Ohio History Journal

RELIGION AND THE WESTWARD MARCH

 

By WILLIAM W. SWEET

 

When the Treaty of Peace was signed with Great Britain in

the year 1783, which gave independence to the United States of

America, the Congregational Church was the largest and most

influential religious body in the land. Though confined almost

exclusively to New England the Congregationalists were, at the

same time, nationally important because of their cultural and edu-

cational leadership. They had come through the War of Inde-

pendence with increased prestige, since their clergy and members

had been overwhelmingly patriotic, and had furnished during the

period a group of leaders who were recognized as of national im-

portance. There were, all told, 656 Congregational churches in

the country at the time the Nation entered upon its independent

existence. The Congregational Church was still established by

law in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire, and it

continued to occupy this privileged position for more than a gene-

ration following independence.

Ranking next in point of numbers and influence at the be-

ginning of our national life were the Presbyterians. Made up

largely of the Scotch-Irish immigrants and their descendants

who had come to the colonies in such vast numbers during the

eighteenth century, the Presbyterian Church had grown with

amazing rapidity from almost nothing at the beginning of the

century to 543 congregations at the time of independence. Both

the Congregational and Presbyterian clergy were to a large degree

American born and American trained. The Presbyterians also

had come through the Revolution with increased prestige because

of their almost unanimous support of the cause of independence.

The only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence was

President John Witherspoon of the College of New Jersey, the

outstanding Presbyterian leader in the Nation.

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The Baptists ranked third among American religious bodies

at the beginning of the national period of our history with 498

congregations. While most numerous in Virginia and North

Carolina, where they had grown rapidly as a result of the great

revivals in those colonies after the middle of the eighteenth cen-

tury, they were found also in considerable numbers in Rhode

Island and Pennsylvania and throughout New England. Generally

speaking, from the standpoint of social and economic standing,

they represented the more humble class of people. Fourth in

number of congregations were the Episcopalians. They had come

through the Revolution with a much decreased prestige due to the

fact that they were the church nearest to the royal authority, and

had contained perhaps the largest number of loyalists. Having

been established by law in six of the colonies these establishments

in every case were overthrown immediately with the winning of

independence, while many of their parishes were vacant, due to the

fact that their great missionary society, the S.P.G., had suspended

operations in America and the missionaries had gone back to

England.

These were the major American churches at the beginning of

American independence. Besides these there were the Quakers

with 295 Monthly meetings or congregations; the German and

Dutch Reformed with 251 congregations; the German Lutherans

with 151; and the Catholics with 50. There were also congrega-

tions of the German sectaries--the Mennonites, the Dunkers, the

Schwenkfelders, and the Moravians, located particularly in Penn-

sylvania, New York and Maryland. The Methodists were just

beginning to emerge as an independent religious body and at the

time of independence had barely begun their organized life in

America.

Such were the organized forces for religion at the beginning

of our national life.

The greatest accomplishment of America has been the con-

quest of the continent. At the end of the colonial era there were

less than three millions of people scattered along the Eastern

Seaboard, none living a great distance from salt water, with many

islands of unoccupied territory between. Within a hundred and

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MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS          73

fifty years from the signing of the Declaration of Independence

the vast continent had been filled in with a teeming population of

more than a hundred millions. Great cities had sprung up along

the interior water-ways and around the Great Lakes; railroads

and factories and mercantile houses had come into existence almost

like magic; virgin forests and prairies had given place to farms

and homesteads, while in every village, and town and country

crossroads were churches and schools, and in the cities and larger

towns were to be found colleges and universities, and great edifices

housing the religious activities of numerous denominations of

Christian people.

Population began to move west with the signing of the Peace

of Paris in 1783 which closed the Revolution. So rapid was this

population movement that within a few years new states began to

apply for admission to the Union, under the provisions laid down

in the famous Ordinance of 1778. First came Vermont in 1791 to

make the fourteenth state; in 1792 Kentucky was admitted, bring-

ing the number of states to fifteen; in 1796 came Tennessee; by

1803 Ohio had gained sufficient population to be admitted. The

years preceding the War of 1812 population movement slowed

down, but the very year the war began Louisiana became the

eighteenth state. Then in rapid succession, as a result of a vast

surge of population movement, came the admission of Indiana in

1816; Alabama in 1817; Illinois in 1818; Mississippi in 1819;

Maine in 1820 and Missouri in 1821. Thus within a period of

just thirty years eleven new states had been added to the Union,

bringing the constellation of stars in the flag to twenty-four.

