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 passed 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 passed 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 constituted 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, balls, 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 prongs 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 sassafras 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 molasses, 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 constitution 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 passed 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 God 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 passed 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
God. 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 Saturday evening of said meeting I went, with weeping multitudes,
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 God. My mother raised the shout, my
Christian friends crowded around me and joined me in praising God.... 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 Cumberland
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 hell 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 God 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 hell 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 superstitious, 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 superstitious, and the absence of schools kept them in
ignorance. They drank to keep off the blues, and when they came together
for amusement 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 horny 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
manuscript 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 sturdy, 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
sparsely 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 God, 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 assembly, 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 God, first, to
bring sinners to repentance, and, secondly, that God 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 superstitious 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 pronounced 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 hell, 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 assigned 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, molasses, 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 fortitude. "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 God 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 "God 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 noble
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
encompassed 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 God, to encourage wickedness of all kinds, to
corrupt the morals and encourage vice, and crowd hell with the lost and
the wailings of the damned, 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 hell 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 hell and the devil had him.'
"I stopped him short by saying, 'Pooh, pooh, man, what are you talking
about? There is no hell 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 hell 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 hell 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 God must be insulted, his name blasphemed, his laws
trampled under foot, yet he must have no hell 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.'
"Although he was confounded, he still clave to his God-dishonoring
doctrine, waxing worse and worse, till it was generally believed he was
guilty of a most heinous crime."
Argumentative battles were not the only troubles Cartwright had to
encounter from Universalists. They came to his revivals, he says, to
hoot and create disturbance. At one of these meetings two sisters,
Universalists in belief, were present. They came to "make fun," but one
of them was overcome by Cartwright's preaching, and went up to the
mourner's bench to be prayed for. When her sister heard of it, she
commenced to make her way to the altar, with the angry determination to
force the penitent from it. "I rose and met her in the crowded aisle,"
says Mr. Cartwright, "and told her to be calm and desist. She made
neither better nor worse of it than to draw back her arm and give me a
severe slap in the face with her open hand. I confess this rather took
me by surprise, and, as the common saying is, made the fire fly out of
my eyes in tremendous sparkling brilliancy, but, collecting my best
judgment, I caught her by the arms near her shoulders and wheeled her to
the right about, moved her forward to the door, and said, 'Gentlemen,
please open the door; the devil in this Universalist lady has got
fighting hot, and I want to set her outside to cool.' The door was
opened, and I landed her out."
Concerning his tilts with the Baptists, he has given a mass of curious
reminiscences, from which we take the following:
"We preached in new settlements, and the Lord poured out his Spirit, and
we had many convictions and many conversions. It was the order of the
day, (though I am sorry to say it,) that we were constantly followed by
a certain set of proselyting Baptist preachers. These new and wicked
settlements were seldom visited by these Baptist preachers until the
Methodist preachers entered them; then, when a revival was gotten up, or
the work of the Lord revived, these Baptist preachers came rushing in,
and they generally sung their sermons; and when they struck the _long
roll_, or their sing-song mode of preaching, in substance it was:
'Water! water! You must follow your blessed Lord down into the water!' I
had preached several times in a large, populous, and wicked settlement,
and there was serious attention, deep convictions, and a good many
conversions; but, between my occasional appointments these preachers
would rush in and try to take off our converts into the water; and
indeed they made so much ado about baptism by immersion that the
uninformed would suppose that heaven was an island, and there was no way
to get there _but by diving or swimming_."
He once preached a sermon on the true nature of baptism, at which were
present the daughters of a Baptist minister, one of whom was converted.
That night it rained violently, and all the neighboring streams
overflowed their banks. Riding along the next day, he met the Baptist
minister on the road.
"We've had a tremendous rain," said Cartwright.
"Yes, sir," said the Baptist brother, "the Lord sent this rain to
convince you of your error."
"Ah! what error?"
"Why, about baptism. The Lord sent this flood to convince you that much
water was necessary."
"Very good, sir," said Cartwright, "and in like manner he sent this
flood to convince you of your error."
"What error?" asked the Baptist brother.
"Why," replied Cartwright, triumphantly, "to show you that water comes
by pouring, and not by immersion."
