OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 261
and our record in military production,
would have been far more brilliant
than it was.
In the afternoon session held in the
Auditorium of the Ohio
State Museum and presided over by
Stanton L. Davis of the Case
School of Applied Science, the following
papers were read by
James M. Miller of Waynesburg College,
Waynesburg, Penna.,
and by Philip D. Jordan of Miami
University.
THE SPIRITUAL FORCE IN EARLY WESTERN
CULTURE
By JAMES M. MILLER
Culture, since the beginning of time,
nas been the evidence of man's
struggle upward, the measure of his
accomplishment. In the sense in which
I shall use the term, it is the effort
of groups of people to improve their
intellectual, spiritual, and esthetic
environment. By early western culture,
I mean that effort limited roughly to
the upper Ohio Valley in the first
quarter of the nineteenth century, that
somewhat neglected period which
saw the settler supplant the pioneer,
and which saw the establishment of a
permanent, stable society, the parent of
our modern industrial democracy.
The importance of that period and that
culture in shaping our later
and larger culture cannot be ignored. If
such a thing exists today as an
American culture, I am sure that it must
be sought within and immediately
adjacent to the Ohio Valley. Other
sections afford established cultures, of
course, but they are likely to be
especially significant of the areas which
produced them, and to offer particular
values and characteristics not widely
representative. The significant American
culture of today is to be found,
I am sure, in spite of Boston and New
York, in spite of Miami and Holly-
wood, in our own Middle West, even in
our own Ohio Valley.
Our modern conception of history, with
its emphasis on social and
cultural aspects, makes us aware of
certain vital forces which have been
instrumental in driving our society
forward, and in making us what we are.
These forces are numerous--the forces of
heredity, of environment, of
economic necessity, of political
expediency, of intellectual capacity, of emo-
tional content, of spiritual urge. The
effects of these forces vary with time,
and their significances are always
dwarfed or magnified by the attitudes and
sympathies of the observer. If I were to
seek the dominant forces which
shape the development of a culture, I
would seek first a symbol of that
culture. I offer you, therefore, a
symbol of our fully developed mid-
western culture, a characteristic
product of the culture of the last genera-
tion.
262 OHIO
ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
In August of 1874, the cherished plans
of Lewis Miller, of Akron,
Ohio, and the Rev. John H. Vincent, of
New York, (bore fruit as the
Chautauqua Institute. Surprisingly successful, it quickly produced
the
Chautauqua circuit.
"Chautauqua"--what a word! What a symbol! Since
the Revivals of 1800 a provincial
society had been laboring to achieve the
Good, the True, and the Beautiful. And
here was Chautauqua! Two
generations looked upon it with delight
and gratification. Chautauqua, be-
gotten of the marriage of the New
England lyceum and the western camp-
meeting. Emerson and Peter
Cartwright--what strange
bedfellows!
Absurd? No, it was not absurd. Four of
Emerson's best-known poems
were published in James Freeman Clark's The
Western Messenger a year
previous to their first appearance in
the East. It seems a far cry from
Lorenzo Dow and his "Chain"
sermon to Russell H. Conwell and his
"Acres of Diamonds." But,
after all, is it such a far cry? The early camp-
meeting was, in a sense, a social
rendezvous; it was, in a sense, an educa-
tional effort; it was, in a sense,
esthetic; it was, in a far larger sense,
moral and religious. The Chautauqua was
a social rendezvous; it was an
educational effort; it was esthetic; it
was, in a sense, religious; and it was,
above all, moral. It was, in short, New
England; estheticism, moralism, and
intellectualism in a setting of
backwoods emotionalism and religious fervor.
So, behind the symbol of the 1880's and
1890's, we may discern its forbear,
the camp-meeting, symbol and typical
product of the earlier culture.
If we are to attempt to evaluate the
significance of this spiritual force
in our early western culture, it is
essential that we understand the society
in which it exerted itself. This early
society was an agrarian society, aug-
mented, in the towns and villages, by a
minority of small merchants, traders,
craftsmen, and adventurers. It is important to realize that all were
strangers in a strange land; that a
nostalgic yearning for an abandoned
home, forsaken friends and families must
have been a common emotion.
