Bradford County PA Chemung County NY Tioga County PA Tri-Counties Genealogy & History by Joyce M. Tice History of Tompkins, Schuyler, Chemung, Tioga 1879 Chapter 38

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POLITICAL HISTORY.

Political Divisions of the People – Presidential Preferences and Gubernatorial Gatherings – Popular Questions – Constitutional Amendments – Free Schools and a Pure Judiciary – Anti-Slavery Agitation, and what cause of it.

POLITICAL DIVISIONS.

The division of the people of Chemung on political issues since the organization of the county is best shown by the way they cast their ballots for candidates for Presidential electors and Governor.

The first election was in 1836, when the Presidential electors resulted as follows:
 

Subsequent elections have resulted as follows.
 

The election in 1876, by towns, was as follows:
 

Popular Questions submitted to the people have been disposed of as follows:
 

ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENT.

While there was no regularly-organized anti-slavery society in Chemung County, yet the agitation was none the less marked, and in its beginning excited quite as much opposition as elsewhere. The first movement was begun in 1836, by Rev. John Frost, John Selover, and Dr. Norman Smith, the former and latter being original "dyed-in-the-wool" abolitionists, while Elder Selover began as a colonizationist with Gerrit Smith. When the Utica people drove the anti-slavery men and women from their city to Peterboro’, Gerrit Smith was no longer a colonizationist, but a zealous emancipationist, and Elder Selover experienced his change of hear on that subject about the time. In 1837 the Annual Conference of the Methodist Churches of Western or Central New York was held at Elmira, and in that Conference was an organized anti-slavery society, composed chiefly of the ministers of that Conference. They desired to hold their annual meeting for the election of officers and the transaction of other business, and applied to the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church for permission to hold their meeting in it, and were refused. A like application to the other churches met the same refusal. In this strait, the ministers applied to Messrs, Selover, Frost, and Smith for aid to get a place to meet in, and they applied to Mr. Davis, the proprietor of the island, - then a beautiful place of resort for all public gatherings, - for permission to meet there, which was readily and cheerfully granted. To this island the ministers and others, to the number of 300 or 400, repaired; but just before organizing the meeting, a deputation from the village trustees waited on the clergymen, and in the name of the trustees forbade the gathering, on the plea of creating a disturbance. The jurisdiction of the trustees over the island was nil, and the clergymen refused to abandon their meeting. Thereupon another deputation of worthy and respectable citizens appeared, and proceeded to read a paper emanating from the trustees of the Presbyterian Church, also forbidding the meeting; but the jurisdiction of the Presbyterian Church over the ministers of the Methodist Conference was of a slighter tenure than that of the trustees of the village over Davis Island, and the second deputation was laughed at for their pains. The fathers of the village and of the church failing in their mission, a less respectable and more noisy rabble – "fellows of a baser sort" – took up the task of dispersing the abolitionists, and with tin horns and pans, and rattles, and implements of rowdyism and riot, they so deafened the atmosphere that the words of the speakers could not be heard by the audience, and the meeting was broken up and left the island.

Application was then made to Mr. T.S. Day for permission to meet on his farm at the foot of what is now Washington Street, in Elmira City, which being granted, the meeting assembled, some 200 strong, about half being the ministers of the Conference and strangers in the village, and the exercises were peaceably conducted. This was the only anti-slavery meeting seriously disturbed by a mob in Elmira. Rev. Mr. Frost was the marshal who conducted the procession to Davis Island, and for his antislavery sentiments, which he would preach at every opportunity, he was finally forced to withdraw from the pastorate of the Presbyterian Church, to make way for one whose political sentiments were more in harmony with those of the financial pillars of the church. Subsequently, discussions were held by Mr. Selover and S.G. Andrews wit certain attorneys, and a brother-in-law of the Presbyterian pastor, one Woolsey Hopkins, on the ends and aims of the Colonization Society, the latter gentleman taking the affirmative side of the question, upholding the society as the true ameliorator of the slave, and the former the negative, showing the society to be an aider and abettor of slavery, and that emancipation was the only true amelioration of the slave. Dr. Tracy Beadie, John W. Wisner, and Simeon L. Rood were the chosen umpires of the disputation, and derided that the negative had the best of argument. Six months later the discussion was repeated, with the same result substantially.

From the time when Elmira refused a hearing to the abolitionists, in 1837, the sentiments it sought to repress grew, slowly for a time, but steadily and surely, until it divided and broke into the ranks of the great parties, and swept over the country like a rising, irresistible flood in 1856, and the party founded on the principle of emancipation at that time have held sway at every Presidential election since.

The early apostles of abolition, aside from those already named, were J.M. Robinson, now of Elmira; Jervis Langdon, now deceased; T.S. and Erastus Day, of Horseheads; S.G.Andrews, now of Williamsport; Iru Gould, G.A. Gridley, of Water Street, Elmira; and Frank Hall. Mr. Selover seems to have been the most aggressive spirit in the early part of the contest, and he has lived to see the principles, the avowal of which brought upon their holders ebloquy, persecution, and reproach, become triumphant in the nation, and accepted by all political parties of the land, of whatever faith or sect. His recital of the above facts was not the least interesting hour passed by the compiler in old Chemung.

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