Ohio History Journal

EARL IRVIN WEST

 

 

Early Cincinnati's

"Unprecedented Spectacle"

 

 

 

When Isaac G. Burnet, Cincinnati's newly elected mayor, called a meeting of the

city's leading citizens for Tuesday night, April 7, 1829, to make arrangements for

a debate between Robert Owen and Alexander Campbell, this can be considered

an official sanction for the extraordinary event that was being planned.¹ Robert

Owen, social reformer, lecturer, and founder of the then defunct communitarian

colony at New Harmony, Indiana, had issued a general challenge a year earlier

from New Orleans to the Christian clergy to defend religion in debate. The invi-

tation had been accepted by Alexander Campbell of Bethany, (West) Virginia,

editor of the Christian Baptist, an aggressive periodical, dedicated to non-sectarian

religion. After reading Owen's challenge and Campbell's reply, the mayor requested

that notices be placed in all the city papers and that interested citizens should

meet again to continue plans for the event. Accordingly, a committee of ten was

appointed to select a site for the debate with instructions to request the First Pres-

byterian Church for use of its facilities. The pugnacious and independent Joshua

L. Wilson, minister of that church and leader of Old School Presbyterians in the

western country, rejected this request. The committee then turned to the Methodist

Church, "a capacious stone building with brick wings" located on Fifth Street,

between Sycamore and Broadway and capable of seating a thousand people.2

The debate, which Frances Trollope called "a spectacle unprecedented, I believe,

in any age or country," began on Monday, April 13th and ended on the following

Tuesday, April 21 after fifteen sittings.³ Timothy Flint, ex-Congregational minister

and one of the moderators, was impressed that the audience "received with invin-

cible forbearance, the most frank and sarcastic remarks of Mr. Owen, in ridicule

of the most sacred articles of Christian belief." Afterwards, a foreigner remarked

to Flint "that he had seen no place, where he thought such a discussion could have

been conducted in so much order and quietness."⁴

1. Cincinnati Daily Gazette, April 9, 1829. Debates on religious topics became commonplace in

later years.

2. Ibid., April 11, 1829.

3. Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, edited by Donald Smalley (New York,

1949), 147-153.

4. Timothy Flint, "Public challenged DISPUTE between ROBERT OWEN . . . and Rev. ALEX-

ANDER CAMPBELL . . . the former denying the truth of all religions in general; and the latter

affirming the truth of the Christian .religion on logical principles," Western Monthly Review, II

(April 1829), 646. Flint's article also appears in Washington National Intelligencer, May 26, 1829.

 

 

Mr. West is professor of church history at the Harding Graduate School of Religion, Memphis,

Tennessee.



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6                                                                  OHIO HISTORY

An over-capacity attendance of twelve hundred at each session attests to the

importance the public attached to the discussion, although opinions varied greatly.

Writing in advance of the event, Robert Dale Owen, son of Robert Owen, thought

the debate would have "claim sufficient to attract the attention of every enlight-

ened man." He regarded the subject to be discussed as "the most important . . .

that can be brought before a public assembly." "Its influence extends," he said

presciently, "to the cabin of the peasant as to the hall of kings."⁵ Flint himself

regarded it as a "combat, unparalleled in the annals of disputation."⁶ On the other

hand, the editor of Washington's National Intelligencer said, "Upon our word, we

think that the good people of Cincinnati might be much more profitably employed

than in encouraging this bootless wrangling."⁷ Cincinnati's caustic visitor, the Eng-

lishwoman Frances Trollope, reflected later, "All this I think could only have hap-

pened in America. I am not quite sure that it was very desirable it should have

happened anywhere."⁸

While the debate was not as epic-making as Campbell's friends thought, the

united stand for Christianity on the final day did indicate an interest by the con-

temporary westerner in religion beyond the sheer novelty of the performance. Re-

ports had circulated in the eastern religious press that infidelity was widespread

on the frontier, and Campbell's biographer states that the clergyman did not hope

to convert Owen but went to fortify a "wavering and unsettled public," which he

regarded as in danger of being carried off by infidelity.⁹

Another aspect of the attractiveness of the debate was the presence of the color-

ful personality of the internationally famous Robert Owen. Born in 1771 in New-

ton, Montgomeryshire, Wales, the son of a saddler and ironmonger, the precocious

boy proved such a voracious reader that he dropped out of school at the age of

nine, and, some said, gave up all religious dogma by the age of ten. He borrowed

freely from private libraries and argued religion sharply with three Methodist

ladies who had loaned him books. At the age of ten he went to live briefly with

his brother in London, and from there he went to Lincolnshire and later to Man-

chester. These were important years in Owen's development for he continued his

study of the beliefs of various sects and also attended both the Presbyterian and

Anglican churches where he heard "conflicting doctrines." In abandoning all reli-

gious beliefs Owen concluded that differences in religion were due to the influence

of social institutions. It was not until 1817, however, that Owen would publicly

attack religion.

