"How Whipple Van Buren Phillips Got His Middle
Name"
In New England, and in Western Rhode Island, naming
conventions followed a few simple rules.
1.
A woman's maiden name was often preserved as a
middle name of a child. For instance,
"Howard Phillips Lovecraft" preserved Sarah Susan Phillips
Lovecraft's family name.
2.
A Biblical name was sometimes chosen. Jeremiah E. Phillips, WVP's father, had such
a first name.
3.
A respected elder, or a child lost to
tragedy. Squire G. Wood 3rd
was named after a boy who was killed in an accident years before. It is likely that Annie Emeline Phillips
p[reserved the memory of her sister Emeline Phillips who died of illness.
4.
In the early days of the Republic between 1800
and 1860, children were often named after Washington, one of the other founding
fathers, or a significant authority figure who may have visited a local
region. For instance Lovecraft's father,
Winfield Scott Lovecraft, was named for the famous General Winfield Scott who
visited the New York area on a campaign stop. Andrew Jackson Wiley, the
engineer used by WVP to construct the final Bruneau dam was clearly named for
the President.
So, how do we determine the circumstances that prompted
Jeremiah E. Phillips to name WVP? It
comes "out of the blue" as there seems no particular reason that
then-Vice President Martin Van Buren would have any contact with the Phillips
clan.
Martin Van Buren was a New York man from a small place
called Kinderhook. This later gave him
the rubric "Old Kinderhook" and etymologists lean toward the everyday
abbreviation "okay", previously "O.K." as deriving from
some anecdote about Van Buren. Earlier,
Van Buren was known as the "Little magician" a reference to both his
height, and his acumen for organization.
He was a whiz.
After the Virginia cycle of Presidents, and a few
Massachusetts Adams, the wildly popular hero of the "War of 1812",
Tennessean General Andrew Jackson swept the election. However, not in Rhode Island. For the majority of the electorate, Henry
Clay of Kentucky was their man and continued to hold sway with the coalition of
the so-called National Republicans, anti-masons, and anti-Catholic voters. (Immigrants at that time were flooding New
England, and those most conspicuous were Catholics from Ireland, or southern
Europe).
Jackson began to immediately spark with his Vice
President, John C. Calhoun (b. 1782) of South Carolina. South Carolina was rancorous over both a
chastening tariff and slavery. Henry
Clay butted heads frequently with Calhoun on these issues, but also with
Jackson’s anger at the then-Bank of the U.S.A.
National elections were quite different in Jeremaih E.
Phillips life. Every state had different
criteria as to who could vote. In Rhode
Island, for instance, only white, male, landowners could vote. That meant less than 10% of all Rhode
Islanders could vote in races, a true oligarchy.
As to Calhoun, he
served as secretary of war under Virginian President James Monroe, and in 1824
ran for the presidency. However,
partisanship and attacks from other contenders forced him out of contention for
the top spot. He settled for the vice
presidency under Massachusetts President John Quincy Adams. In 1828, he was again
elected vice president while Andrew Jackson won the presidency. In that era, the two party structure such as
we know it today, was more fluid. There
were democrats (Jackson) and a loose group known sometimes as republicans
(Clay) and other times as Whigs (a term coined by Clay). It would be much later, after Lincoln's win
and the Civil War, that the two party system really firmed up.
The 1832 election was pretty significant for Rhode Island,
and especially for some of the tribal clans around Foster, Rhode Island. For some reason yet to be fully articulated,
that area of the Moosup and Pawtuxet River Valleys (Foster, Coventry, Rice
City, Hopkins Hollow, Mount Vernon, and other hamlets) seemed to dance to a different
tune than the rest of Rhode Island.
On a national level, Van Buren arranged a massive
organization down to regional captains and precincts that simply overwhelmed
Henry Clay's abilities. Jackson won by a
landslide which re-elected the team of Jackson-Calhoun.
Van Buren had emerged much as do splinter factions (such as
the tea-party of 2010). His were called
the "buck-tails" and his organization skills reset politics in New
York before 1820, and nationally in the early 1820's. Much of this was "suffrage" a means
to expand those eligible to vote. He
crushed the local strong man DeWitt Clinton.
