VOLUME 4 — BOOK VI — CHAPTER XI
METHODISM IN THE WEST, CONCLUDED: 1804 — 1820

Richmond Nolley and his Band of Pioneers set out for the Southwest — Lewis Hobbs and Thomas Griffin — Death of Hobbs — Nolley's Extraordinary Labors — Anecdote — Makes his Way into the Interior of Louisiana — Perishes in the Woods — Daniel De Vinne in Louisiana — Mississippi Conference Organized — Judge Lane — Dr. Kennon — Joseph Travis — Other Itinerants — Asbury in the West — His Opinion of Camp-meetings — His great Interest for the West — His Career closes — Great Progress of Western Methodism — Its Anti-slavery Character — Ecclesiastical Action on Slavery — Camp-meeting Excesses — The "Jerks" — Death of William Lostpeich — Of George Askin — Of Hezekiah Harriman — Aboriginal Missions begun — John Stewart, a Negro, the first Missionary — His Singular History and Success — Mary Stubbs — Outspread of Missions

The extraordinary history of Richmond Nolley has heretofore been sketched down to his departure from South Carolina for the southwest, whither he was sent, with Lewis Hobbs, Drury Powell, and Thomas Griffin, in 1812. They set out together on horseback, and journeyed through the forests and Indian tribes three hundred and fifty miles, "swimming deep creeks, and camping out eleven nights," [1] till they arrived at Nolley's appointment, the Tombigbee Mission. Alas, that we have no journal of that tour, and but incoherent references to any of these standard-bearers of the Church in the wilderness! I have heretofore cited a few allusions to some of them. "Hobbs," says one of our authorities, "was a lovely spirit. He was called the 'weeping prophet.' He shed tears over sinners while he warned them. A year or two afterward he was stationed in New Orleans, where his last strength was spent. Their appointments scattered them widely. Griffin's was on the Ouachita. Few have been so honored in planting Methodism in the southwest. He lived to a good old age, and his memory is blessed by thousands. While Nolley persuaded sinners, and Hobbs wept over then; Griffin made them quail. There was a clear, metallic ring in his nature. By the camp-fire, on the forest-path, he studied. One of the saddlebags men — to whom western civilization is more indebted than to any other class of agents — he mastered the hardy elements of frontier life; he was sagacious in judgment, decisive in action, strong in speech, and generous-hearted." The "old Minutes" remark (in 1815) of Hobbs: "Truly, it may be, said that he counted not his life dear to him so he might be instrumental in advancing the Redeemer's kingdom; for, although he was of a slender habit, he cheerfully submitted to the inconveniences of a missionary station, and the almost incredible difficulties he had to surmount in New Orleans, where he became deeply consumptive. In a lingering and dying condition he traveled nearly one thousand miles, (great part of which lay through an almost uninhabited wilderness,) to his native country, where he departed this life on the fourth of September, 1814, in full assurance of endless life. He was for some time a witness of that love which casteth out all slavish fear. "I am going, but not a missionary; I am going to Jesus! he exclaimed on his death-bed. 'When I entered the connection I gave myself to the Lord and the connection. I now feel no sorrow for having filled the stations to which I was appointed, but a peculiar 'consolation' that I have preached the gospel to a people who till then had been strangers to it.' ''

Astonishing, superhuman almost, as seem the travels and labors of many of the earlier itinerants none of them could have surpassed the adventurous energy of Nolley on his Tombigbee Circuit, among the rudest settlements and Indian perils. For two years he ranged over a vast extent of country, preaching continually, stopping for no obstructions of flood or weather. When his horse could not go on he shouldered his saddlebags and pressed forward on foot. He took special care of the children, growing up in a half savage condition, over all the country, and catechized and instructed them with the utmost diligence, as the best means of averting barbarism from the settlements. To his successor on the circuit he gave a list of them by name, solemnly charging him, "be sure to look after these children." He labored night and day also for the evangelization of the blacks. [3] When Indian hostilities prevailed, the settlers crowded into isolated forts and stockades. Nolley sought no shelter, but hastened from post to post, instructing and comforting the alarmed refugees. He kept "the gospel sounding abroad through all the country," says our authority. The people could not but love him, admiring and wondering at his courage; and the very savages seemed to hear a voice saying unto them, "Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm." It was in this wild country that happened the fact, often cited as an illustration of the energy of the primitive Methodist ministry. "The informant, Thomas Clinton," says a southern bishop, "subsequently labored in that region, and, though a generation has passed, he is not forgotten there. In making the rounds of his work Nolley came to a fresh wagon-track. On the search for anything that had a soul, he followed it, and came upon the emigrant family just as it had pitched on the ground of its future home. The man was unlimbering his team, and the wife was busy around the fire. 'What!' exclaimed the settler upon hearing the salutation of the visitor, and taking a glance at his unmistakable appearance, 'have you found me already? Another Methodist preacher! I left Virginia to get out of reach of them, went to a new settlement in Georgia, and thought to have a long whet, but they got my wife and daughter into the Church; then, in this late purchase, (Choctaw Corner,) I found a piece of good land, and was sure I would have some peace of the preachers, and here is one before my wagon is unloaded.' Nolley gave him small comfort. 'My friend, if you go to heaven you'll find Methodist preachers there; and if to hell, I am afraid you will find some there; and you see how it is in this world, so you had better make terms with us, and be at peace.' " [4]

