Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made Part 31

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

PETER CARTWRIGHT.

One of the most remarkable men in the American ministry is PETER CARTWRIGHT, the "Backwoods Preacher." Sixty-seven years of ministerial labors have pa.s.sed over his head, and yet he still continues in the field in which he has done such good service, and retains all the popularity and much of the fire of his younger days.

He was born in Amherst County, Virginia, on the 1st of September, 1785.

His father had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War, and his mother was an orphan. Shortly after the close of the war, the Cartwrights removed from Virginia to Kentucky, which was then an almost unbroken wilderness. The journey was accompanied with considerable danger, as the Indians were not yet driven west of the Ohio, but the family reached their destination in safety. For two years they lived on a rented farm in Lincoln County, Kentucky, and at the end of that time removed to what was called the Green River Country, and settled in Logan County, nine miles south of Russellville, the county seat, and within one mile of the State line of Tennessee.

The portion of Logan County in which young Cartwright's childhood and youth were pa.s.sed was the very last place one Would have cared to bring up a candidate for the ministry. It was called "Rogue's Harbor," and was thickly settled with fugitives from justice from all parts of the Union.

They actually const.i.tuted a majority of the inhabitants of the district, and when the respectable citizens sought to bring them to justice they readily "swore each other clear," and thus set the law at defiance. They carried on such a course of outrage and violence that the respectable citizens were at length compelled to combine for defence against them by means of an organization known as the Regulators. Several fierce encounters took place between the desperadoes and the Regulators, in which many lives were lost, before the supremacy of the law was established.

"When my lather settled in Logan County," says Mr. Cartwright, "there was not a newspaper printed South of Green River, no mill short of forty miles, and no schools worth the name. Sunday was a day set apart for hunting, fishing, horse-racing, card-playing, b.a.l.l.s, dances, and all kinds of jollity and mirth. We killed our meat out in the woods, wild, and beat our meal and hominy with a pestle and mortar. We stretched a deer-skin over a hoop, burned holes in it with the p.r.o.ngs of a fork, sifted our meal, baked our bread, eat it, and it was first-rate eating, too. We raised, or gathered out of the woods, our own tea. We had sage, bohea, cross-vine, spice, and sa.s.safras teas in abundance. As for coffee, I am not sure that I ever smelled it for ten years. We made our sugar out of the water of the maple-tree, and our mola.s.ses, too. These were great luxuries in those days. We raised our own cotton and flax. We water-rotted our flax, broke it by hand, scutched it, picked the seed out of the cotton with our fingers; our mothers and sisters carded, spun, and wove it into cloth, and they cut and made our garments and bed-clothes, etc. And when we got on a new suit thus manufactured, and sallied out into company, we thought ourselves as _big as any body_."

Young Peter grew up in this rough country with a const.i.tution of iron, and a fair share of Western courage, independence, and energy. He was sent by his father to a neighboring school, but the teacher was an indifferent one, and he learned merely to read and write and cipher imperfectly.

He was a "wild, wicked boy," he tells us, and grew up to delight in horse-racing, card-playing, and dancing. His father seems to have enjoyed having so dashing a son, but his mother, who was a pious woman, took his course seriously to heart, and wept and prayed over her boy as only a Christian mother can. She often talked to him, and moved him so deeply that he frequently vowed to lead a better life; but his pleasures were too tempting, and he fell back again into his old habits. His father presented him with a race-horse and a pack of cards, and he became known among his youthful companions as one of the most fearless riders and the luckiest fellow at cards in the county. The good mother wept and prayed all the more, and the boy hid his cards from her to keep her from burning them.

In 1801, when he was sixteen years old, a change came over him. He had been out with his father and brother to attend a wedding in the neighborhood. The affair was conducted with all the uproarious merriment incident to those days, and when Peter returned home and began to think over it, he felt condemned at having pa.s.sed his time in such a manner.

"My mother was in bed," says he. "It seemed to me, all of a sudden, my blood rushed to my head, my heart palpitated, in a few minutes I turned blind, an awful impression rested on my mind that death had come to me and I was unprepared to die. I fell on my knees and began to ask G.o.d to have mercy on me. My mother sprang from her bed, and was soon on her knees by my side, praying for me, and exhorting me to look to Christ for mercy, and then and there I promised the Lord if he would spare me I would seek and serve Him, and I never fully broke that promise. My mother prayed for me a long time. At length we lay down, but there was little sleep for me. Next morning I rose, feeling wretched beyond expression. I tried to read in the Testament, and retired many times to secret prayer through the day, but found no relief. I gave up my race-horse to my father and requested him to sell him. I went and brought my pack of cards and gave them to mother, who threw them into the fire, and they were consumed. I fasted, watched, and prayed, and engaged in regular reading of the Testament. I was so distressed and miserable that I was incapable of any regular business."

