Concord greeted the year 1853 with feelings of joy and sadness.
President Millard Fillmore was leaving office and being succeeded by our 14th President Franklin Pierce. Our ancestors were indeed proud to see one of their own but there was concern and debate regarding slavery as we headed toward the Civil War.
President-elect Pierce was traveling aboard his train with family when there was a crash and his 11-year-old son Benjamin was killed. When Pierce was sworn in as our president months later it was with a shroud of sadness as he and his wife mourned the loss of their young son. It was within the first year that Franklin Pierce also lost Vice President William King as he succumbed to tuberculosis without having fulfilled any of his duties of the office. John Tyler was sworn in as the new vice president under President Pierce.
In other parts of our country, Levi Strauss and Co. was founded in San Francisco, while a gentleman named George Crum invented the potato chip in Saratoga, N.Y.
When Pierce appointed his cabinet, he was selective and disciplined, choosing people that supported his objectives with confidence and knowledge. On Aug. 29, 1853, the U.S. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis visited Concord and lodged at the Eagle Hotel. He brought Professor Alexander Bache, of the coast survey, along with him to visit and discuss the new administration. The newly-appointed secretary of war spent his mornings dining at the Phenix Hotel on Main Street. Professor Bache would join the secretary to dine, and then walked Main Street as they enjoyed a fine cigar and the hospitality of our ancestors.
They felt welcomed and embraced the visit considering it a successful venture. A carriage ride was enjoyed as the local streets were traversed and the farms viewed by the secretary and the professor followed by a gathering at the Eagle Hotel where the good citizens gathered and spoke with the secretary of war in person. Upon concluding the visit to Concord, the entourage traveled to the lake’s region of New Hampshire and the White Mountains on a brief tour.
There was talk of gold being discovered out west, and the gold rush was just about ready to start with many thoughts turning to instant wealth in the fields of California rather than the fields of wheat that the farmers worked. Men had dreams and the nation was still young with opportunities for those that possessed the desire and ambition to succeed. Our ancestors did not know they would soon be marching to war once again.
The discussions held with the secretary of war at both the Phenix and Eagle hotels on those August days were certainly spirited, for the north contained abolitionists and the secretary of war had other considerations within his duties. When the secretary wished the people of Concord well, he was indeed sincere and promised that the people of Concord would hear from him once again. He boarded his carriage with Bache, the coachman coerced his team away from the Main Street hotel and headed north that warm afternoon with the dust from the street tossed into the air.
The secretary of war did keep his promise and our ancestors heard his name mentioned about a decade later. The people on Main Street that met the secretary of war at the Eagle and Phenix hotels certainly remembered him.
Those that had held the hand of the secretary of war in greeting that day in August back in 1853 had in fact dined and conversed with Jefferson Davis, who became the only president of the Confederacy arrayed in rebellion against the United States of America.