It was startling to see what had become of the town built by ambitious English settlers in the 17th century upon Native American land. They came with the idea that they’d create a model society, but of course, pettiness and plots have a way of appearing wherever humans put down roots. What happened in Springfield shows us how the clash of the real and ideal has created a particularly dogged and pragmatic American character. At its foundation, Springfield was the frontier, and the frontier spirit, usually associated with the “push west” in the 19th century, began here.

My working life as a historian has been devoted to understanding what made 17th-century English people tick, and recently I’ve been thinking about the new lives that 350,000 of them made for themselves in America. At first, they went to Virginia, but the 1630s saw a huge wave of migration to Massachusetts. William Pynchon was one of the original members of the Massachusetts Bay Company, which believed that England had lost its way in politics and religion, but could be guided back to righteousness by example rather than by precept. Pynchon helped to build Boston—the place the company’s first governor, John Winthrop, called “a city on a hill,” a beacon of religious truth and order to light up the Christian world.

It was a noble dream, but of course things didn’t quite work out the way Winthrop and Pynchon had hoped. Colonists were soon living on top of one another in Boston, and there was no agreement about what liberty was. The elders laid down the law, and dissent was punished. Within a few years, thousands had migrated back across the Atlantic to the green and pleasant country they had never ceased to think of as home. Many of those who stayed, moved from the Boston region to the Connecticut River Valley, hoping to carve out a slice of the lucrative trade in beaver pelts that supplied the Old World with felt for making hats.

William Pynchon, founder of Springfield, Massachusetts

In 1636, William Pynchon led seven other colonists to a place known as Agawam, soon to be renamed Springfield after the English village where Pynchon had grown up. They drew up a list of ideals and rules by which to live as a community, and bought land for 50 families, much of it marshy or forested, from the Native Americans who lived there. This they divided it into homelots, woodlots, planting grounds, and meadows, divided by a thoroughfare cut through the trees—it survives as Springfield’s Main Street today, though it’s about six feet higher. Then they began the long and painful work of building houses and fences, delving the soil, and nurturing livestock. This hopeful approximation of an English village looked the part, more or less, but didn’t function like its archetype until a decade later, by which time it had managed to attract sufficient families, crafts, and trades for a satisfactory division of labor and a sort of economic self-sufficiency.

By the mid-1640s, Springfield had a meetinghouse and a minister, well-stocked planting grounds, a mill for grinding corn, and regular (if wary) trade relations with local Indians and neighboring English towns downriver. But it wasn’t heaven on earth. From deeds and letters, and the scribbled pages of court records and account books, quarrelling voices and angry faces, plans and plots, deals and disputes were evident—it would have made for great reality TV. People were acquisitive, worked hard, and were often at loggerheads with each other, however hard law officers labored to keep the peace. In some years crops failed due to drought or disease, and Pynchon had to make sure everyone was fed and that his settlement would survive.

Pynchon was the town’s principal inhabitant—its chief landlord, trader, quartermaster, banker, representative, and magistrate. But he was no stock frontiersman like Davy Crockett or Natty Bumppo. Rather, he was a middle-aged provincial churchwarden, a puritan moralist, and an amateur theologian. In his mind, and in the heart of his fledgling community, God and Mammon co-existed, piety with the lust for prosperity. His business enterprises—exporting beaver and importing everything from axes to eyeglasses—were staggeringly daring and fruitful. He was respected and feared by Englishman and Indian alike.

Over time, Pynchon himself fell out with just about everyone—fellow Englishmen (especially his Connecticut neighbors), Indians, Dutchmen, and in the end the Massachusetts Bay elders who accused him of heresy, no less. A book he wrote, which cast doubt on Christ’s divinity, was publicly burned on Boston Common. Soon after an awkward court appearance in 1651, Pynchon returned to England, leaving his son John to run the family empire in America. The shockwave through Springfield’s spiritual life did not end here. There were also witchcraft trials, prefiguring in a small way the tragedy of Salem, Massachusetts, 40 years later. In a sign of how delicate the social fabric could be, Hugh and Mary Parsons, the town’s brickmaker and his wife, were not only accused by their neighbors, but even accused each other.

In Springfield, pious English people were forced—against their expectations—to adapt to the wilderness and to adopt native ways in dress, food, building, and fighting, even as they struggled to “civilize” the Indians with their way of life. The devil, who in English eyes had so possessed the Indians, seemed to have possessed many colonists as well.

At the same time, these men and women made a world that survived and grew, albeit in ways they could neither have predicted or wanted. So many pioneers of white America’s first century went to their graves disappointed, rueful about the events of their lives, fearful of a future where New England might be punished for failing to live up to God’s designs. And yet by any standards other than their own, they had been spectacularly successful, even if this meant behaving ruthlessly towards their enemies and amongst themselves.