Several months pa.s.sed away, during which time Peter had seasons of comfort and hopes of forgiveness, but during the greater portion he was wretched and miserable, filled with such a fear of the devil that he was almost convinced that Satan was really present with him to keep him from G.o.d. A camp-meeting, held in the vicinity of his father's house, in the spring of 1801, completed his conversion and gave him peace.

"To this meeting," says he, "I repaired a guilty, wretched sinner. On the Sat.u.r.day evening of said meeting I went, with weeping mult.i.tudes, and bowed before the stand, and earnestly prayed for mercy. In the midst of a solemn struggle of soul, an impression was made on my mind as though a voice said to me: 'Thy sins are all forgiven thee,' Divine light flashed all around me, unspeakable joy sprang up in my soul. I rose to my feet, opened my eyes, and it really seemed to me as if I was in heaven; the trees, the leaves on them, and every thing seemed, and I really thought were, praising G.o.d. My mother raised the shout, my Christian friends crowded around me and joined me in praising G.o.d.... I have never doubted that the Lord did, then and there, forgive my sins and give me religion." He went on his way rejoicing, and in June, 1801, was formally received into the Methodist Episcopal Church. In May, 1802, he was appointed an exhorter. He shrank from accepting the position, as he distrusted his own abilities, but finally yielded to his presiding elder's wishes and entered upon his work. In the fall of that year his parents removed to Lewiston County, toward the mouth of the c.u.mberland River.

Although he was but eighteen years old, his presiding elder had detected in him signs of unusual promise, and had resolved to bring him into active labor for the Church at once, and accordingly, upon his departure for his new home, Peter was given authority to lay out and organize a new circuit, the plan of which he was to submit to the presiding elder for approval. The boy hesitated, frightened by the magnitude of the task, but being encouraged by his superiors, accepted the trust, and thus began his labors as a preacher of the Word. Upon reaching his new home, he attended a tolerably good school in the vicinity, hoping to acquire a better education, but the pupils and teacher persecuted him so sorely that he was obliged to withdraw. Determining to lose no time in waiting for an education, he at once began the work of preaching. Being possessed of strong natural sense, a ready wit, and being thoroughly imbued with the spirit of frontier life, he was just the man to carry the Gospel home to the hearts of the rude pioneers of the great West.

His manner was that of a backwoodsman, and he had no city airs and graces to offend the plain, rough people to whom he preached. He was emphatically one of them. He offered them the plain Gospel, and gave theological theories a wide berth.

His plan of operations was adapted to the rudest intellect. It was to thunder the terrors of the law into the ears of his converts, or, in his own words, to "shake them over h.e.l.l until they smelt brimstone right strong," and make them see the fearful condition in which they lay by reason of their sin. Man was to him a wretched, degraded creature, and the only way to bring him to G.o.d was to drive him there by the terrors of the law. Our preacher had very little faith in the quieter, more persuasive means of grace. His first effort was to give the souls of his hearers a good shaking up, bring them face to face with h.e.l.l and its torments, and then, having forced them to flee from the wrath to come, to trust to their future Christian experience for the means of acquiring a knowledge of the tender mercies of the Saviour. It must be confessed that this was the only plan open to him in the field in which he labored. The people to whom he preached were a rude, rough set, mainly ignorant and superst.i.tious, and many of them sunk in the depths of drunkenness and viciousness. The Western country was almost a wilderness. Vast forests and boundless prairies lay on every hand, with but here and there a clearing with a solitary log cabin in it, or but two or three at the most. The people lived in the most perfect solitude, rarely seeing any but the members of their own households. Solitude and danger made them superst.i.tious, and the absence of schools kept them in ignorance. They drank to keep off the blues, and when they came together for amus.e.m.e.nt they made the most of their opportunities, and plunged into the most violent sports, which were not always kept within the bounds of propriety. Churches were as scarce as schools, and until the Methodist circuit riders made their appearance in the West, the people were little better than heathen. The law had scarcely any hold upon these frontiersmen. They were wild and untamed, and personal freedom was kept in restraint mainly by the law of personal accountability. They were generous and improvident, frank, fearless, easy-going, and filled with an intense scorn for every thing that smacked of Eastern refinement or city life. They were proud of their buckskin and linsey-woolsey clothes, their squirrel caps, and their h.o.r.n.y hands and rough faces.