Imminent dangers in a world where nature
appeared none too helpful must
have called for a strong heart and a
faith which is "the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen." The life begat its character-
istic tempers: optimism--one must be
optimistic, or go down; emotionalism
--the strong back was a greater asset
than an analytical mind. Lacking
keen intellectuality, life tended to
become credulous, suspicious, intolerant,
cock-sure, argumentative. And these
characteristic tempers shaped char-
acteristic ideas: arrogant democracy; a
philosophy of hard work and cer-
tain success; a faith in "a good
day coming." Predominant topics of con-
versation at church, tavern, store, and
court - house steps were politics and
religion. History has adequately
recognized the politics of the day. The
religion, culturally more important, is
not so well known.
Estimates have computed the ratio of
churchmembers to non-church-
members, in 1825 as one to six, a
proportion surprisingly great when the
conditions under which the church
labored are recognized. Reliable statis-
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 263
tics are scarce, for early church
records are only occasionally available. A
few approximate figures will suggest the
rapid spread of the religious idea.
In the valley states, a Methodist
population of 2000 in 1800 became 225,000
by 1840; the Baptist population expanded
from about 5000 in 1800 to 80,000
in the same period of years; in 1840,
the Disciples of Christ, a new sect,
equalled the Baptists in numbers; the
census of western Presbyteries, noting
7,686 members in 1810, shows three times
that number by 1820. The quite
apparent advantages of church membership
in towns and villages emphasize
the importance of church affiliations.
Some of the highlights in western church
history which were respon-
sible for the widespread interest in
religious matters and the surprising
vitality of the sects have long been
recognized by historians, pseudohis-
torians, and writers of fiction. There
are the Great Revivals of 1801-2-3-4,
which flamed up from sparks set by James
McGready at Cane Ridge, Ken-
tucky, swept like a prairie fire through
Ohio, Pennsylvania, and western
Virginia, leaving smoldering embers which
were to burst into flame again
and again, even into our own day; the
great camp-meetings which grew out
of them, great assemblies of 5, 10, even
12,000 countrymen, gathered for a
week of social intercourse and religious
ecstacy, day and night, under the
trees and the stars, with relays of
exhorters to hold the gates of Hell wide
open, the barkings, the
"jerks," the "gift of tongues," and showers of grace
descending to revive souls parched and
blistered in the heat of the Pit; the
bitter quarrels of the schismatics,
which left deep and livid scars at the
hearts of many communities; the widely
publicized religious controversies,
debates, and heresy trials, as when, for
sixteen days, Alexander Campbell
and the Rev. N. L. Rice held forth
before large audiences at Danville,
Kentucky, or when the Lyman Beecher
trial of 1832 made the year a not-
able one for Cincinnatians. And, most
exciting of all, there is Mormonism,
with its persecutions, its migrations,
its sinister tales of Avenging Angels.
What is Mormonism? Is it a western
version of New England transcen-
dentalism? I give you a fairly well
authenticated story for what it is worth.
Twelve miles from my home is one of the
oldest churches in the western
country, the Lower Ten Mile Presbyterian
Church. Behind that church
is a grave whose stone bears the legend,
"In Memory of Solomon Spauld-
ing, Who Departed This Life October 22,
1816, aged 55 Years." This is
the grave of the man who probably wrote
one of the most significant books
in the history of America. Solomon
Spaulding was a Connecticut man,
a Dartmouth graduate, and a
Congregational minister. In 1809, he came to
live in Conneaut, Ohio. Here he wrote a
book in which he attempted to
account for the lost tribes of Israel by
arguing that the American Indians
were their descendants. He relates, in a style heavily freighted
with
Biblical diction and phraseology, the
journey of the leaders Nephi and Lehi
and their followers from Jerusalem to
America. Spaulding found no printer
who was interested in his work. He
removed to Pittsburgh, then to Amity,
264
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
where he died in 1816, his book still
unpublished. Sidney Rigdon, a Baptist
minister of Pittsburgh, knew Spaulding,
though he later denied ever having
heard of him. There is evidence that
Rigdon at one time possessed the
Spaulding manuscript. Spaulding's
physician and pastor at Amity, Cephas
Dodd, has testified that Spaulding
suspected Rigdon of having stolen his
book.
Rigdon left Pittsburgh, became a Campbellite, and, in 1830, a
Mormon. In 1830, the Book of Mormon appeared.
It is a pity that western church history
has been so often recorded
by biased and partisan interpreters. It
is a pity that the emphasis has been
so long on the grotesque and sensational
materials. Western church history
deserves sober, scholarly treatment, and
to the competent historian it offers
rich and abundant rewards. The competent
scholar will find, however, that
the true story of the spiritual force in
western culture is not told in the
vivid, exciting, spectacular incidents.