Free and easy as he was in his manner, our preacher had a deep sense of
the dignity of his mission, and he was resolved that others should share
the feeling, and accord him, in his ministerial capacity, the respect
and deference that were his due. His manner of accomplishing this was
characteristic, as the following incident will show: Traveling on his
circuit in 1805, he put up on one occasion at the house of an old man
known as Father Teel, a whimsical old fellow, and supposed to be
Cartwright's match in oddity. He had been warned that the old man,
though a good Methodist, showed little deference to preachers. It was
his custom to rise early, and, as soon as dressed, to give out his hymn,
sing it himself, and then go to prayers, without waiting for his family
to get up. He served preachers in the same way. Cartwright resolved to
beat him at his own game, but the old man was too wary for him.
"Just as day broke," says Cartwright, "I awoke, rose up, and began to
dress, but had not nigh accomplished it when I heard Teel give out his
hymn and commence singing, and about the time I had got dressed, I heard
him commence praying. He gave thanks to God that they had been spared
during the night, and were all permitted to see the light of a new day,
while at the same time I suppose every one of his family was fast
asleep. I deliberately opened the door and walked out to the well,
washed myself, and then walked back to my cabin. Just as I got to the
door, the old brother opened his door, and, seeing me, said, 'Good
morning, sir. Why, I didn't know you were up.'
"'Yes, said I, 'I have been up some time.'
"'Well, brother,' said he, 'why did you not come in to prayers?'
"'Because,' said I, 'it is wrong to pray of a morning in the family
before we wash.'
"The old brother passed on, and no more was said at that time. That
evening, just before we were about to retire to rest, the old brother
set out the book and said to me: 'Brother, hold prayers with us.'
"'No, sir,' said I.
"Said he, 'Come, brother, take the book and pray with us.'
"'No, sir,' said I; 'you love to pray so well, you may do it yourself.'
"He insisted, but I persistently refused, saying: 'You are so fond of
praying yourself, that you even thanked God this morning that he had
spared you all to see the light of a new day, when your family had not
yet opened their eyes, but were all fast asleep. And you have such an
absurd way of holding prayers in your family, that I do not wish to have
any thing to do with it.'
"He then took the book, read, and said prayers, but you may rely on it,
the next morning things were much changed. He waited for me, and had all
his family up in order. He acknowledged his error, and told me it was
one of the best reproofs he ever got. I then prayed with the family, and
after that all went well."
Among his clerical brethren was a poor hen-pecked husband, whose wife
was possessed of a temper that made her the terror of the neighborhood.
Cartwright had often been invited by the poor man to go home with him;
"but," he says, "I frankly confess I was afraid to trust myself" but at
length, yielding to his importunities, he went home with his oppressed
brother, intending to spend the night with him. His visit roused the
fury of the wife, and "I saw in a minute," says our preacher, "that the
devil was in her as big as an alligator, and I determined on my course."
The woman held her tongue until after supper, when her husband asked her
kindly to join them in prayers. She flew into a rage, and swore there
should be no praying in her house that night. Cartwright tried to reason
with her, but she cursed him roundly. Then, facing her sternly, he said,
"Madam, if you were my wife, I would break you of your bad ways, or I
would break your neck."
"The devil you would," said she. "Yes, you are a pretty Christian, ain't
you?"
She continued cursing him, but Cartwright sternly bade her hold her
peace, and let them pray. She declared she would not.
"Now," said he to her, "if you do not be still, and behave yourself,
I'll put you out of doors."
"At this," says he, "she clenched her fist and swore she was one-half
alligator and the other half snapping-turtle, and that it would take a
better man than I was to put her out. It was a small cabin we were in,
and we were not far from the door, which was then standing open. I
caught her by the arm, and swinging her round in a circle, brought her
right up to the door, and shoved her out. She jumped up, tore her hair,
foamed, and such swearing as she uttered was seldom equaled, and never
surpassed. The door, or shutter of the door, was very strongly made, to
keep out hostile Indians; I shut it tight, barred it, and went to
prayer, and I prayed as best I could; but I have no language at my
command to describe my feelings. At the same time, I was determined to
conquer, or die in the attempt. While she was raging and foaming in the
yard and around the cabin, I started a spiritual song, and sung loud, to
drawn her voice as much as possible. The five or six little children ran
and squatted about and crawled under the beds. Poor things, they were
scared almost to death.