They would have been miserable in a city mansion, but they were lords and kings in their log-cabins. To have sent a preacher bred in the learned schools of New England to such a people would have been folly.

The smooth cadences, the polished gestures, and, above all, the ma.n.u.script sermon of a Boston divine, would have disgusted the men and women of the frontier. What cared they for predestination or free-will, or for any of the dogmas of the schools? They wanted to hear the simple, fundamental truths of the Gospel, and they wanted to hear them from a man of their own stamp. They wanted a "fire and brimstone" preacher, one whose fiery eloquence could stir the very depths of their souls, and set their simple imaginations all ablaze; one who could shout and sing with true Western abandon; who could preach in his shirt-sleeves, sleep with them on the bare ground, brave all the dangers of a frontier life, and, if necessary, thrash any one who dared to insult him. Such was the man for these st.u.r.dy, simple Western folk, and such a man they found in Peter Cartwright.

Peter went at the task before him with a will. The country being spa.r.s.ely settled, people had to travel a long way to get to church, and it became a matter of expediency for the clergy to hold religious gatherings at stated points, and to continue them for several days, so that those who desired to attend might be able to avoid the necessity of going home every evening and coming back next day. Church edifices being scarce, these meetings were held in the woods, and a large encampment was formed by the people in attendance. This was the origin of the camp-meeting system, which for many years was the only effective way of spreading the Gospel in the West. It was at a camp-meeting that Peter obtained religion, and he has ever since been a zealous advocate of, and a hard worker at, them. From the first he was successful. The fame of the "boy preacher" went abroad into all the land, and people came in to the camp from a hundred miles around to hear him. He had little education, but he knew his Bible thoroughly, and was a ready speaker, and, above all, he knew how to deal with the people to whom he preached.

He made many converts, and from the first took rank as the most popular preacher in the West.

Peter not only believed in the overruling power of G.o.d, but he was firmly convinced of the active and personal agency of the devil in human affairs. Many of the follies and faults of the people around him took place, he averred, because they were possessed of devils. Each camp-meeting was to him a campaign against Satan, and in his opinion Satan never failed to make a good fight for his kingdom. Certainly some very singular things did occur at the meetings at which he was present, and, naturally, perhaps, some persons began to believe that Peter Cartwright possessed supernatural powers. The following incident, related by him, not only explains some of the phenomena to which I allude, but also the manner in which he was regarded by some of the unconverted:

"A new exercise broke out among us, called the 'jerks,' which was overwhelming in its effects upon the bodies and minds of the people. No matter whether they were saints or sinners, they would be taken under a warm song or sermon, and seized with a convulsive jerking all over, which they could not by any possibility avoid, and the more they resisted, the more they jerked. If they would not strive against it, and pray in good earnest, the jerking would usually abate. I have seen more than five hundred persons jerking at one time in my large congregations. Most usually persons taken with the jerks, to obtain relief, as they said, would rise up and dance. Some would run, but could not get away. Some would resist; on such the jerks were very severe.

"To see those proud young gentlemen and young ladies, dressed in their silks, jewelry, and prunella, from top to toe, take the jerks, would often excite my risibilities. The first jerk or so you would see their fine bonnets, caps, and combs fly, and so sudden would be the jerking of the head that their long, loose hair would crack almost as loud as a wagoner's whip.

"At one of my appointments, in 1804, there was a very large congregation turned out to hear the 'Kentucky boy,' as they called me. Among the rest there were two very finely dressed, fashionable young ladies, attended by two brothers with loaded horsewhips. Although the house was large, it was crowded. The two young ladies, coming in late, took their seats near where I stood, and their two brothers stood in the door. I was a little unwell, and I had a phial of peppermint in my pocket. Before I commenced preaching I took out my phial and swallowed a little of the peppermint.

While I was preaching the congregation was melted into tears. The two young gentlemen moved off to the yard fence, and both the young ladies took the jerks, and they were greatly mortified about it....

"As I dismissed the a.s.sembly, a man stepped up to me and warned me to be on my guard, for he had heard the two brothers swear they would horsewhip me when meeting was out for giving their sisters the jerks.

'Well,' said I, 'I'll see to that.'

"I went out and said to the young men that I understood they intended to horsewhip me for giving their sisters the jerks. One replied that he did. I undertook to expostulate with him on the absurdity of the charge against me, but he swore I need not deny it, for he had seen me take out a phial in which I carried some truck that gave his sisters the jerks.

As quick as thought came into my mind how I would get clear of my whipping, and, jerking out the peppermint phial, said I, 'Yes; if I gave your sisters the jerks I'll give them to you,' In a moment I saw he was scared. I moved toward him, he backed, I advanced, and he wheeled and ran, warning me not to come near him or he would kill me. It raised the laugh on him, and I escaped my whipping....