William Pynchon makes for a complex, often troubling hero. But from his contradictions, greatness sprang: The city he built thrived in trade and industry, culture and civic virtue, well into the 20th century. It was the originator of the game of basketball, vulcanized rubber, and the Merriam-Webster dictionary. It was the hometown of the children’s writer Theodor Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, whose book Oh, The Places You’ll Go! would have made Pynchon proud in its encouragement to leave the safety of home to venture into the unknown. And those 17th-century adventurers would have also appreciated Seuss’ enthusiasm: “And will you succeed? Yes! Yes, you will indeed (98 3/4 percent guaranteed).” Pynchon’s chances of creating a new town had been nothing like as good, and yet, remarkably, he did it anyway.

In recent years, Springfield has struggled—never recovering from the 1968 closure of the U.S. Armory where the famous Springfield rifles were manufactured. Nowadays, crime, drugs, and unemployment blight the city, and civic leaders believe the plan to build a colossal super-casino that will swallow up several blocks is the city’s best hope for getting back on its feet. Springfield will survive, of course, just as it did in the early 1640s when things seemed infinitely more perilous. Hope and hard work guide the American soul, and however transformed modern Springfield is from the fledgling settlement of Agawam, these virtues were at least something that William Pynchon would have recognized immediately.

The post Springfield, Birthplace of the American Character appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

With all the attention on the election, it was the perfect night to pull off a crime. In the town of Springfield, Illinois, several thieves went to work on stealing a body from the local cemetery.

And not just any body.

It was the body of Abraham Lincoln.

The robbers might have gotten away with it. But among their number was an undercover agent who was relaying their activities to the Secret Service.

The Secret Service had not been assigned to protect the body of the dead president. Nor for that matter was the Secret Service in the business of protecting the bodies of live presidents. The agency would not assume that role until after the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901.

But, then as now, the Secret Service was attached to the Department of the Treasury and was in charge of foiling counterfeiters. The grave robbers’ plan was to trade Lincoln’s remains for the release of an imprisoned, notorious counterfeiter–Ben Boyd–and $200,000 in (non-counterfeit) cash.

The Secret Service prevented this particular grave robbery, but we’ve been trying to steal the 16th president ever since.

One of the most hated presidents while in office, Lincoln has become the most beloved, and sought-after, president in our history. President Obama, who announced his presidential campaign from Springfield in 2007, often tries to seize Lincoln’s mantle.

Hollywood is among the most persistent grave robbers. Steven Spielberg is directing a new film, Lincoln, based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s bestselling book Team of Rivals. Just last year, Robert Redford directed The Conspirator, an account of the trial of those accused of plotting to kill Lincoln, with a particular emphasis on the lone female, Mary Surratt. And in a campier spirit, there’s the forthcoming Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, based on historical fiction by Seth Grahame-Smith. It posits that the president worked nights as well as days to protect the Union, and his enemies didn’t all report to Jefferson Davis.

I don’t blame these filmmakers, because I know from how tempting it can be to dip into the Lincoln vault–literally. In my own mystery novel published last year, Lincoln’s Hand, the catalyst of the story is that 1876 grave robbery.

After that failed attempt in 1876, Lincoln’s body was frequently moved to protect against more grave robbing efforts. The coffin was even opened twice to see if the body was still there. It was–and still is.

But you don’t need a shovel to grab a piece of Lincoln. An estimated 16,000 volumes have been written about Lincoln, far and away more than any other American. According to one survey, of the 600 public statues or sculptures of American presidents, more than one-third of them depict Lincoln.

What explains the endless exploitation of Lincoln? The easy answer is that Lincoln is being honored for helping guide the country through its greatest crisis.

But that’s only part of the story. Also central to our attraction is Lincoln’s demise

“It was the manner of his death that elevated him above all others in the American Valhalla,” argued historian James M. McPherson in the New York Times. “Coming five days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, John Wilkes Booth’s shot heard round the world changed triumph into a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.”

This tragedy–death at the moment of triumph–is intensely cinematic, and the story is enhanced by Lincoln’s complex character. Lincoln exemplifies “the right to rise” through hard work and learning, no matter how humble one’s beginning. He is the embodiment of the American dream.

Lincoln also left future authors and screenwriters plenty of material in his own writing. When modern life confuses us, Lincoln’s message remains relevant. To a country obsessed with reinvention, he offers the hope of “a new birth of freedom.” His dictates of “malice toward none, charity for all” still remain the markers for any American who wants to be revered. His explanation of political gravity–“you can’t fool all of the people all of the time”–remains sage advice 150 years later. And what better phrase has anyone designed to describe the internal American struggle against darkness–and for a brighter future–than his counsel to reach for the “better angels of our nature?”

No wonder, then, that everyone wants to dig up Lincoln, whether the goal is to refresh the American spirit, remind us of the American character, or get a book ranked high on Amazon. Bringing Lincoln back to life reminds us what our country strives to be. That comes through whether it’s Lincoln in a straightforward biography or Lincoln in a fistfight with vampires.

Joel Fox, author of the mystery Lincoln’s Hand, is editor of Fox & Hounds Daily and president of the Small Business Action Committee.

*Photo courtesy of Jeremy M Farmer.

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