PRO-SLAVERY HINDRANCES.
BY ELDER JOHN BOGGS.
Although our dear departed brother, Elder Pardee Butler, was never
classed with the Garrisonian Abolitionists, he began his ministerial
life when the demands of the South were being felt in all the North,
both in church and State. If slavery could not be advocated by the
Northern conscience it must at least be ignored by all candidates for
popular favor. It had divided some of the most popular religious
denominations; and was the most exciting subject of discussion known
to the religious world at the middle of the present century. Among the
Disciples of Christ the slavery question was peculiarly perplexing, as
there was a large per cent, of the membership who were actual
slaveholders, and the leaders among us, although publicly committed
against "_slavery in the abstract_," were endeavoring to soften the
hard features of slavery in the Southern States by arguing that the
relation of master and slave was not sinful _per se_, as it was
recognized and regulated both in the Jewish and Christian scriptures.
Bro. Butler was ordained as a minister of the gospel of Christ, among
the. Disciples, at Sullivan, Ohio, some time in the year 1844, by A.
B. Green and J. H. Jones, at that time two of the most efficient
evangelists in Northern Ohio He had a good conscience, which passed
judgment upon his actions in accordance with the great law of love
inculcated by the Lord himself and his apostles, and he did not allow
the application of any "hot iron" so as to sear it. Although he did not
come in direct antagonism with the pro-slavery power while he labored in
the gospel ministry east of the Missouri River, yet it is evident that
the slavery question was a most important factor in making up his
decision to leave his field of labor in the Military Tract in Illinois,
where he gave up present usefulness and ministerial blessedness for a
prospective missionary field and a humble home for his family. He had
spent four years there in active ministerial labor; and in the second
number of his "Personal Recollections" he calls them "the golden days
of my life!"
That the hand of God directed the footsteps of Pardee Butler to Kansas
just at the time he went there, and to the place where he took a
homestead and improved it, and lived on it with his family for a third
of a century, no one who believes in an overruling providence can for
a moment doubt. At the risk of his life, and at the cost of great
privation in his own person, and that of his wife and children, he
unfurled the blood-stained banner of the cross, and never allowed it
to trail beneath his feet through the long years of "border
ruffianism," and the dark days of detraction and misrepresentation. He
was the man for the hour; while on the one hand he was not forgetful
of the obligations resting upon him to his family--he laid the
foundation for a happy home--on the other hand, he was always ready,
both in season and out of season, at home and abroad, to preach the
unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world. To him
more than to any other human instrumentality is the brotherhood of
Christ's disciples indebted for the early introduction of Christianity
in the now grand State of Kansas; and his name will be honorably and
lovingly remembered by all the good and the true, who shall learn of
his unselfish life and his untiring devotion to the cause of the
Master.
In the summer of 1858, after he had been in the new Territory over
three years, Bro. Butler, in the _Luminary_, writes as follows: "To
teach, discipline, and perfect the churches we have already organized;
to gather into churches the lost sheep of the house of Israel,
scattered over this great wilderness of sin; to watch over those who
are still purposing to tempt its dangers, and to lay broad and deep
the foundations of a future operation and co-operation, that shall
ultimate in spreading the gospel from pole to pole, and across the
great sea to the farthest domicile of man--this is the purpose which
we set before us." This brief quotation shows the broadness and
completeness of the work, as contemplated by him, and which is now
going forward to its accomplishment as never before; and to his almost
alone labors at first the work in Kansas can be legitimately traced.
During this year a Territorial Board was formed, and Bro. Butler was
appointed as their evangelist; and a correspondence was had between
him and the corresponding secretary of the General Missionary Society
in reference to affording aid to the Kansas Board to help sustain him
in his evangelical labors. It was conducted in the most friendly
manner and in a true Christian spirit, until the slavery question came
to the front and prevented the accomplishment of what was hoped for
on the one hand, and contemplated on the other. The following extract
from Bro. Butler's third letter will present the issue in the briefest
manner possible:
DEAR SIR:--You say in letter before me, "It must,
therefore, be distinctly understood that if we embark in a
missionary enterprise in Kansas, this question of slavery
and anti-slavery must be ignored." I respond: This
reformation is pledged before heaven and earth, and under
covenants the most solemn and binding into which men can
enter, to guarantee freedom of thought and speech to our
brotherhood-i--not indeed on subjects purely abstract,
speculative and inoperative, but on Bible
questions--questions which involve the well-being of
humanity. This matter of slavery is a Bible question--a
question of justice between man and man--of mercy and
humanity. It is what Jesus would call one of the weightier
matters of the law, and demands, therefore, a large place
in our investigations.
