^' PRINCETON, N. J. ^ Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund. BV 2775 .C6 1903 Clark, Joseph B. 1836-1923. Leavening the nation LEAVENING THE NATION Alexander Huntington Ci.app, D.D. Corresponding Secretary of the Congregational Home Missionary Society from 1865 to 1878. Treasurer from 1878 to 1893. Honorary Treasurer from 1893 to 1897. Editorial Secretary from 1897 to 1899. LEAVENING THE NATION THE STORY OF AMERICAN HOME MISSIONS JOSEPH B. "CLAEK, D.D. Secretary of the Congregational Home Missionary Society NEW YORK THE BAKEK & TAYLOR CO. 33-37 E. 17th Stbeet, Union Squabe Nobth Copyright, 1903, by THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO. Published February 190S. ROBERT DRUMMOND, PRINTER, NEW YORK. TO THE ^^ome Missionax^ |)astors of ^mmco AND THEIR WIVES, WHO WITH LITTLE PRAISE OF MEN ARE LAYING THE REAL FOUNDATIONS OF NATIONAL STRENGTH AND PROSPERITY, THIS RECORD OF HOME MISSIONARY ENDEAVOR IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED. PREFACE " The kingdom of heaven is like leaven.'* Few thought- ful Americans need enlightening as to the theory of Home Missions. They will generally agree with Presi- dent Eliot that "the Church is the permanent organ of society's Hfe " — a modern version and no betterment of Paul's "pillar and ground of the truth.'' Plant a Chris- tian church in any community and it becomes at once the nucleus of law, order, moral living, and civic virtue. Such communities multipHed across the State give character to a commonwealth, and such multiphed commonwealths make a nation strong by making it righteous. Not to argue, but to illustrate, so obvious a truth is the purpose of this book. Three ways of approach were open to the writer. The Denominational and the Chronological treatment (by decades) were attractive by their promise of ease and simpUcity. But in these days of "low fences and fading land-marks" it seemed unwise, as it was cer- tainly distasteful, to exploit Home Missions by sect. It was also discovered that history does not divide itself conveniently into ten-year blocks of time. Both methods were rejected, the one as unseasonable and the other as artificial. There remained the Historical or Genetic method. It has been the claim of Home Mis- sions that it followed the people as the fisherman vi Preface follows the fish. Its story is thus identified with that of American settlements; the two are interwoven like warp and woof, and cannot be separated without de- stroying the fabric. The historical treatment, there- fore, though involving vastly more labor, has been adopted as the only adequate one for the theme. Of the inadequacy of the result no one can be more profoundly conscious than the author. Critical readers will soon discover that they have here little more than the story of beginnings, the bringing of the leaven and the meal together. The quickening process, covering countless sheets of correspondence and thousands of pages of printed annals, would require, however con- densed, several volumes of this size. The cyclopaedia of Home Missions is still to be written. Even in this limited attempt the author would be glad to believe that no errors of statement or more subtle errors of proportion have crept in. He can only claim to have used constant diligence in avoiding them; and should essential error be discovered, he will count it a personal favor to have it pointed out for future correction should the opportunity ever occur. One class of readers has been kept continually in view, that already large and growing number of women in our churches who are making a systematic study of Home Missions and preparing programs of study for others. It is hoped that frequent references made to books and articles containing a fuller treatment of topics named will be found useful to them. The writer is indebted to many sources of informa- tion which have been acknowledged in the text or in notes. Special acknowledgments are due to the Secre- taries of all the Home Boards who have furnished val- Preface vii uable documents; to Dr. Joseph E. Roy, of Chicago, whose accurate historical studies in Home Missions as well as his personal counsel have been available; and to Dr. H. K. Carroll, Superintendent of the Rehgious Census of the United States, whose elaborate figures showing the religious forces of the country have been a constant reference. CONTENTS THE PREPARATION PAOB Christian definition of history. — Providential direction of Columbus. — Spain's attempt at conquest and possession. — ^Vast and swift successes ; culmination : decline ; final coUapse. — Bishop O'Gorman's verdict. — The French experiment; its eariy success; its final failure. — Arrival of the real fathers and founders of America. — Separa- tists and Puritans. — The religious and missionary char- acter of the early settlers. The Plymouth colony, New Amsterdam, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania. Maryland, the Carolinas, Georgia. — All sorts and condi- tions represented. — Our prehistoric home missionaries. — ^Mr. Bancroft quoted 11 