Political Excitement of 1859 and
’60—Foreigners—Know-Nothingism—Foreign Element in Politics—Class
Legislation to Encourage Immigration, Develop the Resources, and
Subvert the Religious Institutions of the State—German Rationalists
and Christianity—The True Interests of a State—Modern
Spiritualism—Its Pretensions—Phenomena—Influence upon the
Credulous—Circles—Mediums—Agents—Lecturers—Free-Loveism—Thousands of
Disciples—Midnight Lamp in Thousands of Homes—Many Turned from the
Faith to Serve Tables—Most Dangerous and Powerful Form of
Infidelity—Free-Thinkers—A Novel Encounter with an “Improved
Monkey”—Napoleon’s “Moral Combinations” at Work upon the Public
Mind.
Many will remember with unfeigned regret the political excitement that
began to agitate the whole country in 1859, and which increased in
violence and intensity the nearer the Presidential election of 1860 was
approached.
In times of great popular excitement, when partisans are using their
utmost efforts to carry elections, it is less surprising than hurtful
that politicians should appeal for support to every class of citizens.
The German population of St. Louis, St. Charles, Franklin, Cole, and
some other counties and cities had increased rapidly in the past few
years, and now for the first time began to make their presence and power
felt in Missouri politics. They had fairly recovered from the effects of
Know-Nothingism, if, indeed, the existence and labors of that singular
political freak did not precipitate the foreign born citizens into a
distinct political element and foist them into political prominence.
Being courted, and flattered, and fawned upon by political
place-seekers, they were easily induced to believe that they held the
balance of power at the ballotbox in many of the largest cities of the
State, and they began to claim the right, not only to vote, but to be
represented as a distinct class in the city and State governments—to
hold office and control municipal patronage.
To secure the support of this class of citizens politicians stood ready
to enact special laws for their relief, to grant privileges and
immunities to them as a class, and to accommodate their social
peculiarities and religious castes and creeds. The statutes of the State
and the ordinances of cities show that they were the _privileged class_,
and that class legislation, which always endangers the well-being of
society, was accommodated in this instance to those peculiarities of the
foreign element which looked to the subversion of the Christian
institutions of the State, and the protection of an infidel sentiment
that dared to invade the sanctity of the Christian Sabbath, disturb the
peace of Christian worshipers, and strike down the supreme authority of
the Word of God as a code of morals and a system of law.
To encourage foreign immigration for the development of the resources of
the State, to build railroads, open coal beds, work lead mines and melt
iron mountains, special legislation may have been necessary, but a State
consists of something other than broad, fertile acres for agricultural
purposes, or coal beds, lead mines, iron mountains and railroads.
These may be fruitful sources of material wealth, and may be necessary
to support and sustain a vast population, but they can not create
intelligence, promote virtue, regulate the social system, or in any way
define and adjust the higher duties and prerogatives of citizenship.
The wisest legislation protects equally the rights of all and confers
exclusive privileges upon none, and the best government guarantees equal
rights to all its citizens.
It is natural to expect that foreigners coming to these shores and
settling in these States would accept the institutions with the
protection of the government, and not seek to supplant the institutions
of the State that offers them home and shelter; and yet it will not be
denied that the foreigners in Missouri, taking advantage of the
readiness of politicians to truckle to their passions and prejudices,
have made strong demands upon the peculiar institutions of the State,
and their demands have not been unheeded. It could not be expected that
German rationalists, who could scarcely speak English well enough to
carry on the most ordinary traffic, would understand, or care to
understand, those institutions of the State which characterized the
State as a Christian commonwealth.
Nor did legislators, politicians, editors or preachers consider the
moral forces they were starting and fostering for evil, and the subtle
agencies that would work with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in
them that perish, and whose coming was after the manner of Satan, with
all power, and signs, and lying wonders, deceiving the very elect, and
spending its force and fury upon the desecrated altars and martyred
ministers of Christianity.
Other and different agencies were at work, and had been for years, which
could not be reached or affected by State legislation, and which
contributed no little to that state of the public mind which put the
institutions and ministers of Christianity under disability—what was
commonly denominated “Spiritualism.” It existed in a multitude of forms,
had many names, and manifested itself in many strange phenomena.
Professing to hold communication with the spirit world and receive
intelligence from departed spirits, it appealed strongly to the curious,
the credulous and the superstitious.