Did Jeremiah Phillips notice this?
We don't know.
In 1821, Van Buren won a U.S. Senate seat but was thwarted
by Clinton man, New Yorker, and Speaker of the House John Taylor. He navigated behind the scenes and ousted
Taylor in favor of Virginian Phillip Barbour who became Speaker of the House in
the Seventeenth Congress. In the 1824
presidential election, Van Buren backed the Republican caucus nominee, Treasury
Secretary William H. Crawford who lost, but the party coalition became
stronger. Did Jeremiah Phillips notice
all this? We don't know. But there seemed to be some trickle down and
maybe those in his regional area began to feel a change in the political
environment.
As we discussed, and now expand upon, that race was
contentious. Four other candidates
entered the race claiming the inheritance of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826, then
very much alive, though barely). The
initial candidates were Crawford, then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams,
then-Secretary of War John C. Calhoun,
Henry Clay, and then-Tennessee Senator Andrew Jackson. The election went to the House of
Representatives. Crawford became deathly
ill, and Adams got the Presidency. Van
Buren seemed to take the old addage,
"Don't get mad, get even." Van
Buren came out of the race leading the faction known as "Radicals".
By December 1826, Van Buren forged an alliance with Jackson
and Calhoun. In 1827, Van Buren was
firmly at the reigns of the campaign. It
must have been near this time that Van Buren became very close friends with the
Rhode Island man, and politically powerful
John Brown Francis. Again, was
Jeremiah Phillips noticing all this, or did he know Francis? There is no evidence yet, but we are closing
in on the mark for 1833.
In 1826 there were 24 states (Missouri was 24 on August 10,
1821 , and no railroad. However the
"West" was growing in power, and the needs of the West was very
different from the South. That pressure
valve was relieved in the West with an 1828 tariff, but South Carolina could
not tolerate it. It was also to play a
critical role in promoting Providence, Rhode Island to an industrial
giant. While it is not the scope of this
Appendix to discuss at length cotton, many Rhode Island corn grist mills were
quickly converted to cotton refining about this time. (Wheat was a rarity not seen often in Western
Rhode Island at this time.) The Sprague
family profited mightily from this tariff.
Of course, South Carolina was handcuffed. If the British could not dump goods into
America, they had no money to buy cotton – the primary crop of South
Carolina.
If all of this sound familiar, the only change for the
second decade of the 21st century is changing "England" to
"China", and "South Carolina" to "U.S.
Manufacturing". Perhaps the old
saying is true: If you do not know
history, you are doomed to repeat it.
This set the stage for the 1828 race – and it seems certain
that Jeremiah Phillips was noticing by now.
He was transitioning from routine farming (if farming could ever be
considered routine) to owning a grist mill.
Van Buren's reward was two years as secretary of state from
1829 to 1831. Politics make strange
bedfellows, and friends quickly turn to enemies. If one recalls the Monica Lowinski debacle of
President Bill Clinton, that was nothing to the public scandal of one Mrs.
Eaton. Mrs. Calhoun snubbed Eaton as an
adulteress, and Jackson was quick to support Eaton\s dignity. The battle raged, and Van Buren is the one
who got burned in this "Petticoat War". It made the newspapers as if it was a
paparazzi National Enquirer story.
Washington was paralyzed – again, a situation we know all to well today
.
Van Buren resigned late March 1831, and that precipitated
virtually all of the other cabinet members to also resign. Jackson set up a new administration. Van Buren was appointed by Jackson as
minister to England, but left before confirmation. Congress seized the chance to – do
nothing. Van Buren languished, until
late February 1832 when he was officially rejected. Van Buren played tourist in Europe until
returning home in July 1832. Jackson
called immediately for a new job – the defining conflict of Jackson's
Presidency, a veto of a bill to
recharter the Second Bank of the United States.