II NEW ENGLAND IN 1798 Why this date chosen. — John Robinson's prophecy and how it was fulfilled. — Church at Salem. — Congregationalism in New England in 1798. — "The Great Awakening" in 1740. George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards. Sur- prising conversions. — Effects of the Great Awakening. — The judgment of posterity. — Theological contention, — Unitarian defection. — Effect of the War of the Revo- lution on the churches. — Birdseye view of the country in 1798. — The beginning of organized home missions. — Sporadic efforts preceding. — Missionary Society of Con- necticut. — Preamble to the Constitution and Article IV. — Massachusetts foUows Connecticut, — The Socie- Contents ties national not local. — The prophetic wisdom of the New-England fathers. — New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont have societies. — The Baptists of New England organize, 1802 20 III THE EARLY WEST Changes in sectional nomenclature. — A new definition of the West in every decade. — New York State in the year 1800. — Presbyterians in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. — Presbyterian immigration in the seven- teenth century. — First Presbyterian Church. — The General Assembly organized. — Strength of the church at this time. — The Reformed Church. — Missionary movement begins, 1786. — Action of the General Assem- bly, 1802. — Standing Committee on missions appointed. —The "Plan of Union."— How it began.— What it meant. — Its supposed author. — Its ideal advantages. — How and why it failed. — The provincial view of New England. — Western New York, Northern and South- eastern Ohio the first points of attack. — Rapid growth of churches. Congregational and Presbyterian, under missionary culture. — New Connecticut; rapid develop- ment. — David Bacon, Joseph Badger, Thomas Robbins. — Prophecy of the Connecticut Society. — Settlement of Marietta; Manasseh Cutler. — Summary of the work of the Connecticut Society at the end of thirty years. — Sacrifices of the missionaries; hardships of travel. — Destitution of the early West and the providential appearance of organized home missions 33 IV THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY— ORDINANCE OF 1787 The importance and vast influence of the Ordinance of 1787. — Manasseh Cutler; his wonderful versatility. — The Northwest Territory; its size and bounds. — Slavery Contents forbidden by the Ordinance.— Birth of American nation- alism. — Three distinct streams of immigration into the Northwest Territory.— The value of German immigra- tion.— " Keystone of the Union."— Its influence on the further West.— Its influence on the South.— The center of population. — Enormous growth. — Center of Ameri- can manufactures.— The home of six Presidents of the United States since 1860 and of eminent leaders of the avil War.— The effect of the Northwest Territory upon home missions. — The provincialism of New England yields to a continental estimate.— America's judgment day in the West.— President Dwight's soUcitude for the West THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY— OHIO, INDIANA, ILLINOIS Settlement of Marietta in 1788.— The new Mayflower.— Indian hostiUties. — Moses Cleaveland and the Western Reserve. — The Virginian Military District. — Population in 1797.— Benefits of the Ordinance.- Beginnings in Indiana. — WilUam Henry Harrison, Governor. — Ef- forts to legalize slavery. — Tecumseh. — Tippecanoe. — Beginnings in Illinois. — Chicago in 1810. — Change in the policy of home missions. — Organization of a Nation- al Society proposed. — Agency of Nathaniel Bouton. — Ordination of home missionaries in Boston. — Organiz- ing convention in New York, May 10th, 1826. — The united Domestic Missionary Society of New York. — The American Home Missionary Society organized.— The effect upon the work. — Migration of Ohioans west- ward. — Population of Indiana in 1826. — Northern Congregationalism in Indiana. — Dr. Nathaniel A. Hyde. Beginnings in Illinois. — Mills and Schermerhom. — Salmon Giddings at St. Louis. — Illinois and slavery. — John M. Peck. — First Sermon in Chicago, Jeremiah Porter.— The Illinois Band.— John M. Ellis and Illinois College.— President J. M. Sturtevant, Theron Baldwin, 47 Contents PAGE Asa Turner, Dr. Edward Beecher. — Results of the Illi- nois Band 55 VI THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY— MICHIGAN AND WISCONSIN Territorial history of Michigan. — Unfriendliness of Great Britain. — George Rogers Clark captures Kaskaskia. — Obstinacy of the Indians. — The Jay Treaty with Great Britain. — Detroit conceded to the United States. — War of 1812. — Lewis Cass appointed Governor, with happy effect. — Beginning of home missions, 1809. — John Montieth, Father Richard, O. C. Thompson, John D. Pierce. — The " Catholepistemiad, or the University of Michigania." — Education and State responsibility. — Interest of the Indians in education. — The University of Michigan. — General Isaac E. Crary and education. — Testimony of T. M. Cooley.