Those who believed in the supernatural, or whose hearts of grief kept
them near the “region and shadow of death,” or whose caste of
temperament made them super-sentimental, or who, by some constitutional
or cultivated peculiarity, easily take up with every wild fancy and
foolish vagary that produces a new and novel sensation; and many others,
too, who had credit for intelligence, refinement and piety—and as for
that, some of the most gifted minds of the State—were led away by it,
and became its deceived disciples, in one form or another, without
suspecting its deceitful moral tendencies.
Lecturers came into the cities and traversed the State, circles were
formed, mediums constituted, spirits rapped and wrote, tables moved and
turned, and men, women and children forgot their meals, and stood in
superstitious awe within the enchanted circles. Thousands of people lost
their relish for the Word of God and forsook his altars of worship. Men
neglected their fields, women their homes and children their schools,
and for whole days and nights hung with bated breath upon the supposed
communications from departed spirits, made often through the most
ignorant mediums. Not only in the cities full, but throughout the vast
populations of the rural districts, all classes seemed more or less
affected by and interested in it. In thousands of homes in Missouri the
midnight lamp shone upon tables surrounded by groups and circles of
people so intent upon the unintelligible incantations and messages of
spiritualism, so-called, that sleep was banished from swollen eyes and
pillows brought no rest to aching heads. By it many were disqualified
alike for secular, domestic and religious duties.
A peculiarity of spiritualism was that night and darkness were necessary
to evoke the spirits. They would rarely communicate to mortals in the
day time, or perform any very remarkable feats, such as playing on
musical instruments, untying mediums, singing in the air, etc., except
in total darkness. Evil spirits, like evil men, “love darkness rather
than light, because their deeds are evil.”
This modern spiritualism—neither the history nor philosophy of which it
is necessary here to discuss—organized itself into bands, circles and
societies of men and women in the larger cities, had their places of
secret nocturnal meetings, rented halls for public Sabbath exercises,
had their rituals and creeds, their priests and prophets, their altars,
incantations and genuflexions, which answered to some sort of public
worship. The first female lecturers and public speakers were
spiritualists, and in the spiritualists’ church, so-called, women are
the high priests and the scriptural teachings in regard to the relation
of men and women and their duties in the church are reversed.
Indeed, to call them a church at all is a misnomer, and a shameful
reflection upon every idea, principle and function of a true church of
Jesus Christ, for by believing in a revelation direct from departed
spirits in the spirit world they reject God’s revelation.
They commissioned mediums to write, women and men indiscriminately to
preach, to heal the sick, to see through the material and reveal the
spiritual, to break up the marriage relation, to destroy parental
affection, to form new standards of private and social virtue, to
disturb and destroy all the old foundations and safeguards of society,
and reconstruct the social system upon the modern ideas of socialism and
the most offensive forms of free-loveism.
Religious liberty with them meant social licentiousness, and the social
virtues were sacrificed to the lustful passions.
These things can not all be affirmed of all spiritualists, and yet the
inevitable tendency is the same, and the extremest consequences are
legitimate. To say that thousands of people in Missouri, through the
subtle agencies of spiritualism, renounced their religion, forsook the
church, neglected to read God’s Word, turned themselves away from paths
of piety and works of righteousness to serve tables, and became
downright infidels, is not half of the whole truth. To a large extent
the minds of men became detached from the foundations of Divine truth,
and wandered, like the “unclean spirit, seeking rest and finding none.”
Systems of infidelity, and infidelity without system, sprang up in every
direction and found supporters amongst those that were least suspected,
and the church began to tremble for the “faith which was once delivered
unto the saints.” Free-thinking, so-called, took the place of solid,
religious faith, and every form of doctrine received encouragement in
the public mind. The tendency in the public mind to skepticism was never
more alarming, and the mystic vagaries of Andrew Jackson Davis stood in
defiant competition with the New Testament. Lecturers appeared in every
city and centre of population, haranguing the people upon the vain
philosophies of men and questions of science, falsely so-called, seeking
to turn away their ears from the truth unto fables, and “doting about
questions and strifes of words” that would and did disturb the
foundations of godliness. Nor could both the religions press and pulpit
countervail their influence upon the public mind. Infidel clubs and
associations were formed under different disguises, and many
mischief-makers began to believe and teach “unwholesome doctrines” and
deceive the ignorant and unwary. It was a common thing to hear of men
lecturing in the principal towns on spiritualism, a higher civilization,
phrenology, pathology, physiology, hygiene, and other kindred topics,
and selling maps, charts and cheap books. In some places they drove a
brisk trade, and set all the old women—and young ones, too—men and boys
to talking and querying over the new ideas and theories advanced by
these flippant, and often immodest lecturers.