"I sang on, and she roared and thundered on outside, till she became
perfectly exhausted, and panted for breath. At length, when she had
spent her force, she became perfectly calm and still, and then knocked
at the door, saying, 'Mr. Cartwright, please let me in.'
"'Will you behave yourself if I let you in?' said I.
"'O yes,' said she, 'I will;' and throwing myself on my guard, and
perfectly self-possessed, I opened the door, took her by the hand, led
her in, and seated her near the fire-place. She had roared and foamed
until she was in a high perspiration, and looked pale as death. After
she took her seat, 'O,' said she, 'what a fool I am,'
"'Yes,' said I, 'about one of the biggest fools I ever saw in all my
life.'... Brother C. and I kneeled down, and both prayed. She was as
quiet as a lamb."
Six months later, our preacher tells us, this woman was converted, and
became "as bold in the cause of God as she had been in the cause of the
wicked one."
In 1823, Mr. Cartwright resolved to move across the Ohio, and selected
Illinois as his new home. The reasons which influenced his actions are
thus stated by him:
"I had seen with painful emotions the increase of a disposition to
justify slavery.... and the legislatures in the slave States made the
laws more and more stringent, with a design to prevent emancipation.
Moreover, rabid abolitionism spread and dreadfully excited the South. I
had a young and growing family of children, two sons and four daughters;
was poor, owned a little farm of about one hundred and fifty acres;
lands around me were high and rising in value. My daughters would soon
be grown up. I did not see any probable means by which I could settle
them around or near us. Moreover, I had no right to expect our children
to marry into wealthy families, and I did not desire it, if it could be
so; and by chance they might marry into slave families. This I did not
desire. Besides, I saw there was a marked distinction made among the
people generally between young people raised without work and those that
had to work for their living.... I thought I saw clear indications of
Providence that I should leave my comfortable little home, and move into
a free State or territory, for the following reasons: First, I would get
entirely clear of the evil of slavery. Second, I could raise my children
to work where work was not considered a degradation. Third, I believed I
could better my temporal circumstances, and procure lands for my
children as they grew up. And fourth, I could carry the Gospel to
destitute souls that had, by removal into some new country, been
deprived of the means of grace."
It was the last reason, no doubt, that decided our preacher. Men of his
stamp were needed west of the Ohio. Kentucky was becoming too old a
State for him, and he felt that his true field of labor was still on the
frontier, and thither he turned his steps. Setting out first on
horseback to seek an eligible location, he reached Sangamon County,
Illinois, where he bought a claim on Richland Creek. He then returned to
Kentucky and wound up his affairs there, obtained a regular transfer
from the Kentucky Conference to the Indiana Conference, which then
controlled Illinois, and in October, 1824, set out for his new home in
Sangamon County. A great affliction overtook him on the way, in the
death of his third daughter, who was killed by the falling of a tree
upon their camp. The affliction was made more grievous by the heartless
refusal of the people in the vicinity to render them any aid. "We were
in great distress," he says, "and no one even to pity our condition....
I discovered that the tree had sprung up, and did not press the child;
and we drew her out from under it, and carefully laid her in our feed
trough, and moved on about twenty miles to an acquaintance's in Hamilton
County, Illinois, where we buried her."
Leaving that lonely little grave behind them, they hurried on to their
new home. Springfield, the capital of the State, was but a small
collection of shanties and log huts, and Sangamon County was the extreme
frontier. It was the most northern county of Illinois, and just beyond
it lay the unbroken Indian country. Numbers of Indians roamed through
the Sangamon River bottom, and spent their winters there. It was as wild
and unsettled a region as our preacher could have desired, and one which
gave him a fine field for the exercise of his peculiar abilities. Mr.
Cartwright was promptly received into the Indiana Conference, and he
lost no time in looking about him. He at once established his family in
their new home, and then set about his work. The work was hard, and
money was scarce. The first year he traveled the Sangamon Circuit he
received forty dollars, and the next year sixty dollars, which he says
was a great improvement in his financial affairs. He was successful from
the first, and in the two years referred to added one hundred and sixty
persons to the Methodist Church in this thinly settled district. For
forty-six years he has labored in this region, adding many souls to the
kingdom of God.