— The "Stump District" and the "Copper Country." — Three Michigans in one. — Baptists and Presbyterians in Michigan. — Wisconsin as a Territory. — Missionary journey of Stephen Peet. — Effect of his narrative. — Anonymous gift for Wisconsin missions. — German elements in Wisconsin. — Results of missionary labor. — General review of the Northwest Territory 73 VII THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE— MISSOURI AND IOWA How we came by Louisiana. — Jefferson, Livingston and Monroe. — Poverty of Napoleon. — President Roosevelt's opinion. — Effect of the Purchase. — Opinions of States- men in 1803. — How Missouri came into the Union. — The Compromise proposed. — The Compromise adopted. The North get a line and the South win a State. — St. Louis in 1800. — Predominance of Cathohcs. — Feeble Contents beginnings. — Abhorrence of Protestantism. — Lack of popular education. — Religious progress. — Iowa, its mixed Territorial history. — Scott's treaty with Black Hawk. — Struggle with the Indians. — Des Moines in 1846. — President Magoun. — Iowa's first missionary. — The "Dubuque Visitor" calls for a missionary. — Begin- nings at Keokuk and Burlington. — Early movements of Baptists, Methodists and Episcopalians. — Asa Turner reaches Iowa; his character. — Reuben Gaylord and Julius A. Reed in Iowa. — The Iowa Band; its origin, its members; farewell services at Andover; reaches Denmark; its members are ordained; begin work. — Influence of the Band. — Dr. Ephraim Adams and Dr. William Salter the only survivors. — Testimony as to the value of the Band. — Its influence on Congregationalism. — ^Testimony of Dr. Harvey Adams. — Results in Iowa. 87 VIII THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE— KANSAS AND NEBRASKA Geographical center of the United States. — The Kansas- Nebraska bill. — Effect of its passage. — Universal ex- citement. — Squatter sovereignty. — Border ruffians. — Emigration Companies in New England. — Conflict in Kansas. — John Brown. — Victory of free labor. — Be- ginning of home missions at Lawrence. — The Andover Kansas Band. — They reach Kansas. — Narrative of Dr. Richard Cordley. — Conditions in Lawrence. — Quan- trell's raid, 1863. — Results of home missions. Baptist, Congregational, Methodist, Presbyterian and Episco- pal. — Nebraska made a Territory. — Fortunate in her neighbors. — Marvelous growth of Omaha. — Arrival of Reuben Gaylord: his heroic journey from Iowa; his faith and patience. — Results of missionary effort in Nebraska. — Testimony of Dr. Bross 104 Contents IX THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE— MINNESOTA AND THE DAKOTAS PAGE Territorial history of Minnesota. — Statehood and area. — Wonderful growth. — Attractions for settlers — First Legislature. — Governor Ramsey; his message. — Be- ginnings in St. Paul and Minneapolis. — Legislative re- port on education. — Great temperance victory, 1852. — Early missionaries, Neil, Whitney, Seccombe and Hall. — Testimony of Dr. L. H. Cobb. — Multiplicity of de- nominations. — End of the "Plan of Union." — Mission- ary leaders. Hall, Cobb, Montgomery, Morley, Hood, Lyon. — Fifty years of home missions in Minnesota. — Cost and results.— "The Star of the North."— The Dakotas set apart as a Territory. — Rapid growth. — Phenomenal richness of soil. — Joseph Ward. — His character; his choice of the West. — His influence among the people. — His part in the history of the State. — Founder of Yankton College. — Testimony of Dr. Brad- ley and Professor Shaw. — Stewart Sheldon. — The Da- kota Band.— C. W. Shelton.— W. H. Thrall— H. D. Wiard. — North Dakota. — Henry C. Simmons. — Char- acter of the people. — Testimony of G. J. Powell 120 X THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE— WYOMING, MONTANA, IDAHO Wyoming a "Mountain State." — The Continental Divide. — A Territory in 1863.— Statehood, 1890.— Growth long delayed. — Indian hostilities. — South Pass City. — Un- ion Pacific Railroad at Cheyenne, 1868. — Beginning of missionary effort. — Rude condition of society. — The Vigilance Committee. — Dr. J. D. Davis and Dr. Josiah Strong at Cheyenne. — Clarendon M. Sanders. — Church growth embarrassed by distances. — Religious forces of the State. — Idaho not a part of the Louisiana Contents PAGE Purchase.— Statehood in 1890.— Error in the official map of the United States.— Corrected by Honorable CorneUus N. Bliss.— Captain Robert Gray.— A "Treas- ure State." Early society chaotic. — "Left wing of Price's army." — Political corruption. — Large propor- tion of Mormons. — Efforts to break their power. — CathoUc Missions. — Protestant Missions handicapped by Catholicism and Mormonism. — Beginnings at Bois6. — Coeur d'Alene.— Dr. J. D. Kingsbury.— His report.— Hopeful beginning at Mullan. — Great opportunity for missionary work. — Agricultural Idaho. — Religious prog- ress. — Statehood in Montana. — Early settlers from the South. — Mingling of southern and eastern elements in Montana, and the result. — Remedial agencies at work. — Beginnings at Billings. — Conditions in Butte. — Re- ligious forces in the State 138 XI THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE— COLORADO AND OKLAHOMA Explorations in Colorado by Zebulon Montgomery Pike.