The Diary of Horace C. Lee, 1841–1842 (Part 2)

By the summer of 1842, halfway through the diary of Horace C. Lee, the nineteen-year-old diarist is making progress on his journey of self-definition in the midst of ever-changing religious, social, and economic conditions in Springfield, Massachusetts. He is drawing the map as he goes, tracking in the journal his every step further and further into the unfamiliar territory of independence and adulthood. Daily he sketches his cultural surroundings in an attempt to identify his position somewhere in the wide blank swath between boyhood and adult masculinity, even as the bustling New England town around him also matures into a thriving city and commercial center. Many of the cultural and historical factors at work in early nineteenth-century Springfield have already been treated in the introduction to the first half of the diary.¹ Here instead will be the outlines of the personal forces transforming the life of the young diarist, namely his faith, his community involvement, and his friendships.

When the second half of the diary begins,² in midsummer of 1841, it has been a difficult spring for Lee, the town, and the nation. A number of his peers have passed away, some from sickness and one in a grisly railroad accident. His paternal grandmother has died at home, leaving his father and uncles in mourning. A Springfield man is found drowned in a small stream, another commits suicide in the wealthy neighborhood of the Hill, and a prominent local lawyer dies after only two and a half days of sickness. Even the president of the United States, William Henry Harrison, succumbs to pneumonia after standing through his own drizzly inauguration without a coat. Lingering winter storms take a bitter toll on the health of young and old, prominent and insignificant, causing Lee to wonder where it will all end.³ This crisis of faith leads him in and out of the many religious communities of Springfield, for both funeral services and Sunday meetings, yet as the icy rains give way to sunnier days he finds himself most consistently drawn to the Episcopal Church.

As the American branch of the Anglican church the Episcopalians had suffered a considerable decline in numbers since the American Revolution, but the Church was regaining strength by the middle of the nineteenth century, especially in towns like Springfield, which swelled with immigrants from different parts of New England. On May 13, 1817, part of an old building on the grounds of the U.S. Armory in Springfield was dedicated as an Episcopal chapel for the worship of the armory employees under the supervision of Lieutenant Colonel Roswell Lee.⁴ Two decades later the Episcopalians finally built their own church and found their own pastor, the son of that same superintendent of the armory, the Reverend Henry Washington Lee. Horace C. Lee is quite taken with the preaching of Reverend Lee, whose extant sermons are filled with emotion and religious feeling that must have resonated with the romanticism of the young diarist.⁵ Reverend Lee preached primarily a faith of moderation, as he did in his October 1842 sermon commemorating the fourth anniversary of the Episcopal church in Springfield: “I exhort you to ‘let your moderation be known unto all men.’ . . . You can never benefit the Church by any ill-tempered or severe attacks upon those who differ or oppose it. Be kind; ‘be courteous.’ Render as many good offices as possible to all who are kind to you, and always return good for evil.”⁶ Here Lee finds a faith community that encourages deference and respect, a refined Christianity that dovetails with the genteel habits and self-discipline he is already cultivating as part of his adult identity.⁷ In fact, Lee seeks to reinforce these middle-class ideals of moderation outside of church as well, primarily through his involvement with the temperance movement.

In 1841 Springfield was brimming with temperance, holding packed lectures by prominent clergy, physicians, and recovering alcoholics in every available meetinghouse or church as often as possible. The Washington Temperance Society, organized in Springfield in November...