The knowledge Owen gained at Manchester while working in the cotton indus-

try, meanwhile, laid the foundation for his later wealth and renown. Before he was

twenty he was managing one of the city's largest mills. In the 1790's, his fortune

grew steadily. His business ability led him, in January 1800, to become manager

of the New Lanark mills in Scotland with a salary of one thousand pounds and a

5. New Harmony Gazette, August 6, 1828, p. 326.

6. Flint, "Dispute Between Owen and Campbell," 641.

7. National Intelligencer, April 21, 1829.

8. Trollope, Domestic Manners, 153.

9. Robert Richardson, Memoirs of Alexander Campbell (Cincinnati, 1872), II, 269. A Presbyterian

paper published a jeremiad on the rapid growth of infidelity in Kentucky. See the Pittsburgh Recorder,

II (November 6, 1823). A report of the American Home Missionary Society said of the West in 1841,

'Mormonism is there to delude them. Popery is there to ensnare them. Infidelity is there to corrupt

and debase them. And Atheism is there to take away their God as they go on to the grave, and to

blot out every ray of hope that may beam on them from beyond.' Quoted in Robert E. Reigel,

Young America, 1830-1840 (Norman, Okla., 1949), 257.

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Cincinnati Spectacle                                                         7

ninth interest in the partnership that owned both factory and village. His marriage

to the daughter of David Dale, the original owner, satisfied a social expectancy,

but between husband and wife there was little rapport. Her devout Scotch Presby-

terianism could never add substance to the dream world in which Owen increas-

ingly resided. Driven on by the irresistible force of a magnificent illusion, Owen

sought the limelight of European and American political institutions, while his

wife walked silently in the lonely shadows he cast behind.

New Lanark was an isolated mill town of two thousand, of which more than

five hundred were children who had been brought from poor homes in Glasgow

and Edinburgh. The situation was one of child labor, immorality, crime, drunken-

ness, and laziness-all contributing to the squalor and diminishing productivity.

The determined enthusiasm with which Owen proceeded to improve these condi-

tions was motivated partly by the desire for increased efficiency of operation and

partly for social reform. From Owen's viewpoint the inhabitants were trapped in

a network of circumstances beyond their control; consequently, they were not

responsible for either their vices or virtues. He would often repeat in monotonous

staccatos: "Character is universally formed for and not by the individual." It is

impossible to overstate Owen's fondness for this expression, by which he meant

that if men were placed in the right environment, they would develop the proper

moral ideas and order their lives in a productive way. Unlike the French Physio-

crats, who conceived of the true role of government to be the adjustment of the

social order to a basic natural order, Owen sought to control the forces of nature

in the common interest.10

Owen worked sedulously to create a new social order around New Lanark. He

instituted a compulsory education system, one of the first in the world. For the

smaller children he began a kindergarten. Not only did he provide better housing

for families, but he started a health fund. His patriarchal instincts served him well;

and in time, through his vigorous leadership, immorality diminished, crime was

cut sharply, and the whole complexion of the village changed. New Lanark came

to be regarded as one of the most efficient mills in Europe. Since England's Indus-

trial Revolution had created in many areas the problems Owen saw upon his

arrival at New Lanark, his social experiment invited closer inspection from phi-

lanthropists and businessmen everywhere.

This remarkable achievement, however, was not the fruit of wholehearted

cooperation. Owen's partners, who were understandably concerned more with

profits than with social reforms, complained incessantly of the high costs of opera-

tions. Jeremy Bentham had invested ten thousand pounds in Owen's mills and

became one of the reformer's most vocal critics. "Owen," said Bentham, "begins

in vapour and ends in smoke. He is a great braggadocio; his mind is an image of

confusion, and he avoids coming to particulars. He is always the same, says the

same things over and over again; he built some small houses, and people who had

no houses of their own went to live in those houses, and he calls this success."

Owen, on the other hand, continued his dreams of villages where 'the meanest

 

10. G. D. H. Cole, Life of Robert Owen (London, 1930), 3, 10, 39. Cole observed that Owen was

"from first to last a deeply religious person, not least when he was denouncing all the creeds, and

earning the reputation of an infidel and a materialist." See also Arthur Eugene Bestor, Jr., Back-

woods Utopias; The Sectarian and Owenite Phases of Communitarian Socialism in America: 1663-1829

(Philadelphia, 1950), 62-63.