"I always looked upon the jerks as a judgment sent from G.o.d, first, to bring sinners to repentance, and, secondly, that G.o.d could work with or without means, and that he could work over and above means and do whatsoever seemeth him good to the glory of his grace and the salvation of the world. There is no doubt in my mind that, with weak-minded, ignorant, and superst.i.tious persons, there was a great deal of sympathetic feeling with many that claimed to be under the influence of this jerking exercise, and yet with many it was perfectly involuntary.

It was on all occasions my practice to recommend fervent prayer as a remedy, and it almost universally proved an effectual antidote."

The excitement of the religious revivals plunged many of the people into excesses. They prophesied, dreamed dreams, and saw visions, and troubled the young preacher exceedingly, but he set his face sternly against all such disorders, and p.r.o.nounced their visions and messages to be from the devil. One of these dreamers came to him one day and told him he had a message from heaven for him.

"Well," said Cartwright, "what is it?"

"It has been revealed to me," said the fellow, "that you are never to die, but are to live forever."

"Who revealed that to you?"

"An angel."

"Did you see him?" asked Cartwright, dryly.

"O, yes; he was a beautiful, white, shining being."

"Did you smell him?" asked Peter, bluntly.

The man looked at him in amazement, and the preacher continued, sternly, "Well, did the angel you saw smell of brimstone? He must have smelled of brimstone, for he was from a region that burns with fire and brimstone, and consequently from h.e.l.l, for he revealed a great lie to you if he told you I was to live forever."

The dreamer turned off abruptly, and disappeared amidst the jeers of the crowd that had listened to the conversation.

On the 16th of September, 1806, Mr. Cartwright was ordained a deacon in the Methodist Episcopal Church by Bishop Asbury, and on the 4th of October, 1808, Bishop McKendree ordained him an elder. Upon receiving deacon's orders he was a.s.signed to the Marietta Circuit. His appointment dismayed him. Says he: "It was a poor, hard circuit at that time.

Marietta and the country round were settled at an early day by a colony of Yankees. At the time of my appointment I had never seen a Yankee, and I had heard dismal stories about them. It was said they lived almost entirely on pumpkins, mola.s.ses, fat meat, and bohea tea; moreover, that they could not bear loud and zealous sermons, and they had brought on their learned preachers with them, and they read their sermons and were always criticising us poor backwoods preachers. When my appointment was read out it distressed me greatly. I went to Bishop Asbury and begged him to supply my place and let me go home. The old father took me in his arms and said: 'O, no, my son; go in the name of the Lord. It will make a man of you.'

"Ah, thought I, if this is the way to make men, I do not want to be a man. I cried over it bitterly, and prayed, too. But on I started, cheered by my presiding elder, Brother J. Sale. If I ever saw hard times, surely it was this year; yet many of the people were kind and treated me friendly. I had hard work to keep soul and body together. The first Methodist house I came to the brother was a Universalist. I crossed over the Muskingum River to Marietta. The first Methodist family I stopped with there, the lady was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, but a thorough Universalist. She was a thin-faced, Roman-nosed, loquacious Yankee, glib on the tongue, and you may depend upon it I had a hard race to keep up with her, though I found it a good school, for it set me to reading my Bible. And here permit me to say, of all the isms I ever heard of, they were here. These descendants of the Puritans were generally educated, but their ancestors were rigid predestinarians, and as they were sometimes favored with a little light on their moral powers, and could just 'see men as trees walking,' they jumped into Deism, Universalism, Unitarianism, etc., etc. I verily believe it was the best school I ever entered. They waked me up on all sides; Methodism was feeble, and I had to battle or run, and I resolved on the former."

Just before he was made an elder, Mr. Cartwright left his circuit, and went home on a visit to recruit. He had made a good fight with poverty during his labors, and at the time of his departure for home he was in a condition sufficiently hard to test any man's fort.i.tude. "I had been from my father's house for three years," says he; "was five hundred miles from home, my horse had gone blind, my saddle was worn out, my bridle reins had been eaten up and replaced (after a sort) at least a dozen times, and my clothes had been patched till it was difficult to detect the original. I had concluded to make my way home and get another outfit. I was in Marietta, and had just seventy-five cents in my pocket.

How I would get home and pay my way I could not tell."