* * *
The brethren here in Kansas have made no such stipulations
with me They have left me to my own discretion in
preaching the gospel to sinners, and teaching the saints
according to the Bible. They have shown themselves too
magnanimous to impose on my conscience a restriction which
their own manhood would forbid, under similar
circumstances, that they should suffer to be imposed on
themselves.
For myself, I will be no party, now or hereafter, to such
an arrangement as that contemplated in your letter now
before me. I would not make this "Reformation of the
nineteenth century" a withered and blasted trunk,
scattered by the lightnings of heaven, because it took
part with the rich and powerful against the poor and
oppressed, and because we have been recreant to those
maxims of free discussion which we have so ostentatiously
heralded to the world as our cherished principles.
In explanation of the first letter received by Bro. Butler from the
corresponding secretary, a second one was sent, from which it is
necessary to make the following extracts:
I reply, that nothing has been said against teaching a
master his duties according to the Bible, nor (what is
just as important) against teaching servants their duties
to their masters, according to the Bible--according to the
instructions given to evangelists--I. Tim. vi. 1-4. My
remarks, as the whole letter will show, had reference to
the question of slavery _in Kansas_. The forms it takes on
there are very different from the duties masters owe their
servants according to the Bible. It is whether a
slaveholder is necessarily a sinner, unfit for membership
in the Christian Church--a blood-thirsty oppressor, whose
money is the "price of blood," and would "pollute" the
treasury of the Lord, etc. etc. And, on the other hand,
whether American slavery is a divine institution, the
perfection of society for the African race, and essential
to their happiness--while all Abolitionists are fit only
for the madhouse or the penitentiary. These and such like
are the _forms_ the question of slavery assumes in Kansas,
as well as in many of the free States, where there are no
"masters and servants" in that sense to be taught their
duties, in reference to which it was said the question
must be entirely ignored. And we can not consent that on
one side or the other such pleas shall be made under the
sanction of the American Christian Missionary Society.
I did not then, nor do I now, suppose that if you were
employed by the A. C. M. S. to preach the gospel in
Kansas, it would fall to your lot to furnish instructions
to many masters and servants. If in any churches you may
raise up in Kansas--evidently destined to be free--you
find masters and slaves, of course it will be your duty to
instruct them both "according to the Bible." But to
furnish such instruction, and to go through Kansas
lecturing on anti-slavery, or mixing up any pro-slavery or
any anti-slavery theories and dogmas with the gospel, or
to plant churches with the express understanding that no
"master" shall be allowed to have membership in it, are
very different things. And I had this very matter in view
when I wrote to you, for I had some-how heard that the
church of which you were a member was about to take just
such a stand, and I wanted to have it distinctly
understood that so far as action under the direction of
the A. C. M. S. was concerned, all such ultraisms must be
ignored. . . . You felt anxious to have help to preach the
gospel in Kansas. I felt anxious to assist you. I saw
danger in the way, growing out of the fact that I
represent a society whose membership is in the South as
well as in the North, and that some factious ultraists are
constantly on the watch to sow the seeds of discord. I
knew the state of things in Kansas as bearing on the
slavery question. I knew something, too, of your treatment
there, and of your feelings. I saw that if you were
employed to preach there, an effort would be made to
herald it, as in Bro. Beardslee's Case, as an anti-slavery
triumph. This would be unjust to us. And as the practical
question of master and slave does not exist there to any
extent, I spoke of ignoring the question altogether. If
you still insist on the right to urge that question, and
take part in the controversy raging in Kansas, _under the
patronage of the A. C. M. S_., I have only to say it is
outside the objects contemplated in our constitution. But
if you wish simply to preach the gospel and instruct
converts in a knowledge of Christian duties, "according to
the Scriptures," there was certainly no occasion for your
second letter to be written.