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8                                                                   OHIO HISTORY

and most miserable beings now in society will . . . become the envy of the rich

and indolent . . .'11

The New Lanark reformer then pursued his expanding vista with absolute dedi-

cation. In 1813 he published his A New View of Society in which he declared that

character is formed in childhood entirely by environment. It is pointless to perse-

cute people who commit crimes, he pointed out, for they are not responsible. The

object of his new society would be to prevent crime by proper training in early

life. In January 1815, in a bill sponsored by Sir Robert Peel, Owen tried to get a

measure through the House of Commons which would have limited children's

working hours. The bill failed, and the Factory Act of 1819, a drastically altered

version, displeased Owen. He, however, drove relentlessly forward.12

To sell churchmen and statesmen on his New View became a principal feature

of his modus operandi. Owen visited John Quincy Adams in London in 1817 while

the latter was serving as American minister to England. Adams wrote in his diary

that the reformer was a "speculative, scheming, mischievous man." When Owen

visited him in Washington in 1844, Adams wrote that he appeared "as crafty

[and] crazy as ever."¹³ When Owen visited Washington on his trip to New Har-

mony in 1824, the two discussed religion. Adams never relented in his opposition

to Owen's social system after that, and referred to Owen's state of mind as "ra-

tional insanity."¹⁴ Nor were some other prominent Americans better impressed.

The turning point in Owen's career came during an address which he delivered

at the City of London Tavern, August 21, 1817. When asked why his new views

had not been adopted earlier, Owen replied it was because of the errors of reli-

gion, the crucial one being the preaching of the doctrine of human responsibility.

In reality men were creatures of their environment, but the churches taught that

men made their own character. They sought through doctrines of rewards and

punishments to provide proper motivation, "whereas the only sound way of mak-

ing men good was to give them a good material and moral environment, . . . they

would become good automatically." To Owen all theologies "proceeded from the

deluded imagination of ignorant men." He considered the priesthood as the chief

of Satanic institutions, and concluded that "man is a geographical animal, and the

religions of the world are so many geographical insanities.^"15 As Owen expanded

his views, he denied that the Bible was the revelation of "the mind and will of

God," that there was any truth to the Calvinist doctrines of original sin and pre-

destination, or that the soul was immortal. He stated flatly that matter was eternal,

and there was nothing but matter in the universe, and that the bodies men now

have may continue in other forms and animals.16

 

 

11. Arthur J. Booth, Robert Owen, The Founder of Socialism in England (London, 1869), 27, 28;

quoted in Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, 73.

12. J. Bronowski and Bruce Mazlish, The Western Intellectual Tradition, from Leonardo to Hegel

(New York, 1960), 456.

13. Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams: Comprising Portions of his Diary

from 1795 to 1848 (Philadelphia, 1877), XII, 116, 117.

14. John Q. Adams to Rev. Bernard Whitman, December 25, 1833. The Adams Family Papers,

Massachusetts Historical Society. (The author used the microfilms of this collection in the Indiana

University library.)

15. Cole, Life of Robert Owen, 22, 192, 93; Booth, Robert Owen, 4; Marguerite Young, Angel in

the Forest: A Fairy Tale of Two Utopias (New York, 1945), 268-269.

16. Timothy Flint, "A Tour," Western Monthly Review, II (September 1828), 198-201; Christian

Messenger, II (January 1827), 44-46; Indianapolis Journal, February 21, 1826.

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Cincinnati Spectacle                                                             9

The religious press responded to Owen's attacks with a sustained cataract of

malevolence. The Christian Observer, in October 1817, linked Owen with Voltaire,

Condorcet and Paine, and denounced him for saying that religious teaching fos-

tered false views of human nature and perpetuated 'superstition, bigotry, hypoc-

risy, hatred, revenge, wars, and all their evil consequences.17 But it was Owen's

rejection of the doctrines of human depravity and original sin that touched a sore

point, because the liberals thought the orthodox Calvinists were using these highly

incendiary issues as a stalking horse to attack them. Nevertheless, Owen's "Decla-

ration of Mental Independence" nearly united all religious forces against him.

Selecting July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independ-

ence, as the auspicious moment for his announcement, Owen stated his intention

of freeing the world of three evils: private property, irrational systems of religion,

and marriage.

I now Declare, to you, and to the world, that Man up to this hour, has been, in all parts

of the earth, a slave to a TRINITY of the most monstrous evils that could be combined to

inflict mental and physical evil upon his whole race.

I refer to Private, or Individual Property--ABSURD AND IRRATIONAL SYSTEMS OF RELI-

GION--AND MARRIAGE, FOUNDED ON INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY COMBINED WITH SOME ONE OF

THESE IRRATIONAL SYSTEMS OF RELIGION.¹⁸

It was a basic presupposition during this period that the American nation was

built on the foundation of good morals and that morality could be equated with

religion.19 A correspondent from South Carolina wrote to the New Harmony

Gazette in October 1827 that "religion is in the estimation of most thinking men

the only efficient sanction of moral obligation."²⁰ A cloud hung over the Indiana

colony in the minds of most Americans. Because it lacked the cohesive element of

morality, predictions of its imminent collapse increased.

