CHAPTER I
THE CONNECTICUT YANKEE
I
Firecrackers had just celebrated the thirty-fourth year of the Independence of the United States in the small town of Bethel, Connecticut, when the first son by his second wife was born to Philo F. Barnum. P. T. Barnum was born on July 5, 1810. He arrived late. It was a pity, for he would so much have enjoyed being born on the Fourth of July. He himself wrote that after peace and quiet were restored, and the audience had regained their seats, he made his début. Probably his tardiness was for the best: competition between P. T. Barnum and the national holiday would have been too much--for the national holiday.
Lincoln had just about cut his first tooth, and Poe was in his swaddling clothes, when Barnum appeared on the American scene. When, in 1891, he died, Free Silver was beginning to be discussed in the Senate, and William James’s _Principles of Psychology_ was a new book. The span his life covered was as significant as any in American history, and he managed to make himself as much at home among his contemporaries as the Fourth of July. Barnum wrote to Matthew Arnold when Arnold was lecturing in this country, inviting him to visit at Bridgeport, Connecticut. The invitation read: “You and I, Mr. Arnold, ought to be acquainted. You are a celebrity, I am a notoriety.” This remained his self-appointed position among his fellowmen during his entire lifetime.
They named him Phineas Taylor Barnum, after his maternal grandfather, Phineas Taylor, from whom he inherited a tract of swampy, snake-infested land, known as “Ivy Island,” and a propensity for practical jokes which the boy never outgrew. Barnum wrote of his grandfather: “He would go farther, wait longer, work harder, and contrive deeper, to carry out a practical joke, than for anything else under heaven.” Barnum admitted the influence of Phineas Taylor’s propensity, and throughout his own life he exercised it with all the force which heredity gives to individual action. The paternal grandfather was Ephraim Barnum--Captain Ephraim Barnum, a captain of militia in the Revolutionary War. Captain Ephraim Barnum had fourteen children by two wives, and died at the age of eighty-four, when P. T. Barnum was seven years old. His grandson tells us that “he relished a joke better than the average of mankind.”
Philo F. Barnum, P. T. Barnum’s father, was sometime tailor, farmer, tavern-keeper, livery-stable proprietor, and country store merchant. He also operated a small express company, and his son wrote that “with greater opportunities and a larger field for his efforts and energies, he might have been a man of mark and means.” He never did a profitable business in any of these capacities.
Phineas began the little schooling he received when he was six years old. He later wrote that “a school-house in those days was a thing to be dreaded--a schoolmaster, a kind of being to make the children tremble.” The first three male teachers he sat under--a Mr. Camp, a Mr. Zerah Judson, and a Mr. Curtiss--“used the ferule prodigiously.” For one season he attended the private school of Laurens P. Hickok, later Professor Hickok, the educational philosopher and metaphysician. Hickok’s sweetheart, Eliza Taylor, was also a pupil. “One day he threw a ruler at my head,” Barnum wrote. “I dodged, and it struck Eliza in the face. He quietly apologized and said she might apply that to some other time when she might deserve it.” Young Phineas excelled all other scholars in Bethel in arithmetic, he admits, and his later career shows a constant development by the rules of arithmetical progression and sometimes even as fast as a geometrical progression. He recalled that his teacher and a neighbor got him out of bed late at night at the age of twelve to settle a wager. The teacher had bet that Phineas could figure up the correct number of feet in a load of wood in five minutes. Phineas marked down on the stovepipe in his father’s kitchen the given dimensions and in less than two minutes gave the correct result, much to the delight of his teacher, his mother, and himself, and the incredulous astonishment of the neighbor.
He was often kept out of school to help on his father’s farm, and he records as one of his earliest emotions an aversion to hand-work that earned him a reputation as the laziest boy in town. This impression of him by his neighbors, however, was false, Barnum said, “because I was always busy at head-work to evade the sentence of gaining bread by the sweat of my brow.” Throughout his life he hated manual labor and routine work, but the number of enterprises in which he sometimes engaged simultaneously would indicate that he never disliked work if he was allowed to choose its nature. What Barnum called “my organ of acquisitiveness” was large. At an early age he earned money by selling cherry-rum to soldiers, and when he was twelve years old he owned a sheep, a calf, and a sum of money in his own right. He would have been a wealthy boy for his environment, if his father had not insisted that he buy his own clothes.