— Pike's Peak. — Expedition sent out by the Secretary of War, Calhoun. — Its report. — "The Great American Desert."— Fremont's exploration in 1842. — Discovery of Gold in 1852. — Aurania. — False reports from Pike's Peak and their effect. — Growth in population. — Rapid after 1860. — "The Centennial State." — Beginnings of missionary work at Gregory Diggings, Central City and Black Hawk. — Rev. William Crawford. — Denver and its churches. — Colorado Springs, Dr. James B. Gregg. — Superintendent Joseph W. Pickett. — His wonderful zeal. — His sagacity. — His temptation. — His tragic death. — Dr. Charles C. Creegan in Colorado. — Dr. Addi- son Blanchard. — Rev. R. T. Cross. — Superintendents C. M. Sanders and Horace Sanderson. — Examples of success in the city. — Cripple Creek and its missionary history. — Rev. G. W. Ray. — Religious forces to-day. — The fruits of home missions. — Oklahoma the last frag- Contents ment of the Louisiana Purchase. — Quaint report of a Spanish explorer. — How it returned to the status of "pubHc lands." — Efforts to force occupation. — De- feated by United States troops. — Oklahoma opened by the Government. — Story of the occupation by Richard Harding Davis. — Cherokee Strip opened. — Superinten- dent Parker's description of the scene. — Home mission- aries go in with the crowd. — Begin the organization of churches at once. — A later opening in 1891.^ — Rapid development of churches in thirteen years. — Oklahoma ready for Statehood 153 XII THE SOUTHERN BELT Where it begins. — Settlement of Virginia in 1607. — Captain John Smith. — Mixed elements among the early settlers. — Beginnings in Maryland. — Tolerant spirit of Lord Baltimore and his son. — The Church of England. — The settlement of the Carolinas. — Georgia a philanthropic enterprise. — The Wesleys and George Whitefield. — The middle class wanting in Southern society. — Effect of slavery. — Large religious element at the South. — Home missionaries withdraw after 1856. — Great disruption of churches on account of slavery. — A new missionary problem introduced by the War. — Early efforts in behalf of the blacks. — The American Missionary Association; its origin and spirit. — Its work at the south. — Lewis Tappan and Dr. M. E. Strieby. — Baptist Missions at the South. — Methodist work for freedmen. — A new South since the War. — Work in Florida, Texas and Louisiana. — Remarkable development in Georgia and Alabama. — The Midway Church and its work. — Atlanta. — The new spirit of the South 173 Contents XIII THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST— OREGON AND WASHINGTON PAGE Early history of Oregon. — Struggle for possession. — Dr. Marcus Whitman. — His appointment as missionary of the American Board. — Whitman and Spaulding start for Oregon with their brides. — How they kept the Fourth of July at the Great South Pass. — Success of their mission to the Indians. — Why Dr. Whitman took his winter journey across the continent. — His arrival in Washington. — His interviews with President Tyler and Daniel Webster. — His visit to Boston. — His return to Oregon with a large company. — Its effect on the future of Oregon. — The Whitman massacre and what led to it. — Rev. George H. Atkinson reaches Oregon by the way of the Sandwich Islands in 1848. — Population and pros- pects at that time. — Society heterogeneous. — Re- ligious condition crude. — Dr. Atkinson's valuable ser- vice to the State. — His knowledge of its history and resources. — His address before the Chamber of Com- merce in New York. — His articles in the "Oregonian." — Congregational development in Oregon. — Dr. Atkin- son's interest in education and his valuable service. — Dr. Aaron L. Lindsley, "Presbyterian Statesman of the Northwest." — His great work in Oregon and Alaska. — Washington set off from Oregon as a Territory in 1853. — Its rapid settlement. — Present population. — Church growths. — The Yale Washington Band. — Their personnel and success. — Washington to-day. — Testimony of Rev. A. Judson Bailey. — Religious forces in the State 193 XIV THE MEXICAN CESSION— CALIFORNIA How California became part of the United States. — Captain John C. Fremont. — Its imperial size. — Its diversified climate. — Its wonderful products. — The discovery of gold in 1849. — Effect on population. — A new home- Contents PAGE missionary problem. — The reign of terror and disorder. — Vigilance Committees. — The birth of law. — Ordina- tion of missionaries in New York for California — J. W. Douglas, S. H. Willey and J. H. Warren. — Early con- ditions. — Destructive fires. — Unstable population. — Congregational, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist and Episcopal beginnings at San Francisco. — The " Pacific. " — Professor Royce quoted. — Southern California. — Rev. Alexander Parker, first missionary on the ground. — Rapid growth and marvelous changes — Effect of the opening of California on the churches of