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For Solomon Southwick’s biographers, the huge and asymmetrical thoughts of one among Albany’s most compelling characters was sometimes entered by his soul-baring countenance. Of their day, in spite of everything, the rising science of physiognomy may inform lots concerning the man.
From a distance of practically 2 hundred years, nevertheless, it appears that evidently physiognomy is a remarkably elastic science, its practitioners leaving us with conflicting proofs of the contradictory character traits they discovered revealed within the face of Albany’s Renaissance man.
In Joel Munsell’s Annals of Albany, for instance, Southwick is described as “somewhat under middle size-with a countenance beaming with benignity, and expressive of an enthusiastic, ardent and sanguine temperament-a countenance, indeed, indicative of the many and active virtues of his heart.”
In Price’s Recollections of Albany, alternatively, he’s remembered as having had “the finest eye and forehead that ever belonged to mortal man, but every other feature of his face was either indifferent or defective. His countenance, therefore, was an index to the character of his mind-incongruous, mixed and full of contradictions.”
Southwick, born in Rhode Island on Christmas Day in 1773, was, virtuous or not, held up as this city’s traditional self-made man all through a lot of the nineteenth century. He got here to Albany in 1792, bringing little with him however a unusual pedigree and a big measure of expertise, drive and creativeness, although-as is the case with many “self-made men”-a few extra benefits got here his manner from exterior sources than the tales have a tendency to emphasise. At any price, inside the span of simply fifteen years he grew to become one of many metropolis’s most distinguished residents, as a serious power within the newspaper enterprise right here and as a shrewd political operator.
At numerous instances in his profession, he served as editor and writer of the Register (“the political Bible of the western region”); the Plough Boy (below the inconceivable pseudonym of Henry Homespun); the Nationwide Democrat (an organ that served largely to advance his unsuccessful bid for the governorship of the state as a dissident Democrat); the Christian Visitant (a non secular paper); and the Nationwide Observer (a rabidly partisan publication dedicated to the anti-Masonic political social gathering). On the identical time, he served the political and industrial pursuits of the world in such capacities as state printer, clerk of the Meeting, Albany County Sheriff, postmaster of the town, a regent of the state college, and president of Mechanic’s and Farmer’s Financial institution.
For the primary forty years of the century, in truth, Solomon Southwick was a ubiquitous presence in Albany, writing, politicking, allotting charity, and-perhaps his favourite avocation-lecturing on the virtues of self-education and self-reliance. (Different favourite lecture matters for the favored and busy orator included temperance, a sizzling concern of Southwick’s day and one by which he shared a passionate dedication with the primary of a number of Erastus Cornings, and the Bible, a sizzling concern in anyone’s day.)
It was as a lecturer that Southwick made what was to be is most enduring mark on the neighborhood, touching and provoking numerous younger people-make that males, white men-through each eloquence and residing testimony.
“Himself, emphatically a self-made man-one of nature’s noblemen . . .,” an admirer wrote, “owing all of knowledge, of mental and moral culture, of success in life, of honor, fame, distinction and usefulness, to his exertions and perseverance, it was the predominant desire-the master passion, so to speak, of his mind-to communicate to others, and especially to the laboring classes-to the indigent, the obscure and friendless-and generally to the young in every condition of life-that knowledge of their powers and faculties which should render them independent of extraneous circumstances and adventitious aid, in the development of their minds, and the advancement of their personal and pecuniary interests.”
Gorham Price, who was, below the pen identify Ignatius Jones, Albany’s most sardonic and maybe most entertaining scribe, noticed his previous good friend’s ardour for self-education considerably otherwise, nevertheless. Southwick’s writing model, Price reported, was “redundant in epithet, inflated and declamatory,” his language, “in the main, loose and inelegant.”
With out the finishings of a proper training, Price felt, Southwick was “credulous to excess, and even superstitious. . . . He was extremely fluent and even eloquent in conversation. But he had too little knowledge of the world, [leaving] his judgment too often at fault.”
Then, too, regardless of his emphasis on training, “He read but little, and only from necessity,” Price mentioned.
Maybe the classically-educated Mr. Price was proper about Solomon Southwick and the inescapable gaps in a selfmade training. Or maybe Southwick was merely far forward of each his personal time and Price’s creativeness. In 1839, just some months earlier than his demise on the age of 66, Southwick unveiled a proposal for the creation of a “literary and scientific institute” within the Metropolis of Albany. The institute, which might be directed by Southwick himself, would, he mentioned, be designed to afford the “requisite facilities to young men desirous of pursuing a course of self-education.”
