Overview:  January - July 1864
NEW YEAR’S 

 Fig. 3.1. The Peabody Institute, Peabody, Mass. 

     The citizens of South Danvers gathered at the Peabody Institute on Main Street to ring out 1863 with a Grand National Concert. Students in “Mr. Watts’ juvenile class” sang patriotic songs such as “Zouaves Camp” and “When the War is Nearly Over” and performed laughable farces entitled “The Flower of the Rebel Army” and “The Raw Recruits.” 
     Four days later, crowds again visited the Institute to attend a War Meeting. It featured the lively music of the Salem Brass Band and patriotic speeches.  Recruits signing on before January 12 received an extra bounty from the town. 
    “Let Massachusetts and all other states make a New Year’s present of their quotas to the army, and the hearts of not only the suffering captives of Richmond, but many other loyal men, black as well as white, all over the South, would be encouraged as they hear the tramp of 30,000 more marching to their deliverance,” said lawyer and Peabody Institute Trustee Alfred A. Abbott.
    “To fail in this is to hold back the reserve that is to win the battle.  The prosperity of this part of the country would depart, and we should see our land rent with civil feuds, and drenched in fraternal blood: We are enjoying prosperity such as was never before known in civil war.  And shall we make return for this by folding our arms, or shall we sacrifice all, our life, if may be, to the cause of those at home.  He would leave it to the wives and mothers of our brave soldiers to say whether we should give up now.  We must succeed, for God never let anything so precious as patriot blood be lost.” 

    As in many industrial areas of the north, South Danvers was prospering in 1864.  Local tanneries imported 30,000 more hides than the year before.  The Danvers Bleachery on Foster Street was set to expand by adding dyeing and napping facilities.  The W. M. Jacobs & Son tannery announced plans to level its site near Eagle Corner [Washington and Main streets] and build a new four-story factory. 
    The Eastern Railroad, which posted an 8.25 percent increase in earnings in 1863, ran a special late train during that winter in order to afford South Danvers citizens an opportunity to attend the New York and Havanna Opera Troupe at the Boston Theatre.  A successful Antiquarian Supper and Levee, fairs and sleigh rides were popular, as well as the use of laughing gas. 
    As the town’s prosperity grew so did the cost of living and members of the working classes found it increasingly difficult. The town’s vital statistics for 1863 indicate that of 150 births that year, 78 of the newborns were children of “foreign-born” parentage.   Of the 100 deaths that year, nearly half (47) were children under 8 years of age. 
    By the end of January, the curriers in South Danvers and Salem called a strike.  A letter-to-the-editor signed by “Looker-On” reads, “So far as the curriers simply ask for a rise in the price of labor, corresponding to the rise in the price of necessaries of life, they are clearly right; but when they attempt to dictate to their employers as to the manner in which they shall carry on their business – what laborers they shall employ – how many apprentices they shall have, etc. – they are just as clearly wrong.” 
   The Journeyman Curriers of Salem and South Danvers were supported early on by curriers in New York and New Jersey.  By March, the strike involved violence and intimidation. 
   Despite the three-month-long strike, the business of tanning and currying continued to prosper and in April the Wizard reported, “The strikers are generally falling back into their old places, or going into other business, so that street idlers are getting much more rare.”  Additionally, the strike resulted in “American workmen” filling “the places vacated by foreigners.” 
    Another issue that separated the owners from the laborers was the availability of inexpensive transportation.  At town meeting in February, citizens opposed a petition from the Eastern Railroad to consolidate the South Reading Branch Railroad and endorsed a proposal of the Salem and South Danvers Railroad for a charter for a road in Danvers and for a petition for a Horse Railroad from South Danvers to Lynn.  The voters retained the right to demand the enterprise “be in the hands of those who are identified with the local interests and business, and will make it subservient to the prosperity of South Danvers and Lynn, and not under the control of men or corporations who would undertake it for speculative purposes…” 
    One letter-to-the-editor charged that opposition to the proposed horse railroad route was voiced by “some six to eight men in this town who keep a number of fancy horses, and who have but little else to do but exercise them by driving to Salem and back two or three times every day…Shall ninety-nine one-hundredths of the inhabitants of the town of Danvers be put to trouble and expense daily on account of the present impracticable mode of conveyance to Salem in order that the pleasure and interests of some few may be gratified and enhanced?” 
    It was late May before the state Legislature granted the petition to place track on Washington and Bridge streets, “in view of running the cars to Danvers, over the main road”.    In June, the existing Horse Railroad raised its rates to six cents per single ticket.  The rate hike was justified due to the high cost of meal, hay and upkeep for the horses.  The following week, the Horse Railroad donated a third of the fares collected to benefit soldiers in hospitals. 
    Another “specimen of the rich trampling upon the rights of the poor” arose in April, when the high price of butter placed it out of reach of poor families.  The price hike was blamed on “speculators who have been shipping vast quantities to Europe to pay for imported gewgaws…” A pledge was proposed for circulation among families, “whereby they agree to abstain from the use of butter altogether, until it comes down to a fair price.” 
   The spring was marked by unusual weather. Snow fell in early April sufficient for sleighing.   Tricked by the weather, wild geese “commenced their spring campaign too early” and had to return South.   By mid-May, the temperature was near 90 degrees and extreme heat, “up to 100 degrees in the shade” was recorded in late June.  The full moon that appeared at the end of June was so bright that residents near Eagle Corner falsely reported the “bright light in a southwesterly direction” as a fire. 
    Throughout the late spring of 1864, people in South Danvers harbored hopeful feelings about the outcome of the war.  The Union victories in late 1863 at Vicksburg and Chattanooga, the relative inactivity of the Army of the Potomac, and the assignment of Ulysses Grant as Major General all added to the north’s optimism. 
     In February, President Abraham Lincoln called for 500,000 more men to fill the ranks of the Union Army.  The requisite number of local men was easily found, as recorded in a Wizard editorial: “It is now stated as a fixed fact that South Danvers is nine men short of filling her quotas, and Danvers, forty in excess.  The latter must be a good place for those dreading a draft to live in.” 
     By mid-summer, the war assumed a more terrible nature, eliciting deep despair. As the reports were received of the losses resulting from six weeks of the bloodiest fighting, from the Wilderness to Petersburg, the patriotic rivalry between the two towns took on a grisly nature.  The lists of recruits previously published in the paper were replaced with lengthy lists of dead men from the towns. 
     A note at the bottom of the list of Danvers men reads, “It will be seen that the above list contains the names of fifty-four soldiers, who have been killed in battle or died while in the United States service, this is a loss of eighteen greater than that of our neighbor town, South Danvers, and probably larger than that of any other town in Essex County, in proportion to its population.” 
     Symbolizing both the hope and weary resignation of the townspeople towards the war is the record of MOSES SHACKLEY, JR., a graduate of Peabody High School. His story is recorded in the pages of the Wizard beginning in 1861, when he joined the Army at the age of 17. 
     At the town's first war meeting, Shackley's father,  a member of the committee of five selected by the townspeople to meet the call for troops, announced that he "had already fitted out and sent his son at an expense of fifty dollars.  This allusion to the young and patriotic Shackley ... brought down the house with deafening applause." 