As this played out, it definitely affected Western Rhode
Island. By this time, a group of
businessmen south of Foster, Rhode Island had set up a banking plan. In those days, banks issued their own
"money". The Mount Vernon
business leaders realized they could leverage the growth of Providence and
bring capital back to Foster for more business loans. Then, as goods were provided to providence,
the sales and interest payments would fuel more loans back to Providence. Stones, Frys, and Gardners were all
intertwined in this, as well as their extended clan members as profits and
growth began. More on the impact of the
Jackson-Bank feud below. A prominent
name emerges for our study about this time.
Van Buren helped guide this splinter group to a national
convention of its own, thereby snubbing both the the Anti-Masonic Party
(September 1831) and the National Republican Party (December 1831). The very first "Democratic"
convention was held in Baltimore between 21–23 May 1832. Jeremiah Phillips certainly was not a
delegate, and he may have only read the news about it. Still, this was something very new in
American politics. The Convention did
not bother renominating Jackson, and spent the entire time lauding Van Buren
and nominating him as the Vice President.
The election of 1832 became a referendum on the Bank of the
United States with Clay on the Bank side, and Jackson determined to extirpate
it. Van Buren was the master of the
race, and Jackson won handily – but not in Rhode Island, a telling sign. So, if Rhode Island was dead set against
Jackson, why in heaven's name would Jeremiah Phillips name his son after his
henchman Van Buren?
We begin to close in on the tale.
On 27 November in the Rhode Island Republican (p. 2, col. 4)
the results were released on the Rhode Island Governor's fifth ballot
election. In The Rhode Island Republican six-way race for
the Governorship was a deadlock and Foster is shown supporting nearly 2:1 James
Fenner against Lemuel Arnold. It would
be quite some time before it was finally settled, but this gives an indication
of the political feeling there. This was
out of step with many other localities.
A few selected numbers:
Providence 737
Arnold, 173 Fenner, plus other votes for other candidates
Newport 259
Arnold, 111 Fenner
Scituate 68
Arnold, 128 Fenner
Foster 90
Arnold, 168 Fenner
Coventry 152
Arnold, 125 Fenner
Foster was beginning to be different and considering it was
originally split from Scituate. For
readers today, the striking thing is how few votes cast there were. In this election, each candidate for Governor
represented a national Presidential candidate.
In this case, Arnold carried for Clay, Fenner for Jackson, and young
William Sprague was the anti-masonic candidate.
Foster and Scituate (from which Foster had derived) were strongly in
Jackson’s camp. Foster's last vote was
215 for Fenner and 93 for Arnold. (p. 20
of The Politician's Manual, 1832,
Edwin Williams, printed James Van Norden, 1834).
It is highly likely that Jeremiah Phillips, a land owner,
supported Jackson and Van Buren as did many of his neighbors. He would not have been happy at the outcome
for Clay, nor at the Governor-elect. He
was about to get some exciting news, though.
The President and Vice-President were coming to Rhode Island in the
Summer of 1833. There is probably no
better guidebook through this political morass of the Jacksonian era than Waking
Giant: America in the Age of Jackson (David S. Reynolds, 2008,
Harper). We follow Reynolds' logical
discussion, and fill in with several contemporary issues of the Hartford Times
noted below. The discussion of Jeremiah
Phillips, below, is this writer's opinion.
This writer painstakingly reproduced the mostly steamship
route of President Jackson, Vice President Van Buren, and their party. By now there was a primitive train in
Baltimore (Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road), otherwise horse drawn coaches and
steamships were the rapid transit of the era.
The trip below might take a 21st century driver a little more
than a day. It took Jackson the better
part of a month.
At the end of this Appendix essay, the route will be traced
in more detail for the curious reader..
However, if Jeremiah Phillips wanted to see Jackson or Van Buren, he had
to have went west to Hartford, south to Norwich, or east to Providence. The coach system to Providence is the most
likely. If it is agreed that he did go
to Providence, many others did as well.
The city was jammed. So as Jeremiah Phillips headed to Providence to
meet the President, Jackson was touring Fort Adams at Newport. On 23 June 1833, Jackson was in Providence.
Assuming a conception around late February 1833, Rhoby
Rathbun Phillips was in the middle of her 2nd trimester with the
future WVP as Jeremiah sped to Providence.