To the foregoing a rejoinder was written by Bro. Butler, which closed
the correspondence with the A. C. M. S., and from which the following
extracts are taken, that the readers may understand his position
correctly:
I reply, 1. In your former letter I find no reference to
the _forms _ the agitation of this question assumes in
Kansas. I presume you had not a copy of that letter before
you when you wrote this one. But you do allude to "forms"
the agitation of this question had assumed in Cincinnati,
and in reference to Bro. Beardslee and the Jamaica
mission. I was also instructed that "our missionaries"
must not be ensnared into such utterances as the
_Luminary_ can publish to the world, to add fuel to the
flame. The utterances against which I was guarded _seemed_
to be in Cincinnati rather than in Kansas. I had already
published a piece indicative of my views in the
_Northwestern Christian Magazine_, and that appeared to be
the obnoxious "utterance." 2. You are misinformed relative
to the "forms" the agitation of this question assumes in
Kansas. The question, Shall slaveholders be received as
church members? has hardly been debated at all. 3. Neither
myself nor any person associated with me has at time
proposed to organize a church to exclude slaveholders. 4.
Slaveholders have been members of our churches from the
first day until now. How, then, could I understand you as
referring to anything else than to my own published
Cincinnati utterances?
* * *
As respects slavery, the whole power of the master and the
obligation of the servant is found in the proper meaning
of the words of such precepts as these "Masters, render
unto your servants that which is just and equal;"
"servants, obey your masters," etc. All within such limits
is the doctrine which is according to godliness--all
beyond, whether on the part of the master or the slave,
and which is attempted to be foisted into the church as a
part of the apostolic doctrine, is schismatical, and
essentially fills up the picture drawn by Paul: "If any
man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words,
even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the
doctrine which is according to godliness; he is proud,
knowing nothing'--from such withdraw thyself." In these
precepts no right is given to the masters to buy and sell,
to traffic in slaves; no right to enslave the children,
and the children's children of his servants; no right to
hold them in a relentless bondage which knows no limit but
the grave, and in which the heritage transmitted by the
slave to his children, is a heritage of bondage to all
generations.
On the 26th of August, 1858, the same season that the foregoing
correspondence took place, Bro. Butler wrote to the editor of the
_Christian Luminary_ the following letter, which is given entire, as
showing the exact position which he occupied ministerially at that
time:
OCENA, ATCHISON CO., KAN., Aug. 26, 1858.
DEAR SIR:--Three churches--one meeting at Leavenworth
City, another at Mount Pleasant, Atchison county, and a
third at Pardee, same county--have formed an organization
for the purpose of propagating the gospel in Kansas. For
four months I have been in the employ of these churches.
My first business was to travel over the Territory and
ascertain where we have brethren in sufficient numbers to
make it expedient to organize churches. To that end I have
traveled over that portion of the Territory north of the
Kansas River, and embraced in the counties of Leavenworth,
Atchison, Doniphan, Jefferson, and Calhoun; also, to some
extent south of the Kansas River.
I will not say that this has been the pleasantest labor of
my life. A long and wearisome ride across wide prairies,
under a burning sun, has often been followed by a
fruitless effort to excite interest enough to justify
established preaching. I would not convey the idea that
this region is not full of promise to the missionary,
notwithstanding I am fully persuaded that we are not to
expect such _immediate_ results as have followed my own
labors elsewhere. We must first sow, and then, in due
time, we shall reap, if we faint not.
The M. E. Church reports 120 preachers in Kansas and
Nebraska; the U. B. Church, 9, sustained in part by
contributions from abroad. The Missionary Baptists make
good their right to the name they have chosen, by
sustaining four missionaries. I confess it is a matter of
profound humiliation to me that the demonstration that
ours is primitive apostolic Christianity, is found in the
fact that we can afford but one missionary in Kansas, and
that to his support not one dime has been contributed from
abroad. The brethren in the Territory, under an unexampled
pecuniary pressure, and out of their deep poverty, have
done all that has been done. Two new churches have been
organized--one at Big Springs, Douglas county, numbering
twenty-eight members; the other at Cedar Creek, Jefferson
county, of eleven members. We have also the nucleus of a
congregation at Atchison, and another at Elk City, Calhoun
county. Thus we have in this part of Kansas the foundation
laid for eight churches, all of which are steadily
increasing in numbers; and the brethren composing them, in
all the elements of future growth, and in moral and in
religious excellence, are at par value with the
brotherhood in any of our States or Territories.