By 1814 he had made his way into Louisiana to the renowned Opelousas and Attakapas Circuit, which lay far in the interior of that state, half way of the distance from New Orleans to Texas, and extended from the Red River to the Gulf. Wonderful things are still told of his labors on Bayou Teche, the O'Tash River of Bowman's letter, heretofore quoted. He had great success on the circuit, and no little persecution. As an example of the treatment he had to endure from a class of the rude population, it is said that a sugar planter drove him away from his smoke-stack, where he had gone to ask the privilege of warming himself. On one occasion, when he was preaching, some lewd fellows of the baser sort took him forcibly from the stand, and were on their way to the bayou to duck him; but a Negro woman, armed with a hoe, effected his rescue; and, having assisted the exhausted preacher back to the house, and put him in the stand, said triumphantly, "There now, preach." [5]

He appeared in the next Conference an attenuated, worn-out man, yet it was deemed necessary to send him back to the same rugged field. "He went," says his presiding elder, "without a murmur." He was accompanied on his return by Griffin. They crossed the Mississippi and a vast swamp. "The difficulties we had to encounter," says Griffin, "were almost incredible." Coming to a place where they must separate, after embracing each other, with mutual benedictions they parted. It was in the latter part of November, and a dark, cold, rainy day. Arriving at night at the house of a friendly man, where he stayed till morning, imparting the comforts of religion to its inmates, Nolley resumed his journey. Across his path there lay a large swamp and deep creeks, and not a single white man was to be found between him and the place of his destination. Alone he traveled on till evening, when he found himself at an Indian village. "Having to cross a creek before night, and apprehending from the rains that it would be swollen, he employed an Indian to go with him. When he arrived on its banks he found it, as he anticipated, a full and angry flood, rushing tumultuously along. There was no alternative but to cross, or remain with the savages, so he chose the former; and, leaving his valise, saddlebags; and a parcel of books with the Indian, he urged his horse into the stream. No sooner did his charger strike the current than he was beaten down the flood. The animal battled courageously with the stream, but before the other shore was reached, horse and rider were far below the landing-place of the ford, and, the banks being high, it was impossible for the horse to gain a foothold, or make the ascent of the other shore. In the struggle to do so the rider was thrown, and, grasping the limb of a tree which extended over the stream, he reached the shore. The horse swam back to the side of the stream whence he had started. The missionary directed the Indian to keep his horse till morning, and he would walk to the nearest house, which was distant about two miles. He traveled through the woods about one mile, wet, cold, and weary. Unable to proceed any further, and conscious perhaps that his work was done, and that he had at last fulfilled the errand of his Master, he fell upon his knees, and commended his soul to God. There, in that wild wood of the far West, alone with his God and the ministering spirits that encamp around the saints, Richard Nolley, the young missionary, closed his eyes on earth to open them in heaven. When he was found he was lying extended upon the wet leaves, his left hand upon his breast, and the other lying by his side. His eyes were closed, and the, gentle spirit left a smile upon his pallid cheek ere it passed away to that bright and beautiful world, where the wicked cease to trouble, and the weary are at rest." [6]

The day of his death was Friday, his fast day. He was probably weaker than usual, and his feeble health and fatiguing travels, together with the unusual coldness of the weather, were more than he could bear. His knees were muddy, and there were prints of them in the ground, showing that he had been praying in this last scene of his mortal life. He had evidently resigned himself calmly to his fate, selecting a place to die on, beneath a clump of pines, composing his limbs, and closing his eyes. A traveler found him the next day. He was borne to the nearest house, and on Sunday was buried "in Catahoula Parish, near the road leading from Alexandria to Harrisonburg, and about twenty miles from the latter place. In 1856 three members of the Conference sought out the long-neglected and almost forgotten spot, marked it, and, kneeling down, consecrated themselves afresh to the same ministry of faith and patience and love. These forty years the recollection of Nolley has quickened the zeal of his brethren. From that mound of earth, in the fenceless old field, a voice has spoken, 'Be faithful.' In the minds of the people the effect was profound." [7]