The greatest task which the American churches faced during

the latter years of the eighteenth and the early years of the nine-

teenth centuries, was that of following this restless and moving

population with the softening influence of the Christian Gospel.

And those churches which succeeded in devising the most adequate

means of following population as it pushed over the Alleghenies

and on into the Ohio and Mississippi valleys were the religious

bodies destined to become the largest, and to that extent, the most

influential forces in extending religion and morality throughout the

new Nation. In the year 1847 Horace Bushnell preached a sermon

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74     OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

before the American Home Missionary Society on the subject,

"Barbarism the First Danger." There is not space here to set

forth the main points in that able discourse on the needs of the

West, but the very title itself summarizes what the author thought

to be the chief dangers arising from the rapid movement of people

into the vast unoccupied areas of the continent.

I propose here to sketch briefly the methods of the major

religious bodies at work in the Nation as they attempted to meet

the responsibility of trying to make and keep the restless and raw

American frontier decently Christian.

 

The Presbyterians

The Presbyterians had, seemingly, the best opportunity of any

of the American religious bodies of becoming the largest and most

influential American church. The reason for this statement is that

the Presbyterians were already living farther west than any other

religious body in America, at the opening of the national period.

They were largely Scotch-Irish people, and as the Scotch-Irish

constituted the last great immigration movement to America pre-

vious to the American Revolution, they were compelled to find

their homes on the frontiers of the colonies. At the opening of the

War for Independence they were to be found in every one of the

thirteen colonies in sufficient numbers to make their influence felt.

There were at least five hundred Scotch-Irish communities in

America at the opening of the Revolution, located mostly in the

back country. Thus as Theodore Roosevelt says in his Winning

of the West, "they constituted America's first frontiersmen, pos-

sessing those qualities--energy, courage, boldness and intelligence

--which made them ideal pioneers." If they had any religion at

all they were almost sure to be Presbyterians.

By 1760 Scotch-Irish Presbyterian churches were scattered

along the back country from the "frontiers of New England to the

frontiers of South Carolina" and Georgia. Ten years before the

Declaration of Independence Presbyterian preachers began to

itinerate among the settlements of Western Pennsylvania, and year

by year thereafter we find traces of these pioneer missionaries

visiting the frontier communities. Scotch-Irish people probably

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MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS           75

 

constituted the largest element in the movement of population

across the Alleghenies at the close of the Revolution which soon

raised Kentucky and Tennessee to statehood.

But for reasons that, at this distance can be easily discerned,

the Presbyterians failed to take full advantage of the opportunity

which the frontier presented. It is my purpose here to point out

briefly, first the Presbyterian technique of frontier procedure and

then to state, what seems to me to have been their principal

handicaps.

At first settled pastors were urged by their presbyteries to

preach as often as possible in communities where there was no

settled ministry. This, at first was done only on the request of

such communities. Soon, however, the "duty of sending the gospel

without solicitation to destitute regions" was felt, and presbyteries,

synods and finally the General Assembly adopted a more or less

definite missionary policy. Preachers were sent out on extensive

tours through the new settlements to learn the needs and to locate

the places where Presbyterian people, or where people of Presby-

terian background were located. Numerous accounts of such tours

have come down to us, which give a vivid impression of the life

and labors of the early frontier Presbyterian preachers.

The Presbyterians, however, were slow in forming churches

in the new settlements. Perhaps one of the chief reasons for this

was the Presbyterian method of the congregation extending a call

to the minister. To carry out this system there must be congrega-

tions. But of course, in the early West there were no congrega-

tions, hence no calls. For instance it was more than ten years from

the first visit of Presbyterian ministers to southwestern Pennsyl-

vania to the forming of the first congregations and the calling of

the first settled minister in the region.

Another handicap experienced by the Presbyterians in their

impact on the frontier was their insistence that the ministry be

kept at a high educational level. Practically all of the first

pioneer preachers west of the Alleglenies were college graduates,

and as the need for ministers on the frontier became increasingly

large, it was impossible to supply these needs with college-trained

men. When the Cumberland Presbytery in southern Kentucky

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76     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

attempted to meet this situation by licensing men who could not

meet the high educational requirements of the church, the Synod

took action, suspended the Presbytery and finally disbanded it.