When he was about twelve years old, Barnum paid his first visit to New York City, assisting a neighbor to deliver a drove of cattle there. To “go to York” from Connecticut in 1821 was not a trip, but a journey, which had some of the elements of a pilgrimage; it took Phineas four days to reach the big city with his cattle. During this period passengers traveled from Connecticut to New York via the New York-Boston stage coach or by boat via Long Island Sound. The stage coach was not allowed to take on passengers in any Connecticut town on Sunday, and any man who rode on horseback or in his carriage before sundown on the Lord’s Day was arrested by a deacon of the church. If the stage coach driver was found with passengers in his possession, he was arrested by meeting house sentinels, posted along the Connecticut route of the coach. In Barnum’s youth the Blue Laws were Connecticut’s contribution to American life. The voyage to New York by boat depended upon the state of the wind, sometimes requiring eight hours and sometimes several days. Barnum’s grandfather, Phineas Taylor, took this voyage upon an occasion which gave him an opportunity to enact what seemed to impress his grandson as Phineas Taylor’s most famous practical joke. On this particular voyage the fourteen jolly jokers from Bethel were becalmed for seven days, at the end of which all needed to shave. There was one razor on board, belonging to Phineas Taylor, who professed himself against the practice of shaving and refused the loan of his razor. Finally, the boat approached New York on Sunday afternoon. Barnum’s grandfather was persuaded to lend his razor since the barber shops would be closed when the party arrived in New York. Because time was short, he stipulated that each man must shave half his face and pass the razor on to the next. After all had finished, each could begin shaving the other half of his face. Half of each face was shaved, and Phineas Taylor began on the other half of his own face. When he had finished, Barnum’s grandfather stropped the razor, and, as if by accident, it flew from his hand into the water. All the other passengers created a sensation with their half-shaved faces when they arrived in New York on Sunday afternoon. Barnum himself never ceased to delight in this type of joke.
Barnum’s father soon despaired of ever being able to make his son useful on the farm, and Barnum admitted that he “generally contrived to shirk the work altogether, or, by slighting it, get through with the day’s work.” His father opened a country store in Bethel and made Phineas the clerk. Here he drove sharp bargains with old women who paid for their purchases in butter, eggs, beeswax, feathers, and rags. The atmosphere of the country store exercised an important influence on Barnum’s later career. On wet days there was no business, and then, he tells us, “from six to twenty social, jolly, story-telling, joke-playing wags and wits, regular originals, would get together at the tavern or store, and spend their evenings or stormy afternoons in relating anecdotes, describing their adventures, playing off practical jokes upon each other, and engaging in every project out of which a little fun could be extracted by village wits whose ideas were usually sharpened at brief intervals by a ‘treat,’ otherwise known as a glass of Santa Cruz rum, old Holland gin, or Jamaica spirits.” Practical jokes of a crude nature, the product of brains whose sole aim was to get the better of the other fellow somehow, were a great source of amusement and one of the few sources of instruction of young Phineas. These Connecticut Yankees must have made this Connecticut Yankee realize that if he was to survive in this world, he must be sharp and not too scrupulous, except on Sunday.
His own grandfather played what Barnum called a practical joke, and which we might be inclined to call something more, on the boy the day he was born. It has been mentioned that Barnum inherited a tract of land called “Ivy Island” from Phineas Taylor in consideration of taking the name Phineas through life. His grandfather never spoke of the boy in the presence of strangers without saying that he was the richest boy in town because he owned “Ivy Island.” For about six years these allusions to “Ivy Island” continued, and finally, when he was twelve years old, permission was granted him to visit the property which was deeded in his name. The property consisted of bogs, snakes, hornets, and stunted ivies, mostly under water. When he asked for an explanation, Phineas was told that it could not be an island unless it was literally surrounded by water, and that it could not be “Ivy Island” unless its main product was stunted ivies. We shall see how Barnum used “Ivy Island” to advantage, but at the time it was a profound disappointment, and the incident must have influenced his impression of the ways of the world.
Deception was common practice in the country store business. Barnum wrote that often he cut open bundles of rags brought to the store by country women to exchange for goods, and found that what were ostensibly good linen and cotton rags contained in their midst extra weight in the shape of stone, gravel or ashes; and farmers regularly brought their loads of oats, corn, and rye into town short of their stated weights. Many years later Barnum told a story in his book, _The Humbugs of the World_, that he would agree characterizes the atmosphere in which he found himself as a boy:
“There is a much older and better-known story about a grocer who was a deacon, and who was heard to call downstairs before breakfast to his clerk:
“‘John, have you watered the rum?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘And sanded the sugar?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘And dusted the pepper?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘And chicoried the coffee?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Then come up to prayers.’”