He was but thirty years old, tall, slender, emaciated by labors and fastings; hair dark, radiant eyes, and a countenance full of determination and saintliness; was never married; "was always busy, rising at four o'clock at all times and places;" was a man of no extraordinary intellectual powers, but of extraordinary courage, self-denial, and labor, and yet achieved more perhaps by his death than by his life, for his name is consecrated in the heart of the Church as that of a martyr, and he is still spoken of "through the interior of Louisiana" as "a man of the rarest qualities, and especially as one of the most eminent saints." [8]

Many other itinerants, worthy of commemoration, venerated in the local traditions of the Church, but with hardly other record than the vague allusions of the Minutes, were added year after year to the pioneer band Not a few were raised up in the new field itself, and some were even sent to the older sections of the denomination. It can hardly fail to surprise northern Methodists to observe in the Minutes, attached to the old Opelousas or Attakapas Circuit, in the heart of Louisiana, the name of Daniel De Vinne, a laborer still abroad and vigorous, in the New York East Conference, though nearly half a century has passed since he followed the tracks of Axley and Nolley in this wild region. Born in Ireland in 1793, he was brought by his parents to America when not a year old, and became a Methodist in Albany in 1810. He caught the spirit of the itinerancy of that day, and longed for missionary work. In 1818 he joined an association, formed in New York by Joshua Soule, for the support of Mark Moore, of Baltimore, as a Methodist missionary in New Orleans; a society which was the germ of the Missionary Society of the Church, organized a few months later. The same year he went to Louisiana, and began a Sunday-school for slaves, which was soon dispersed by opposition. He ascended the river, and labored on the Natchez Circuit; was received into the Conference of 1819, and sent to the Opelousas Circuit, where he traveled two years, encountering the severest hardships; preaching every day, except Monday, to the whites, and every night to the slaves, besides leading classes, and traveling from thirty to forty miles a day over prairies without roads or bridges; fording the bayous, or, when they were high, swimming them, or passing over by floats of decayed logs, tied together by graped vines. A hearty hater of slavery, he devoted himself with much zeal to the religious welfare of its victims, and they were his most ardent friends. [9] His circuit was a range of five hundred and sixty-four miles, from Alexandria, on Red River, to the Gulf. His salary the first year, "after paying ferriage and horse-shoeing," was less than thirteen dollars; the second year "it advanced prodigiously to sixty-seven dollars." For some years he did faithful service in various parts of this grand field, and returned to the North only when it began to be amply supplied by ministerial recruits from its own Churches, or adjacent Conferences.

In 1817 appears in the Minutes, for the first time, the title of the "Mississippi Conference," ordered by the General Conference of 1816. It was organized at the house of William Foster, at Pine Ridge, Adams County, about seven miles above Natchez, Bishop Roberts presiding. A southern authority, writing in 1858, says: "The little company of pioneers then assembled were a feeble band, nine in number, all told. They had to provide for the spiritual wants of the people, so far as Methodism was concerned, from the Chattahoochee to the Tennessee River, and from the Cherokee nation east to the Sabine River west. The little company all slept under the same roof, and ate at the same hospitable table. The cottage — for now it seems quite diminutive — still stands, almost unchanged. It is worthy of remark that four of that little band, at the end of forty-one years, still survive. Five have finished their course with joy. Those who have gone to their reward are Thomas Griffin, John Menifee, John Lane, Ashley Hewitt, and Alexander Fleming. The survivors are Peter James, Elisha Lott, Thomas Nixon, and Elijah Gent. Dr. Winans was local at that time, but present, and assisting at the Conference. One was received on trial, Thomas Owens, the first recruit in the territory. In looking over the region to be supplied by this little band we are constrained to exclaim, What hath God wrought! They went out with their staff; but now they are more than three bands. From this nucleus have sprung the Alabama, Louisiana, two Texas Conferences, and a part of the Memphis Conference." [10]

It had now two districts, Mississippi and Louisiana, nine circuits, twelve preachers, and one thousand nine hundred and forty-one members. By 1820 it reported three districts, all with state titles — Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama — comprising the state of Louisiana south of the Arkansas, all the Mississippi territory south of the Tennessee River, and stretching over the present states of Mississippi and Alabama. It had yet but eleven "appointments" and seventeen preachers, but most of its circuits were four or five hundred miles around, and the itinerants preached daily. Many mighty men were subsequently in their ranks, and influential local or "located" preachers cooperated with them extensively. Methodism here, as elsewhere in the West, was rapidly appropriating the country.