Out of the controversy which arose because of this action finally

emerged the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

A third handicap which frontier Presbyterianism met in at-

tempting to deal with the peculiar needs of the time was the

rigidity of its creed and polity. Thus it was soon found that when

such a rigid system as that of Presbyterianism tried to accom-

modate itself to new needs and to meet new problems, instead of

bending, it broke, just as non-elastic things generally do. The

Presbyterians also labored under a superiority complex and their

ministers instead of searching out destitute communities of any

sort, tended to concentrate on those communities where Presby-

terian people were to be found. In other words they went out

hunting Presbyterians, and were not so greatly concerned about

making Presbyterians out of the raw human materials which the

frontier furnished in such abundance.

In this connection mention should be made of the operations

of the Plan of Union, an agreement with the Congregationalists,

made in 1801, by which Presbyterians and Congregationalists were

to work together on the frontier. During the first thirty years of

the last century the Congregationalists were little concerned about

perpetuating Congregationalism in the West and were seemingly

willing to be absorbed by the Presbyterians outside New England.

Such organizations as the American Home Missionary Society and

even the Connecticut Missionary Society, though supported by

New England Congregationalists, were working in the West to

form Presbyterian churches. The result was that during these

years thousands of Congregational people moving west became

Presbyterians, leaving Congregationalism permanently weak in the

Middle West.

Perhaps another reason why the Presbyterians were not as

successful in winning members on the frontier as were the Baptists

and Methodists was because most of the early Presbyterian

ministers in the West were also school-teachers. Being college

graduates quite naturally they would be asked to conduct schools.

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MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS          77

 

This, of course, occupied much of their time. And it is a signifi-

cant fact that most of the first colleges founded in the West as

well as several of the early state institutions were established by

Presbyterian ministers.

 

The Baptists and the Frontier

The methods developed by the Baptists in meeting frontier

needs differ greatly from the Presbyterians, and from the stand-

point of winning members, were far more effective.

During the period of the Great Colonial Revivals the Baptists

had developed an uneducated and unsalaried ministry, which was

found to be particularly adapted to frontier needs. The Anglican

clergy in Virginia and Maryland were both well trained and well

paid, but had the reputation of having little concern for the

spiritual welfare of the people under their care. Baptist antipathy

towards the Established Church was undoubtedly one of the rea-

sons for the development of this type of ministry. To pay or to

educate a minister came to be considered among them as more or

less sure to destroy vital religion.

The average Baptist preacher, therefore, of the latter eighteenth

century was just an ordinary American farmer who, like St. Paul,

made his own living and gave what time he could to the preaching

of the Gospel. They might be well characterized as farmer-

preachers. It was this type of ministry that took the Baptist

gospel into the back-woods communities of Virginia and the

Carolinas during the latter part of the colonial period, and this

same type of ministry furnished the pioneers in spreading the

Baptist gospel as population began to push cross the Alleghenies

into the great new West.

The Baptists had much, especially in their type of church

government, which would tend to make a large appeal to the people

of the frontier. Their church government was a pure democracy,

in which every member had an equal chance to express his views.

To such a degree was democracy carried in some of the frontier

churches that even slave members were given the privilege of

voting in church matters, as were also the female members. Their

preachers came from among the people themselves and since they

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were largely self-supporting they would be as much attracted to

the better land and the freer air of the West as were the people

to whom they preached. As Theodore Roosevelt states in his

Winning of the West (Vol. III, p. 101), "The Baptist preachers

lived and worked exactly as did their flock; their dwellings were

little cabins with dirt floors, and instead of bedsteads, skin-covered

pole bunks; they cleared the ground, split rails, planted corn, and

raised hogs on equal terms with their parishioners." Thus the

Baptists were particularly well suited in their ideas of govern-

ment, in their economic status, and in their form of church

government to become the ideal western immigrant church.

The very looseness of Baptist organization made it easy for

them to follow population westward. In any large body of settlers

moving over the mountains during the latter years of the eighteenth

and the early years of the nineteenth centuries from Virginia and

the Carolinas, there was sure to be among them not only Baptist

people, but Baptist farmer-preachers as well. Let us look at one

of the companies of Virginia immigrants as they make their way

over the mountains in the years immediately following the winning

of Independence.

They left their Virginia home the very year the Revolution

closed and took the long painful way over the mountains. They

finally settled in Woodford County in Kentucky, on Clear Creek,

and soon a relatively large number of cabin homes sprang up about

them. Among the settlers moving in were several farmer-preachers'

families, and it was not long until religious meetings were being

held in the cabins. Out of this came a religious awakening in the

neighborhood and finally a church organization.

