Baptists, “Friends to Humanity.”--Their Anti-slavery position.--
Mr. Clark joins them.--Manner of his reception.--His Views
of African Slavery.--Views of African Colonization.--Made
Life-member of a Colonization Society.--Circulars on Slavery.
--Personal behavior.--Conversational Gifts.--Writes Family
Records.
A class of Baptists had commenced organizing churches, first in
Illinois and then in Missouri, denominated, as a kind of distinction
from other Baptists, as “Friends to Humanity.” They were frequently
called emancipators by others. They were opposed to slavery, and being
desirous of operating in a quiet and peaceful manner against the
commerce in human beings, this class adopted rules by which they were
to be governed in the admission of slave-holders into the churches. The
organization originated in Kentucky, in 1807, and made a division in a
small association in Illinois in 1809. They would not receive persons
to membership “whose practice appeared friendly to perpetual slavery;”
that is, those who justified the holding of human beings as property,
on the same grounds of right as they claimed their horses or other
kinds of property. They did admit to membership in the churches of
Christ slave-holders under the following exceptions.
1. Persons holding young slaves, and recording a deed of
emancipation at such an age as the church should agree to.
2. Persons who had purchased slaves in their ignorance, and who are
willing the church should decide when they shall be free.
3. Women who have no legal power to liberate slaves.
4. Those that held slaves who from age, debility, insanity, or
idiotcy were unfit for emancipation. And they add, “some other
cases which we would wish the churches to judge of, agreeable to
the principles of humanity.”
These Baptists differed widely from modern abolitionists of the
Northern States and England, at least in the following particulars.
1. They never adopted the dogma that slave-holding is a “sin _per
se_,”--a sin in itself, irrespective of all the circumstances in
which the parties might be providentially placed. Hence they could
consistently buy slaves and prepare them for freedom; or contribute
funds to enable slaves to purchase themselves, with a clear conscience.
2. They never aided fugitive slaves to escape from their masters, or
secreted them, in violation of the constitution and laws of the land.
3. They never interfered in any objectionable way, with the legal and
political rights of slave-holders. They preached the gospel in an
acceptable and successful manner among slave-holders.
4. They aimed to do good both to master and servant, in a quiet, lawful
and peaceable mode.
5. They endeavored to consult the true interests of all parties
concerned.
6. They ever upheld the constitution and laws of the country in a
peaceful way. Some of this class were chosen to official stations in
both the territory and state of Illinois, and took the oath to support
the constitution and laws of the United States without quibbling and
evasion.
Their general faith and practice corresponded with the principles of
Baptists in general Union.
Mr. Clark had gradually become a Baptist in all respects. For eight or
ten years after he had been baptized in the manner already described,
he remained in an independent position. With the exception of his
visits to the lower country, the larger portion of his time he spent
on the western side of the Mississippi, with occasional visits to his
Illinois friends. The members that remained of the society he organized
near Bellefontaine in Illinois, had attached themselves to other
churches,--some to the Baptists, and others to the Methodist Episcopal
church. Those about the Spanish pond and Coldwater settlements in St.
Louis county gradually became Baptists, and regarded him as their
pastor and spiritual guide. For some years he watched the course of
his old friends, the Lemens’ and others of that class. He felt deeply
interested in their anti-slavery position. Their quiet, unobtrusive
method of managing the perplexing question of slavery corresponded with
his own views and experience. The father, his old friend and associate,
had become an ordained minister, and two of his sons, who had studied
under Mr. Clark, were now heads of families, and joint pastors of
Cantine, (now Bethel) church, and, with their compeers in the ministry,
were performing much itinerant service in the destitute settlements.
Benjamin, the eldest son of Captain Joseph Ogle, was an ordained
minister in this connection of Baptists. Father Clark and these
brethren had always enjoyed fraternal intercourse, though no formal
church connection had been formed. His manners were so inoffensive,
his labors in the ministry were so disinterested and unremitting, his
views were so scriptural, and his daily conduct so fully exemplified
a life of faith on the Son of God, that no one thought of calling in
question his regular standing in the ministry. He might have lived and
died without reproach, and enjoyed the confidence of all good men in
the same isolated position he had occupied from 1796. But his sound
judgment guided him, and the impressions received in prayer prompted
him to unite with others in a formal association. He was fearful he
might set an example for erratic preachers to follow.
This class of Baptists held an annual meeting within the bounds of
their churches on each returning autumn, though they had not assumed
the form of a regular association. Such a meeting Mr. Clark attended,
with some of the brethren from Coldwater, and proposed union and
coöperation. Not from any necessity of knowing more of his character,
but as a precedent for subsequent cases he was examined on his
Christian experience, views of doctrine, and practice. The result
being highly satisfactory, he was received by the hand of fellowship
being given by all the brethren present, while an appropriate hymn was
sung.