The character of such teachings can not better be illustrated than by
relating a somewhat novel adventure which the author had in the spring
of 1859 with one of these lecturers.
While stationed in Jefferson City I was invited by the Moniteau County
Bible Society to deliver a lecture in California on the Bible cause, and
aid them in raising funds to supply the destitute of the county with the
Word of God. Arriving in California by the afternoon train I was
informed that a gentleman, a stranger, had been there lecturing for
several evenings, and would lecture again that evening, in a public
hall. My informants had not heard him, and could not tell exactly his
subject or his object. When informed that his lectures were free, and
that he was selling some kind of books, I was not long at a loss to
reckon his moral latitude and longitude, and, indeed, to “guess” whence
he came, and what he came for, and hoped that some lucky chance would
throw us together.
The meeting of the Bible Society that night was quite a success, but my
anxiety to see the lecturer seemed fated to disappointment. The next
morning, in company with a friend, I went to the hotel, near the depot,
to await the arrival of the down train. A goodly number of gentlemen sat
and stood about in the public room awaiting the train also. My friend
soon opened the way (as he knew many of them) for an appeal to them for
contributions to the Bible cause, to which they pretty generally
declined to respond. About this time a rather queer looking genius
entered the hotel from the street, hastily and boisterously relieving
himself at once of what seemed to be a meal sack half filled with books,
and several rather pert exclamations and general salutations, taking a
seat near me. I did not at first suspect his identity, but his
inveterate loquacity brought him into notice, and my eye soon measured a
small, thin-visaged, sharp-nosed, squint-eyed, thin-lipped, cadaverous,
nervous specimen of humanity, a stranger to every sense of modesty,
propriety and decency, and who believed that with himself all wisdom
would die. He soon learned that I lived in Jefferson City, and the
following conversation occurred. Turning to me, whom he had evidently
been regarding for some time with uncivil curiosity, he said:
“You live in Jefferson City?”
“Yes, sir.”
“On your way home now?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Will you be good enough to make an announcement for me to lecture in
your city next week?”
“Well, I don’t know. Our people are not good lecture-goers.”
“Why, don’t you think I can have a good house?”
“That depends upon circumstances.”
“What circumstances? My object is to do good.”
“What subject do you propose to lecture on?” I asked.
“Various subjects; but especially treating of the construction and
functions of the human body, the laws of physiology and hygiene.”
“You may possibly do some good by lecturing on such subjects,” said I,
“and as we both are trying to do good, but in different ways, possibly
if you will help me I may be able to help you.”
By this time, of course, we had the eager attention of all present.
“How can I help you?” he inquired.
“I am trying,” I replied, “to raise money to supply the destitute of
this county with the Bible, and as I have applied to all of these
gentlemen for help, perhaps you would give me something.”
“No, indeed,” said he, with emphasis, “I would rather give my money to
have all the Bibles in the county burned up.”
“You don’t believe much in the Bible, then?”
“Not a bit of it,” he replied. “It has deceived the people long enough
already. If the people would only read my books on physiology and
hygiene, and learn something of the nature and laws of their own
physical organization, and what will promote the health, growth and
action of all its parts, and let that ‘old fable’ alone, they would be
healthier, happier and better off every way.”
He said this with an air of assurance and authority which he evidently
thought and desired would settle the matter with me, at least for the
present, as he rose and walked the room nervously.
But I had seen too many men in the West to be bluffed off after that
style, and my interest in him was too intense.
“Well, my friend,” I said, after he subsided a little, “If you do not
believe the Bible, what do you believe?”
“I am a free-thinker, sir.”
“And what is a free-thinker?”
“One who thinks freely, and as he pleases, upon all subjects, without
the shackles and ‘leading strings’ of the Bible, or any other old
book—who has the independence and manliness to think for himself.”
“I have long desired to see a free-thinker,” said I, rather coolly.
“Look at me, then, and you will see one,” he replied, rather curtly.
“Will you be kind enough,” I asked, “to tell me what you think,
‘freely,’ upon some subjects of grave importance of which the Bible
treats?”
“What subjects?”