To the numerous list of important itinerants; thus far noticed, in this great ultramontane field, scores, not to say hundreds, of similar characters might be added, such as John Lane, (generally known as Judge Lane,) a man of "noble form and captivating manners," and who, after years of ministerial travel, broke down, located, and, marrying into the family of the Vicks, became one of the proprietors of Vicksburgh, a wealthy and most influential citizen and public functionary, and always used his eminent advantages for the promotion of religion. He re-entered the itinerancy in 1822, and died in it in 1855, exclaiming, "I am ready! I have been living for this all my lifetime!" [11] Dr. Robert L. Kennon, after laboring some years in South Carolina and Georgia, settled in Alabama, and became one of its most eminent citizens and representative Methodists, and, re-entering the itinerancy, died in it while attending the Conference of 1837, "a preacher," says a southern bishop, "of very high order." [12] Joseph Travis, after traveling thirty years in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, passed to the southwest, and continued his useful ministry in the Mississippi Conference. Thomas L. Douglass, of North Carolina, after preaching about fourteen years with distinguished success in the Virginia Conference, was transferred, in 1809, to Tennessee, where he was "the instrument or the conversion of hundreds and thousands of souls [13] a man of great dignity and amenity, a genuine Christian gentleman, and a rare pulpit orator. He died in 1843. And, as we pass again northward, we meet, in the Minutes, with the names of Joseph Oglesby, Charles Holliday, Jonathan Stamper, La Roy Cole, John F. Wright, John Crane, James Gwin, Alexander Cummins, Marcus Lindsey, William R. Raper, William W. Redman, John A. Waterman, Allen Wiley, William Gunn, and scores of others, equally noteworthy, who were identified with western Methodist history, more or less, during these years, and the events of whose individual lives in the ministry would make romantic volumes.

These powerful men were under the episcopal guidance of Asbury and McKendree; leaders worthy to command such a host." [14] Asbury made through all these years, down to within four or five months of his death, his annual visit to the West; but, as now in all other parts of the country, his records give us hardly any available facts. He still endured there many hardships, especially in crossing the mountains; but the flood of emigration had borne along hundreds of excellent Methodist families, with whom he had been familiar in the East, and who hailed his coming in the wilderness, often with tears, sometimes with the wildest delight. "Thus," he wrote there in 1805, "our people are scattered abroad; but, thank the Lord! they are still in the fold, and on their way to glory." In Kentucky, the same year, he writes, "We meet crowds directing their march to the fertile West. Their sufferings for the present are great; but they are going to present abundance and future wealth for their children. In ten years, I think, the new state will be one of the most flourishing in the Union." He says, in this visit, "Sure I am that nothing short of the welfare of immortal souls and my sense of duty could be inducement enough for me to visit the West so often. O the road, the hills, the rocks, the rivers, the want of water even to drink; the time for secret prayer hardly to be stolen, and the place scarcely to be had! My mind, nevertheless, has been kept in peace."

He rejoiced at the introduction of the camp-meeting, as peculiarly suited to the wants of these new regions. It gave him immense congregations, and added the people to the Church by thousands. In 1809 he says "it appears that the bishops will hold one in every district;" but the presiding elders held many more. The same year there were seventeen on Miami District, as many on that of Indiana, and almost every district had two or more. At one of them the bishop wrote, "I cannot say how I felt, nor how near heaven. I must take the field!" Again he exclaims, "I pray God that there may be twenty camp-meetings a week, and wonderful seasons of the Lord in all directions." "More of camp-meeting!" he again writes; "I hear and see the great effects produced by them." In his last western tour (1815) he says: "My soul is blessed with continual consolation and peace in all my great weakness of body, labor, and crowds of company. I am a debtor to the whole continent, but more especially to the northeast and southwest. It is there I usually gain health, and generally lose it in the south and center. I have visited the South thirty times in thirty-one years. I wish to visit Mississippi, but am resigned." He was too feeble in health to go thither, but would have gone had not the preachers at the Conference, who knew the sickliness of the Southern Mississippi, had the kindness and self-denial to remonstrate against his purpose. In September of this year, while at Cincinnati, he had "a long and earnest talk" with McKendree "about the affairs of the Church" and his own prospects. "I told him," he adds, "that the western part of the empire would be the glory of America for the poor and pious; that it ought to be marked out for five Conferences, to wit: Ohio, Kentucky, Holston, Mississippi, and Missouri; in doing which, as well as I was able, I traced out lines and boundaries. I told him that having passed the first allotted period, (seventy years,) and being, as he knew, out of health, it could not be expected I could visit the extremities every year, sitting in eight, it might be twelve, Conferences, and traveling six thousand miles in eight months." He feels the approaches of his "great change," but offers to travel and work on, as he might have ability. The news of Coke's death reminds him impressively that he too must soon depart; and in the next month, while attending the Conference, he perceives distinctly that his work is about done, and resigns himself without sadness to his fate. "I ordained the deacons," he writes, "and preached a sermon, in which Dr. Coke was remembered. My eyes fail. I will resign the stations to Bishop McKendree, I will take away my feet." He reviews, but with a glance, the past, and turns his look still forward with joy. "It is my fifty-fifth year of ministry, and forty-fifth year of labor in America. My mind enjoys great peace and divine consolation. Whether health, life, or death, good is the will of the Lord. I will trust him; yea, and will praise him: he is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.' Glory! glory! glory!"