The process of forming a Baptist church on the frontier was

a relatively simple matter. There were no high church officials to

consult; no bishops or presbyteries, synods, or conferences to

be called in for advice.  If a Baptist church was wanted,

there were in every community, all the elements present to form

it. Nor was there expense involved. The minister was unsalaried;

ground for a church building would be donated and the neighbors,

whether Baptist or non-Baptist would be more than glad to donate

their services in the erection of a log meeting-house. Thus the

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MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS          79

 

Baptist churches in the early West sprang out of the soil of the

frontier.

In the formation of the Clear Creek Church in Woodford

County, Kentucky, in the year 1785, the people gathered together,

drew up a covenant and articles of faith; elected the deacons and

then proceeded to choose a minister by popular vote. The vote

favored John Taylor, although he was among the youngest of the

five farmer-preachers who were members of the church. And this

process was followed in hundreds of communities throughout the

West, the Baptists most often being the first religious organization

to appear in a new community.

Of course the Baptist farmer-preacher had little time to give

to the preparation of his sermons, for he had his farm to tend,

and he prepared for his Sunday ministrations as he followed

the plow, or split rails in the forest. John Taylor in his History of

Ten Churches tells of one day's work in which he set up, single-

handed, a hundred panels of rail fence six rails high, the rails being

eleven feet long, and they had to be carried from where they had

been split. During the course of his long career in Kentucky he

and his sons and slaves cleared more than four hundred acres of

heavily timbered land. I have found very few Baptist sermons in

manuscript in my search for materials dealing with frontier

religion. The simple fact is that the farmer-preacher did not pre-

pare his sermons by writing. Rather he went on the theory that

all that was needed was that he should open his mouth and the

Lord would fill it.

A good example of the Baptist farmer-preacher is James

Lemen, the founder of the first Baptist church in Illinois. Like

most frontier farmers he made his own harness. The horse collars

were of straw or corn husks, plaited together. Once being engaged

in breaking a piece of stubble ground and having stopped for

dinner, he left the harness on the beam of the plough. His son,

who was employed with a pitch fork to clear the plough of the

accumulating stubble, stayed behind and hid one of the horse col-

lars in order that there might be a longer period of rest while

his father braided another. But Lemen returning and missing the

collar mused a few moments, and then, much to the disappoint-

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80     OHIO ARCHA EOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

ment of his son, pulled off his leather breeches, stuffed the legs

with straw, threw the legs over the horse's neck, placed the

hames over the stuffed breeches' legs and went on plowing for

the remainder of the day. Such ingenuity was characteristic of

the frontiersmen generally, and the frontier preachers were no

exception.

Both the Disciples, or the Christians, and the Universalists

were protest movements in the West. They arose as a reaction

against the over-emotionalized revivalism found particularly among

the Baptists and Methodists and to a limited degree among the

Presbyterians. Both emphasized the simple acceptance of the Gos-

pel and repudiated the necessity for a miraculous conversion. Both

used the farmer-preacher technique and both possessed the con-

gregational form of church polity, which was particularly accept-

able in the democratic atmosphere of the West.

 

The Methodists

At the opening of the national period the Methodists were

the smallest of the religious bodies in America having less than

I5,000 members when the Methodist Episcopal Church became

an independent ecclesiastical body in 1784. But the Methodists

had the advantage of having as their spiritual father a born or-

ganizer--John Wesley--and was the first American religious body

to achieve a national organization. Thus from the very beginning

they looked upon the new Nation as a whole, and conceived of

their task in national terms.

Another advantage, from the standpoint of equipping Meth-

odists for their national task, was the circuit system. Devised by

John Wesley in England, it was brought to America by Francis

Asbury and his fellow laborers, and was found admirably suited

to meet the conditions and needs of a new country, where people

were living in scattered communities and where distances were

great. Thus one circuit-rider was able to bring the softening in-

fluences of the Christian Gospel into many communities, for the

average circuit in the early West covered a region often as large

as a present day Methodist conference. The circuit-rider preached

every day in the week, except on Monday--that day he rested

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MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS           81

 

from his extra labors over the Sabbath. His preaching places

often numbered from twenty-five to thirty. The nucleus of Meth-

odist organization was the class-meeting presided over by the class-

leader whose duty it was to inquire into the spiritual welfare of

each member of his class, at least once a week. And out of these

classes sprang Methodist church organizations as the frontier com-

munities increased in population and frontier life became settled

and orderly.