The boy was brought up to attend church regularly. Barnum’s grandfather was a Universalist, and that was the religion which he strenuously defended during his maturity and unto his death, but apparently he also came under the stern influence of strict Methodism. Of his early religious experiences Barnum told a reporter for the _New York Sun_ when he was seventy-three years old: “I was brought up in the fear of hell, and when I went to Methodist prayer meetings, at the age of thirteen or fourteen, I used to go home and pray and cry and beg God to take me out of existence if He would only save me; but I didn’t see much chance for me in the way they put it.” There was only one meeting house in Bethel, where all attended, and no differences of sects seemed to disrupt the harmony of religion, but seemingly this did not detract from the severity with which worship was indulged. Doubtless it was partly as a reaction from the fiery hell of those early Methodist influences that Barnum as soon as he was able to choose for himself turned to Universalism, by which salvation is guaranteed more or less to all those who seek for it, without regard to their previous condition of sinful servitude. The meeting house at Bethel, without steeple or bell, was also without heat in winter, for one of the brethren said when a stove was suggested by an irreverent reformer, “A pretty pass, indeed, when professing Christians need a fire to warm their zeal.” The women were allowed to bring to church tin boxes with live coals, as foot-stoves, but the men were expected to endure with hardihood the cold Connecticut winter draughts during the long sermons, which usually lasted one hour and a half, and sometimes continued for two hours.
Phineas attended a Bible class at which the students drew texts for their compositions from the clergyman’s hat. In his autobiography Barnum told that he once drew forth the text from Luke x. 42: “But one thing is needful; and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her.” “_Question_: What is the one thing needful?” His answer is short, but it serves as a concise creed from which he did not deviate later in life:
“This question, ‘What is the one thing needful?’ is capable of receiving various answers, depending much upon the persons to whom it is addressed.
“The merchant might answer that ‘the one thing needful is plenty of customers, who buy liberally without “beating down,” and pay cash for all their purchases.’
“The farmer might reply that ‘the one thing needful is large harvests and high prices.’
“The physician might answer that ‘it is plenty of patients.’
“The lawyer might be of opinion that ‘it is an unruly community, always engaged in bickerings and litigations.’
“The clergyman might reply, ‘It is a fat salary, with multitudes of sinners seeking salvation and paying large pew rents.’
“The bachelor might exclaim, ‘It is a pretty wife who loves her husband, and who knows how to sew on buttons.’
“The maiden might answer, ‘It is a good husband, who will love, cherish, and protect me while life shall last.’
“But the most proper answer, and doubtless that which applied to the case of Mary, would be, ‘The one thing needful is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, follow in his footsteps, love God and obey his commandments, love our fellow-man, and embrace every opportunity of administering to his necessities. In short, the one thing needful is to live a life that we can always look back upon with satisfaction, and be enabled ever to contemplate its termination with trust in Him who has so kindly vouchsafed it to us, surrounding us with innumerable blessings, if we have but the heart and wisdom to receive them in a proper manner.’”
The clergyman approved highly this essay of the thirteen-year-old Barnum, and he himself approved it many times in later life, when he wrote the same thing in different words. To his mind, one must look carefully to the main chance, attain monetary success by all odds, and practise humility by means of a proper respect for God and Jesus Christ. In short, Barnum lived a life that he himself always did look back upon with satisfaction--a satisfaction which stands out triumphantly in his autobiography.
The character of his early environment in Bethel, Connecticut, was admirably summed up by Barnum when he was seventy-one years old. He presented a bronze fountain eighteen feet high, “the design a Triton of heroic size, spouting water from an uplifted horn,” to the inhabitants of his birthplace. The town was decorated with flags and bunting, and the police and fire companies, with apparatus and bands of music, greeted their native son, their returned hero, the conqueror of Success. Barnum made this speech, which is inserted here because it tells with characteristic altiloquence more of his early life than anything he ever wrote, or which ever could be written by another:
“My friends: Among all the varied scenes of an active and eventful life, crowded with strange incidents of struggle and excitement, of joy and sorrow, taking me often through foreign lands and bringing me face to face with the king in his palace and the peasant in his turf-covered hut, I have invariably cherished with the most affectionate remembrance the place of my birth, the old village meeting house, without steeple or bell, where in its square family pew I sweltered in summer and shivered through my Sunday-school lessons in winter, and the old school-house where the ferule, the birchen rod and rattan did active duty, and which I deserved and received a liberal share. I am surprised to find that I can distinctly remember events which occurred before I was four years old.