If the older churches, blessed with such abundant means,
would aid us in this hour of our need, it is my opinion
they would be no poorer on earth and much richer in
heaven. But whether they aid us or not, I trust we shall
hold our own, and ultimately prove that the weapons of our
warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the
pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and
every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge
of God. We have a number of young preachers, who are
giving promise of future usefulness. Very truly, your
brother,
PARDEE BUTLER.
P. S.--Five persons in this congregation, and one at Big
Springs have been recently added by baptism; also two from
other denominations.
On the 1st day of July, 1859, Bro. Butler made a very interesting
report of his labors, and especially of his tour in several of the
free States--mostly where he had labored in the gospel before his
removal to Kansas. As the document is too long for publication entire
in this volume, only the more important extracts can be given. The
first two paragraphs being only a fuller statement of what is already
written, the first extract will show the voluntary indorsement of Bro.
Butler by the churches for which he had been laboring, as follows:
WHEREAS, Bro. Butler has faithfully and diligently
performed the labor assigned him as our evangelist;
therefore,
_Resolved_, I. That we do most heartily approve of his
labors and general course of conduct during his term of
service. 2. That the officers of this Board be directed to
procure the services of Bro. Butler, or some other
suitable person, to solicit aid in the States for this
society.
Bro. Humber, as president of the Board, did not call it
together to complete the arrangement contemplated. On my
own part, I felt unwilling to importune him. I went on my
tour, therefore, simply under the indorsement and approval
of my own congregation. I left home December 16, 1858, and
returned May 12, 1859. I visited the Military Tract of
Illinois, Northeast Iowa, Southwest Michigan, Central and
Eastern Indiana, and Northern Ohio. The amount of money
realized was $365; expenses, $110, leaving a balance on
hand of $255, as the first installment of the fund of our
begun mission.
Of all the churches in which I sought a hearing only one,
the church at Bedford, Ohio, gave me the cold shoulder. In
response to my request for the privilege of delivering a
lecture before them, in development of our wants and
condition in Kansas, they responded that they considered
it "political," and they had resolved that their house
should not be used for political lectures!.... In all the
localities visited by me, I found the masses of the people
with such convictions as will constrain them to treat
slavery in the United States as a moral evil, and to
patronize only such societies as assume toward it a
similar position. It is asked: What have we to do with
slavery? I reply: We, as Christians, should have nothing
to do with it. But we in Kansas are placed under
compulsion to have something to do with it. We have
slaveholders in our churches; and if the time should come
when there will be no slaves in Kansas, still we have
something to do with it, for within one day's ride of us
in Platte county, Mo., is the largest body of slaveholders
in that State. Discipline is special to each congregation,
but that sense of justice which always stands as the basis
of discipline, is common to all the churches of one
communion. This public opinion is created by a mutual
interchange of sentiment--the books we read and the
preachers we hear. For years past slaveholders have ceased
to hear those suspected of abolitionism or to read their
writings. I will bear very long with error where mutual
discussion and free interchange of sentiment promise
ultimately to bring all to be of the same mind. Am I told
that the safety of slave property requires that
Abolitionists should not be heard in the slave States? I
reply: The more shame to those who perpetuate an
institution that demands for its security the tyranny of
such proscription; and that the human soul of the black
man should be so cruelly dwarfed and robbed of his
manhood. . . . Such are the not very flattering
impressions made on my mind during a five months' tour in
Northern Ohio, after an absence of nine years. There must
and will be a reform; it has become a public necessity.
Temporizers are proverbially short-sighted. God gives only
to the pure-hearted the divine privilege of foreseeing the
coming of those beneficent revolutions, which exalt and
dignify humanity. Ambitious and selfish men are left to go
blindly on and fall into their own pit. At present there
will be chaos I The people will not follow those who have
been accustomed to lead, notwithstanding those leaders
will have power greatly to embarrass the action of those
who do not follow them. We have three pressing wants: 1. A
_sustained_ paper that will not bow the knee to the image
of this modern Baal. Such a paper we have, but it should
not be concealed, that it must pass through a fiery
ordeal, and can only be sustained by the timely efforts of
its friends. 2. We need a convention made up of men who
regard slavery as a moral evil, and are disposed to make
their own consciences the rule of their action. 3. We need
a missionary fund, which shall be placed in such hands
that it shall not be prostituted to the vile purpose of
bribing men into silence on the subject of slavery.
