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Greatest Hits (pinned)

Anyone lacking the patience to read through Gallison’s journal in chronological order may enjoy these individual entries, which draw interest well beyond their place in any given year.

Volume A opens with Gallison’s telling of his ambitions for the journal. Beginning it in early 1807, his senior year, he intended, in part, to use it to compensate for deficiencies in his Harvard education. Already, we see evidence of precocious learnedness, serious intent, and considerable narrative skill.

Only a few months later, Gallison’s expulsion from Harvard created the first trauma of his adult life. Lengthy reflection on his role in the “Cabbage Rebellion”— a protest against the quality of dining hall food— crystallized both his conservative temperament and affection for Harvard. In tension with these sentiments— and almost uniquely in his class— he elected to honor his oath never to return unless all his classmates were forgiven. Harvard eventually found a face-saving way to bring him back into the fold, granting him an honorary master’s after it was clear that he would never accept the BA. But it was a long and hard trial for his conscience.

Next, we have two entries from the busy summer of 1812. The first airs out some arguments presented by Federalists who were happy to borrow Jeffersonian tactics– namely, threats of nullification and secession– to put a spoke in the wheel of the Madison administration as it prepared for war against Britain. Temperamental and cultural favor toward Britain (or, at least, opposition to Democratic-Republicans and France) led many politicians to abandon ideological positions when convenient.

The other entry records the town meeting at Faneuil Hall, called to discuss sending delegates to a convention. This was thoroughly reported in the newspapers, but Gallison provides detail only known to himself, and he catches the mood quite vividly. Fearing that an extra-legal convention might lead to dissolution of the Republic, Gallison was one of a few to vote against it, even while accepting the main Federalist point that the war was unwise. Walking a fine line between dissent and loyalty to a strong national government, he then joined a volunteer militia company. Unexpectedly, the eventual arrival of the Hartford Convention two years later caused him much less worry. By then, however, he knew that moderates would run the show and were not about to cause any real trouble.

From July 1817, we have the arrival of President James Monroe into Boston. While some labeled this visit as the beginning of an Era of Good Feelings, Gallison and his spiritual mentor William Ellery Channing were not nearly so enthusiastic. When the President attended a service at the Federal Street Church as part of his charm offensive, Channing’s sermon made clear his disdain for those who sought unnecessary military glory– implicitly including the Democratic-Republican hawks who had led the United States into war against Britain just five years before. For his own part, Gallison did his best to avoid unnecessary contact when Monroe called upon the former Mrs John Hancock for old times’ sake.

Finally, for those seeking material unconnected to political strife, we have the story of a friend’s unsuccessful battle with manic depression, strung out over several years. Anyone interested in historical attitudes toward mental illnesses might find this useful.

November, 1820

Teleology is dangerous, and spoilers often irritating. But observant readers will have figured out that John Gallison (1788-1820) couldn’t have lived too long after his work on the Missouri Compromise memorial and the address to the Peace Society in 1819. To disclose how it all turned out, we present Gallison’s final journal entry. We cannot know if his terminal illness was already plaguing him. His handwriting did get increasingly erratic as the month wore on, although it may be an extension of a trend past his more fastidious youth.

In any case, it is a grand send-off. We have notes on his family and social life– in both Marblehead and Boston– extensive notes on Sunday sermons, an enthusiastic spectator’s comments on the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, and an afternoon of civilized conversation at former President Adams’s home in Braintree.

Adams, of course, was quite retired from public life by this time. His anointment as president of the convention was an act of homage only, which he gratefully acknowledged before surrendering the post to a younger man.

As an additional bonus, we enclose Gallison’s index for the final volume. Along with page numbers and marginal notes, he often added these to each volume in order to make his future study more productive. For one volume, he even tried a method recommended by John Locke. This is a bit simpler, and it leaves a decent overview of his other topics for the year.