Arduous as his labors had been in the Kentucky Conference, they now
increased very greatly. He had a larger amount of territory to travel
over, people were more scattered, and the dangers to be encountered were
greater. In 1827, he was made presiding elder, and given the Illinois
District, then a very extensive region, and in 1828 Galena charge was
added to this district. The district thus enlarged extended from the
mouth of the Ohio River to Galena, the entire length of the present
State of Illinois, and over this immense distance our preacher was
obliged to travel four times in the year. The journeys were made either
on horseback or in an old-fashioned sulky or one-seat gig. There were
miles of lonely prairie and many rapid streams to cross, and roads,
bridges, or ferry-boats were almost unknown. Yet Peter Cartwright was
not the man to be deterred by obstacles. When he set out on his official
journeys, he allowed nothing that it was possible to overcome to prevent
him from keeping his appointments. In crossing the prairies, he would
guide himself by the points of timber, for there were no roads over
these vast plains. Oftentimes the streams to be crossed were swollen,
and then he would swim his horse across them, or ride along the shore
until he found a tree fallen over the current. Stripping himself, he
would carry his clothes and riding equipments to the opposite bank, and
then, returning, mount his horse and swim him across the river. Dressing
again, he would continue his journey, and perhaps repeat the proceeding
several times during the day. When overtaken by night, he would seek a
place in some grove, and, lighting a fire with his tinder-box and steel,
tie up his horse, and, throwing himself on the ground, sleep as
peacefully as on a bed of down. Sometimes night would come on before he
had crossed the prairie or made his way to the timber point he was
aiming for, and then he would sit down on the ground, in the darkness
and alone, and, holding his horse by the bridle, await the return of
light to enable him to see his landmark. Sometimes he would find a
little log-hut with a settler's family in it, and he says it was "a
great treat" to come upon one of these lonely cabins and enjoy the
privilege of a night's lodging. If the family were Methodists, there was
sure to be preaching that night; and if they were strangers to that
church, our preacher set to work at once to convert them. He labored
faithfully, faring hard, and braving dangers from which his city
brethren would have shrunk appalled. He carried the Gospel and the
Methodist Episcopal Church into all parts of the great State of
Illinois, and even into Iowa and the Indian country.
In 1832, the first Illinois Conference met in the town of Jacksonville,
and Mr. Cartwright attended it. He had now been a traveling preacher for
twenty-eight years, and, as he felt himself sorely in need of rest, he
asked and obtained a superannuated relation for one year. On the same
day, Bishop Soule, who presided at the Conference, came to him to ask
his advice with reference to the Quincy District. It was very important,
but the bishop could not find a presiding elder willing to take charge
of it, as it was an almost unbroken wilderness. The bishop was in sore
distress, as he feared that he would be obliged to merge it into another
district. The spirit of the backwoods preacher at once took fire, and,
declaring that so important a field ought not to be neglected, he
expressed his willingness to relinquish his superannuated relation and
accept the charge. The bishop took him at his word and appointed him to
the district, which he served faithfully. His adventures in traveling
from place to place to fill his appointments are intensely interesting,
and I would gladly reproduce them here did the limits of this chapter
permit.