“I can see as if but yesterday our hard-working mothers hetcheling their flax, carding their tow and wool, spinning, reeling, and weaving it into fabrics for bedding and clothing for all the family of both sexes. The same good mothers did the knitting, darning, mending, washing, ironing, cooking, soap and candle making, picked the geese, milked the cows, made butter and cheese, and did many other things for the support of the family.
“We babies of 1810, when at home, were dressed in tow frocks, and the garments of our elders were not much superior, except on Sunday, when they wore their ‘go-to-meeting clothes’ of homespun and linsey-woolsey.
“Rain water was caught and used for washing, while that for drinking and cooking was drawn from wells with their ‘old oaken bucket’ and long poles and well sweeps.
“Fire was kept over night by banking up the brands in ashes in the fireplace, and if it went out one neighbor would visit another about daylight the next morning with a pair of tongs to borrow a coal of fire to kindle with. Our candles were tallow, home-made, with dark tow wicks. In summer nearly all retired to rest at early dark without lighting a candle except on extraordinary occasions. Home-made soft soap was used for washing hands, faces, and everything else. The children in families of ordinary circumstances ate their meals on trenchers, wooden plates. As I grew older our family and others got an extravagant streak, discarded the trenchers and rose to the dignity of pewter plates and leaden spoons. Tin peddlers who traveled through the country with their wagons supplied these and other luxuries. Our food consisted chiefly of boiled and baked beans, bean porridge, coarse rye bread, apple sauce, hasty pudding beaten in milk, of which we all had plenty. The elder portion of the family ate meat twice a day--had plenty of vegetables, fish of their own catching, and occasionally big clams, which were cheap in those days, and shad in their season....
“Our dinners several times each week consisted of ‘pot luck,’ which was corned beef, salt pork, and vegetables, all boiled together in the same big iron pot hanging from the crane which was supplied with iron hooks and trammels and swung in and out of the huge fireplace. In the same pot with the salt pork, potatoes, turnips, parsnips, beets, carrots, cabbage, and sometimes onions, was placed an Indian pudding, consisting of plain Indian meal mixed in water, pretty thick, salted and poured into a home-made brown linen bag which was tied at the top. When dinner was ready the Indian pudding was _first_ taken from the pot, slipped out of the bag and eaten with molasses. Then followed the ‘pot luck.’...
“There were but few wagons or carriages in Bethel when I was a boy. Our grists of grain were taken to the mill in bags on horseback, and the women rode to church on Sundays and around the country on week days on horseback, usually on a cushion called a pillion fastened behind the saddle, the husband, father, brother, or lover riding in front on the saddle. The country doctor visited his patients on horseback, carrying his saddle-bags, containing calomel, jalap, Epsom salts, lancet and a turnkey, those being the principal aids in relieving the sick. Nearly every person sick or well was bled every spring.
“Teeth were pulled with a turnkey, and a dreadful instrument it was in looks, and terrible in execution....
“I remember seeing my father and our neighbors put through military drill every day by Capt. Noah Ferry in 1814, for the war with Great Britain of 1812–15.
“My uncles, aunts, and others, when I was a child, often spoke about ravages of Indians from which their ancestors had suffered, and numbers of them remembered and described the burning of Danbury by the British in 1777....
“Esquire Tom Taylor sometimes wore white-topped boots. He was a large, majestic-looking man, of great will-force, and was considered the richest man in Bethel. Mr. Eli Judd was marked second in point of wealth. Every year I took twelve dollars to Esquire Tom Taylor to pay the interest on a two hundred dollar note which my father owed him. I also annually carried four dollars and fifty cents to Eli Judd for interest on a seventy-five dollar note which he held against my father. As these wealthy men quietly turned over each note filed away in a small package till they found the note of my father, and then indorsed the interest thereon, I trembled with awe to think I stood in the presence of such wonderfully rich men. It was estimated that the richer of them was actually worth three thousand dollars!
“Esquire Tom Taylor made quite a revolution here by one act. He got two yards of figured carpet to put down in front of his bed in the winter, because the bare board floor was too cold for his feet, while he was dressing. This was a big event in the social life of that day, and Esquire Tom was thought to be putting on airs which his great wealth alone permitted.