the East. — Its strategic importance recognized. — Great missionary enthusiasm. — Reaction from over booming. — Mission- aries discouraged by unstable conditions. — Faith tried but finally triumphant. — The harvest after fifty years — The growth of religious forces 213 XV THE MEXICAN CESSION— UTAH, NEW MEXICO AND ARIZONA Utah, fruit of the Mexican War. — Early ignorance of the country. — Discovery of Great Salt Lake. — Brigham Young and Latter-Day Saints arrive. — Their industry in early settlement. — The origin of Mormonism. — Books of reference — A new home-missionary problem. — Mormonism a public evil to be actively opposed. — Deseret — Brigham Young appointed Governor. — Demand for Christian missionaries. — Rev. Norman McLeod. — His church. — Early success. — Persecution. — Murder of King Robinson. — The mission abandoned. — Revived six years later. — Presbyterians enter Utah — Their success with churches and schools. — The New West Education Commission organized. — Results after ten years. — United with the Education Society — What home missions has accomplished for Utah. — Strange types and customs in New Mexico and Arizona. — Their antiquity. — Relics of early Spanish possession. — Three distinct civilizations in New Mexico — Pueblos, Contents PAGE' Spanish-Mexicans, Americans. — Religious nature of the New-Mexicans. — Testimony of missionaries. — Re- markable conversions.— The success of Presbyterian missions. — Conditions in Arizona 228 XVI ALASKA, CUBA AND PORTO RICO Russian possession of Alaska.— Ceded to the United States. — Honorable William H. Seward.— Value of Alaska to the United States. — Home missions slow to enter; the reason why. — The Greek church in Alaska. — First mis- sionaries from the United States.— Work at Fort Wran- gel, Cape Prince of Wales, Douglas, Nome and Valdez. Alaska in the future. — Missionary exploration of Cuba. —Dr. J. D. Kingsbury and Rev. E. P. Herrick warmly welcomed. — Reaction among the Cubans against the Catholic Church. — Interest in Havana; at Matanzas; at Bolondron; at Guanaboacoa. — Missions established on the island. — Cooperation and comity. — Cuba open to the Gospel and Christian education. — Porto Rico becomes an American province. — Dr. A. F. Beard and Dr. W. H. Ward visit the island.— Population and iUiteracy. — Great destitution of schools and churches. — Beginning of work by the American Missionary Associ- ation. — Presbyterian efforts. — Cuba and Porto Rico ideal missionary fields 248 XVII HOME MISSIONS AND THE IMMIGRANT PROBLEM Immigration between 1850 and 1880.— Relaxing effect on the immigrant. — Loss to the American Catholic Church. — The G rman element. — The census of 1900. — Per cent, of foreign-bom and of foreign parentage. — Immigration in different States. — In large cities. — Sources of immigration. — Distribution of foreign ele- ments. — The effects upon American life. — Remedies for Contents PAGE the evil. — The responsibiUty of home missions. — Foreign departments of the Congregational Home Missionary Society. — Rev. M. W. Montgomery's visit to Sweden. — His discoveries and their effect. — The Welsh in America. — Baptist work among foreigners. — Presbyterian interest in the problem. — What the Re- formed Church has done. — The appeal of the city. — Responsibility of home missions for the congested elements of the city 262 XVIII NEW ENGLAND TO-DAY What New England has done for the West. — Great changes among her people. — Eaily and continuous migrations westward. — The effect on New England. — Churches depleted by emigration. — Dark pictures of religious destitution. — Remedial agencies at work. — Testimony of home-missionary secretaries in Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. — Is New England on the whole decadent? — Testimony to the contrary. — Ad- vancement of education among the people. — Increase of spiritual life among the churches. — Young men furnished to the ministry. — Gains in church member- ship in proportion to the population. — Denominational cooperation in Maine. — Missionary work for foreigners throughout New England. — Prosperity of the work. — Testimony afforded by benevolent contributions. — Continuous gains in forty years. — No reason for des- pondence 283 XIX WOMAN'S PART "Boston Female Society for Missionary Purposes" in 1800. — "Female Cent Institution of N w Hampshire" in 1804. — Its origin and remarkable history. — Mrs. Asa McFarland. — Presbyterian women organize. — What they have accomplished. — Baptist women unite for Contents PAOB home missions.— The zeal of Congregational women.— Missionary boxes. — "Woman's Home Missionary As- sociation" in 1880. — Its scope and object. — What it accomplished. " State Unions' and their rapid spread. Mrs. H. M. Shelton, Mrs. H. S- Caswell, Mi;s D. E. Emerson. — Fimds contributed by Congregational wom- en. — Their helpful cooperation. — Woman's movement in the Reformed Church; in the Methodis and Episco- pal churches. — Woman's wo k and the renaissance of the spiritual 303 XX COOPERATIVE AGENCIES The chief agency the Church. — Memorial to the congress of 1777, — Action of Congress in 1781 respecting distribu- tion of Bibles.