He journeyed on, still preaching almost daily, but failing fast, till at last, resolved to die in the field of his long and glorious warfare, he had to be carried into the pulpit, and, in about five months after this entry in his journal, was borne in the arms of his traveling companion from the last one he occupied, when "unable either to walk or stand," and in seven days ceased at once to work and live."

With such men, led by such commanders, we are not surprised that western Methodism triumphed all over the settled regions of the Mississippi Valley; that the one Western Conference with which we began this period had increased to five by its close, each of them bearing the names of now mighty states — Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and Mississippi that its six presiding elders' districts were now twenty-seven, many of them individually comprehending the territory of a modern Conference; that its thirty-nine circuits were now two hundred, striking the waters of the great lakes on the north, and of the Gulf of Mexico on the south, winding among the Allegheny fastnesses on the East, and threading the Indian trails to the farthest log-cabins on the West; and that its seventy-two preachers had increased to three hundred and forty, and its communicants from fifteen thousand three hundred and fifteen to ninety-eight thousand six hundred and forty-two. [15] Largely more than one third of both the ministry and membership of American Methodism was now within the Valley of the Mississippi. Western Methodism had now also its Book Concern at Cincinnati, with Martin Ruter, from New England, at its head.

It was a powerful "temperance" organization, battling with the most menacing vice of that new country. It was also decidedly and practically an anti-slavery society. I have cited some of its anti-slavery records; one of these documents (the original manuscript of which now lies under my eye) is the "Address from the Quarterly Meeting Conference, in Livingston Circuit, Kentucky, to the Bishops and Members of the Western Conference," 1806, signed by McKendree and James T. White. It reads like a modern "radical" production: "Isaiah saith, 'Undo the heavy burdens, let the oppressed go free; break every yoke, and thou shalt be like a watered garden, a spring of water which faileth not; yea, thou shalt be the restorer of the paths to walk in.' This day our official brethren voluntarily submitted all their slaves to the judgment of the Conference, whether bought with their money before or after Joining society, given or born in their houses, and we thereby had the unspeakable pleasure of decreeing salvation from slavery in favor of twenty-two immortal souls." It proceeds to state examples. William Code gave up thirteen; Josiah Ramsey "offered up six on the altar of love;" James T. White one, "which was his all." Another case is deferred to the next meeting, and it is added that "when this is done we shall, as far as we know, be free from the stain of blood in our official department. Glory, halleluiah! Praise ye the Lord!" "If it is consistent with your authority, and it seemeth good unto you, we should be glad of liberty to exclude buying and selling [of slaves] from our Church, and to require of all slave-holders who may hereafter become members of the Church, to submit their slaves to the judgment of the Conference," etc.

Similar memorials were sent from other quarterly Conferences to the Western Conference, and at the session of 1808, held at "Liberty Hill," Tenn., and comprising about fifty preachers, Burke read such petitions from Hinkstone and Limestone Circuits, and also "an Address" to the Annual Conference, "stating the necessity of a rule on the subject of buying and selling slaves, signed by James Gwyn." Collins and Parker moved "that the subject of slavery be considered, and some decisive rule made on that subject." The Conference appointed Sale, Lakin, and Burke to "draft a rule on the subject." Their report was adopted, subjecting to trial in the quarterly Conference, and to expulsion from the Church, any member who should buy or sell a slave, except in a clear case of humanity. Asbury and McKendree were both present, and both signed these proceedings, McKendree having been elected bishop, a few months previous, by the General Conference. We trace this determined anti-slavery sentiment for years in the West. As early as 1805 Sale wrote from Lexington Circuit, Ky.: "My soul still abhors the infernal practice of slavery a much or more than ever. My wife hates the nefarious practice. In this we are congenial in sentiment. Our possessions are in Ohio state, where the air is not contaminated with slavery. I travel this year in Kentucky. A few days past I wrote a bill of emancipation to have six set at liberty. The man promised me to have it recorded as soon as possible. I anticipate the time when God shall deliver his Church from oppression." Such may be said to have been the general sentiment of the western itinerants of these days of primitive purity and power. In 1816 the Tennessee Conference, assembled at Bethlehem, affirmed, "We most sincerely declare that, in our opinion, slavery is a moral evil." It regretted the civil laws which restricted its ability to act against the evil, "and remove the curse from the Church of God," and passed resolutions against it. At its preceding session it expelled from the Church Joseph Bryant for buying a Negro. [16]