“When I was but ten years old, newspapers came only once a week. The man who brought us the week’s papers came up from Norwalk, and drove through this section with newspapers for subscribers and pins and needles for customers. He was called Uncle Silliman. I can remember well his weekly visit through Bethel, and his queer cry. On coming to a house or village he would shout, ‘News! News! The Lord reigns!’ One time he passed our school-house when a snow storm was prevailing. He shouted: ‘News! News! The Lord reigns--and snows a little.’
“Everybody had barrels of cider in their cellars and drank cider-spirits called ‘gumption.’ Professors of religion and the clergy all drank liquor. They drank it in all the hat and comb shops, the farmers had it at hay and harvest times. Every sort of excuse was made for being treated. A new journeyman must give a pint or quart of rum to pay his footing. If a man had a new coat he must ‘sponge’ it by treating. Even at funerals the clergy, mourners, and friends drank liquor. At public vendues the auctioneer held a bottle of liquor in his hand and when bidding lagged he would cry ‘a dram to the next bidder,’ the bid would be raised a cent, and the bidder would take his boldly and be the envy of most of the others.
“The public whipping post and imprisonment for debt both flourished in Bethel in my youthful days. Suicides were buried at crossroads. How blessed are we to live in a more charitable and enlightened age, to enjoy the comforts and conveniences of modern times, and to realize that the world is continually growing wiser and better.
“I sincerely congratulate my native village on her character for temperance, industry, and other good qualities.
“And now, my friends, I take very great pleasure in presenting this fountain to the town and borough of Bethel as a small evidence of the love which I bear them and the respect which I feel for my successors, the present and future citizens of my native village.”
II
Among the many ways Barnum found for making money during his boyhood, the lottery business was his most important enterprise; from the ages of twelve to fifteen he was a lottery manager and salesman, selling his tickets to the workmen in the hat and comb factories near Danbury. Lotteries at this time were permitted by the state and often indulged in by churches and educational institutions, and in Bethel lotteries were held for the benefit of the church, where, according to Barnum, the minister often preached against gambling. That grandfather, Phineas Taylor, who appears at every turn in the early career of Barnum, was manager of a lottery, and it was by his example and with his advice that Phineas tried this means of growing rich quickly.
In September, 1825, when Barnum was fifteen years old, his father died insolvent. Phineas had loaned his father all his savings and held Philo Barnum’s note for the money, but as he was a minor his debt was ruled out, and he was compelled to serve as clerk in a store just before the funeral in order to get money for shoes to follow the coffin to the grave. Irena Barnum, his mother, continued to keep the tavern at Bethel to support herself and her five children, of whom Phineas was the oldest. Phineas soon became a clerk in the general store at Grassy Plain, a village one mile northwest of Bethel, where he worked for six dollars a month and his board. Here his duties were much the same as they had been in his father’s country store at Bethel, but he showed signs of the advertising ability and the power to attract by unusual enterprises which were later to make him famous, when he organized at this store in Grassy Plain a lottery for the purpose of moving his boss’s old stock of tinware and green glass bottles. Those who won prizes in the lottery received their choice of a tin dipper or some green glass bottles.
It was while he was a clerk at Grassy Plain that Phineas met Charity Hallett. Charity had visited Grassy Plain on a Saturday to buy a hat from Aunt “Rushia,” the only milliner of the two towns. It was Phineas’s custom to return to Bethel every Saturday night, remaining with his mother until Monday, so that he might go to church with her. He was told that Charity was afraid to return to Bethel alone in the storm on this particular Saturday night. During the ride he learned that “the fair, rosy-cheeked, buxom girl, with beautiful white teeth,” as he later described her appearance at the time, was a tailoress in Bethel. Her face haunted him in his dreams that Saturday night. He met her in church the next morning, and the reality seemed to fulfil the pictures of his imagination. But he was able to see her only in church every Sunday that season, for they were separated by the distance between Bethel and Grassy Plain.
