; the loss of the timber trade as forests dwindled; vanishing wildlife,
fish, and game that had carried farmers through the previous years of bad harvests;
a series of epidemics that swept through New England in 1813 and 1814; the deleterious
economic effects of the recent war and trade embargo; the lure of western territories
with far more productive soil (and far fewer rocks); and several years of cooler weather
and poor harvests leading up to 1816.

They called it “Ohio fever,” and the unparalleled coldness of the summer of 1816 followed
by the calamitous harvest convinced many New Englanders that nature was sending them
an indisputable message. “Something, it seemed, had gone permanently wrong with the
weather,” concluded Lewis Stilwell, “and when this cold season piled itself on top
of all the preceding afflictions, a good many … were ready to quit.” Generous terms
for the sale of public land, cheap and easy credit from banks in the Western states,
and the removal of Native American tribes from the Ohio Valley following the War of
1812 made the decision easier. Promoters and land agents set up offices in towns such
as Portsmouth, Maine, and Cornish, New Hampshire, selling orders for land in Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, and even western Pennsylvania. They promised luxuriant lands with
rich loam soil and a “mild and salubrious” climate, “an earthly Paradise, where every
thing which is considered a luxury, might be had almost without care, labour or exertion,”
and boundless opportunities: Indiana had recently applied for statehood, but two-thirds
of its land still lacked white settlers, as did nearly half of Ohio, and three-quarters
of the Illinois territory.

Loading all their possessions—a bed, a few quilts, some dishes, the family Bible,
kettles and pots, a churn, a blanket chest—into a covered wagon (or an oxcart for
the less prosperous), hundreds and then thousands of New England farm families set
out for the Western lands. Given the perilous state of American roads, the journey
west required stamina and patience. (Rumor had it that roads were so rough that a
pail of cream would churn into butter on the way west.) Some pilgrims traveled through
the Mohawk Valley, then headed west to Buffalo; from there they could take a boat
to Ohio or hug the eastern shore of Lake Erie into northern Ohio. Others chose to
cross Pennsylvania, climbing the Alleghenies before descending into Pittsburgh and
crossing the river into Ohio. Observers described the roads over the mountains as
“rude, steep, and dangerous”; one physician who made the trip recalled that “some
of the more precipitous slopes were consequently strewn with the carcases [sic] of
wagons, carts, horses, oxen, which had made shipwreck in their perilous descent. The
scenes on the road—of families gathered at night in miserable sheds, called taverns—mothers
frying, children crying, fathers swearing—were a mingled comedy and tragedy of errors.”

One route through western Pennsylvania ran over Laurel Hill, a mountain more than
seventy miles long, where rains turned the track to soft clay mud more than a foot
deep, obstructed by stones nearly as large as a barrel. A farmer from Stonington,
Connecticut, who tried to navigate his wagon through the pass watched it nearly tip
over four times as he descended a single slope, but the passage was so narrow and
steep that the walls of the pass helped him push the wagon upright each time.

Not all the emigrants were young. In late September, a dozen wagons filled with passengers
described as “consistently advanced in life” left Worcester, Massachusetts. And some
left to avoid the prophesied apocalypse, including a band of religious zealots calling
themselves “Christ-ians” who left Connecticut to find “a kind of Paradise on earth”
in Ohio.

By the end of October, so many emigrants from New England were flooding into Ohio—to
Columbus (recently named the new state capital), Steubenville, Chillicothe (the former
state capital), and Circleville—that the Zanesville
Messenger
reported that “the number of emigrants from the eastward the present season, far
exceeds what has ever before been heretofore witnessed.” The
Messenger
’s editor estimated that at least several thousand refugees had passed through Zanesville
in the past several weeks: “On some days, from forty to fifty wagons have passed the
Muskingum at this place. The emigrants are from almost every state north and east
of the Potomack, seeking a new home in the … territories of the west; traveling in
various modes—some on foot, some on horses, and others in different kinds of vehicles,
from the ponderous Pennsylvania wagon, to the light New England pleasure carriage.”

