Israel Washburn Jr. biography casts light on little-known giant

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Editor’s Note: Maine Bound is a column featuring new books written by Maine authors set in the Pine Tree State or with other local ties.

BY ROXANNE MOORE SAUCIER

OF THE NEWS STAFF

ISRAEL WASHBURN JR.: MAINE’S LITTLE-KNOWN GIANT OF THE CIVIL WAR, by Kerck Kelsey, Picton Press, 209 pp, $18.50.

Former Vice President Hannibal Hamlin said of Patty Washburn, “Rome in all her glory never produced such a woman as the mother of the Washburns.”

Patty had high expectations of her children, and the Livermore family of seven sons and three daughters included four men who served as congressman, two of whom also were governors. Their oldest son, Israel Washburn Jr., was elected governor of Maine in 1860.

Washburn is well worth a biography, and Kerck Kelsey has produced the well-written “Israel Washburn Jr.: Maine’s Little-Known Giant of the Civil War.” Kelsey is a trustee of Washburn-Norlands Living Center, once the home of the Washburn family.

Kerck used family journals as well as the personal journal of Washburn to write this fine book.

Born in 1813, Washburn studied law with his uncle, Reuel Washburn, then opened his own practice in Orono. Known for his work ethic and physical energy, Washburn was a man of many talents. In addition to his public service, he co-wrote a hymnbook and lectured about Scottish songs and poetry.

During the lumber boom along the Penobscot River in 1834, it was Washburn who observed it was possible to judge a man’s wealth “by the number and length of the wolves’ tails that hung over the back of his sleigh.”

A few years later, he married Mary Maud Webster and they had four children – Henry Clay, Ada, Charles Fox and Anna Maud.

Washburn taught law to brothers Charles and William and was known politically as a “conscience Whig” rather than a “cotton Whig.”

“Slavery was the great scourge of the country, a gigantic evil,” and “its area should not be enlarged,” he said during his 1850 campaign in Congress. Pleased with his stand, the Free Soil Party decided not to run anyone against Washburn.

Eventually, all the Washburns ended up leaving the Whigs over the issue of the expansion of slavery in the West. By 1854, there were some 18 factions in Maine, from the Fusion Freesoilers to the Temperance Anti-Maine Law Whigs.

In August, the Franklin County Whigs, Freesoilers and liberal Democrats each held meetings in Strong and agreed to come together as the Republican Party. The platform emphasized temperance and opposition to the spread of slavery. Come November, James G. Blaine’s Kennebec Journal in Augusta left the Whigs to support the Republicans.

By 1856, Washburn was a member and advocate for the Republican Party, strongly urging Sen. Hannibal Hamlin to join the party – which he did. Hamlin was elected governor and Washburn was returned to Congress. Two years later, the Republicans took all six of Maine’s congressional seats.

In 1860, Hamlin was elected vice president on the ticket with Abraham Lincoln, and Washburn was elected governor. That same year, the village of Salmon Brook in Aroostook County was incorporated as the town of Washburn.

A few months later, the Civil War began and the governor started to build a new army in Maine. Washburn personally did much of the organizing, including lobbying the federal government to get the troops paid. In fact, it was Washburn who conducted the interview with Joshua Chamberlain before he become an officer.

After his time in office, Washburn served 14 years as customs collector in Portland and became president of the Rumford Falls and Buckfield Railroad. He died in 1883 and was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Bangor.

Adding to the fascination of this book is excerpts from Washburn’s personal journal, including his characterization of the controversial James G. Blaine as someone who “is not and cannot be a statesman. It does not lie in his nature or training. He has no insight, without which there can be no statesmanship. He cannot take a philosophical view of things and he cannot grasp cause and consequence, or see more than the shoalest surface of questions.”

“Israel Washburn Jr.: Maine’s Little Known Giant of the Civil War” is available for $18.50, plus $4 postage and 5 percent sales tax from Picton Press, P.O. Box 250, Rockport 04856-0250.