It seems very unlikely that she traveled with him. There, somehow, Van Buren made a major impact
on him through a speech, or perhaps even a personal handshake. It was over in a matter of hours, and
Jeremiah likely conducted other Providence business before returning home.
It would have been the talk of the Summer, and come 22
November 1833 Whipple Van Buren Phillips was born.
The scenario presented above represents the historical
accuracy of National, State, and Regional politics. Martin Van Buren was not a war hero, nor did
he particular cut a strong national following, though he did go on to become
President in his won right. Jeremiah
Phillips does not strike one as a political junky. He did not name previous other children after
Van Buren, and he chose not to name Whipple after Andrew Jackson - a true war hero and man of amazing
personality. Thus, some personal
enthusiasm for Van Buren had to have been exhibited.
The press has been known to fabricate the truth, but every
dispatch has Van Buren immediately near the President at every function. Van Buren did not just cut loose and ride
over to Foster, Rhode Island to see the hoi poloi. Even his close friend, John Brown Francis,
would have met his in one of the larger towns of Rhode Island (Newport,
Providence, or Pawtucket).
The one singular event coinciding with Martin Van Buren and
Jeremiah Phillips happened between 10 June and 4 July 1833 with Andrew
Jackson's unique New England tour. This
writer believe that it was this even that named Whipple Van Buren Phillips.
President Andrew Jackson Takes a Trip
In 18 and 33 the President took a little trip,
No, it wasn't 1812, nor the Mighty Missisip-
It was New England that he steamed through,
New York to Connecticut to Rhode Island, too.
The General became very profoundly ill.
-
Chris Perridas, c. 2012
In the Spring of 1833, Jackson determined to make a trip
through New England. Not since President
Monroe had anyone tried to do this while in office. Even in campaigns, travel was not easy.
Logistics were arranged, and an itinerary was set
forth. It was not to be a very pleasant
trip for the old General. He carried two
bullets that constantly nagged at him.
He was nearly toothless with constant throbbing in his mouth. Yet when he spoke, he electrified crowds
small and large. He was outstandingly
personable.
ñ
On Thursday, 6 June 1833, he left Washington for
Baltimore and briefly rode the Baltimore and Ohio at the breathtaking speeds of
20 miles per hour. He spent three days
in Baltimore, notably meeting the Native American warrior (we might call him a
freedom fighter today) named Blackhawk.
ñ
On Monday, 10 June 1833, he arrived in
Philadelphia and promptly fell ill.
ñ
He managed to recover, see a physician, get bled
out, and made it to a New York Broadway parade for Wednesday 12 June 1833.
ñ
On Saturday, 15 June 1833, Jackson's and his
entourage left New York for New Haven and arrived on the steamboat Splendid
at 6 o'clock. They made it to Yale where
Jackson received an honorary degree.
ñ
On Sunday, 16 June 1833, Jackson went to church
at Trinity.
ñ
On Monday, 17 June 1833, Jackson saw the
impressive Carriage Factory in New Township, and went to Cooke's tavern in
Wallingford, and then to Merdian where he was greeted by bells ringing. Then he was off to Berlin which was packed
with people.
ñ
On Tuesday, 18 June 1833, Jackson took a boat
from the wharf at Middletown, and visited Norwich.
ñ
On 19 June 1833, Wednesday, Jackson steamed over
to Fort Adams at Newport, Rhode Island.
ñ
He left Newport a 6 P.M. On Thursday, 20 June
1833, and made his way to Providence where crowds thronged.
ñ
He left providence on 21 June 1833, Friday, and
headed to Pawtucket. Then it was on to
Boston and Lowell, MA. The factories had
closed in his honor, but he begged for them to be reopened so he could see the
advanced technology they employed. He
fell ill again, but recovered enough to go on.
He saw the ship, Constitution, (Old Ironsides), maneuver into dry
dock on 24 June 1833.
ñ
He went to Bow, New Hampshire, and the citizens
escorted him on to Concord, New Hampshire ending his tour on Saturday, 29 June
1833.
ñ
By Thursday, 4 July 1833, Jackson was back in
Washington.
... stay tuned for an essay on this intriguing mystery ...
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