War Inconsistent with the Religion of Jesus Christ. David Low Dodge
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boy’s education was slight and fragmentary. The summer he was six years old he attended the school of a venerable Irish maiden lady about sixty years of age, learning Watts’ Divine Songs, texts of Scripture, and the Shorter Catechism. From the age of seven to fourteen—the family now living on a farm in the neighboring town of Hampton—he attended the district school for two terms each winter, having no access to any other books than the primer, spelling book, arithmetic, and Bible. “I used often, when not at work in the shop evenings, to retire to the old kitchen fireplace, put my lamp into the oven, and, sitting with my back against it, take my arithmetic, slate, and pencil, and try to cipher a little. I often think how I should have been delighted to have had one fifth part of the advantages enjoyed by most of my descendants.” Confined to the house for seven weeks a little later as the result of accidents, he turned hungrily to such books as he could secure—Dilworth’s Arithmetic, Webster’s Abridged Grammar, and Salmon’s Universal English Geography. “This opened a new and astonishing field to me for contemplation. I now obtained the first glimpse of the boundaries of land and water, of the lofty mountains, and of the mighty rivers which had cut their channels through the earth. I read and surveyed the maps and meditated upon them until I began to lecture to my young companions, and was considered quite learned in geography. Having an object in view, I began to thirst for knowledge, and succeeded in borrowing in succession The Travels of Cyrus, Xerxes’ Expedition into Greece, The History of Alexander the Great, and Hannibal’s Invasion of Rome.” He proposed and brought about the formation of a society of young men in the town, for the improvement of minds and manners. There were fourteen young men, with an equal number of young women presently added, each furnishing a useful book as the beginning of a library. “We obtained some of the British classics, such as the Spectator, Guardian, etc., with a few histories; the subjects formed a foundation for conversation when we met together.”
Now the young man’s ambition turned from farming to school-teaching. He began with district schools, becoming a successful teacher from the start, prosecuting his own studies assiduously in every leisure hour, fired with a desire to improve the schools, which were everywhere as wretched as can well be imagined. For some months in 1795 he left teaching to join other young men in building a bridge at Tiverton, Rhode Island. Then he attended the academy at North Canterbury, Connecticut, under the charge of the eminent teacher, John Adams. “This was the only opportunity I ever enjoyed of attending a good school, and this was abridged to fulfill my engagement to teach the town school in Mansfield.” In 1796 he opened a private school in Norwich, adding the next year a morning school for young ladies and an evening school for apprentices and clerks, all of which flourished. During this time he was profoundly interested in religious matters, attending many revivals and becoming more and more concerned with moral and social problems. Now, too, he married, his wife being a daughter of Aaron Cleveland of Norwich, a strong character, afterwards a clergyman, “whose name you will find enrolled among the poets of Connecticut,” and who as early as 1775 published a poem on slavery, which, condemning slavery as wholly antichristian, attracted a good deal of notice. He was the first man in Connecticut to arraign slavery publicly. Elected to the General Assembly from Norwich on that issue, he introduced a bill in behalf of emancipation.
With health somewhat impaired and with family cares increasing, David Dodge now turned from teaching to trade. First it was as a clerk in Norwich, then as a partner in a general store, then as head of various dry goods establishments in Hartford and other Connecticut towns, always and everywhere successful. In 1805 Messrs. S. and H. Higginson of Boston, cousins of his wife, a firm of high standing and large capital, made him a proposition to enter into a copartnership with a view to establishing an extensive importing and jobbing store in the city of New York; and he accepted the proposition, going to New York the next year to take charge of the concern in that city. He took a store in Pearl Street, and the year afterwards the family took possession of the house connected with the store, still reserving the house in Hartford as a retreat in case of yellow fever in New York. From this time until his death, April 23, 1852, New York was, with occasional interruptions, his home and the center of his varied and ever enlarging activities. Just before the outbreak of the war with England his partners became bankrupt through losses in extensive shipping of American produce to Europe. “Bonaparte sprung his trap upon more than a million dollars of their property.” Mr. Dodge now established cotton factories in Connecticut, and later commenced anew the dry goods business in New York, his home for years alternating between New York and the Norwich neighborhood; and for the nine years following 1835 he occupied a large farm in Plainfield, New Jersey.
Active as was his business life, and faithful his devotion to his large business affairs—and he came to rank with the most prominent mercantile men of his day—his mind was always intent upon social and religious subjects. “During the years of 1808 to 1811 our business became extensive and demanded much thought and attention; yet I think my affections were on the subject of religion.” Revivals of religion, the interests of his church in Norwich or New York, the improvement of the lives of his factory operatives, the organization in New York of the Christian Friendly Society for the Promotion of Morals and Religion—such were the objects which commanded him. Throughout his long residence in New York he was a prominent worker in the Presbyterian church, for many years an elder in the church. He took a leading part in organizing the New York Bible Society and the New York Tract Society, was much engaged in the early missionary movements in New York, and in promoting the education of young men for the ministry. He was a lover of knowledge, a great reader, and one who thought and wrote as he read. Deeply interested in history, ancient and modern, his chief interest was in theological discussion. He was familiar with the chief theological controversies of the day, and upon many of them committed his views to writing. His knowledge of the Bible was remarkable; he read it through critically in course forty-two times. He held firmly the Calvinistic system of doctrine, and he addressed to his children a series of letters, characterized by great ability and logical force, in defense of the faith, and constituting together a compendious system of theology.
Several of these letters are included in the memorial volume published for the family in 1854 under the editorial supervision of Rev. Matson M. Smith. This volume contains, besides the two essays on war here reprinted, and various verses and letters, the interesting autobiography which he prepared, at the request of his children, a few years before his death, and a supplementary biographical sketch by his pastor, Rev. Asa D. Smith. In the mass of manuscripts which he left behind was an essay upon “The Relation of the Church to the World,” and one upon “Retributive Judgment and Capital Punishment,”—to which he was sharply opposed. He was opposed indeed to so much in human governments as now constituted—“whose ultimate reliance,” he said, “is the sword,” and whose laws he felt to be so often contrary to the laws of Christ to which he gave his sole allegiance—that he would neither vote nor hold office. Strict and inflexible as he was in his views of political and religious duty, he was one of the most genial and delightful of men, a Christian in whom there was no guile, fond of the young, affectionate, courteous, “given to hospitality,” “careful habitually to make even the conventionalities of life a fitting accompaniment and expression of the inward principle of kindness.” A face as strong as it is gentle, and as gentle as it is strong, is that which looks at us in the beautiful portrait preserved in the family treasures, and a copy of which forms the frontispiece of the present volume.
The character and influence of the family which he founded in New York, during the three generations which have followed, constitute an impressive witness to David Dodge’s force and worth, his religious consecration, and high public spirit. At the junction of Broadway and Sixth Avenue stands the statue of his son, William Earl Dodge, whose life of almost fourscore years ended in 1883. For long years the head of the great house of Phelps, Dodge & Co., the manager of immense railway, lumber, and mining interests, the president of the New York Chamber of Commerce, a representative of New York in Congress, a leader in large work for temperance, for the freedmen, for the Indians, for theological education, for a score of high patriotic and philanthropic interests, New York had in his time no more representative, more useful, or more honored citizen. And what is said of him may be said in almost the same words of William Earl Dodge, his son, who died but yesterday, and who combined broad business and philanthropic activities in the same strong and influential