As his job continued in a country store, Barnum became more inured to the ways and means of country store success. In his autobiography he recorded the gist of these: “It was ‘dog eat dog’--‘tit for tat.’ Our cottons were sold for wool, our wool and cotton for silk and linen; in fact nearly everything was different from what it was represented. The customers cheated us in their fabrics: we cheated the customers with our goods. Each party expected to be cheated, if it was possible. Our eyes, and not our ears, had to be our masters. We must believe little that we saw, and less that we heard.... Such a school would ‘cut eye-teeth,’ but if it did not cut conscience, morals, and integrity all up by the roots, it would be because the scholars quit before their education was completed.” He did quit for a time and went to Brooklyn, New York, where he was offered a position in a grocery store, but the humdrum of this existence of petty trade was beginning to annoy him. His disposition was speculative, and a regular salary never satisfied him, especially since all these early salaries were small. Although he was only seventeen years old, he was ambitious enough to want his own business, and he opened a porter-house in Brooklyn. He soon sold it at a profit and on the basis of his experience became a bartender in another porter-house in New York City. While working and living in New York, he visited the theater frequently, and soon became in his own opinion “a close critic.”
Grandfather Phineas Taylor wrote his grandson in 1828, offering him half of his carriage-house rent free, if young Phineas would return from New York and establish some kind of business in Bethel. Before he left New York Phineas made arrangements for shipments with wholesale merchants, and upon his return to Bethel turned the carriage-house, which was situated on the main street of Bethel, into a retail fruit and confectionery store, where ale and oysters were also sold. Phineas invested his entire fortune, $120, in his Bethel store, and during the first day’s business took in $63. Grandfather Phineas Taylor was much pleased with his boy’s success; he advised him to take the agency for some country-wide lottery in addition to his store business, and Barnum followed his advice. The store was the resort of the country loungers and the town wits, and the practical jokes which were played there, and which delighted Barnum so much that he reproduced them in detail in his autobiography, contributed to make him what he later was. In the autobiography he himself attributes his development in part to the influence of these stale puns and crude practical jokes, which he did not seem to realize, even in his middle age, were far-fetched, and often barbaric.
When Barnum was eighteen years old, his store in Bethel was visited by the first showman he ever met, Hackariah Bailey, not related to James A. Bailey, who was Barnum’s partner many years later. Hackariah Bailey was a “character.” He imported the first elephant that was ever brought to this country and made a fortune by exhibiting it. Later he toured with several traveling menageries, operated opposition steamboats on the Hudson River, and finally built a hostelry in Somers, New York, which he called “Elephant Hotel,” where a golden elephant stood on a large stone pillar in front of the veranda as homage to the foundation of the Bailey fortune. Young Barnum listened with great interest to the stories of Hackariah Bailey.
Barnum made another trip to New York City in his nineteenth year to investigate opportunities, of which he had been told, for a thriving lottery business in Pittsburg. An agency for the whole state of Tennessee was vacant, and the offer of it was tempting, but there was Charity Hallett, tailoress in Bethel, and Tennessee was too far from Bethel. The possibilities of profit in the lottery business impressed Barnum, and he used all the time he could spare from his store in selling lottery tickets throughout near-by Connecticut counties. He established agents throughout the surrounding country and soon was selling from five hundred dollars’ worth to two thousand dollars’ worth of lottery tickets each day. It was in this business that Barnum first used advertising. He issued handbills and circulars with extravagant language and huge pictures. Immense gold signs and posters in many colored inks covered the front of Barnum’s lottery office, and “home-made poetry” persuaded prospective purchasers. Oyster suppers at his mother’s tavern followed the drawing of prizes.
Charity Hallett, the “attractive tailoress,” continued to occupy an important place in Barnum’s mind; he was still meeting her at church, and whenever the sale of oysters, lottery tickets, and general merchandise permitted him spare time. In the summer of 1829, when he was just nineteen years old, Barnum, without mentioning his intentions to his mother, proposed marriage. Those intentions must have been obvious, however, for some time, because in his autobiography Barnum wrote that his mother and his other relatives thought that his enterprise, if not his origin, entitled him to aim higher in the social scale than a local tailoress. But there were many impartial townspeople, said Barnum, who thought that Charity Hallett “was altogether too good for Taylor Barnum.” They were married that November in New York City at the house of Charity’s uncle. Barnum went on record in his autobiography as opposed to early marriages, but he hastily prefaced these admonitions with the statement, “had I waited twenty years longer, I could not have found another woman so well suited to my disposition, and so valuable as a wife, a mother, and a friend.” Barnum’s mother was angry at his secret marriage in New York, but, after a month of Sundays, he was invited to bring his wife to Sabbath dinner. During the two years after his marriage Barnum continued his country store, his lottery business, with branches in Danbury, Stamford, Norwalk, and Middletown, and found time to engage in religious and political controversy.