Back east, fires continued to devastate woodlands. Smoke from a series of blazes in
eastern New York State, from Ticonderoga to Plattsburgh, blinded sailors on Lake Champlain.
One traveler reported that the smoke on the lake was so thick that “the steam boat
moves very slow and cautious, continually sounding, not being able to discover either
shore when near the middle of the Lake.” A measure of relief finally arrived in the
form of a snowstorm on October 17, weeks ahead of the first snow of autumn in a typical
year. In Albany, snow fell for most of the evening. Chautauqua County, New York, received
eight inches; St. Lawrence County reported slightly more. A correspondent in Haverhill,
New Hampshire, reported a snowfall of “about 12 inches deep.… Sleighs have been going
quite brisk today.” Hanover, the home of Dartmouth University, also witnessed heavy
snow, and travelers noted drifts several feet deep in the nearby White Mountains.

*   *   *

P
RESIDENT
Madison returned to Washington on October 9, after an absence of more than four months,
only to find that workmen still had not finished repairing the Executive Mansion.
Nor had much work been accomplished on the Capitol. Builders still awaited new stone
for the House side, and renovations to the Senate were delayed when numerous legislators
decided they wanted more extensive changes than originally planned. Cost overruns
already plagued the project, but the architect in charge, Benjamin Latrobe, promised
that the additional work would “render the building much more strong and durable than
it was before the conflagration.”

With only five months left in what Madison termed his “detention,” tributes to the
President filled the press. Unlike Washington, Adams, or Jefferson, Madison would
leave office with the nation largely united behind the policies of his administration;
as Henry Adams concluded, Madison “seemed to enjoy popularity never before granted
to any President at the expiration of his term.” John Adams agreed, in his own fashion.
In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, Adams accused the Madison administration of “a thousand
Faults and blunders,” yet he acknowledged that Madison and his Cabinet had “acquired
more glory, and established more Union than all his three Predecessors, Washington,
Adams, Jefferson, put together.” Indeed, Madison was so highly regarded by the American
people at the end of his term that he still holds the record among presidents for
having the most towns and counties named after him in the United States.

*   *   *

C
ONDITIONS
in Ireland deteriorated rapidly in September and October. From all parts of the island,
but especially from the west, came eyewitness reports of constant, drenching rain
that ruined acre upon acre of crops. “Dreadful weather,” Daniel O’Connell wrote to
his wife on September 30. “There is nothing but rain and wretchedness.” Accounts in
The Times
of London made clear the extent of the developing catastrophe:

Westport, County Mayo: There is not in this extended county 100 acres reaped—the heavy
crops all floundered and rotted … no change of weather, at this advanced season, can
render them productive—add to which, a complete failure in the potatoes.

Killarney, County Kerry: Wheat afflicted by blight. Well-ripened fields of oats flattened
by rain. “I saw one field of flax not yet pulled; many spread, but no prospect of
their drying. Very little of the turf [used for heating homes in winter] brought home.”

Castlebar, County Mayo: Before today, we believe, there was not twenty acres of corn
reaped throughout the whole of the county of Mayo, and scarcely an acre within six
miles of this town, in any direction.… The potatoe [sic] crop is by no means as productive
as usual, and a considerable part of it has been further injured by the late floods.…
Every article of consumption, except flesh meat, is advancing in price.”

Belfast, County Antrim and County Down: All the low grounds flooded—the people struggling
to save whatever they can of the harvest, up to the knees, and many places to the
middle, in water. The potatoes in the flooded ground are looked upon as lost, the
season being so far advanced; the turf not saved.

Athlone, County Westmeath: I know not whether this letter will reach you, for the
roads are quite inundated. I do not think we shall have an acre of wheat within ten
miles round us. We are in the midst of a flood. The fields are covered, and I have
not been able to discover, in an anxious walk, any vestige whatever of grain.