— The American Bible Society organized 1816. — Its great work in eighty-six years. — American Tract Society formed in 1825.— The immense volume of its publications. — The American Sunday-school Union begins in 1824. — What it has done for the nation. — Church buildings and parsonages. — Action of the Al- bany Convention in 1852.— The Congregational Church Building Society — Its relation to the Home Missionary Society. — Its methods.— Baptis church erection. — Methodists organize for church bulding.— Presbyteri- ans and their work in church building. — Denomination- al Sunday-school work of Congregationalists and Pres- byterians. — The Young Men's Christian Association. — Its origin and spread.— Its blessed ministry.— Other cooperative agencies — Christian civilization one body having many members 31G XXI THE FRUITS The test of leaven.— The \dtality of the home-missionary idea. — More than thirty national home-missionary societies organized. — One hundred and forty million dol- lars invested. — Overwhelming proof of the \itaUty of Contents the home-missionary seed. — The debt of evangeUcal churches to home missions. — Most of them due to home missions. — Increase of evangelical communicants in proportion to the population — Voltaire's prophecy and its failure. — Do home missions pauperize the churches? — Home missions a paying investment finan- cially. — Striking testimony. — Incidenta fruits. — Christian education the outgrowth of home missions. — Christian Colleges founded by home missionaries. — The Congregational Education Society. — Home mis- sions and love of country — Testimony of Dr. R S. Storrs. — High ideals more influential than political parties. — Collateral values of home missions. — Indirect testimony from Southern orators. — Home missions in the Civil War.— Patriotic zeal of Christian Colleges. — Home-missionary literature. — "Our Country" by Dr. Josiah Strong. — Home missions and their relation to foreign missions. — Samuel J. Mills. — Formation of the American Board. — Its effect upon home missions. — Its dependence upon home-missionary enterprise. — Opinions of broad-minded men, Prof. Austin Phelps, Dr. R. S Storrs, Marcus Whitman Montgomery, WiUiam Kincaid, Prof. E. A. Park. — Faith and hope in the future of home missions. — Conclusion 330 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, Alexander Huntington Clapp, D.D Frontispiece Paul D. Van Cleef, D.D Facing page 30 Map showing the Territorial Expansion of the United States Facing page 48 Thomas J. Morgan, LL.D '* " 82 Cyrus Dickson, D.D " " iio Michael E. Strieby, D.D., LL.D " " 186 Henry Kendall, D.D " " 220 Alvi Tabor TwiNG, D.D " " 264 John P. Durbin, D.D «* " 318 LEAVENING THE NATION I THE PREPARATION History is a word of many definitions, but in the last analysis it can have but one meaning. All history is the unfolding of a divine plan looking toward the recovery of humanity, and a kingdom of heaven on earth. Either we must accept this or surrender our faith in "Some power outside ourselves that makes for righteousness." With this for a master-key, the study of history becomes the most fascinating of all pursuits. To the reverent student it is more; it is communion with the very thoughts of God. In the following pages attention is to be fixed upon a single link in this slowly unfolding chain, — the link of Organized American Home Missions. But to every great movement, like the one under review, there is a prehistoric stage of no little interest in itself, and of yet greater value for its connections. "The only true knowledge of things," says Archbishop Leighton, "is the knowledge of their causes." Causes are apt to be remote and prehistoric. In the light of events no reasoning mind can doubt that the western hemisphere, particularly North America, was predestined, concealed, discovered, and reserved, to become the seat of a Protestant Christian nation. XI 12 Leavening the Nation The three frail ships of Columbus were headed towards the middle Atlantic coast, and in a few days would have touched that shore, when a flock of pigeons, flying over the masts in a southwesterly direction, led the naviga- tor to change his course towards the Caribbean Sea. But for that shifting of the helm, the Atlantic States might be occupied to-day by the descendants of Spanish Catholics.