It required no small amount of courage to perform the various duties of
a backwoods preacher, and in this quality our preacher was not
deficient. He was frequently called upon to exercise it in his camp
meetings. These assemblies never failed to gather large crowds from all
parts of the surrounding country, and among others came numerous
rowdies, whose delight it was to annoy the preachers and worshipers in
every conceivable way. Cartwright put up with the annoyance as long as
he could, and then determined to put a stop to it. He believed in
fighting the devil with fire, and put down many a disturbance. The
following is the way he went about it:
"Our last quarterly meeting was a camp meeting. We had a great many
tents and a large turnout for a new country, and, perhaps, there never
was a greater collection of rabble and rowdies. They came drunk and
armed with dirks, clubs, knives, and horsewhips, and swore they would
break up the meeting. After interrupting us very much on Saturday night,
they collected on Sunday morning, determined on a general riot. At eight
o'clock I was appointed to preach. About the time I was half through my
discourse, two very fine-dressed young men marched into the congregation
with loaded horsewhips, and hats on, and rose up and stood in the midst
of the ladies, and began to laugh and talk. They were near the stand,
and I requested them to desist and get off the seats; but they cursed me
and told me to mind my own business, and said they would not get down. I
stopped trying to preach, and called for a magistrate. There were two at
hand, but I saw they were both afraid. I ordered them to take these two
men into custody, but they said they could not do it. I told them as I
left the stand to command me to take them, and I would do it at the risk
of my life. I advanced toward them. They ordered me to stand off, but I
advanced. One of them made a pass at my head, but I closed in with him
and jerked him off the seat. A regular scuffle ensued. The congregation
by this time were all in commotion. I heard the magistrates giving
general orders, commanding all friends of order to aid in suppressing
the riot. In the scuffle I threw my prisoner down, and held him fast;
he tried his best to get loose. I told him to be quiet, or I would
pound his chest well. The mob rose and rushed to the rescue of the two
prisoners, for they had taken the other young man also. An old, drunken
magistrate came up to me, and ordered me to let my prisoner go. I told
him I should not. He swore if I did not he would knock me down. I told
him to crack away. Then one of my friends, at my request, took hold of
my prisoner, and the drunken justice made a pass at me; but I parried
the stroke, and, seizing him by the collar and the hair of the head, and
fetching him a sudden jerk forward, brought him to the ground and jumped
on him. I told him to be quiet, or I would pound him well. The mob then
rushed to the scene; they knocked down seven magistrates, several
preachers, and others. I gave up my drunken prisoner to another, and
threw myself in front of the friends of order. Just at this moment, the
ringleader of the mob and I met; he made three passes at me, intending
to knock me down. The last time he struck at me, by the force of his own
effort he threw the side of his face toward me. It seemed at that moment
I had not power to resist temptation, and I struck a sudden blow in the
burr of the ear and dropped him to the earth. Just at this moment, the
friends of order rushed by hundreds on the mob, knocking them down in
every direction."
Once, while crossing a river on a ferry-boat, he overheard a man cursing
Peter Cartwright and threatening dire vengeance against him, and
boasting that he could "whip any preacher the Lord ever made." This
roused our preacher's ire, and accosting the man, he told him he was
Peter Cartwright, and that if he wanted to whip him he must do so then.
The fellow became confused, and said he did not believe him.
"I tell you," said Cartwright, sternly, "I am the man. Now, sir, you
have to whip me, as you threatened, or quit cursing me, or I will put
you in the river and baptize you in the name of the devil, for you
surely belong to him." "This," says Cartwright, "settled him."
Once, having gone into the woods with a young man who had sworn he would
whip him, he sprained his foot slightly in getting over a fence, and
involuntarily placed his hand to his side. "My redoubtable antagonist,"
says he, "had got on the fence, and, looking down at me, said, 'D----
you, you are feeling for a dirk, are you?'
"As quick as thought it occurred to me how to get clear of a whipping.
"'Yes,' said I, 'and I will give you the benefit of all the dirks I
have,' and advanced rapidly toward him.
"He sprang back on the other side of the fence from me; I jumped over
after him, and a regular foot race followed."
"It may be asked," says the old man, naively, "what I would have done if
this fellow had gone with me to the woods. This is hard to answer, for
it was a part of my creed to love every body, but to fear no one, and I
did not permit myself to believe that any man could whip me until it was
tried, and I did not permit myself to premeditate expedients in such
cases. I should no doubt have proposed to him to have prayer first, and
then followed the openings of Providence."
Mr. Cartwright was from the beginning of his ministry an ardent advocate
of temperance, and, long before the first temperance society was
organized in the country, he waged a fierce war against dram-drinking.
This fearless advocate of temperance came very near getting drunk once.