In addition to the circuit-rider, who gave his full time to the

ministry, the Methodists also had their farmer-preachers, like the

Baptists and the Disciples, termed local preachers in Methodist

parlance. In fact the Methodist gospel in many instances was

first brought to numerous communities, not by the regular circuit-

riders, but rather through the zeal of some farmer-preacher. But

the circuit-rider was almost omnipresent. So closely did he keep

pace with the westward march of population that often he arrived

on the scene before the mud in the stick chimney of a settler's

cabin was dry or the roof poles were in place.

Unlike the Presbyterians, the Methodists had the advantage

of an elastic system of church polity. Both Presbyterians and

Baptists believed that their systems of polity were prescribed in

Scriptures. The Methodists accepted Wesley's position that the

Scriptures prescribed no form of church government, but that the

episcopal was the best form and was not contrary to Scripture.

Thus as needs arose the Methodists were able to modify their

church government to meet frontier needs. Among Presbyterians,

when such attempts were made, controversy and division resulted.

It is an interesting fact that the Presbyterians have furnished the

most numerous as well as the most famous heresy trials.

It has been suggested that the Presbyterians, Congregational-

ists, and Baptists had an aristocratic theology, but democratic

forms of church government. The Methodists, on the other hand,

possessed an autocratic form of church government, but preached

a democratic gospel. And it may seem rather strange that the

Methodists, with their highly centralized and autocratic system

of church government, should have succeeded so well in the highly

individualistic and democratic society of the West. In a sense it

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succeeded because Bishop Asbury was an autocrat. He had the

authority to send men where he pleased. But he was no autocrat

who exercised his authority from a comfortable seat east of the

Alleghenies. He traveled more continuously than any of his cir-

cuit-preachers.  He never had a home; and his salary was no

more than that of the humblest circuit-rider. In fact he was a

strange combination of democracy and autocracy--democratic in

his life, autocratic in his rule.

Methodist theology was ideally suited to make an effective

appeal to the democratic society of the frontier. It was the gospel

of free grace, free-will and individual responsibility to God. To

the average frontiersman the Calvinistic gospel of limited grace

and election seemed entirely out of harmony with what he saw

all about him. As he looked about he saw no indication of a

favored group--the Elect. Everyone was living in log houses, and

all were engaged in working out their temporal salvation through

their own efforts. Why should their souls' salvation be on any

different basis? It is not strange that frontier conditions were

responsible for modifications of strict Calvinism, and that the

Presbyterians suffered the most numerous and severe schisms. The

Episcopalians, handicapped by the weakened condition in which

they were left by the Revolution, did not inaugurate a frontier

missionary policy until 1835, when Bishop Jackson Kemfer be-

came the first missionary bishop for the West.

The Catholics established their first diocese west of the Alle-

ghenies in 1808 at Bardstown, Kentucky, but they did not con-

stitute a numerous body in the West until the new German and

Irish immigration brought a greatly increased Catholic constitu-

ency into the country.

There is much that is amusing, if not particularly enlighten-

ing, in the frontier religious controversies which were common

enough in the early West. Methodists and Presbyterians had many

a debate over the doctrine of election and predestination. Once

Peter Cartwright was dining with some Presbyterian ministers

and the argument for and against predestination began. Turning

to the Presbyterian minister next to him Cartwright asked, "Do

you think it predestined that you should eat that particular piece

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MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL PROCEEDINGS            83

 

of meat on the end of your fork?"  The Presbyterian solemnly

declared in the affirmative. At that Cartwright suddenly grabbed

the piece of meat and ate it himself, thus defeating the divine

decree.

Presbyterians and Methodists often locked horns with Baptists

on the question of baptism. But whenever a Universalist ap-

peared, Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists presented a united

front. Hell-fire and endless punishment were too essential a part

of their revivalistic gospel for them to allow its disparagement on

the part of the upstart Universalists. While each of the great

frontier religious bodies had its own peculiar major emphasis, and

each developed its own techniques in meeting frontier needs, yet

in their total impact there was far more unanimity than has been

generally realized. The early camp-meetings were interdenomina-

tional affairs, where Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists co-

operated. The different churches in their days of frontier poverty

often shared the same meeting-house; frequently they gladly

loaned their churches to other bodies.

It is easy to criticize these frontier religious bodies and their

leadership. Doubtless both left much to be desired; but they per-

formed a type of service which could not have been rendered by

any other human agencies in that time of dire need.

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