Greater values are found in more
prosaic efforts, for the story of
religion in the West is by no means all
epileptic preaching and warped and
twisted philosophic thinking.
Near the end of November, 1815, Timothy
Flint, Harvard, 1800, ar-
rived with his family in Cincinnati with
a roving commission to preach in
Ohio and Kentucky under the authority of
the Connecticut Missionary
Society. What Flint found as to the
condition of religion in Cincinnati de-
serves attention, for Cincinnati, by
that time, had become an important
center of the western cultural effort,
and Flint, at 36, was a commentator
of more than average intelligence who
was about to make his presence
felt in the religious and literary life
of the West of his day. The mis-
sionary was pleased to discover that the
moral conditions of society in
Cincinnati were, with due allowance for
the age of the town, "astonishingly
regular and correct." There were many societies for the diffusion
of
religious knowledge, instruction, and
charity. Highly respectable people
of the city showed a laudable desire to
belong to some religious group.
The press teemed with polemic religious
pamphlets. The ministers of the
region were men of considerable talent
and readiness, of enlightened zeal
and sanctity of character.
There is hardly a phase of human
endeavor which did not feel the
impact of a driving religious force. And
especially was this true in the
centers of population, where the
cultural effort was most productive. Due
to the pressure of this force, more than
to that of any other, law and order
came to the West, and no bulwark of
decency and morality was more
stanchly and steadfastly defended than
that erected by the organized church.
A history of secondary and higher
education in the West is almost entirely
a history of a religious effort. An
academy, usually under the direction
of the local minister, became the boast
of every self-respecting community;
and the college, that "temple of
science" to which Edmund Flagg looked
for the moral salvation of the valley,
remains today the monument of the
missionary zeal of the established
churches. These efforts were so ef-
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 265
fective and so unique that they still
appear as one of the most remarkable
cultural accomplishments of all time. My
faith in the essential goodness of
my fellow-men leaps high when I realize
how little was the necessity for
such effort in that struggling,
practical society, and how meager its rewards.
Surely here was an effort purely of the
spirit, the product of a Divine Urge.
And Washington and Jefferson,
Transylvania, Ohio, Miami, Cincinnati,
and a score of institutions whose names
are forgotten, remain to me the
monuments of the high ideals of the
culture of a generation we are all too
prone to ridicule. In literature, too,
the spiritual effort was potent. The
western press was prolific in the
production of text - books, theological
treatises, and religious pamphlets. My
list of thirty-four religious periodicals
which came into being between 1800 and
1840 is by no means complete.
These magazines, and the books and
tracts distributed by traveling preachers
and by tract societies, supplied the
bulk of the popular reading of the day,
and were tremendously important in
shaping the thought of the period.
Then there were the social experiments.
Father Rapp's effort at Harmony,
the Trappist colony in Kentucky, the
Quaker settlements, the Zoar and
Shaker efforts in Ohio, even Mormonism,
were fundamentally religious
efforts.
But back of all these efforts stand the
men who motivated them.
What an array! What a variety! Buffoon
and nobleman! Charletan,
scientist, and saint! All men of force,
of achievement, all imbued with a
seal to mold a society for the years to
come. One characteristic they had
in common, however--an old-fashioned,
naive, almost whimsical trait--
every one of them, every one, bowed his
head publicly to a Supreme Power
and served a spiritual Master. Sons of
Thunder they were, beating about
in the bushes to save lost souls; and
simple, dignified pastors, quietly tend-
ing their flocks. Politicians might vote embargos and
compromises in
Washington, might even lead the nation
into the Valley of Death: these men
were shaping men's lives and minds, and
preparing their souls, so that
men might, if need arose, endure that
Valley.
Most spectacular of this group were the
revival preachers and itiner-
ants. Their methods were unique and
extravagant, but they were effective.
"The Rev. Mr. Blaney will preach
next Sunday in Dempsey's
Grove, at 10 A. M., and at 4 p.
M, Providence permitting. Between
the sermons the preacher will run his
sorrel mare against any nag
that can be trotted out in this region
for a purse of one hundred
dollars."
There was James McGready, kindler of the
fires of the Great Re-
vival; a raw-boned Scotch-Irishman
trained in John McMillan's log college
at Canonsburg.