III
At this period in New England history religion was rife, and in 1831, particularly in the section where Barnum lived and throughout the rest of New England as well, it was also violent. Converts were being made wholesale by means of protracted religious meetings and hortatory witchery; some of these converts worked themselves into religious frenzy, and suicides as well as murders in the name of God were common occurrences. Many of the more imaginative ministers advocated a Christian Party in politics, and were in favor of confining the right to hold public office to those only who professed faith in God and belief in Jesus Christ. At the age of twenty-one Barnum was sagacious enough to realize that in spite of all his respect for clergymen and his reliance on their work they must be kept in their proper place, which was in church. Many persons besides himself were alarmed at the prospect of a religious fanaticism that would conquer civil government to the destruction of liberty. Barnum wrote several articles on the dangers of religious usurpation, which he sent to the nearest weekly newspaper, a Danbury publication. The editor regretted that he could not find space for Mr. Barnum’s contributions, whereupon, like many writers on controversial subjects, Barnum was convinced that the editor did not dare to print his articles, and that there was no free press. But unlike most of his rejected brethren, Barnum took action. He purchased a press and types, and within a few weeks after the rejection of his religious opinions began publication of his own weekly newspaper in Danbury, Connecticut, which was called, of course, _The Herald of Freedom_.
There are no files of this paper extant, which is unfortunate, for they would undoubtedly reveal interesting character developments in our hero’s history. He himself tells us that “the boldness and vigor with which this paper was conducted soon commanded a liberal circulation, not only in the vicinity of its publication, but large numbers of copies were sent into nearly every State in the Union.” The vigor and boldness are not Barnum’s exaggerations, for we know that he was always vehement, but particularly so at this period, and it was not long before he was sued for libel. A Danbury butcher whom Barnum accused in his paper as a spy in the Democratic Party caucus, sued for libel and collected several hundred dollars. But this did not deter the twenty-one-year-old editor and publisher, and soon afterwards he had another and more important libel suit to defend. _The Herald of Freedom_ accused a deacon of “taking usury of an orphan boy.” Had he called the deacon a “note-shaver” and extortioner, or merely remarked that he was “grinding the face of a poor orphan boy,” the court would have been lenient, but to call a deacon a usurer was ungodly, for usury is forbidden in the Bible, and the judge, who was also a churchman, charged the jury vigorously; and when they brought in the appropriate verdict, he sentenced Phineas T. Barnum, editor, to sixty days in the common jail and to pay a fine of $100.
Barnum went to jail in Danbury, where his room was papered and carpeted, and where friends were allowed to visit him daily. He continued to edit _The Herald of Freedom_ there, and several hundred additional subscriptions came in during his period of servitude. Mr. P. F. Madigan, the New York autograph dealer, recently found the following letter from Barnum, written while he was in jail. It was addressed to Gideon Welles, then a member of the Connecticut Legislature, and afterwards Secretary of the Navy under President Lincoln:
“DANBURY, ‘COMMON JAIL,’ Oct. 7, 1832.
“MR. WELLES D’r Sir:
“I am by the unhallowed decree of that lump of superstition David Daggett sent within these gloomy walls sixty days for daring to tell the truth!! My trial with Hanson Taylor did not come on this term on account of the absence of witnesses; but my trial with Seth Seelye has come and the best counsel in the country were employed against me. Seelye testified in his own defense, and in his testimony he contradicted four unimpeachable witnesses. Daggett charged the jury in such a manner that many intelligent men who were present remarked that he was the best lawyer that had pled in behalf of the State. The bar and seat of the Judge was filled with priests, there being no less than eight present. Brother Holly of the _Sentinel_ will report the case at length, and I hope you will take the trouble to read the trial and then make such remarks as justice demands. The excitement in this and the neighboring towns is very great, and it will have a grand effect. Public opinion is greatly in my favor. After the judge had given his cursed charge I was advised by many to forfeit the bonds which were but $100, but I chose to go to prison, thinking that such a step would be the means of opening many eyes, as it no doubt will. A number of the Presbyterians in this town have declared it to be oppression, and are beginning to raise their voices against it. The same spirit governs my enemies that imprisoned Sellick Osborn and burnt to death Michael Servetus by order of John Calvin. But the people are more enlightened than in the days of Calvin and they will upon reading my trial express their indignation at such oppression and persecution. You will observe that the Democrats in this County have a Convention at Bridgeport on Thursday next. I am constantly writing to our friends in different parts of the country urging upon them the importance of attending this meeting, and I think it will be well attended and be the means of helping our party very much in this county. Judge Wildman is so lame with the rheumatics that he cannot walk; but he declares he will attend the convention if he is obliged to hire men to carry him in their arms. He is a man of spirit and sense. It is a great pity we had not about twenty men like him in this country.