Fig. 3.4. Company A, 8th Massachusetts Regiment, known as the Salem Zouaves.  

     Shackley enlisted before the onset of the war as a 3-months man with the Salem Zouaves of the Massachusetts 8th Regiment.  He was on his way, he thought, to Baltimore, Maryland to protect the Capitol. He was routed not to Baltimore, but to Annapolis to protect Old Ironsides and was among the troops that arrived at Washington shipyard and marched to the capitol building. In August, he made a visit home and was reassigned as a wagoner to the Massachusetts 19th Regiment.  He soon left the wagons and went into the ranks. By September, he was stationed at Harrison's Landing on the James River in Virginia and participated in the seven days fighting before Richmond. 
     He earned a Lieutenant's commission by his bravery and participation in the bloody encounters of Ball's Bluff (Harrison's Landing), the battles of the Peninsula, second Bull Run (Manassas), Antietam, Fredericksburg (Marye's Heights), and at Gettysburg, where he distinguished himself. 
     When a battery was disabled while under terrific cannonading, volunteers were sought to assist in working its guns.  The Adjutant General reported, "The conduct of Second Lieutenant Moses Shackley, who insisted on joining the volunteers, was particularly gallant and brave, walking from piece to piece, encouraging and assisting the men." 
    Shackley remained with his regiment some five months after the battle of Gettysburg, when, his well-earned rank was reduced in what was reported as a "mean attempt to injure his reputation." He returned to South Danvers and an editorial appeared in the Wizard in December, 1863.  It reported that Shackley was absent without leave from the Army and was discharged.  "Such services in the foremost positions in actual warfare deserve honorable mention, and its only for those who have done more in the great cause of the country to speak in terms of disparagement," it read. 
     Twenty-year-old Shackley did not remain inactive for long. When the call for more troops was issued in the winter of 1863, he enlisted at a lower grade in the 59th Veteran Corps, and, under generals Burnside and Gould, he fought safely at the Wilderness and was mortally wounded in the Bloody Angle at Spottsylvania Court House on May 12, 1864. He died the next morning at the camp hospital. 
     “Of all who have gone out from us, few have fought so many battles and encountered so many perils, and at the same time endured the fatigues of the camp as cheerfully as our departed friend and townsman,” read the editor’s note preceding the article that appeared in the Wizard on June 1.
     Another loss felt by the town was the death of local author NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE in May.  An obituary by “H.D.J.” appeared in the Wizard.  The author reported that “[We/I] have listened with admiration to his sublime and instructive conversation.  He was mentally sensitive in the extreme.  He never seemed to appreciate the great power of his own genius.” 
     Hawthorne’s career and writing was a topic of continued coverage in the Wizard.  Editor Fitch Poole, Jr. reviewed Hawthorne’s book “Marble Faun” in a May 1860 issue of the paper.  A report penned by Hawthorne and providing an account of the battle of the ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimac, appeared in the Wizard in July 1862.
     Since its inception, it was a habit of the Wizard to feature all news published about GEORGE PEABODY, the town’s benefactor. The town received news in late January that “the trustees of Mr. George Peabody’s munificent gift of 150,000 to the poor of London, have decided to appropriate the fund, or the large part of it, to the erection of buildings in suitable localities to furnish lodgings for the poor.  One of the proposed buildings has already been finished, and the lodgings are about to be let.  It is four stories high covering an area of 30,000 square feet. It contains, besides stores upon the street…” 

Fig. 3. 5. Peabody Square, Islington, London.

     The following month, the Wizard reported that “Five hundred thousand dollars of the Coast Defence scrip of Massachusetts has been taken by George Peabody, of London, at $110.” 
     In late spring, the Wizard reported that George Peabody donated $500 to the Baltimore Sanitary Fair.  A month later, Peabody announced he would retire in October from George Peabody and Company. 
      Much of his time was occupied with plans for the Peabody Donation Fund, “for the benefit of the industrious poor”.   Eventually, the endowment became the Peabody Education Fund, which directed its efforts to provide education in the southern United States.

Fig. 3. 6  Peabody Fund Commission - Admiral [David] Farragut, George Peabody, Hamilton Fish,
General [Ulysses] Grant, Governor Aiken, S.C., Robert Winthrop, Samuel Wetmore