The intellectual appeal Owen lacked was compensated for in personal qualities.

Most Americans regarded him, as did Timothy Flint, an "honest enthusiast, whose

real intentions were the good of mankind."²¹ His sparkling conversation, air of

suavity, perfect self-command, and constant good humor brought him wide public

esteem. He was always optimistic, for the milennium was always just ahead, and

"he was running so fast towards it that he had no time to notice the pitfalls in the

way."²² He was almost totally free of anger and preferred to sum "pure and genu-

ine religion" into one word, "Charity."23 While Mrs. S. H. Smith, that connoisseur

of minutiae in Washington society, thought he was "ugly, awkward, and unpre-

possessing, in manner, appearance and voice, she thought him very interesting in

 

 

 

17. Quoted in Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, 124.

18. Timothy Flint, "New views of society; or Essays on the formation of human character, etc.

Various addresses delivered by Mr. Owen, dedicated to those, who have no private ends to accom-

plish, and who are honestly in search of truth, etc.," Western Monthly Review, I (June 1827), 105-118;

Young, Angel in the Forest, 233, quoted from the National Intelligencer, August 3, 1826.

19. Sidney Mead, The Lively Experiment: The Shaping of American Christianity (New York, 1963),

53; Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War (New York,

1965), 67-69.

20. New Harmony Gazette, November 28, 1827.

21. Flint, "New Views," 118.

22. Cole, Life of Robert Owen, 34.

23. National Intelligencer, August 12, 1826.

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10                                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

conversation." After her visit with him, she was convinced that he was devoted to

the all-absorbing idea of promoting the happiness of mankind. "He is extremely

mild," she wrote, "and instead of being offended by opposition or difference of

opinion he is pleased with free discussion and even bears being laughed at, with

great good nature."²⁴ In short, Owen was one of the most fascinating and unique

personalities ever to visit the country. His trip to America to inaugurate the New

Harmony project was one continuous triumphal march during which time he

addressed the nation's leaders.

The path that led Alexander Campbell to Cincinnati on that April day in 1829

was in sharp contrast to that of his challenger. Born near Ballymena in County

Antrim, North Ireland, September 12, 1788, he was reared in the pious atmosphere

of a Scotch Presbyterian home. His father, an Old Light Seceder Presbyterian, and

his mother, a descendant of a French Huguenot family, guided their son toward

an academic career that was heavily oriented toward theological studies. Under

his parents' guidance he memorized large selections from the Bible and augmented

his studies by attendance at a local academy. Although his father wanted him to

enter the ministry of the Seceder Church, Alexander hesitated while he sought for

solutions to the problems raised by variations in religious dogmas. While he searched

for answers, his father joined the Scotch-Irish immigration to America in 1807,

and Alexander waited with the family in Ireland for an appropriate time to follow.²⁵

During the next three eventful years, Alexander shifted his theological position

away from the Seceders toward Independency. He spent a year at the University

of Glasgow where he came under the influence of Greville Ewing, a well-known

Scotch Independent. His contact with the teachings of James and Robert Haldane

and those of John Glass and Robert Sandemann left a lasting impression on his

religious thought. In Ireland, Campbell belonged to the Presbytery of Market Hill,

and in Scotland, to that of Glasgow, keeping himself in good standing with the

Seceder Church. Upon his departure from Scotland, however, he confessed that his

confidence in the Confession of Faith was shaken. When he arrived in Washington,

Pennsylvania, in the fall of 1809, he was "under the conviction that nothing that

was not as old as the New Testament should be made an article of faith, a rule of

practice, or a term of communion amongst christians."²⁶

While completely dedicating himself to religious service for the next decade,

Campbell at the same time established a reputation for being an independent thinker.

At the close of a discourse on "The Sermon on The Mount," which he delivered

to the Brush Run church near his home at Bethany, near Wheeling, Virginia, in the

summer of 1810, he stated his convictions of the independence of the church of

Christ from any denominational connections and "the excellency and authority

of the scriptures." During that year he delivered 106 sermons on sixty-one "pri-

mary topics of the Christian religion" in the western part of Pennsylvania, Virginia,

and eastern Ohio. Meanwhile, his fame as a preacher of unsurpassed talents and

boldness of thought grew.²⁷

 

24. Margaret B. Smith, The First Forty Years of Washington Society . . ., edited by Gaillard Hunt

(New York, 1906), 179, 222.

25. The standard biography of Alexander Campbell is Richardson's Memoirs of Alexander Camp-

bell.