His views on African slavery gradually acquired firmness and
consistency. We have traced his convictions on this subject to his
exquisite sense of human rights, his innate principles of natural
liberty, his sympathies with afflicted and oppressed humanity,
his own deprivation of liberty by the British press-gang, and his
imprisonment for nineteen months by the Spaniards in Havana. In a
personal acquaintance of fifteen years, and the examination of various
fugitive papers, we find no confusion of thought, and no lack of just
conceptions of the subject. His intercourse with slave-holders was
ever courteous and kind. He never obtruded his opinions where no good
impressions could be made, nor in any way disguised his sentiments
before any person. His frankness and candor were so well known, that
all classes had entire confidence in his motives and mode of treating
this subject.
When the subject of the colonization of free colored persons in Africa
was brought to his mind by the formation of the American Colonization
Society, he hailed it as an omen of good. He understood the strong
objections to the emancipation of slaves remaining amongst us. He
understood well the prejudices against the peculiarities of the African
race, as one of the barriers to amalgamation with white people, and
amidst the gloom that surrounded the hopeless bondage of that race,
he saw one luminous spot in the moral hemisphere. The star of hope
appeared to him to arise in Africa. The finger of providence pointed
in that direction, and he abounded in faith and prayer for success
in the enterprise. He was not so visionary as to imagine there would
be no defects in its management, or no drawbacks in the colonization
movement. He well understood it was an object not to be accomplished
in one generation, and that its influence upon emancipation must be
gradual and indirect. He desired to have an influence produced in the
minds of slave-holders towards the moral and religious interests of the
slaves.
So long known and so well understood were his anti-slavery principles,
and his interest in the colonization scheme as the means of removing
one of the most formidable obstructions to emancipation, that the
ladies of Lofton’s prairie, then in Greene, (now Jersey) county,
Illinois, one of his monthly preaching stations, paid him the
compliment of making him a life member of the county auxiliary
society.[55]
Mr. Clark wrote several circulars for the annual association of
Baptists, to which he belonged, on the subject of Slavery, which were
published in their minutes. They were dictated by a courteous and
christian-like spirit, plain, pointed, impressive and efficacious.
After he joined the Baptists, his labors were the same as before,
except in a wider range of traveling, and more extended christian
intercourse. No time was wasted in idleness or frivolous pursuits.
Always cheerful, always the same devout, praying man. There were two
or three families in Missouri, as Upper Louisiana was called from the
period of the organization of the territory in 1812, where he made
his _home_. All his earthly wants were cheerfully provided for by his
friends. Certain mothers in Israel vied with each other in providing
his annual supply of clothing; the domestic manufacture of their own
wheels and looms. The cloth was the same as was then worn by the
farmers of the country, but was kept by the wearer in a neat and tidy
manner. He did not live to enter on the era of this frontier, when
dress, equipages, furniture, and houses, as in the old states, were
used for the special benefit of other people’s eyes. Nor at that period
would rank, or social position be detected by the dress a man or woman
wore.
Mr. Clark was noted for refinement and simplicity. His personal
appearance and dress were noticed for neatness. His habits, of which
he scarcely appeared conscious, were those of the gentleman. Though he
used tobacco, he never acquired the filthy practice, still very common
in this country by rude and ill-mannered young men, of spitting about
the fire place, stove, and furniture. If he had occasion to discharge
the saliva, he invariably stepped to the door, though it might have
been in a log cabin. He used the bath frequently by resorting to some
retired spot in the creek or river. For many years, and until the close
of life, he bathed his feet in cold water at all seasons of the year.
We have known him walk a quarter of a mile, in extreme cold weather in
the winter, to a spring or creek that he might lave his feet and wade
in the cold water. Long practice made this habit a luxury.[56]
In all his personal intercourse, and manner of address, one could
perceive not only good breeding, but a nice sense of propriety. His
visits in families were no less effective in moral cultivation, than
his public preaching, though that was impressive and interesting, and
the instruction given highly scriptural and evangelical. He possessed
a gift not very common, and probably little cultivated by ministers,
in introducing the subject of personal religion, in a pleasant,
conversational way.
A stranger, on witnessing his mode, would have seen nothing
ministerial, dignified, or professional. There was no change in the
tones of his voice, and effort made to introduce a subject not relished
by the party. There was no affectation of concern for others, no
cant, nothing in style or mode that differed from his conversation
on ordinary topics. Young persons, unused to be addressed on such a
subject, soon found themselves in the presence of a familiar friend. No
man could make a more touching appeal to the mother of a young family,
and while he awakened her maternal feelings to the moral and eternal
welfare of her offspring, he scarcely failed impressing on her own
conscience concern for her personal salvation.
It was a pleasure to him, and a gratification to the families he
visited, to write out the family record in his peculiarly neat and
correct chirography, in the household Bible. And when a new Bible was
purchased, its possessors waited many weeks, and even months, until
FATHER CLARK, as every one familiarly called him, visited them and made
the record. These Bibles are preserved to this day, and may be found
among the descendants of the pioneer families, dispersed as they are
over a wide extent of territory. The first immigrants to Iowa, and
several families who went to Oregon, carried these copies as choice
memorials of a much venerated man.
For the last fifteen years of his life there was so much uniformity
in his labors, that were we to follow out this period in detail, it
would be but a repetition of the same things from year to year. Such
incidents as are necessary to spin out the thread of the narrative
and finish the portraiture of this good man, will be crowded into the
concluding chapter.