^ Landing with his mutinous crew upon the wooded island of San Salvador, Columbus planted two standards — the royal flag of Leon and Castile, and, be- side it; the elder banner of the Cross ; thus, at its South- ern gateway, dedicating the New World to civil rule and to the higher law of heaven. After this significant opening, the events of the next three hundred years seem more like a parenthesis in the divine plan than its orderly progress. But were they a parenthesis? The movement of history more often resembles that of the river than that of the avalanche, — winding about in many capricious courses, often turning back upon itself, but finding its way to the ocean at last. America was the discovery of Spain, and, by every right, to Spain belonged the first attempt at conquest and possession. The story of that endeavor, its "swift and vast" suc- cesses, the Catholic possession of Florida, New Mexico and California; its Indian converts, numbering, in the Floridas alone, some thirty thousand ; the self-denying labors of its missionaries, strangely disfigured by oppres- sion and horrible cruelties, inseparable from the Romish methods of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; the marvelous expansion of empire and Church, until they »G. P. Fisher, "The Colonial Era," p. 15. The Preparation 13 embraced the greater part of the present territory of the United States; the culmination, decUne, and final col- lapse of the enterprise ; all these are among the common- places of history — "a strange but not imparalleled story of attempted cooperation in the common ser\dce of God and Mammon and Moloch — of endeavors after concord between Christ and Belial." ^ Glory, greed, and un- scrupulous propagandism, without one gleam of popular liberty, were the ruling motives of the Spanish invasion. The inevitable end came in 1850, with the annexation of CaHfornia to the Union ; or, to be quite exact, then came the beginning of the end ; the final chapter of defeat was to be written in the issue of the late Spanish-American war. That the picture, so hastily sketched, is no Protestant caricature, let the very latest Catholic historian of the period bear witness. "Our survey," says Bishop O'Gor- man,^ "of the work of the Spanish Church in the terri- tory of the United States is at an end. In time, it ex- tended from 1520 to 1840 and covers therefore over three hundred years. In space, it extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific south of the thirty-eighth degree of latitude and covered our present States of Florida, Alabama, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Over a hundred thousand of the aborigines were brought to the knowledge of Christianity and introduced, if not into the palace, at least into the antechamber of civiliza- tion. It was a glorious work, and the recital of it im- presses us by the vastness and success of the toil. Yet as we look around to-day, we can find nothing of it that remains. Names of saints in melodious Spanish stand * L. W. Bacon, "American Christianity," p. 7. ' Quoted in part by L. W. Bacon, p. 15. 14 Leavening the Nation out from maps in all that section where Spanish monk trod, toiled, and died. A few thousand Christian In- dians, descendants of those they converted and civilized, still survive in New Mexico and Arizona, and that is all." There is pathos in the story itself, and in the lament of the historian; but there is still more of instruction. Here is no parenthesis in the divine plan, but an object lesson that was needed, and may well serve for the warning and the despair of any power on earth, whether domestic or foreign, that shall attempt or hope to domi- nate America by oppression and force. America was not discovered to be the prey of monarch or hierarch, but for the home of the self-governed and the free. But the great lesson needed further endorsement and France was chosen to furnish it. It is an impressive fact that, while the Spaniard entered America by the south- ern gate, through the Gulf of Mexico, the French invader was directed to the northern door, through the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. The great middle coast from Maine to Georgia was reserved for men of another type and for a more hopeful enterprise. The French invasion, hke the Spanish, was for glory, gain, and Catholic supremacy; but its methods were gentler and more politic than those of Spain. In its dealings with the natives, it substituted the silken glove for the mailed hand. The Spaniard oppressed and enslaved the Indians. The French made them allies by the strong ties of mutual interest. This wiser policy was, in large measure, the secret of the rapid and wide-spread extension of the French colonies, which, within thirty years from the founding of Quebec, had been pushed westward to the head of Lake Superior, and southward through the whole length of the Missis- sippi valley, embracing the vast domain of Canada, half The Preparation t$ of Mexico, half of Vermont, more than half of New York, and a large part of Texas. Spain was sullenly retreating before her more powerful rival, France was everywhere advancing, and there seemed httle reason to doubt that America was marked out to become an enormous French colony, given over forever to old-world monarchy and Roman CathoHcism. The " Seven Years War, " and the treaty that resulted, changed all this in a moment. Great Britain became by conquest the residuary legatee of all the French posses- sions in America "from the Arctic ocean to the Mexican gulf." The magnificent and almost reahzed dream of French empire dissolved like a morning mist, and, thus again, as in the rout of Spain, the lesson was engraved anew across the page of history that America was stiU a problem unsolved, awaiting the will of God and the set times of His providence.