BY DANA WILDE

OF THE NEWS STAFF

THE LEGACY OF A GENTLE MAN: THE POETRY OF GORDON CARR, by Gordon Carr; Bar Harbor, Maine, 2004; 154 pages, large format paperback.

The poems in “The Legacy of a Gentle Man” are the work of a man who didn’t think of himself as a professional poet. Instead, Gordon Carr, who was born in Van Buren in 1914 and afterward lived in several other New England states, was a machinist for a watch company, and he wrote verses partly for fun, partly to give shape to difficult feelings, and partly to entertain his children and grandchildren.

Writing poetry for recreation has, in our day and age, advantages and disadvantages, when we come to appraise the poems themselves. This collection compiled by Gordon Carr’s daughter, Melba Wilson of Bar Harbor, offers moments of powerfully evoked emotion, but some of the poems’ technical weaknesses will put off more sophisticated readers.

The main literary advantage Carr, now 90, had in his lifetime – apart from a gift for meticulous observation of both outer and inner detail – is that he felt no professional duty to make his poems sound like more than they are. Instead, he speaks very directly and never gets lost in philosophical hand-wringing over the slipperiness of language or large political significances, which our industry-certified poets are all schooled to indulge.

The best of Carr’s poems penetrate honestly into difficult feelings, especially those concerning his family. The pains of the postwar decades’ “generation gap,” in poems such as “Dispute” and “Departed Child,” are outright heart-wrenching and give crystal glimpses into what some parents felt in the 1960s as the kids abandoned them. “Father to His Children” begins:

I used to think, when I was young

And got starry eyed and saw the one

I thought I’d marry,

The children we would have

Would be strong and pure and always

Would know just the right thing to do.

As they grew up in perfection,

We’d share the little things,

Become pals, like those I had when I was young.

It started out that way.

And the poems around it go on to depict how it didn’t end up so. These lines are innocently but economically and forcefully shaped. Many of the book’s earlier poems have this evocative directness.

A disadvantage to writing without the ambition of becoming a master is that misdirections in the formal architecture can go chronically unattended. Many of Carr’s poems about bugs and breezes and boring preachers are startling in their detail, but Dr. Seuss-like exclamations such as “my goodness” and “dear ME” frequently rupture stanzas and moods, and sometimes homely words of wisdom attached at the end of a poem dissolve an atmosphere. These tendencies may exasperate readers requiring qualified polish.

But the authentic and often forceful emotional dimensions of many of these poems make them worth reading. They are more human and more moving than what we usually get from the pros.

Copies of “The Legacy of a Gentle Man” are available from Melba Wilson, 18 Bridge St., Bar Harbor 04609, or mwilson@acadia.net.

BY DALE MCGARRIGLE

OF THE NEWS STAFF

GHOSTS OF EDEN, by T.M. Gray, 2005, Five Star, Waterville, hardcover, 278 pages, $25.95.

The cause of the Mount Desert Island fire of 1947 has never been determined.

In her new novel, Birch Harbor author T.M. Gray puts the blame on an otherworldly force.

Set in 1947, “Ghosts of Eden” focuses on Saxon Faraday, who is returning home to MDI after a five-year stay at a Bangor mental institution. All she has left is her family manor, which, unfortunately, is also home to an evil presence. Saxon spends the first half of the book finding out how evil.

Saxon decides that if she is going to take her home back she needs to drive out the spirits that possess it. To do this, she recruits a mentally challenged neighbor and his teacher, an elderly black man. Together, against long odds, they take the fight to their powerful adversary, in the hopes of saving not just the house but also the world from destruction. The fire is an aftermath of that battle.

Gray strains credulity, even for the horror genre, blending elements from the expected haunted house to Area 51. Yet she deftly pulls it all together in the end in a not-overly-gory read.

T.M. Gray proves herself a writer to watch in the horror field.

To order “Ghosts of Eden,” call (800) 877-4253 or e-mail galeord@gale.com.