I am not commissioned specially to speak for the
_Luminary_, nor to prophesy concerning any convention
which may hereafter assemble. I only speak for myself. Let
it then be candidly admitted that the fund which I have
been able to collect is a rather unpromising beginning,
and that it does not augur that this mission will be well
sustained. I remark, then, I never was adequately
sustained. I have been a frontier and a pioneer preacher,
and have shared the fortunes of such men. To keep myself
in the field I have labored very hard, I have toiled by
day, and have subjected my family to the necessity of such
labor, privation, and close economy as, perhaps, calls for
rebuke instead of praise. The churches at Davenport, Long
Grove, De Witt, Marion, and Highland Grove, in Iowa; and
Camp Point, Mt. Sterling, and Rushville, in Illinois, can
be addressed as to my former manner of life. I would speak
modestly of myself; and have not obtruded these matters
before the brethren until rudely assailed as though I
never made any sacrifices. I do not complain, and what I
have said is offered, as evidence, in some sort, that
money appropriated to this mission will not be squandered.
In this connection it is thought proper to insert a single quotation
from a letter which appeared in the _Review_, a paper which published
editorially, the most unscrupulous slanders in reference to Bro.
Butler's work in Kansas, which letter was written by Bro. S. A.
Marshall, of Leavenworth--both an M. D. and a preacher, and than whom
no more honorable gentleman ever lived in that city. His testimony is
incidental, and therefore so much the stronger:
The brethren of the four churches named have tried to
co-operate together to sustain Bro. Pardee Butler as home
missionary for a little while. He is an able evangelist
and generally beloved: and being on the ground and well
acquainted with the country, and the manners and customs
of the people, could be obtained at much less expense, and
perhaps be as useful and acceptable to the people as any
other available evangelist.
In harmony with the suggestion made by Bro. Butler in his report, for
a convention of our brethren who look upon slavery as a moral evil,
call was made for such a meeting to convene in the city of
Indianapolis on the 1st day of November, 1859. About six hundred
signatures were attached to the call, including many of the most
intelligent and influential members of our churches in the North.
After much misrepresentation and denunciation, the convention was held
in the Christian chapel in Indianapolis; a constitution for a
missionary society adopted and the necessary officers appointed. Many
of the churches gave it a most hearty endorsement. It was deemed
expedient that Bro. Butler, before returning to Kansas, should visit
as many churches as practicable. Accordingly, he wrote to the
_Luminary_ under date of December 26, 1859, from Springville, Ind., as
follows:
I have thought best, before returning to Kansas, to make a
short visit to this part of Indiana, where, according to
report, almost all the brethren are opposed to our recent
missionary movement. In twenty-three days I have preached
thirty-two discourses. For the mission we raised, cash,
$55; pledges, $43. Three have been added by baptism, and
one from the Presbyterians who had formerly been immersed.
Some of our preaching brethren in this part of the State
conclude to take the advice of Gamaliel: "And now I say
unto you, refrain from these men, and let them alone; for
if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to
naught; but if it be of God, ye can not overthrow it; lest
happily ye be found even to fight against God." In the
cause of a common piety and a common humanity.
Bro. Butler returned to Kansas, and resumed his labors wherever a door
of entrance was opened to him. Angry clouds thickened across the
political and religious horizon, until, shortly, the storm broke forth
in unwonted fury, and swept away from the national statute book every
vestige of American slavery. For a quarter of a century longer he
continued in the service of the Master, laboring successfully in every
department of the ministerial work--evangelical, pastoral, and in the
advocacy of all moral reforms, and especially as a leader in the
warfare waged against the saloon interest in Kansas. He lived to see
his adopted State take an advanced position in the legal prohibition
movement, slavery in the United States abolished, and the cause of
Bible Christianity flourishing as it had never done before. He
commanded the respect of all who knew him, and was regarded as one of
the chief founders of the church. His presence at all the Christian
conventions in and out of the State was always hailed with tokens of
gladness. Still he was aware that there were individual members, and
even some churches that never forgave him for the active part he took
against the extension of slavery, and his indictments against it as a
moral evil--a sin against God and man. Fifty years of his eventful
life were consecrated to the service of the Master and the good of
humanity. He died with the ministerial harness on. At the time of the
sad casualty which proved to be fatal, he had arrangements for
continued work in the churches, both at home and abroad. He finished
his course with joy, for he knew there was laid up for him in heaven a
crown of righteousness. He labored assiduously in life, and now enjoys
the sweet rest which remains for the people of God.