He did reach home, however, after many characteristic adventures, and obtained another outfit, and while there he took an important step--he married. "After a mature deliberation and prayer," he says, "I thought it was my duty to marry, and was joined in marriage to Frances Gaines, on the 18th of August, 1808, which was her nineteenth birthday." Peter and his bride knew that a hard life was in store for them, but they felt strong in the love they bore each other. They were simple backwoods folk, and their wants were few. "When I started as a traveling preacher," he said fifty-three years afterward, "a single preacher was allowed to receive eighty dollars per annum if his circuit would give it to him; but single preachers in those days seldom received over thirty or forty dollars, and often much less; and had it not been for a few presents made us by the benevolent friends of the church, and a few dollars we made as marriage fees, we must have suffered much more than we did. But the Lord provided, and, strange as it may appear to the present generation, we got along without starving or going naked." There is something awe-inspiring in the simple trust in G.o.d which this good man displayed in every stage of his life. Once satisfied that he was in the path of duty, he never allowed the future to trouble him. He provided for it as far as he could, and left the rest to the Master whose work he was doing. Poverty and hardship had no terrors for this brave young couple, and it was very far from their thoughts to wait until a better day to marry. They would go out hand in hand into the world and meet their trials together. Children would come, they knew, and those little mouths would have to be fed, but they would be industrious, saving, and patient, and "G.o.d would provide."

Peter Cartwright's mission was to plant the Methodist Episcopal Church in the West as well as to preach the Gospel. For that end he worked and prayed. The Methodist Episcopal Church was his haven of safety. Without, all was storm and darkness; within its fold all was peace and light. He believed his church to be the best door to heaven, if indeed it was not in his estimation the only one. He was a fanatic, pure and simple, as regarded his own denomination, but a fanatic full of high and n.o.ble purposes, and one whose zeal was productive only of good. This fanaticism was necessary to the success of his labors. It was his perfect belief that his was the only church in which sinners could find perfect peace that carried him through the difficulties which encompa.s.sed him. Men were dying all around him, and they must come into his church. They had other denominations close at hand, but they, in his estimation, would not do. The Methodist Episcopal Church was a necessity for sinners, therefore it must be planted in all parts of the land. No sacrifice was too great for the accomplishment of this object. He has lived to see those sacrifices rewarded, to see his church one of the most numerous and powerful religious bodies in the country.

Being so zealous in behalf of his own church, it is not strange that he should have clashed frequently with other denominations. He got along very well with the majority, but with the Baptists and Universalists he was always on the war path. The latter especially excited his uncompromising hostility, and he never failed to attack their doctrines with all his forces wherever he encountered them. "I have thought,"

says he, "and do still think, if I were to set out to form a plan to contravene the laws of G.o.d, to encourage wickedness of all kinds, to corrupt the morals and encourage vice, and crowd h.e.l.l with the lost and the wailings of the d.a.m.ned, the Universalist plan should be the plan, the very plan that I would adopt....

"A few years ago," he continues, "I had a neighbor who professed to be a confirmed Universalist. He contended with me that there was no devil but the evil disposition in man, and that there was no h.e.l.l but the bad feelings that men had when they did wrong: that this was all the punishment any body would suffer. When this neighbor's father lay on his dying bed (a confirmed Universalist, professedly) there was a faithful minister of Christ who believed it his duty to visit this old Universalist, warn him of his danger, and try to awaken his conscience, if not seared, to a just view of his real situation. The minister, however, failed in his faithful attempt and well-meant endeavors, for the old man, then on his dying pillow, was greatly offended at the preacher, and told him that he did not thank him for trying to shake his faith in his dying moments. This neighbor of mine, and son of this old, hardened sinner, was greatly enraged at the preacher, and cursed and abused him in a violent manner. A few days after the demise of the old man, he, in a furious rage, began to abuse and curse the preacher in my presence, and said:

"D---- him; I wish he was in h.e.l.l and the devil had him.'

"I stopped him short by saying, 'Pooh, pooh, man, what are you talking about? There is no h.e.l.l but the bad feelings that a man has when he does wrong, and no devil but the evil disposition that is in man.' Thus answering a fool according to his folly.

"'Well,' said he, 'if there is no h.e.l.l there ought to be, to put such preachers in.'

"'Now, sir,' said I, 'you see the utter untenableness of your creed, for a man even in trying to do good honestly draws down your wrath, and, in a moment, you want a h.e.l.l to put him into and a devil to torment him for giving you an offense, and for doing what no good man ought to be offended about. But G.o.d must be insulted, his name blasphemed, his laws trampled under foot, yet he must have no h.e.l.l to put such a wretch in, no devil to torment him. Now I would be ashamed of myself if I were in your place, and let the seal of truth close my lips forever hereafter.'