His death came on Christmas Eve, almost exactly a year after his Peace Society address in 1819. His symptoms, as detailed in Channing’s lengthy obituary, are consistent with viral meningitis, although some sleuthing in his final year’s journal entries might turn up other causes. In any case, his friends and colleagues did their best to honor him. Not just Channing, but Josiah Quincy and others left generous acknowledgement, and the Massachusetts Supreme Court bar wore crepe for the rest of their session. He had no descendants that we know of. His father lived a few more decades and left a decent estate to his stepmother, which kept her comfortable in Marblehead. And his summary of the First Circuit Court cases was reprinted several times through the 19th century.

December, 1819

As promised, a follow-up on the composition of the Missouri Compromise memorial. Here, Gallison presents the fruits of his all-nighter to the committee. Scholars interested in the legal history of abolition (or restriction) of slavery may be interested in the insertion of language composed by Nathan Dane specifically citing the Northwest Ordinance. Dane was one of that document’s architects in 1787.

Toward the end of the month, we get a few notices of his address to the Peace Society for their annual meeting on Christmas Day. It seems that he sought some advice from William Ellery Channing on its style and clarity. Of more interest to us is the content, which shows kinship to the sermon Channing delivered to President Monroe in July, 1817.

Deletions

To prepare his journals for future reading Gallison left many marginal notes, with additions, observations, and references to previous or subsequent entries being quite common.

One other interesting component of his editing is his deletions. Broadly speaking, he made two kinds. One, transparent and frugal with ink, served to delete an error that he didn’t want to forget completely. A blind alley in his work on Euclid and an unduly pessimistic theological note received that treatment in Volume A.

In a few other places, he resorted to obliteration. His intent for the journals was always that he should be the only reader. Nevertheless, he occasionally wrote reports that might have embarrassed someone were they to be discovered later, and those get a very different treatment.

The link above leads to a conversation with Uncle Sewall in the summer of 1812. Federalists were talking increasingly openly about secession from the union, and Sewall or someone in his inner circle seems to have said something that would have led to censure after the War of 1812’s conclusion.

November, 1819

Here, we have the record of a most busy month. A fire ripped through Boston as the northern lights flashed overhead, leading a host of volunteer firemen to give service above and beyond anything they might have expected.

The Rev Mr William Ellery Channing explicated some points of Unitarian theology, in a long sermon noted with great detail and vigor by our diarist. Channing had only recently delivered his canonical Baltimore sermon, so his mind was fresh and his imagination quite engaged.

Perhaps of greatest interest today, a committee of Boston’s top lawyers met to plan a response to the proposed entry of Missouri to the Union as a slave state. They met in Gallison’s office, and Gallison was part of the committee formed to organize the public meeting and draft the necessary letters to Congress. He ended up doing most of the writing in a frenzied all-nighter, to be discussed in a later entry.

October, 1819

Moderation seized the agenda for much of Sunday, October 17th.  William Ellery Channing preached in the morning about Christianity’s efforts to keep ‘lusts & passions’ under control.  While he didn’t make any specific note about the Republicans who pushed toward the War of 1812, he did remind the congregation that Biblical embodiments of those unfortunate flaws were often represented by military figures.  This was a theme he had dwelt on when preaching to President Monroe in 1817, at the onset of the latter’s ‘Era of Good Feelings’ tour. His protégé would expand upon it further at year-end, in his address to the Peace Society.

Gallison’s classmate from Harvard, the Rev Mr Francis Parkman came at the subject from a different angle, drawing from an analysis of Elijah ‘that it is by a calm, dispassionate manner, the gospel may be best diffused, [and] that it is in the calm & quiet of the soul it is best heard.’   

Looking at other topics in Gallison’s entries from October, 1819 , we find that Aunt Scott’s finances, and the concurrent relationship with her first husband’s agents were less secure than before.