26. Alexander Campbell, "Address to the Public," Christian Baptist, II (1824) in bound volume,

revised by D. S. Burnet (Cincinnati, 1835), 92.

27. Ibid.

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Cincinnati Spectacle                                                            11

When Campbell was immersed by Elder Matthias Luse in 1812, his relations

with the Presbyterians were broken; at the same time, he was drawn into the Red-

stone Baptist Association. His famous "Sermon on The Law," which he delivered

before the Association in the summer of 1816, only accented how tenuous this

connection really was. By the time of his debate with W. L. McCalla, a vitriolic

Old School Presbyterian, in 1823, Campbell and his colleagues in the Baptist

ministry glowered at each other over a chasm of distrust and suspicion.28

After a short fling with politics in 1829, the minister devoted his entire atten-

tion to what he called a religious reformation. His teachings, a syncretistic system

that combined elements from many religious dogmas, began with a fundamentalist's

view of the Bible as the inspired word of God; as a result, only doctrines and

practices which he considered to be founded on the Bible could be accepted. He

considered the "three great maxims . . . which have been three cardinal points in

our theological compass" to be: "The testimony of God believed constitutes Chris-

tian faith; The testimony of God understood constitutes Christian knowledge;

and The testimony of God obeyed constitutes Christian practice."²⁹ E. D. Mansfield

heard Campbell several times in Cincinnati between 1826 and 1829 and summarized

his doctrines to be: "The Bible alone is the only creed . . . regeneration is coincident

with baptism." Campbell, he concluded, "was a man of learning, keen intellect,

and an instructive speaker. He was interesting in discussion and conversation."30

Although Campbell was much admired, his unique system, his excessive self-

confidence, and strong derogations invited vigorous opposition, particularly from

the Baptists. John Waller complained that Campbell "seems to have imbibed the

impression that he was a chosen vessel of the Almighty, appointed to set in order

the crazy concerns of Christendom which had been in mournful confusion since the

age of the apostles."31 After admitting that Campbell was "a polemic ajax in the

region where he began the propagation of his tenets," another Baptist minister

recognized that Campbell was "incisive in sarcasm and caricature, shrewd in repar-

tee, and possessed of an overwhelming confidence in his ability."³2 Campbell, in

fact, could scarcely be ignored.

Americans on the western frontier, as a Louisville Unitarian minister said, "have

a taste for oratory," which partly explains Campbell's popularity as a speaker. His

lofty diction which tended often to become excessively sublime and verbose fol-

lowed the general pattern of Henry Clay. Like the Kentucky orator, Campbell stood

erect and made few gestures. As his deep-set eyes pierced the audience, his Scotch-

Irish brogue poured forth a stream of eloquence. One listener said, "The great

excellence of Campbell's delivery, consists in the feeling which it inspires, of his

manly independence, entire conviction of the truth of what he says, and entire

understanding of his whole subject. He is plain, forcible, and self-possessed; he is

 

28. Alexander Campbell, "Anecdotes, Incidents, and Facts," Millennial Harbinger, V (June 1848),

344-349. For a discussion of New and Old School Presbyterian division, see "Rankin Autobiography,"

fn. 19, in this issue.

29. Alexander Campbell, "Andrew Broadus Against Himself," Millennial Harbinger, III (April

1832), 151.

30. E. D. Mansfield, Personal Memories: . . . with Sketches of Many Noted People, 1803-1843 (Cin-

cinnati, 1879), 272.

31. John N. Waller, "Messrs. Campbell and Rice on Influence of the Holy Spirit," Western Baptist

Review, I (September 1845), 23.

32. B. F. Riley, A History of the Baptists in the Southern States East of the Mississippi (Philadel-

phia, 1898), 174.

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12                                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

not hurried away by his words or by his thoughts, but has the command of both."³³

Alexander Campbell's popularity on the frontier, both as a unique religious leader

and eloquent speaker, lured Cincinnati's citizens to this "unprecedented spectacle"

as much as the singular career of the socialist reformer.

By the spring of 1827 it seemed evident that the courses of the two men would

ultimately converge. Campbell had read in the New Harmony Gazette Owen's

"Declaration of Mental Independence." Since he desired to get better acquainted

with Owen before establishing his opinions too securely, he formed only two

quick impressions: He agreed that circumstances do influence character, but felt

that Owen had glorified this principle excessively to the exclusion of other valu-

able considerations. "To make everything in human character depend upon the

power of circumstances, is to me as great an error as to making nothing depend

on it.^"34 Furthermore, he agreed with most American religious leaders that it had

never been demonstrated that a social system could be successful without religion.