“You will observe in my paper of last week that I have engaged the services of our friend Andrews; if you can give him a compliment you would much oblige me, as by my copying it into my columns it might prove of much service to my paper. Please accept my warmest thanks and those of my wife for your assistance in recovering the lost shawl. It came safe and my wife was thrown into ecstasies as an offset for the tears, which (womanlike) she had shed over the loss of it. Lest I might tire your patience too much I will draw to a close. Please give my respects to Judge Niles and the rest of our friends, tell them that I am suffering for daring to tell the truth but that the kindness of friends keeps my spirits buoyed up in this day of trial. Let me hear from you when opportunity shall offer and believe this to be from your Ob’t servant in good spirits.
P. T. BARNUM.
“G. WELLES, ESQ.”
Barnum in his early years was a Democrat, because Grandfather Phineas Taylor was a staunch Democrat, and his father had also voted that ticket. If we are to judge from the above letter, written when he was twenty-two years old, Barnum had some of the qualifications of a ward politician. He refers several times to “our friends,” and he seems to have believed firmly that it was a duty as well as a privilege to attend party conventions.
The end of Barnum’s term in the Danbury Common Jail was celebrated by indignant defenders of a free press from the surrounding country. In the court-room where he had been convicted and sentenced an ode, written for the occasion, was sung, and an eloquent oration on the Freedom of the Press was delivered by the Rev. Theophilus Fiske. Both the ode and the oration have disappeared into limbo. “A sumptuous repast” was served to several hundred guests, and speeches and toasts continued most of the afternoon. But the most imposing part of the celebration was still to come. It was reported in Barnum’s paper, _The Herald of Freedom_, for December 12, 1832:
“P. T. Barnum and the band of music took their seats in a coach drawn by six horses, which had been prepared for the occasion. The coach was preceded by forty horsemen, and a marshal, bearing the national standard. Immediately in the rear of the coach was the carriage of the Orator and the President of the day, followed by the Committee on Arrangements and sixty carriages of citizens, which joined in escorting the editor to his home in Bethel.
“When the procession commenced its march amidst the roar of cannon, three cheers were given by several hundred citizens who did not join in the procession. The band of music continued to play a variety of national airs until their arrival in Bethel, a distance of three miles, when they struck up the beautiful and appropriate tune of ‘Home, Sweet Home!’ After giving three hearty cheers, the procession returned to Danbury. The utmost harmony and unanimity of feeling prevailed throughout the day, and we are happy to add that no accident occurred to mar the festivities of the occasion.”
While he was indulging in political and religious controversy, Barnum was also buying recklessly for his country store. In order to do business faster than the ordinary country store, he extended credit and soon had an accumulation of bad debts. Many of these accounts are balanced in his old ledger: “By death, to balance;” “By running away, in full;” “By cheating me out of my dues, to balance;” “By failing in full;” “By swearing he would not pay me, in full.” Barnum became disgusted and sold his interest in the store. And that year lotteries were prohibited in Connecticut by law. _The Herald of Freedom_ was not making money, and No. 160 of that paper was the last issue published under Barnum’s name. He was compelled to seek new and more profitable enterprises, and he decided to enlarge his horizon. In the winter of 1834–1835, when he was twenty-four years old, Barnum removed his wife and daughter to New York City.
Thus ends the early Yankee influence that shaped Barnum’s character. It made of him a creature that in its development was to become the apotheosis of the Yankee, with all the distinguishing characteristics of that type and some very distinctive qualities all his own. Mrs. Trollope in her _Domestic Manners of the Americans_ characterizes the Yankee with traits that are appropriate to Barnum’s personality as it was bred by his early environment. “In acuteness, cautiousness, industry, and perseverance,” wrote Mrs. Trollope of the Yankee, “he resembles the Scotch; in habits of frugal neatness, he resembles the Dutch; in love of lucre he doth greatly resemble the sons of Abraham; but in frank admission and superlative admiration of all his own peculiarities, he is like nothing on earth but himself.” The Connecticut Yankee with his wife, Charity, and their daughter, Caroline, left Bethel with nothing but the crafty, bold and thrifty Yankee heritage and the practical education that were calculated to make him preëminent if the proper outlet and channel were offered for his energies.