The numerical growth of western Methodism in these years would be incredible did we not remember that emigration was now sweeping like an inundation down the western slopes of the Alleghenies, and bearing along thousands of eastern Methodists to the new ultramontane circuits. The camp-meeting, now almost everywhere in vogue, kept nearly all the settled parts of the valley of the Mississippi in religious excitement, and afforded thousands after thousands of additions to the Churches. But these great forest gatherings, apparently supplying a necessity of the country, were at last found to be attended with serious evils. The prolonged and intense excitement which accompanied them produced a singular physical effect, known through the West as the "Jerks." They became epidemic from Michigan to Louisiana. The great "revival," which, beginning in 1800, lasted for some years, and pervaded the entire country, was at last quite generally characterized by this "physical phenomenon." We have seen, by Finley's account, the extraordinary scenes of the "Cane Ridge camp-meeting," where twenty thousand people were gathered, and hundreds smitten to the ground at one time. In another work [17] I have discussed this curious subject, and suggested its probable scientific solution. I have shown that the "Jerks" were rapid contortions, which seemed always to be the effect, direct or indirect, of religious causes, yet affected not only religious, but often the most irreligious minds. Violent opposers were sometimes seized by them; men with imprecations upon their lips were suddenly smitten with them. Drunkards, attempting to drown the effect by liquors, could not hold the bottle to their lips; their convulsed arms would drop it, or shiver it against the surrounding trees. Horsemen, charging in upon camp-meetings to disperse them, were arrested by the strange affection at the very boundaries of the worshipping circles, sometimes struck from their saddles as if by a flash of lightning, and were the more violently shaken the more they endeavored to resist the inexplicable power. "If they would not strive against it, but pray in good earnest, the jerking would usually abate," says Cartwright, who has seen more than five hundred persons "jerking" at one time in his large congregations. The bonnets, caps, and combs of women would fly off; and so violent were the motions of their heads that "their long hair cracked almost as loudly as a wagoner's whip." Thoughtful men became alarmed at these signs, especially when they saw them spreading over most of the new states and territories. Infidels and scorners could hardly dare to oppose them, for they themselves were often seized by the mysterious affection, while their arguments or jests were but half uttered, and drunken revilers were smitten by it when alluding to it in their carousals in bar-rooms. Many were the theories proposed for its explanation among Presbyterians and Methodists, by whose joint agency it began. Some supposed it to be a demoniacal effect designed to disparage religion; others believed it to be a demonstration of the Spirit of God, and promoted it; others pronounced it a morbid physical affection, a species of catalepsy, and no argument for or against religion, but the result of extreme excitement, and therefore justifying more moderate measures; while still others, unable to explain it, believed that, whether in itself good or evil, it was providentially permitted as a means of directing universally the attention of the western population to the consideration of religious subjects. Camp-meetings began, however, to fall into disfavor. For some years there were few if any held in Kentucky; but being still deemed a great convenience for the dispersed population, they were restored with improved order. State legislatures enacted, at the instance of the Methodists, good laws for them, and they have continued to be a sort of American "institution" — summer religious festivals, not only in the West, but in all parts of the nation.

I have already had occasion to notice the deaths of some of the most prominent itinerants of the West. Besides these, the obituary of the Minutes commemorates William Lotspeich, a German, born in Virginia, who, without extraordinary abilities, was a sound, studious, and useful preacher, and, from 1803 to 1813, traveled in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio, and died in the latter year, saying, "Tell my old friends all is well, all is well." George Askin, an Irishman, began to travel in 1801, labored successfully in Western Pennsylvania, Western Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio, and expired in 1816, exclaiming, "My God is mine, and I am his. I have been in the dark mountains, but King Jesus has given me complete victory. Glory be to God!" Hezekiah Harriman, of Baltimore, joined the itinerancy in 1795, labored in Western Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, and Kentucky down to 1803, when he was sent to help Gibson in the Natchez country, and arrived in time to attend him in death. In 1805 Harriman himself was diseased by the climate, and had to embark from New Orleans for Philadeiphia. He died on Baltimore Circuit in 1807, "testifying that he had no fear of death."