On this basis, Campbell rejected Owen's "Declaration of Mental Independence" as

contrary to the events of human history. The principles on which New Harmony

had been established, he thought, were "at war with reason, revelation, and a

permanent cooperation."³⁵ In a series of articles in the Christian Baptist through

the summer and fall of 1827 Campbell defended religion as a necessary base for

any social system.

Campbell's hostility to the Owenite communitarian system intensified during

the next year. A Dr. Underhill from an Owenite community at Kendal in Stark

County, Ohio, popularized Owen's views in the state. When a reader of the Chris-

tian Baptist requested Campbell in February 1828 to debate this man, Campbell

refused, but, answering in April, said if Robert Owen "will engage to debate the

whole system of his moral and religious philosophy with me, if he will pledge

himself to prove any position affirmative of his atheistical sentiments as they lie

scattered over the pages of the New Harmony Gazette . . . I will engage to take

the negative and disprove all his affirmative positions, in a public debate to be

holden any place equi-distant from him and me."³⁶

Owen was well aware that his New Harmony experiment had failed when he

arrived in New Orleans from Liverpool in early January 1828. Nevertheless his

dreams of another colony were rekindled when he learned of the population growth

in Texas, and of the land grants given to settlers by the Mexican Government.

Meanwhile, he saw it was necessary to popularize his views as extensively as pos-

sible. In the next three weeks he told New Orleans audiences that he had spent

more than $500,000 and devoted forty years of his life to making his ideas a

reality. He invited "all governments and enlightened people" to stop wars by fol-

lowing principles "which are in strict accord to our natures." Then, in late January,

an advertisment appeared in the papers, addressed "To the Clergy of New Orleans":

 

 

 

33. J. F. C., "Alexander Campbell at Louisville," Western Messenger, I (June 1835), 57, 58.

34. Alexander Campbell, "Mr. Robert Owen and the Social System, No. 1," Christian Baptist, IV

(1827), 327.

35. Alexander Campbell, "Deism and the Social System, No. IV," Christian Baptist, V (1827), 364.

36. Alexander Campbell, open letter to "Mr. A.," Christian Baptist, V (1828), 433-434. Apparently

Campbell did not yet know of Owen's challenge that had been issued in January 1828. Richardson,

Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, II, 239-240.

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Cincinnati Spectacle                                                        13

 

Gentlemen-I have now finished a course of lectures in this city, the principles of which

are in direct opposition to those which you have been taught it your duty to preach. It is

of immense importance to the world that truth upon these momentous subjects should be

now established upon a certain and sure foundation. You and I, and all our fellow-men,

are deeply interested that there should be no further delay. With this view, without one

hostile or unpleasant feeling on my part, I propose a friendly public discussion, the most

open that the city of New Orleans will afford, or if you prefer it, a more private meeting,

when half-a-dozen friends of each party will be present, in addition to half-a-dozen gentle-

men whom you may associate with you in the discussion. The time and place to be of your

appointment.

I propose to prove, as I have already attempted to do in my lectures, that all the reli-

gions of the world have been founded on the ignorance of mankind; that they are directly

opposed to the never changing laws of our nature; that they have been and are the real

sources of vice, disunion and misery of every description; that they are now the only real

bar to the formation of a society of virtue, of intelligence, of charity in its most extended

sense, and of sincerity and kindness among the whole human family; and that they can be

no longer maintained except through the ignorance of the mass of the people, and the tyr-

anny of the few over that mass.

 

Owen concluded the challenge with a postscript that if his proposition were declined,

he would then regard these as unanswered truths.³⁷

The reformer found it necessary in the next few weeks to repeat his challenge

and to extend it to clergymen outside of New Orleans. As he departed from the city

on a steamboat, he soliloquized that he had discussed religion with the highest

dignitaries of the English and Irish churches, with leaders of dissenting churches

and with a prominent Jew in London, so he had expected the New Orleans clergy

to be willing to investigate the truth "for the good the knowledge of it would do

mankind. They thought differently and did not accept my proposal."³⁸ What reasons

the New Orleans clergy had for ignoring Owen are unknown, but his challenge

continued to arouse public interest.

The question may be fairly asked why Owen was so set on a debate. He wrote

later to the London Times that the object of the meeting was not to discuss the

truth or falsehood of the Christian religion but to determine the errors in all reli-

gions and to select from each the kernel of truth so as "to form from them collec-

tively a religion wholly true and consistent, that it may become universal, and be

acted upon conscientiously by all."³⁹ The editor of the Cincinnati Chronicle and

Literary Gazette explained Owen's challenge from the fact that his social system

was falling into disrepute, and those who had once been enchanted by his theories

were disgusted with their practical application. Since New Harmony was becoming

"a living memorial of the egregious folly of his Utopian schemes," the editor

thought Owen wanted the debate to sustain his reputation as a reformer "and

gratify his ambition for notoriety."⁴⁰ Owen would hold other debates, but he was

no debater: "He was far too intent on stating his own case, at inordinate length,

to pay any attention to his opponents." Moreover, he regarded a public disputation

