About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America 2014
The headline said, “Pastor leaves pulpit.”
It was October 15, 1900 – 114 years ago almost to the day. Because of the hissing and booing and because he feared violence, the pastor stepped down.
Were they booing him or his ecclesiastical message? No, they were booing fellow parishioners at the Methodist Church in Lenox Dale.
“On Sunday night as the pastor was about to announce the opening hymn, who should saunter in with majestic carriage and a haughty stride but these two disturbers of the minds and peace of good citizens.”
Pastor Richards motioned to the woman to follow him into the vestibule. She did, and the man followed the woman. Richards asked them to leave.
“Thus,” the pastor said afterward, “bloodshed was averted.”
Good grief! Who were they and what did they do?
The man and woman, each married to others, had taken a “honeymoon” together and were seen “keeping company”.
The Berkshire community was indignant. Entering the church together was the tipping point and now the community was no longer silently indignant about the couple’s behavior but loudly enraged. When the couple left the building, a thing occurred that was strictly forbidden on Sunday in the Methodist Church: applause broke out.
Lenox Dale was not about to drop the matter and the Pittsfield Evening Journal was not about to drop the story. On the front page, the newspaper described the “crime” but did not name the couple. Was it finer feeling or fear of a law suit? The following day another story about the sinners appeared on the front page and so did their names. This was not speculation or gossip; this was hard news.
Mrs. Joseph Hathaway and Mr. Edward Wagner were attacked by a mob of masked men who intended to tar and feather them.
Early reports said a mob of 60 young men gathered at the train station to collect a bucket of tar and some feathers, and to plan their assault.
They put on masks and approached the Hathaway house. They threw stones at the house and finally forced open the door.
Mrs. Hathaway met them and pointed at one boy.
“I know you,” she said.
“No you don’t,” he said.
“Yes I do,” she said and shouted his name.
Scared, he ran off. Mrs. Hathaway slammed the door. They were about to force their way in once more when Wagner shouted, “I have a gun and am prepared to shoot whoever comes through the door.”
The mob hesitated. They were slowed but not stopped. They did enter the house and searched for Hathaway and Wagner, but the couple had escaped into the woods.
Eventually the mob dispersed.
The following day the newspaper called it “a case of white-capping”.
White-capping, also called night-riding, was violent action taken to intimidate and control behavior that was not against the law but was deemed to be at odds with community’s standards of behavior.
White-capping was uniquely American and started even before the Revolutionary War. The first recorded “white-capping” was when rural farmers tar and feathered the King’s tax collector. During the Revolutionary War, white-cappers punished Tories (King’s Men).
In the nineteenth century, white-cappers ganged together to intimidate debauchers, adulterers, wife-beaters, and the indolent. Their targets changed but not their methods. They favored tar and feathers, the whip, dunking (we call it water boarding), shots or stones aimed at a house, and arson. Masked or sheeted, they came at night. Some identify the whitecaps as the forerunners of the Klu Klux Klan.
After that first report of white-capping, facts were hard to gather.
“Everyone in Lenox Dale is mum,” The Evening Journal reported. “The result of a rumor circulating that the miscreants are known and will be summoned into court.”
That harrowing night was only the beginning. All over the state, newspapers picked up the story. In Berkshire County, the story led the news for five days.
An indignant Mrs. Hathaway was interviewed, “I am not afraid. Let them come again and see what happens.”
A furious Wagner planned to leave his managerial position at a paper mill in Lee, “I will not live in a town where they do not know how to treat a civilized man decently.”
He swore to come back with sufficient funds to bring a legal action against the white cappers.
The article that ran in the Boston paper had a surprising result. A wealthy man offered a $100 reward to anyone who could bring evidence against any member of the mob.
One reporter wrote to his colleagues, “If you know anything, boys, now’s the time to tell. That $100 is two weeks’ salary.”
Perhaps we associate night riders in sheets carrying tar, feathers, and burning torches with the Deep South. This was Massachusetts. Nonetheless no one claimed the $100. The law did nothing even after Wagner lodged a complaint. Certain residents of Lenox and Lenox Dale expressed satisfaction that the night’s activities would discourage any future misbehavior on the parts of Wagner and Hathaway, and even, they confided, be a warning to others in the community who may be “canoodling.”
A few muttered that no matter the behavior of Wagner and Hathaway, tar and feathering was inexcusable; moreover the behavior was private and none of the community’s business. The two sides of an issue that would carry throughout the twentieth century into the twenty-first were solidified.
The story slowly died, but before it did surprising facts surfaced. The white-cappers had first found Joe Hathaway and taken him to the local tavern for a drink. He was found wandering the street in a “doped” state. The white-cappers doped him to prevent him from defending his wife when they attacked. Joe Hathaway would have defended his wife?
Moreover, when Mrs. Hathaway fled, she went to Mrs. Wagner who took her in and sheltered her. Mrs. Wagner sheltered her?
As it turned out, both spouses knew and approved of what was a platonic friendship. Both spouses knew and were pleased when the church-going and reverent Mrs. Hathaway convinced Mr. Wagner to go with her to church because he had not been inside a church in 16 years. In the end, apparently, their behavior had been faultless: no adultery and no flouting of community values.
Even so, the white cappers did succeed in changing Mrs. Hathaway’s behavior. Before that night, she had stitched onto the curtains in her front window – for all the village to see – “Love thy neighbor as thyself and God with all thy heart.” After, she took the curtains down.
From white-cappers to the Temperance League to the Right-to-Lifers, the notion that we should “enforce community standards of behavior” is an idea as old as our country. The argument on the other side for privacy and minding one’s own business is equally old.