He had stopped with a fellow preacher at a tavern kept by an Otterbein
Methodist, who, thinking to play them a trick, put whisky into the new
cider which he offered them. Cartwright drank sparingly of the beverage,
though he considered it harmless, but, "with all my forbearance," he
says, "presently I began to feel light-headed. I instantly ordered our
horses, fearing we were snapped for once.... When we had rode about a
mile, being in the rear, I saw Brother Walker was nodding at a mighty
rate. I suddenly rode up to Brother Walker and cried out, 'Wake up! wake
up!' He roused up, his eyes watering freely. 'I believe,' said I, 'we
are both drunk. Let us turn out of the road and lie down and take a nap
till we get sober,' But we rode on without stopping. We were not drunk,
but we both evidently felt it flying to our heads."
In 1826 Mr. Cartwright was elected to the Legislature of the State, and
at the expiration of his first term was reflected from Sangamon County.
He was induced to accept this position because of his desire to aid in
preventing the introduction of slavery into the State. He had no liking
for political strife, however, and was disgusted with the dishonesty
which he saw around him. "I say," he declares, "without any desire to
speak evil of the rulers of the people, I found a great deal of
corruption in our Legislature, and I found that almost every measure had
to be carried by a corrupt bargain and sale which should cause every
honest man to blush for his country."
He was full of a quaint humor, which seemed to burst out from every line
of his features, and twinkle merrily in his bright eyes. Often in the
midst of his most exciting revivals he could not resist the desire to
fasten his dry jokes upon one of his converts. No man loved a joke
better, or was quicker to make a good use of it. He was traveling one
day on his circuit, and stopped for the night at a cabin in which he
found a man and woman. Suspecting that all was not right, he questioned
the woman, and drew from her the confession that the man was her lover.
Her husband, she said, was away, and would not return for two days, and
she had received this man in his absence.
[Illustration: CARTWRIGHT CALLING UP THE DEVIL.]
Cartwright then began to remonstrate with the guilty pair upon their
conduct, and while he was speaking to them the husband's voice was heard
in the yard. In an agony of terror the woman implored Cartwright to
assist her in getting her lover out of the way, and our preacher, upon
receiving from each a solemn promise of reformation, agreed to do so.
There was standing by the chimney a large barrel of raw cotton, and as
there was no time to get the man out of the house, Cartwright put him
into the barrel and piled the cotton over him.
The husband entered, and Cartwright soon engaged him in conversation.
The man said he had often heard of Peter Cartwright, and that it was the
common opinion in that part of the country that among his other
wonderful gifts our preacher had the power to call up the devil.
"That's the easiest thing in the world to do," said Cartwright. "Would
you like to see it?"
The man hesitated for awhile, and then expressed his readiness to
witness the performance.
"Very well," said Cartwright; "take your stand by your wife, and don't
move or speak. I'll let the door open to give him a chance to get out,
or he may carry the roof away."
So saying, he opened the door, and, taking a handful of cotton, held it
in the fire and lighted it. Then plunging it into the barrel of raw
cotton, he shouted lustily, "Devil, rise!" In an instant the barrel was
wrapped in flames, and the lover, in utter dismay, leaped out and rushed
from the house. The husband was greatly terrified, and ever afterward
avowed himself a believer in Cartwright's intimacy with "Old Scratch,"
for had he not had ocular proof of it?
Riding out of Springfield one day, he saw a wagon some distance ahead of
him containing a young lady and two young men. As he came near them they
recognized him, though he was totally unacquainted with them, and began
to sing camp-meeting hymns with great animation. In a little while the
young lady began to shout, and said, "Glory to God! Glory to God!" and
the driver cried out, "Amen! Glory to God!"
"My first impressions," says Mr. Cartwright, "were, that they had been
across the Sangamon River to a camp meeting that I knew was in progress
there, and had obtained religion, and were happy. As I drew a little
nearer, the young lady began to sing and shout again. The young man who
was not driving fell down, and cried aloud for mercy; the other two,
shouting at the top of their voices, cried out, 'Glory to God! another
sinner down.' Then they fell to exhorting the young man that was down,
saying, 'Pray on, brother; pray on, brother; you'll soon get religion.'
Presently up jumped the young man that was down, and shouted aloud,
saying, 'God has blessed my soul. Halleluiah! halleluiah! Glory to
God!'"