 

 

 

37. New Harmony Gazette, March 26, 1828, p.169.

38. Ibid., April 9, 1828, p.¹⁸⁶.

39. Cincinnati Chronicle and Literary Gazette, February 14, 1829.

40. Ibid., April 25, 1829.

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as a means of providing a platform from which he could repeat his unvarying version of the truth!41 Be that as it may, Owen's attention was soon drawn to Campbell's invitation of April 1828. Owen's acceptance was published in the New Harmony Gazette in mid- May; and in early July, on his return to England, Owen spent a night in Campbell's home in Bethany. Later in a letter to his son, Robert Dale, from Wheeling on July 13, Owen said that he and Campbell had agreed on Cincinnati as the place, and the time to be the second Monday in April 1829.42 In selecting Cincinnati as the site, both disputants acknowledged the importance of this growing Ohio River city, now so familiarly known as the "Queen City of the West." Next to New Orleans, Cincinnati was the chief city of the western country. In three years its population had jumped from 16,000 to almost 25,000. Four hundred ninety-six houses were erected there in 1828, and the newspapers boasted of the "extraordinary prosperity" of the city and that "peace, plenty and 41. Cole, Life of Robert Owen, 299. 42. New Harmony Gazette, August 6, 1828, p.326; Alexander Campbell, "A Debate on the Evi- dences of Christianity," Christian Baptist, VI (1828), 470.

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prosperity have pervaded all classes of our inhabitants."43 Cincinnati had twelve newspapers and periodicals, thirty-four charitable organizations, twenty-three churches, twenty-eight religious societies, forty schools, two colleges and a medical school. Its theater was considered the finest outside of New York and Philadel- phia, and presented some of the nation's greatest stars. Many of its citizens were descendants of prominent New England families, among whom was Timothy Flint who described Cincinnati as 'a picture of beauty, wealth, progress and fresh ad- vance, as few landscapes in any country can surpass.'44 The delay until the next spring for the discussion was ostensibly to allow Owen time to return to England and look after business. In reality a plan for a new communitarian colony in Mexico was unfolding in the reformer's mind. In October 1828, Owen published in England, a Memorial of Robert Owen to the Mexican Republic, and to the Government of the State of Coahuila and Texas in which he requested from the Mexican Government a grant of land in Texas to be colonized 43. Chronicle and Literary Gazette, February 14, 1829. 44. Quoted in Russell A. Griffin, "Mrs. Trollope and the Queen City," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXXVII (September 1950), 294.

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16                                                                   OHIO HISTORY

with Owenite communities. Despite the fact the Mexican minister in London

informed Owen that his plan was fantastic, the reformer sailed for Mexico City in

November, carrying letters from important men in England to the Mexican Govern-

ment. After spending only two short weeks in the capitol, Owen departed; and

"the entire [Mexican] project quietly vanished into the air."⁴⁵

When Campbell left for Cincinnati on April 7, he was satisfied that he had made

thorough preparation for the coming encounter. For months he had involved

himself in the "skeptical system" as he tried to imagine what it would be like to

be a doubter. More than ever he was convinced that not one good reason could

be offered against the Christian faith, and that sectarianism was the greatest

enemy of the Christian faith in the world. He was resolved that he would not try to

defend what the creeds said, for "it is the religion of the Bible, and that alone, I

am concerned to prove to be divine." He departed with the satisfaction that he had

the prayers and good wishes "of myriads of christians in all denominations."⁴⁶

Both men were in the Queen City by Friday anxiously awaiting Monday's open-

ing session.

More than a thousand people, some from two and three hundred miles distant,

came to the Methodist Church on Sycamore Street that bright spring morning.

"All ages, sexes and conditions were there," said Flint. The chapel was equally

divided with one side for the ladies and the other for the men with a separate

door of entrance for each. The city's leading citizens were there. A seven-man

board of moderators, headed by Judge Jacob Burnet, Senator-elect from Ohio, sat

on an elevated platform. Alexander Campbell brought with him his father, Thomas,

and two younger brothers, while Owen was attended only by a young German

friend. The contestants sat side by side waiting for the debate to begin.⁴⁷

Owen, dressed in a fine suit of black broadcloth, with manuscript in hand,

spoke slowly and deliberately in chaste English.⁴⁸ Mrs. Trollope noted that his voice

was soft and gentle with nothing harsh in his expressions. As a matter of fact,

"his whole manner, disarmed zeal, and produced a degree of tolerance that those

who did not hear him would hardly believe possible."⁴⁹ After asserting that the

whole history of Christianity was a fraud, Owen entrenched himself behind his

famous "Twelve Laws," each of which merely described one or another aspect of

the vast power of circumstances as determinants of all human development. For

the remainder of the debate, Owen refused to do more than repeat them. This

happened so often that Flint surmised that the reformer's sole purpose in the

debate was to fly his reputation like "a kite, to take up his social system into the

full view of the community, and by constant repetition to imprint a few of his

leading axioms on the memory of the multitude."⁵⁰ At one point, Owen reiterated

45. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, 216-217.

