[46]
Provincetown
Incorporated June 14, 1727. Population in 1860, 3,206; in 1865, 3,475. Valuation in 1860, $1,263,695; in 1865, $1,576,145. The selectmen in 1861, 1862, and 1863, were Robert Soper, Abraham Chapman, Simeon S. Gifford; in 1864, Simeon S. Gifford, Silas S. Young, Lysander S. Paine; in 1865, Silas S. Young, Simeon S. Gifford, Alexander Manuel. The town-clerk and town-treasurer during all the years of the war was Elisha Dyer. 1861. The first legal town-meeting, to act upon matters relating to the war, was held on the 2d of May, at which it was voted to pay a sum of twenty dollars to every able-bodied man who should volunteer from Provincetown in either the army or navy, to be paid on his departure from the town to join for service; also ‘the sum of ten dollars a month for single men, and men having wives only, and fifteen dollars a month to men having families, while in the service, which pay shall begin at the time his government pay begins.’ At the same meeting the following preamble and resolutions were read and adopted:—Whereas it has pleased God to give us the grandest country on the globe, with the best government, as established by our fathers, ever inhabited by mortals; and as it is satisfactorily ascertained that a long-cherished scheme has been entertained, by miserable miscreants, to subvert this government to the most dastardly purposes of iniquity, destroying the Union and the Constitution; and as we regard this as an unprovoked, barbarous, and sacrilegious attack upon the dearest rights and interests of the American people, we denounce it as a villanous attempt to subvert laws and to destroy a Constitution which we reverence, and which they have sworn to support: we therefore Resolve, That the loss of our liberty and national honor would be a greater calamity than war, the loss of property, or of life itself. Resolved, That it is the duty of the Executive to bring the whole power of the Government to crush out secession and rebellion, and to put to an efficient end their disturbances; and that no favor or compromise should be suffered, but upon the basis of unqualified submission of those in rebellion. Resolved, That we pledge to the National and State Governments a hearty support of men and means, by which these ends may be accomplished.