Thinking that these were genuine penitents, Cartwright rode rapidly
toward them, intending to join in their rejoicings; but as he drew near
them, he detected certain unmistakable evidences that they were shamming
religious fervor merely for the purpose of annoying him. He then
endeavored to get rid of them, but as they were all going the same
direction, the party in the wagon managed to remain near him by driving
fast when he tried to pass them, and falling back when he drew up to let
them go ahead. "I thought," says our preacher, "I would ride up and
horsewhip both of these young men; and if the woman had not been in
company, I think I should have done so; but I forebore."
In a little while the road plunged into a troublesome morass. Around the
worst part of this swamp wound a bridle path, by which Mr. Cartwright
determined to escape his tormentors, who would be compelled to take the
road straight through the swamp. The party in the wagon saw his object,
and forgetting prudence in their eagerness to keep up with him, whipped
their horses violently. The horses bounded off at full speed, and the
wagon was whirled through the swamp at a furious rate. When nearly
across, one of the wheels struck a large stump, and over went the wagon.
"Fearing it would turn entirely over and catch them under," says Mr.
Cartwright, "the two young men took a leap into the mud, and when they
lighted they sunk up to the middle. The young lady was dressed in white,
and as the wagon went over, she sprang as far as she could, and lighted
on all fours; her hands sunk into the mud up to her arm-pits, her mouth
and the whole of her face immersed in the muddy water, and she certainly
would have strangled if the young men had not relieved her. As they
helped her up and out, I had wheeled my horse to see the fun. I rode up
to the edge of the mud, stopped my horse, reared in my stirrups, and
shouted, at the top of my voice, 'Glory to God! Glory to God!
Halleluiah! another sinner down! Glory to God! Halleluiah! Glory!
Halleluiah!'
"If ever mortals felt mean, these youngsters did; and well they might,
for they had carried on all this sport to make light of religion, and to
insult a minister, a total stranger to them. When I became tired of
shouting over them, I said to them:
"'Now, you poor, dirty, mean sinners, take this as a just judgment of
God upon you for your meanness, and repent of your dreadful wickedness;
and let this be the last time that you attempt to insult a preacher; for
if you repeat your abominable sport and persecutions, the next time God
will serve you worse, and the devil will get you.'
"They felt so badly that they never uttered one word of reply."
Our preacher was determined that his work should be recognized, and as
he and his fellow traveling ministers had done a good work on the
frontier, he was in no humor to relish the accounts of the religious
condition of the West, which the missionaries from the East spread
through the older States in their letters home. "They would come," says
he, "with a tolerable education, and a smattering knowledge of the old
Calvinistic system of theology. They were generally tolerably well
furnished with old manuscript sermons, that had been preached, or
written, perhaps a hundred years before. Some of these sermons they had
memorized, but in general they read them to the people. This way of
reading sermons was out of fashion altogether in this Western world, and
of course they produced no effect among the people. The great mass of
our Western people wanted a preacher that could mount a stump or a
block, or stand in the bed of a wagon, and, without note or manuscript,
quote, expound, and apply the word of God to the hearts and consciences
of the people. The result of the efforts of these Eastern missionaries
was not very flattering; and although the Methodist preachers were in
reality the pioneer heralds of the cross through the entire West, and
although they had raised up numerous societies every five miles, and
notwithstanding we had hundreds of traveling and local preachers,
accredited and useful ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ, yet these
newly-fledged missionaries would write back to the old States hardly any
thing else but wailings and lamentations over the moral wastes and
destitute condition of the West."
The indignation of our preacher was fully shared by the people of the
West, who considered themselves as good Christians; as their New England
brethren, and the people of Quincy called a meeting, irrespective of
denomination, and pledged themselves to give Peter Cartwright one
thousand dollars per annum, and pay his traveling expenses, if he would
"go as a missionary to the New England States, and enlighten them on
this and other subjects, of which they were profoundly ignorant."
Circumstances beyond his control prevented his acceptance of this offer.
"How gladly and willingly would I have undertaken this labor of love,"
says he, "and gloried in enlightening them down East, that they might
keep their home-manufactured clergy at home, or give them some honorable
employ, better suited to their genius than that of reading old musty and
worm-eaten sermons."