On the evening of the 20th, a high-powered legal cohort discussed some of their hopes and fears for the state Constitutional convention that loomed ahead.  Speaker Biglow was not too perturbed by the people’s ability to call a convention, although consensus among Daniel Webster and Judges Story and Prescott seemed to fear placing too much authority in the hands of the people in such an event. One remedy for any democratic excesses would be, they felt, was to give discretion to the legislature and not involve the public in debate. This was not a completely controversial position; they invoked even the Jeffersonian physician Dr Charles Jarvis and the fiery Samuel Adams as authorities favoring it.

September, 1819

September, 1819 brings some travel from Boston to visit family on the North Shore.  For the first visit, Gallison arrived in Salem by horse or coach, at sunset on the Saturday of what we now think of as Labor Day weekend.  Walking into the darkness, he reached his father’s house in Marblehead in about an hour and a half.

The following Sunday, while meeting with family members, he attended two churches.  This was not unusual for him, although in this case he hesitated before going to one, because of some controversy surrounding the guest minister’s invitation.  Gallison does not specific whether that stemmed from his being Irish, or his missionary activity in Hayti, or some other cause, but he eventually put aside his doubts and found that Mr Morton possessed ‘genius & eloquence.’

Other quick items include several updates on his discussions of privateering with the Peace Society, a charming piece of gossip concerning Daniel Webster in his days at the Phillips Exeter Academy, and his devotion of a stormy Sunday evening to reading the ‘Report of the Am[erican] Colonization Society.’

August, 1819

As noted earlier, Gallison had always devoted much of his journal to intellectual or spiritual life. In keeping with that, detailed descriptions of William Ellery Channing’s sermons fill nearly half of the entries for August, 1819.

Not content to be busy only on Sundays, he also describes a month filled with his other passions, including his intellectual life (writing for the North American Review), family, and Harvard.

At the end of the month, he visited the former President John Adams, in Quincy. Filled with gossip and talk of world affairs, this gathering of notables punctuated a most happy few weeks.

July, 1819

Gallison’s entries for July, 1819 cover three of his main interests: Federalism, Unitarianism, and the law. On the Federalist side, he was invited to be the speaker at the annual meeting of the Peace Society, a notoriously Federalist organization founded after the disastrous War of 1812. He eventually chose to address Christian ethics and political life, building on a foundation from Channing’s sermon during President Monroe’s famous visit to Boston in 1817. His first thought, however, was to talk about privateering, a subject that was on the mind of the Society, and would absorb a great deal of his attention in the following year.

Otherwise, along with some notes on his legal work and study, he left richly detailed impressions of the Sunday sermons and other religious meetings he had attended.

June, 1819

Several points of interest this month.  Gallison starts with the annual election ceremony for the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts—then as now a social occasion as much as a military one.  Posts of his on this occasion in other years indicate that some Gilbert & Sullivan pageantry was already making its way into the occasion.

More relevant to Gallison’s own life, he expanded his work for the church into teaching Sunday school.  In addition, he resumed an interest in privateering that eventually found its way into an essay for the July, 1820 issue of The North American Review, and a petition to Congress he drafted, submitted after his death in 1821.  William Ellery Channing and Daniel Webster were among the signers of the latter piece.

There are more notes on his churchgoing, an increasingly significant portion of his journal in later life– if we may say that about anyone who dies at 32!

A lighter note can be found in his description of a Handel & Haydn Society concert, interrupted by a fire in a nearby bakery.  The aria in question was from Handel’s L’Allegro, Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato.

H&H was founded in 1815, dedicated (as may be deduced by its name) to supporting ancient and modern music.  The preeminence of those two composers in Boston’s musical life can be seen in the ceremonies commemorating peace with Britain in that year.  A multi-hour outdoor pageant featured, along with the speeches and brass bands, some of the most famous numbers from Handel’s Messiah and Haydn’s Creation.  Greatest hits from the greatest hits, as it were.

[1] Nicholas Parrillo, “The De-Privatization of American Warfare: How the U.S. Government Used, Regulated, and Ultimately Abandoned Privateering in the Nineteenth Century,”  Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, Vol 19, Issue 1, 52.