Southwick’s surprising demise put an finish to that plan, however it’s fascinating to notice that its spirit returned to Albany within the latter half of the 20 th century and now lives on, one imagines fairly comfortably, within the places of work of Empire State Faculty and Excelsior Faculty, two state-spawned faculties constructed on a dedication to “lifelong learning.”
Who made the self-made man?
Solomon Southwick was born into an previous and distinguished Rhode Island household, not less than the third Solomon within the lineage. And whereas his legend stresses his unassisted climb to the highest, he clearly began life with extra benefits than most. Like our Solomon, his father, additionally Solomon, was a newspaper editor (The Newport, Rhode Island, Mercury), and each bit as politically lively as his son could be, in his case within the patriot trigger throughout the Revolutionary Battle and as a member of the Rhode Island common meeting. Then, too, when the youthful Southwick arrived in Albany in 1792, he went to work for his brother-in-law, John Barber, the unique proprietor of the Albany Register. Earlier than lengthy, he grew to become a companion within the enterprise, then the only real proprietor when Barber died in 1808. In an fascinating foreshadowing of the son’s dedication to self-education, the archives of the College of Pennsylvania present that the elder Southwick was enrolled in that prestigious establishment for a number of years, however left earlier than he was graduated.
“Despite this early departure, Penn’s Trustees’ minutes record the bestowing of an honorary Bachelor of Arts degree upon ‘Solomon Southwick of Rhode Island, who without the usual Foundation of critical Learning and Languages discovered an aptness worthy of encouragement in Mathematics and some Branches of Philosophy.’ Since he had actively been enrolled in the collegiate program, this degree was an A.B. ‘gratiae causa,’ making Southwick eligible for the A.M. ad eundem degree awarded to him by Yale in 1780,” in line with an entry on a web site exploring “Penn in the 18th Century.”
In his personal phrases
We are able to get a style of Solomon Southwick’s oratory, and a glimpse of simply how profitable he was, or wasn’t, in his course of self-education from the in depth writings he left behind, together with a famed Fourth of July deal with excerpted right here. His admixture of politics and piety is perhaps seen as distinctly of his time, if the politics of our personal day had not revived that method of thought (though nothing just like the eloquence). To Price’s cost that Southwick had “too little knowledge of the world,” properly, chalk one up for Price for Solomon’s attribution of the printing press to “Faust;” on the opposite aspect of the coin, although, what number of up to date school graduates can quote-or identify-Salmacius and Filmer? “Thus we see that MONARCHY flowed at first from the wrath of God: And hence we are not surprised, in spite of all the sophistry of its advocates, from the silly sons of Samuel, down to such sages as Filmer and Salmasius, that although it has inflicted curses innumerable, it has rarely, if ever, bestowed a solitary blessing, upon mankind: It has been, it still is, and it ever will be, no matter what shape be given to it, the bane of the earth, until the returning mercy of God, which has already dawned upon the United States, shall relieve the human race from its cruelties and oppressions, and banish it back to its native regions of darkness. For a period of from two to three thousand years, MAN labored under this curse of Monarchy, when GOD . . . saw proper to lay the foundation of his deliverance. HE inspired FAUST with the sublime idea of the invention of printing; and COLUMBUS, shortly after, with the still more sublime conception, if that be possible, of the existence and discovery of a new world; a new and a vast theatre of action for the human race: And on that vast theatre, of which ‘our own, our native land,’ constitutes so fair a portion, . . . . Hither, in due season, came our pilgrim fathers, flying from their monarchical and hierarchical tyrants and persecutors. And here did they find time, not only to make ” the wilderness blossom because the rose,” but to reflect seriously upon the creation, nature and destiny of MAN-his relationship to God-his duty to that Supreme Being, and to himself-the government that best suited him in this world, and the means by which he should find his way to another and a better one. Here, independent of vain, pompous and arrogant Hierarchs, tyrannical and despotic Kings and Princes . . they breathed and enjoyed in its fullness the pure atmosphere of freedom. Here, without let or hindrance, they opened, read, and understood for themselves, the Sacred Volume; and from that only true fountain of spiritual, moral, historical and political light, they found themselves more and more confirmed in their pre-conceived opinions, that Freedom was the original gift of Heaven-that Monarchy was afterwards inflicted as a curse-and that hence Rebellion to Tyrants was Obedience to God.”
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