“The origin of man, for instance. If you reject revelation, how do you
account for the origin of our race?”
“Easy enough;” he replied. “In the same way that I account for the
origin of plants and animals by growth and development.”
“You believe, then, in what is called the ‘development theory?’”
“I do, most fully and freely.”
“From what is man a development?” I asked.
“From the lower animals, and immediately from the animals whose organism
is nearest like ours.”
“What animal,” I asked, “do you think furnishes the resemblance so
striking that leads you to believe that man is a development from it,
and an improvement on it?”
With evident embarrassment, he answered, “I suppose the ape or the
monkey.”
“Then,” said I, “I think I can have you a fine audience in Jefferson
City next week, if I can make the announcement according to your
theory.”
“How is that?” he inquired.
“I will tell the people that an improved monkey will lecture to them.”
The excitement of the man was scarcely less than the evident pleasure of
the listeners.
“And, moreover,” I continued, “I will readily excuse you for not giving
me anything for the Bible cause, and can no longer be surprised that you
desire to see all the Bibles destroyed.”
“Why?” he asked, turning upon me sharply.
“Because,” said I, “I can not expect a monkey, however developed and
improved, to appreciate a revelation from God.”
He became furious, sprang to his feet, and with gesticulations as rapid
and violent as the volubility of his tongue, and as threatening as the
intensity of the mingled chagrin and anger that burned in his
countenance, delivered himself somewhat as follows:
“You are a Methodist preacher, going about trying to make the people
believe that they can get religion—that God can convert them. It is all
a deception—a delusion. God can do no such thing. I was deceived once,
too, and was fool enough to join the Methodist church and believe that
God could convert me. I went to the mourners’ bench, where you try to
get people to go; they sang, and prayed and shouted over me, and beat me
on the back, and tried to make me believe that I was converted. But it
was no such thing. God could not convert _me_. How could he get into me?
Where would he come in at? At the mouth? or nose? or ears? All the men
in the world could not make me believe that I could be converted. God
’lmighty could not convert _me_.”
He closed, pretty well exhausted, and yet with his feelings somewhat in
the ascendant, and with marked interest awaited my reply.
“I am not at all astonished at the fact,” said I, “that God could not
convert you.”
“Why? Do you not teach the people that God can convert and save men?”
“Certainly I do. But, then, I read in the Scriptures no provision
whatever for the conversion and salvation of monkeys, however improved.”
Without another word he wheeled and “went away in a rage,” snatching up
his sack of books in his flight, and muttering something that could not
be heard above the roar of laughter that followed him. I never saw him
afterward. From that moment he went his way, and I mine. Our paths never
crossed each other, or at least we never met. Our encounter lasted about
half an hour, and when he disappeared so unceremoniously nearly every
gentleman present walked up and gave me a dollar for the Bible cause, as
the best way of testifying their appreciation of the victory.
This aptly illustrates the pernicious character of the teachings then
rife through the State, and this “improved monkey” was a fair specimen
of the class of itinerant lecturers that were then talking to thousands
upon thousands of the people every week.
The rejection of the office of chaplain by the State Legislature, and
the passage of the “Sunday law,” and other class legislation affecting
the religious institutions of the State, meant more than the temporary
freak of a few irreligious politicians. It was the expression of a
wide-spread and growing sentiment amongst the people, and the first bold
demand of a fast-maturing infidelity.
The great Napoleon said that “there are certain moral combinations
always necessary to produce revolution; and if they do not exist it is
impossible to revolutionize a government or interrupt its peaceful
administration. Without them a few ambitious leaders, inspired by
selfish motives, may struggle in vain for political power.”
If civil revolutions attest the wisdom of this remark of the great
military chieftain, much more the moral and religious phases which
revolutions assume under given conditions.
The foreign element, with its rationalism, anti-Sabbatarianism and
abused Romanism; the irreligious element, with its Spiritualism,
Universalism, Free-lovism and open and disguised infidelity—these
furnish to the reflecting “moral combinations” sufficient to produce, or
at least to control and direct, the great moral agencies that were so
efficient during the civil revolution in burning churches, breaking up
religious associations, hunting down and dragging ministers of the
gospel “to prison and to death,” and adding to the horrors of civil war,
this, that the comforting ministrations of Christianity are proscribed,
or altogether prohibited, under the penalty of imprisonment or death, or
both imprisonment and death, to the man of God whose enlightened
conscience teaches him to fear God rather than man.