"The Lord has done great things for
us in the wilderness, and
the solitary place has been made glad;
the desert has rejoiced and'
blossomed like the rose."
266 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
There was James Havens,
"Father" Havens, "Uncle Jimmy," "Old
Sorrel," illiterate, uncouth, but
tremendously vital and prolific. And "Daddy"
Turck, coarse, loud, yet tender.
"I'm after souls! I'm after souls, and
souls I must have." There was
Valentine Cook, who, on the night of the
earthquakes in December, 1811, fell out
of bed, leapt up, and made for the
door. His wife seized his night-gown and
pled with him not to leave her,
but Valentine left her the gown,
shouting, "If my Lord is coming, I can
wait for no one!" There was Peter Cartwright, best-loved of
all the
camp-meeting preachers; thick-set,
muscular, preaching a militant, intolerant
Methodism to thousands in Tennessee,
Kentucky, and Illinois. And then,
to be sure, there was Lorenzo Dow,
"Bearer of the Word," "eccentric
Cosmopolite," he called himself;
others called him "Crazy Dow."
"Oh Lord, put a stop to
Mohammedanism, Judaism, Heathen-
ism, Atheism, Deism, Universalism,
Calvinism, and all other Devil-
isms."
Dirty, bearded, picturesque, sick,
confused, pathetic, he traveled tire-
lessly with Peggy, hs "Rib,"
in England, Ireland, and through all the habita-
tions of man east of the Mississippi. He
bought 452,000 acres on the Missis-
sippi and Chippewa rivers in what is now
western Wisconsin. Here he
intended to establish his ideal city. He
had the plans drawn, and he named
it "Loren, the City of Peace."
There was to be another colony, to be called
"Beulah Ethiopia." Shades of
Blake and Coleridge and Shelley! What a
beautiful dream!
None of these men are noteworthy for
intellectual capacity or close
reasoning. We find little or nothing which they have contributed to
sound theological doctrine. Rather,
their efforts confused and beclouded
issues, and ended in violent, erratic
quarrels and schisms, the effects of
which are still apparent. But for that
very reason they deserve serious
study, for in them was nurtured the
vital flame of a living, breathing,
tempestuous religion of tremendous
importance in the shaping of habits of
thought and in molding ideals.
Then, too, there are the colorful and
interesting schismatics. Finis
Ewing, principal fly in the Presbyterian
ointment, and chiefly responsible
for the Cumberland schism of ninety
years duration. Barton W. Stone and
Alexander Campbell, of
"Stoneite", "New Light", and "Campbellite" fame,
Henry Bascomb, George Brown, the
Methodist rebel, Richard M'Nemar and
John Dunlevy, the Shaker demagogues.
Joseph Smith found the emo-
tionally overwrought western people
ready and willing to suspend all reason
and accept his myth of magic spectacles
and divine revelation. There was
the pathetic Millerite delusion of the
1840's, and the fantastic excitement
roused by Joseph Dylks, the
"Leatherwood God," in 1828. Overwrought,
imagination-haunted men bring us the
fuss and sputter of medieval disputa-
tions, and the brimstone smell of the
devil-hunts of the Dark Ages.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 267
But this is by no means all of the
picture. In the more sound and
stable portion of this religious
history, the investigator will encounter many
figures of profound significance. There
were those saints of Presbyterian-
ism who brought evangelical zeal and
Scotch philosophy and theology from
Princeton to western Pennsylvania, James
Power, Joseph Smith, Thaddeus
Dodd, and John McMillan. All left impressions
upon their portions of the
western country which endure to this
day. There are David Rice and
James Blythe, Presbyterians, and Henry
Toulmin and Horace Holley,
Unitarians, whose services to the
Lexington area and to Transylvania Uni-
versity are so significant. There is the
Lexington publisher, Thomas Skill-
man, printer and backer of a number of
religious periodicals, who es-
tablished, in 1828, the Western
Luminary "to counteract the influence of
infidelity." There are the
Episcopalians, Joseph Doddridge and Bishop
Philander Chase. There is the Quaker, Elisha Bates, and his Moral
Advocate of Mount Pleasant, Ohio, and his colleague, Benjamin
Lundy.