Toward the end of this period western Methodism, essentially a system of missionary evangelization, became more distinctively missionary, by turning its attention to the aborigines, thereby prompting at last the organization of the Missionary Society of the Church. Remarkably providential events gave it this new direction. While Marcus Lindsey was preaching on a Sabbath, in 1815, in Marietta, Ohio, a Negro addicted to drunkenness, and on his way to the river at the time to drown himself, heard the voice of the itinerant, went to the door of the Church, and, after listening to the sermon, returned home with an awakened conscience. On the next Sunday he joined the society, and his neighbors soon saw that he was indeed a regenerated man. He endeavored, in a humble way, to do good, and resolved at last to go among the Indian tribes a witness for the gospel. He could read, and was a superior singer. With his Bible and hymn-book he traveled to the Delawares, on the Muskingum, thence to a tribe near Pipetown, on the Sandusky, thence to another tribe on the Upper Sandusky. In some places he was well received, in others fiercely repelled, and in peril of martyrdom by the tomahawk; but he usually allayed the violence of the savages by his melodious hymns, or by falling on his knees in prayer, an attitude which the Indians revered with wondering awe. On the Upper Sandusky he found, among the wigwams of the Wyandottes, a captive Negro, Jonathan Pointer, who had been taken by them in Virginia when a child, and who could act as his interpreter. His first congregation consisted only of an old Indian man, "Big Tree," and an aged Indian woman, named Mary. [18] But he soon had the whole clan under his influence, and thus went forth, from the first settlement in the Northwestern Territory, the first American Methodist "missionary," John Stewart, and he an African, the founder of that series of aboriginal missions which has since been extended over most of the Indian countries, which has rescued, amid the general decline of the tribes, thousands of immortal souls, and which opened the whole "missionary" career of the denomination.

These extraordinary facts excited no little interest in the western Churches. Assistance was bountifully sent to Stewart and his converts; Jane Trimble especially gave them her sympathies and aid. In 1819 the Ohio Conference adopted the mission, and sent James Montgomery as Stewart's colleague, both being under the presiding eldership of Finley. A school was established by the aid of the national government. Finley, Elliott, Gilruth, Henkle, and many other preachers, labored among the scattered communities of the tribe. Stewart was made a local preacher, and died in the faith in 1823. Converted Wyandottes bore, in 1820, the news of their evangelization to a portion of their tribe, near Fort Maiden, in Canada; two Indian preachers went thither, converts were multiplied, and, twelve years later, there were nine aboriginal missionary stations in Upper Canada, two thousand adult Indians, and four hundred youths were receiving instruction in eleven schools, and the names of John Sunday, Peter Jones, and other native evangelists, became eminent in the Church and in Europe. [19] The labors of Stewart and his white colleagues continued to prosper greatly. A heroic woman, Harriet Stubbs, sister-in-law of Judge McLean, went to their aid as teacher of Indian girls. "She possessed," says Finley, "more courage and fortitude than any one of her age and sex that I have been acquainted with. In a short time the intrepid female missionary was the idol of the whole nation. They looked upon her as an angel-messenger sent from the spirit land to teach them the way to heaven. They called her the 'pretty redbird,' and were only happy in the light of her smiles. This most amiable young lady took charge of the Indian girls, and began to teach them their letters, and infuse into them her own sweet and happy spirit." It was not long before five leading chiefs, Big Tree, Between-the-Logs, Mononcue, Hicks, and Peacock, joined the Church. Big Tree was the first convert of his tribe. Between-the-Logs became a powerful preacher; but Mononcue excelled him in the peculiar aboriginal eloquence, and "was," says Finley, "a son of thunder." All these, and hundreds more, after useful lives, died in the faith, but not till they saw Methodist missions established among their people from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. In about three years after Stewart went, solitary and unsupported, on his mission, the "Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church" arose. Its necessity had become obvious. It threw its protecting arms around all the Indian missions, and has since reached them out, with the gospel of peace, to nearly all the ends of the earth.

In re-entering the Valley of the Mississippi, at the beginning of this period, I said that we were descending again the western slope of the Alleghenies to witness marvels hardly paralleled in ecclesiastical history. I have given but the outlines of facts which would fill volumes, yet are they indeed wonders, of character, labor, travel, suffering, and success. And their results, as witnessed in our day, justify the importance here given them. The men who were chief actors in these strange scenes saw in them "signs and wonders," but hardly dared to estimate their full significance; we now see that they were constructing one of the mightiest religious empires of our planet. Half the Methodism, nearly half the entire Protestantism of the new world, lies now beyond the Alleghenies. Strenuous with life and energies, boundless in resources, continually rearing churches, academies, colleges, publishing houses, and, above all, noble men and women, this "great West," for which Methodism showed such a wise prescience, and heroic devotion, seems destined soon to be the fountainhead, the reservoir, not only of material, but of moral resources for the western hemisphere, if not indeed for the whole earth.