Our preacher did visit New England in 1852, not as a missionary,
however, but as a delegate to the General Conference which met that year
in Boston. His fame had preceded him, and he was one of the marked men
of that body. Every one had heard some quaint story of his devotion to
his cause, his fearlessness, or his eccentricities, and crowds came out
to hear him preach. But our backwoods preacher was ill at ease. The
magnificence of the city, and the prim decorum of the Boston churches,
subdued him, and he could not preach with the fire and freedom of the
frontier log chapel. The crowds that came to hear him were disappointed,
and more than once they told him so.
"Is this Peter Cartwright, from Illinois, the old Western pioneer?" they
asked him once.
He answered them, "I am the very man."
"Well," said several of them, "brother, we are much disappointed; you
have fallen very much under our expectations, we expected to hear a much
greater sermon than that you preached to-day."
It was a regular Bostonian greeting, and it not only mortified and
disheartened the old pioneer, but it irritated him. "I tell you," says
he, "they roused me, and provoked what little religious patience I
had.... I left them abruptly, and in very gloomy mood retreated to my
lodgings, but took very little rest in sleep that night. I constantly
asked myself this question: Is it so, that I can not preach? or what is
the matter? I underwent a tremendous crucifixion in feeling."
The result was that he came to the conclusion that he _could_ preach,
and that the people of Boston had not "sense enough to know a good
sermon when they heard it." A little later old Father Taylor, that good
genius of the Boston Bethel, a man after Cartwright's own heart, came to
him and asked him to preach for him, and this, after hesitating, our
preacher agreed to do, upon the condition that he should be allowed to
conduct the services in regular Western style.
"In the meantime," says he, "I had learned from different sources that
the grand reason of my falling under the expectations of the
congregations I had addressed was substantially this: almost all those
curious incidents that had gained currency throughout the country
concerning Methodist preachers had been located on me, and that when the
congregations came to hear me, they expected little else but a bundle of
eccentricities and singularities, and when they did not realize
according to their anticipations, they were disappointed, and that this
was the reason they were disappointed. So on the Sabbath, when I came to
the Bethel, we had a good congregation, and after telling them that
Brother Taylor had given me the liberty to preach to them after the
Western fashion, I took my text, and after a few common-place remarks, I
commenced giving them some Western anecdotes, which had a thrilling
effect on the congregation, and excited them immoderately--I can not say
religiously; but I thought if ever I saw animal excitement, it was then
and there. This broke the charm. During my stay, after this, I could
pass anywhere for Peter Cartwright, the old pioneer of the West. I am
not sure that after this I fell under the expectations of my
congregations among them."
Sixty-seven years have passed away since the old pioneer began his
preaching, and still he labors in the cause of his Master. Age has not
subdued his zeal or dimmed his eye. His labors make up the history of
the West. Where he first reared his humble log-hut, smiling farms and
tasteful mansions cover the fertile prairies of the West; cities and
towns mark the spot where his backwoods camp-meetings drew thousands
into the kingdom of God; the iron horse dashes with the speed of the
wind over the boundless prairies which he first crossed with only the
points of timber for his guides; the floating palaces of the West plow
the streams over which he swam his horse or was ferried in a bark canoe;
and stately churches stand where the little log chapels of the infant
West were built by him. It is a long and a noble life upon which he
looks back, the only survivor of the heroic band who started with him to
carry Christ into the Western wilds. He has outlived all his father's
family, every member of the class he joined in 1800, every member of the
Western Conference of 1804, save perhaps one or two, every member of the
General Conference of 1816, the first to which he was elected, all his
early bishops, every presiding elder under whom he ever ministered, and
thousands of those whom he brought into the Church. "I have lived too
long," he said, in a recent lecture; but we take issue with him. He has
not lived too long whose declining age is cheered by the glorious
fruition of the seed sown in his youth and prime. Few, indeed, are given
so great a privilege; and few, having lived so long and worked so hard,
can say with him, that during such a long and exposed career, "I have
never been overtaken in any scandalous sin, though my shortcomings and
imperfections have been without number." A man who can boast such a
record, though he be as poor in purse as this simple-hearted backwoods
preacher, has earned a Great Fortune indeed, for his treasure is one
that can not be taken from him, since it is laid up in Heaven, "where
neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break
through nor steal."
IX.
AUTHORS.