There are the Cincinnatians, Stephen
Gano, Joshua L. Wilson, James Free-
man Clark, the Transcendentalist. And
there are James Finley, John Mason
Peck, and James H. Perkins, and Calvin
Stowe, and Robert Hamilton
Bishop. And--but enough of names. The
roll is long. Behind these men
stood the organized churches, striving,
in their various ways, to bring
order out of disorder, striving to bring
light to dark places, striving to
prepare men for the better life which
was to come. That much of their
effort was of more worldly value than
they may have intended need not
detract from their reputations.
Here, then, in the stable, conservative
religious life of the West was
laid the foundation for western culture.
Here were the intellectual values,
imported from New England, from
Princeton, from the Scottish univer-
sities. Fused with the emotional values
roused by the Sons of Thunder,
they produced a vital, progressive,
moral, intellectually inquisitive, and,
above all, religious society which found
the Good, the True, and the
Beautiful in the pleasantly edifying Chautauqua
Assembly.
A contemporary writer has written an
important book--I might almost
say, a great book, for I do not believe
that a better portrayal of frontier
life has appeared since Edward
Eggleston's The Hoosier Schoolmaster.
I speak of Conrad Richter's The
Trees. It is a powerful book, convincing,
and, as far as it goes, true. Its
setting is the Ohio country of an earlier
period than that of which I have been
speaking. Nevertheless, I fear that
the book fails of greatness through a
serious error of omission. There is
not, in the entire book, a single hint
or suggestion of the religious Idea.
I am sure that no re-creation of
frontier society can be completely true
without it.
Of this, our modern day, such an
omission would not, of course, be
serious. We have progressed far beyond
even the dreams of our fathers.
Our modern society is so competent, so
efficient, so comfortable, that it is
268
OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
with difficulty that we refrain from
being surprised at ourselves. And our
culture dwarfs that of our fathers to
insignificance. We cannot be expected
to judge values according to the
standards of a culture which, to us, ap-
pears so naive, so childlike, so
unintelligent and emotionally unstable. But
sometimes, when our present world is a
bit too much with me, the strident
voice of the news broadcaster comes to
me from long ago and far away,
and I hear, from underneath the trees of
a firelit camp-ground, the voice
of a Son of Thunder. He is speaking to
me, and what he says makes me
ponder.
"Open the Pit of Hell, O Lord, and
show these snivelling
sinners Thy torments! Show them their
brothers and their sisters,
their mothers and their fathers,
gnashing their teeth and gnawing at
their chains. Make them believe, O Lord!
Knock them down!
Knock them down, and show them Thy wrath
to come!"
AN OHIO SURGEON IN PARIS, 1835-1836
By PHILIP D. JORDAN
In December, 1835, a
twenty-eight-year-old American naval surgeon
took rooms on a narrow Parisian street
near the great French clinics and
hospitals which then were the world's
leading teaching institutions for young
physicians.1
Dr. Louis A. Wolfley, assistant surgeon
on the U. S. S. Delaware,
had obtained leave2 to devote eight
months to furthering his medical educa-
tion begun in Cincinnati in November,
1829, at the Ohio Medical College.3
Born in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania on
February 19, 1807, Wolfley had
come to Circleville, Ohio, in 1829 with
his brother-in-law, Dr. William N.
Luckey. In Circleville, Wolfley helped
Luckey mix drugs and roll pills.
Such apprenticeship had been his only
preparation for further schooling in
Cincinnati. There, during the winter and
spring terms of 1829, this tall
young man listened attentively to the
brilliant anatomy lectures of Jedediah
Cobb, and there also, he received his
first formal introduction to nineteenth
century chemistry, pharmacy, materia
medica, surgery, and the theory and
practice of medicine.
After his graduation in June, 1830,
Wolfley did not return to Athens
where he had previously practiced by
rule of thumb, but he opened an office
in Lancaster, Ohio, a community of
fifteen hundred persons.4 There
he
successfully courted Eleanor Ann Irvin,
daughter of Judge William W.
Irvin, member of Congress. Wolfley also
became acquainted with Senator
1 This paper, dealing especially with
the Parisian phase of Dr. Wolfley's career,
is an abridgment of a more extended
article prepared by the author and by Howard
D. Kramer, of the State University of Iowa.
2 Mediterranean Cruise, October 9, 1834,
Wolfley MSS.; Woodbury to Patterson,
Washington, March 24, 1835, Wolfley MSS.
3 Registrar's office of College of
Medicine, University of Cincinnati.
4 See Wolfley's advertisements in
Lancaster Gazette, April 5-19, 1830.