Knowlton Biography, Chapter 21
Twenty-one: Arrested in Amherst
It availed but little for me to talk. I knew it was the kind or character of the book that had caused the prosecution. The Justice said he must require bonds for my appearance at the Court of Common Pleas, to be holden about eight weeks hence, at Northampton. I then told him I was there without friends, acquaintances or property. I told him something of the situation of my family and affairs—that it would be a hard case for me to lie in Northampton Jail until court time, for so trifling and unintended an offence. He put the bonds at fifty dollars. I told him I could not meet them—could not secure any one to this amount. He wanted to know if I did not own a horse and wagon.
Charles left upstate New York and headed home to Winchendon. When he arrived there, Charles planned to send some books by stagecoach to Woodstock, Vermont. Nahum Haskell, the town clerk there, was a freethinker and thought he could place a few copies with his friends. Charles drove southeast, to Springfield, Massachusetts, delivering copies of Modern Materialism to subscribers scattered along the way. Springfield was an industrial city at the southern end of the Connecticut River Valley, where Modern Materialism was appreciated by some of the area’s large population of machinists, gunsmiths, and skilled craftsmen.
Charles left Springfield the next afternoon, following the Connecticut River northward through a gap in the Holyoke Range, a line of hills running east to west across the otherwise flat river valley. He turned eastward, arriving in Amherst at nightfall. Charles was very pleased with himself. He had nearly fifty dollars in his pockets, and he “thought how glad it would cause my wife to feel when I got home, and how much it would help me in procuring necessaries for my family.” After a hearty supper at the town’s tavern, Charles decided to stroll across the town common to Amherst College and see if he could interest any of its students in Modern Materialism and his ideas.
Charles met several Amherst students, and exchanged a copy of Modern Materialism for a few smaller books. He handed out a couple more copies to students who promised to pay for them or to return them in the morning. Amherst was a young college, established in 1821 after a failed attempt to relocate Williams College closer to the prosperous population centers of the river valley. Like many early American colleges, Amherst’s mission was the instruction of “indigent young men of promising talents and hopeful piety, who shall manifest a desire to obtain a liberal education with a sole view to the Christian ministry.” Amherst had a small band of men the school’s administrators considered “six or eight of the most bold, hardened and notorious enemies of religion,” who tried to start a freethinkers’ club. But most of Amherst College’s students were revivalists, alarmed that “irreligion, skepticism, open infidelity, blasphemy even, and ridicule of sacred things had become exceedingly bold.” Charles had accidentally left a copy of Modern Materialism with some of these orthodox young men, and the next morning he discovered “they had a very poor opinion of my book.”
On his way back to Amherst’s tavern the next morning with his unsold books, Charles stopped at the home of the College President. Reverend Heman Humphrey lived in a fourteen thousand square-foot mansion built for Amherst College’s presidents, on a little knoll overlooking the grassy main quadrangle and the campus chapel. Humphrey was a balding man with a long nose and brooding eyes. He was described by his friends as a zealous preacher and a man of “hearty, robust, common sense and practical wisdom, united with high moral and Christian principle.” President Humphrey’s guiding vision for education at Amherst College was his belief that “Without the fear of God nothing can be secure for one moment. Without the control,” he said, “of moral and religious principles, education is a drawn and polished sword in the hands of a gigantic maniac.”
Unaware of Reverend Humphrey’s intolerance of freethought, and apparently still believing that the president of a prestigious New England college would welcome discussion and philosophical disagreement, Charles introduced himself to President Humphrey and handed him a copy of Modern Materialism. Humphrey looked the book over briefly, and said he was surprised that someone as respectable-looking as Charles would be peddling such trash. “I saw he was agitated,” said Charles.
I told him it was a work of my own; that I could but believe that it contained correct and original views of the important subjects of which it treated; that I meant no offence in coming to him with the book, but thought, considering his standing, he might like to see an effort to explain the intellectual phenomena upon the principle of materialism. “I care nothing about your materialism,” was his angry reply. He treated me without the least respect.
Charles left the president’s mansion, “with a great desire that I might yet be able to cause him to care something about materialism.” On his way back to the tavern to collect his things, Charles passed a man headed for Humphrey’s house. A few minutes later, as Charles was preparing to leave for home, the same man approached him and asked if he was Charles Knowlton. When Charles said yes, the man said, “Well, I have a warrant for you,” and hustled him off to Amherst’s town jail.
When he was led into the town court, which was packed with dozens of Amherst College students, Charles learned he’d been arrested for peddling books. Charles was surprised, and told the judge he knew of no law against selling books. He’d often seen men peddling bibles and religious tracts, Charles said. But the judge read out a Massachusetts law against the peddling of books—and most other things—in the state, except by their manufacturers. Relieved, Charles explained that in fact he was the manufacturer of the book, and to prove his point he described its production in detail. But the judge brushed the facts aside.
Charles tried a different approach, and argued that he wasn’t really peddling the book. He was traveling to deliver copies to his subscribers, Charles said, and while he had shown it to the students he had only taken a few books in trade for a single copy. The judge was not swayed. He set Charles’s bail at fifty dollars and commanded him to appear at the District Court in Northampton in two months. If he could not make bail, Charles would be held in jail until his trial.
Alarmed, Charles objected that he didn’t have that much money, and had no friends in Amherst who would bail him out. The horse and wagon that the judge wanted him to sell, Charles said, belonged to someone else. Was the judge really going to jail him for two months on the charge of peddling a single book?
After more pleading, the judge finally reduced Charles’s bond to twenty-five dollars, and Charles was able to make bail and avoid another two months behind bars. There’s no evidence that Charles returned for trial or had any more trouble over this incident, so the charges were probably dropped when the case got to the county court in Northampton. There were—and still are—many old laws on the Massachusetts books that are simply ignored rather than being repealed. By 1829, most Massachusetts authorities had probably forgotten that peddling was illegal, since they were happily collecting taxes from peddlers throughout the state. It was only Reverend Humphrey’s zealousness to save Amherst College students from “skepticism, open infidelity,” or worse, that had endangered Charles Knowlton’s freedom in Amherst.