46. Alexander Campbell, "Desultory Remarks," Christian Baptist, VI (1829), 552.

47. Flint, "Dispute Between Owen and Campbell," 640-641.

48. Nathan J. Mitchell, Reminiscences and Incidents in the Life and Travels of a Pioneer Preacher

(Cincinnati, 1877), 65.

49. For a general discussion of the debate see Trollope, Domestic Manners, 147-153; The Evidences

of Christianity, A Debate Between Robert Owen, of New Lanark, Scotland and Alexander Campbell,

President of Bethany College, Va. Containing an Examination of the "Social System," (Nashville, Tenn.,

1912); for Owen's remarks, see Robert Owen, Robert Owen's Opening Speech and His Reply to the

Rev. Alex. Campbell in the Recent Public Discussion in Cincinnati to Prove That the Principles of all

Religions are Erroneous, and Injurious to the Human Race (Cincinnati, 1829). (This is a rare volume,

but there is a copy in the Covington Collection of Miami University's Alumni Library.)

50. Flint, "Dispute Between Owen and Campbell," 642.

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Cincinnati Spectacle                                                      17

his contention that the particles of the body were eternal, without beginning and

end, and that his body, when decomposed, would later reappear in "new forms of

life and enjoyment." On hearing this statement, says Flint, a revulsion of horror

swept over the audience, and he felt the "coals of eloquence burning in his bosom"

so strongly that he himself wanted to answer.51

Campbell's perfect self-possession left no doubt that he was in thorough com-

mand. Now, slightly over forty with the first sprinkling of white in his hair and

possessing a finely arched forehead and a sparkling bright and cheerful countenance,

the clergyman "wore an aspect, as one who had words both ready and inexhaust-

ible." So sure was he of his ground that he left the impression "that he would not

retreat an inch in the way of concession, to escape the crack and pudder of a

dissolving world." Campbell tried, with withering satire, to shake the perfect com-

posure of his antagonist. Undaunted, however, Owen retorted, making the audience

roar with laughter, and the debate moved along in good humor.⁵²

Campbell's thorough acquaintance with sixteenth and seventeenth century Chris-

tian Apologists provided him with the opportunity to fortify his audience's faith

in the Christian religion. Late in the evening of the eighth day of debate, Camp-

bell asked the audience to be seated. Then, in a moment of drama, he asked all

who prize the Christian religion to please rise. "Instantly, as by one electric move-

ment, almost every person in the assembly sprang erect." When he asked those who

were "friendly to Mr. Owen's system" to rise, only three or four admitted to "this

unenviable notoriety." For a moment there followed a pause and then "a loud and

instant clapping and stamping raised a suffocating dust to the roof of the church."

The victory for Campbell seemed apparent to most of the audience for few were

convinced that Owen's Twelve Laws had disproved the Christian religion. While the

viewers were disappointed that the two men had not come to close grips on the

question of the validity of Christianity, they departed in admiration of Campbell's

superb powers. "Mr. Campbell left on the far greater portion of the audience,"

wrote Flint, "an impression of him, of his talents and powers, and his victory over

his antagonist, almost as favorable, as he could have desired."⁵³ In the long run the

editor of the Cincinnati Chronicle was probably right when he observed that if

Owen had anticipated that his challenge would have been accepted by one as cap-

able as Alexander Campbell, he would not have issued it; and on the other hand,

if Campbell had known all Owen had in mind, he might not have accepted it.54

While the debate was not cataclysmic, it came at a time when religion was

reasserting its dominion over men's minds following the period of inactivity after

the close of the Revolution. On the American frontier a spirit of inquiry was in the

air and a vigorous individuality concomitant with the dawn of the Jacksonian era

drove men to seek for solutions to their doubts. The Calvinism that ruled so sedately

in Colonial America was now being put to rest and the frontier was seeking for new

grounds of faith somewhere between atheism and dogmatic sectarianism. The crowds

that came for miles to hear the debate were driven by numerous complex impulses,

not the least of which was the search for new religious foundations in an age of

dynamic transitions.

 

 

51. Ibid., 643-644.

52. Ibid., 641, 644.

53. Ibid., 646-647.

54. Chronicle and Literary Gazette, April 25, 1829.

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