Mullingar, County Westmeath: The lakes around the town rose “to an height unprecedented
in the memory of the oldest inhabitant.” The road to Longford was nearly impassable.
Lough Owel had completely inundated several acres of ground around its banks. “Yesterday
morning it overflowed the supply cut (to the Royal Canal), the banks of which burst,
and has inundated the country to an alarming extent.”

Enniskillen, County Fermanagh: Lough Erne overflowed its banks. Meadows on low ground
had been underwater for the past several months. By October 8, the water had risen
to nearly four feet, and Lough Erne continued to rise. “There is no crop; we shall
not have as much corn in this country as will support us. Potatoes are equally bad,
which, you know, must be the case when we are under inundation.”

A traveler who made the thirty-mile journey from Ballinasloe to Moate reported that
nearly all the country he traversed was under water. “It was a miracle, he said, how
the coachman made his way through.” Along much of the route, slash walls—stone walls
without mortar—were covered up to four feet high.

Skeptics in England suspected the Irish were exaggerating the extent of the destruction,
but a recently returned traveler made it clear in the October 19 issue of
The Times
of London that was not the case. “Let no one impose upon you,” he wrote, “the harvest
is destroyed.… I see nothing before us but the prospect of the most grievous of all
earthly calamities—
famine
.” The only hope seemed to rest with heaven. “God is powerful, and can, by a miracle,
save his creatures from destruction; but without such, we see nothing for it but the
desolation of the land.”

By the first week of October, Peel harbored no illusions about the state of the harvest
in Ireland. In a series of letters to Lord Liverpool (October 9) and Lord Sidmouth
(October 10), the chief secretary explained in detail the magnitude of the impending
disaster. “Since the first of this month we have had almost an incessant storm—the
Sun has scarcely made its appearance and the wind has done as much damage as the rain,”
Peel informed the prime minister. “I assure you nothing can be more melancholy than
the Accounts which are received from every part of the Country … not one third of
the average Crop of wheat will be saved.” The recent rains had been especially destructive
to the oat and barley crops, Peel continued, “and (what is of more consequence so
far as this country is concerned) to the Crop of Potatoes. I fear the effect of the
wet has been not only to reduce the size of the Potatoe [sic] but to make it soft
and unwholesome.” Moreover, the constant rain had rendered the turf—which Irish peasants
depended upon as free and abundant fuel to compensate for shoddy housing and thin
clothing—nearly unusable. “If there is a severe winter the want of fuel will be a
greater source of misery than the want of food,” Peel concluded. “I fear we have melancholy
Prospects before us, and are threatened with calamities for which it is impossible
to suggest a remedy.”

Peel did not expect increased hardship to provoke widespread violence in Ireland.
“Distress in this country has a different effect—almost a contrary effect—from what
it has in England,” he informed a colleague. “Sheer wickedness and depravity are the
chief sources of our crimes and turbulence, and I am satisfied that severe distress
would rather tend to diminish than to increase them.” In any event, Peel believed
the Irish peasantry would never challenge an open display of English armed force.
“We burn people in their houses, and shoot at them from behind ditches, in this country
in great abundance,” he wrote, “but there is a most salutary terror of what is called
‘the Army,’ whether it consists of two regiments or of a couple of dragoons.”

Perhaps Ireland could avoid violence in the aftermath of a disastrous harvest; it
could not avoid disease. Typhus—known as “the contagious fever,” or simply, “the fever”—already
was spreading through parts of County Mayo by the end of September. Presumably Peel
did not know that lice and fleas carried the organism that caused the fever, but he
did understand why Ireland in 1816 presented a fertile ground for an epidemic. As
Peel subsequently explained to Parliament, “the causes of the disease are, I fear,
want of employment, and the poverty it engenders, and the defective quality and quantity
of food, from the wetness of the season and the want of fuel.” Certainly Ireland qualified
on all counts.