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ENDNOTES

1 Bishop McTyeire's Sketch of Nolley, in "Biographical Sketches," p. 264.

2 Biographical Sketches, p. 266.

3 Methodist preachers generally in the South, in these early days, instructed the Negroes at night, as the latter were kept hard at work during the day. Many of them perished by this toil, superannuated to their daily preaching to the whites.

4 Bishop McTyeire.

5 Sprague, p. 441.

6 Minutes of 1816, and Finley's "Autobiography," p. 342.

7 Bishop McTyeire.

8 Ebenezar Hearn, (one of his successors there,) in Sprague, p. 443.

9 "Having preached my last sermon in St. Mary's courthouse, La., on leaving I observed a stir among the slaves: they were making up a donation for me. It was gracefully presented, and amounted to fifty cents. Small as it was, it has never been forgotten." — Letter to the Author.

10 Rev. Dr. Drake, "Biographical Sketches," etc., p. 238. It should be stated, however, that the Conference was, de facto, formed as early as 1813. The General Conference of 1812 authorized its organization "whenever it should seem expedient;" and as, during the war, from 1812 to 1815, the preachers could not pass through the Indian country to the Tennessee Conference, they "assembled on the first of November, 1818, at the residence of Newit Trick, a local preacher, living near Spring Hill Church, in Jefferson County, Mississippi, and organized themselves into a quasi Conference. This first informal Conference was composed of Samuel Sellers, Miles Harper, Lewis Hobbs, Thomas Griffin, John S. Ford, William Winans, Richard Nolley, and John Shrock. William Winans was elected secretary, and the business was conducted in regular order. Three other similar sessions were held without a bishop, at which they received and elected preachers to orders, passed upon each other's character, collected their statistics, planned their work, assigned the preachers to their fields of labor, and then sent their minutes to the Tennessee Conference for approval, in order to their incorporation in the general Minute." — Rev. J. G. Jones in New Orleans Christian Advocate.

11 Rev. Dr. Drake, Annals of South. Meth., 1856, p. 265.

12 Bishop Andrew, in Sprague, p. 121.

13 Rev. Dr. McFerrin, in Sprague, p. 211.

14 Roberts had hardly yet begun his episcopal travels in the West, his first duties being in the East.

15 I must remind the reader that I follow not the geography of the Church, but the natural geography of the country, in these as in all other estimates.

16 See extracts from the "Journal of the Western Conference," by Bishop Morris, in the Western Christian Advocate, January, 1851. The original "Address" of Livingston Circuit belongs to the invaluable collections of Rev. Mr. De Hass, of Washington City, D. C.

17 History of the Religious Movement of the Eighteenth Century, called Methodism," etc., vol. ii, p. 425, where I attempt to explain "these physical phenomena of religious excitement," and give the opinion of the best Methodist authorities respecting them. Compare also the present work vol. i, pp. 261, 382, 404.

18 Finley's "Sketches," p. 391.

19 Strickland's "History of the Missions of the M. E. Church," p. 73. New York, 1854.

hrough the Indian country to the Tennessee Conference, they "assembled on the first of November, 1818, at the residence of Newit Trick, a local preacher, living near Spring Hill Church, in Jefferson County, Mississippi, and organized themselves into a quasi Conference. This first informal Conference was composed of Samuel Sellers, Miles Harper, Lewis Hobbs, Thomas Griffin, John S. Ford, William Winans, Richard Nolley, and John Shrock. William Winans was elected secretary, and the business was conducted in regular order. Three other similar sessions were held without a bishop, at which they received and elected preachers to orders, passed upon each other's character, collected their statistics, planned their work, assigned the preachers to their fields of labor, and then sent their minutes to the Tennessee Conference for approval, in order to their incorporation in the general Minute." — Rev. J. G. Jones in New Orleans Christian Advocate.

11 Rev. Dr. Drake, Annals of South. Meth., 1856, p. 265.

12 Bishop Andrew, in Sprague, p. 121.

13 Rev. Dr. McFerrin, in Sprague, p. 211.

14 Roberts had hardly yet begun his episcopal travels in the West, his first duties being in the East.

15 I must remind the reader that I follow not the geography of the Church, but the natural geography of the country, in these as in all other estimates.

16 See extracts from the "Journal of the Western Conference," by Bishop Morris, in the Western Christian Advocate, January, 1851. The original "Address" of Livingston Circuit belongs to the invaluable collections of Rev. Mr. De Hass, of Washington City, D. C.

17 History of the Religious Movement of the Eighteenth Century, called Methodism," etc., vol. ii, p. 425, where I attempt to explain "these physical phenomena of religious excitement," and give the opinion of the best Methodist authorities respecting them. Compare also the present work vol. i, pp. 261, 382, 404.

18 Finley's "Sketches," p. 391.

19 Strickland's "History of the Missions of the M. E. Church," p. 73. New York, 1854.

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