^ Meanwhile, the real founders and fathers of America were being born and trained in varied schools of trial and adversity. Liberty of thought and will and conscience was in the air of those times, both in Great Britain and on the Continent. The Separatists, who came out of the Church of England to seek a freedom they could not find within its pale; the Puritans, who remained in the church with the vain hope of reforming it to their own ideals, both were fighting the same battle under different ban- ners, and with slightly different weapons — the battle of a free conscience against ecclesiastical tyranny. To these two in particular. Separatists and Puritans, and to other sufferers for conscience' sake, both in England and on the Continent, America loomed large in the West as ' For fuller treatment of Spanish and French experiments see L. W. Bacon, "American Christianity," p. 6-29. 1 6 . Leavening the Nation an asylum for the persecuted and dissatisfied; and hence it happened that without the faintest preconcert of action, with Uttle of strategy and scant thought of worldly gain, with no ambition for glory or for empire, but with a passionate longing for freedom and for peace, the third invasion of America began, which was to change the face of the world. Perhaps no other nation in history, unless it were God's chosen people, was ever more distinctly religious and missionary in the character of its early settlers. The official charters and commissions granted by foreign courts to these emigrants contain, almost without ex- ception, an explicit recognition of the divine claim. "The thing is of God," said the London Trading Com- pany in its letter patent to the Plymouth Pilgrims. " In the name of God, Amen," are the opening words of the Mayflower Compact, and the full spirit and meaning of that document are summed up in the phrase that follows: " for the glory of God and the advancement of the Chris- tian faith." The signers of this immortal compact paused on the threshold of their great enterprise, "at a time," says Bancroft, "when everything demanded haste," and kept a sabbath of prayer and praise on Clark's Island. Governor Bradford, in his history of the Plymouth col- ony, declares that the colonists "had a great hope and inward zeal of laying some good foundation for propagat- ing and advancing the Gospel of the Kingdom of Christ, in these remote parts of the world, yea," he adds, "though it should be as stepping stones unto others." In this germinant and prophetic sentence lies hidden the seed of all the wonderful missonary history of the nineteenth century. So overwhelming indeed were the religious aspects of the Plymouth Colony, that it is scarcely re- The Preparation 17 membered, to-day, that the Pilgrims were agents of a trading company, whose chief interest in the voyage was the fish they might catch, and the furs they might cure for export. Nor was New England the only spot settled by Chris- tian emigrants "for the glory of God." The Dutch of New York were children of the Reformation, and, how- ever eager for trade, brought their religion with them, and, it is claimed, set up their first church in New Am- sterdam, a full year before the Pilgrims landed at Pljnn- outh. Whether this disputed claim of a church can be proved or not, it is certain they had religious teachers and supported services for worship and instruction. New Jersey was peopled cliiefly by Presbyterians, Scotch and Irish. Delaware, another of the original colonies, was known as New Sweden, because settled by Christian Swedes, sent out by Gustavus Adolphus, their Christian King, who declared his purpose of making the new col- ony "a blessing to the common man as well as to the whole Protestant world." The very name of William Penn suggests the broad, earnest, and Christian hirnian- ity in which the beginnings of Pennsylvania were laid. Even Virginia, which we are not apt to regard as a dis- tinctively religious colony, urged upon its first governor "the using of all possible means to bring over the natives to a love of civilization and to a love of God and of His true religion." Maryland began as a Roman Cathohc colony, but the tolerant spirit of Lord Baltimore and his son and the rapid immigration of Episcopalians, Presby- terians, and Baptists soon transferred the political con- trol into Protestant hands. The early settlers of North and South Carolina declared themselves to be actuated by "a laudable zeal for the propagation of the gospel," 1 8 Leavening the Nation while Georgia, the last of the colonies to be settled, was a philanthropic enterprise from the start, dominated by godly Moravians from Germany and Presbyterians from the highlands of Scotland. It is not to be disputed, and it would be folly to deny, that all sorts and conditions of men were represented among the pioneers of America. All the vices of human nature were there and in full play. Ambition, greed, bigotry, cruelty, persecution, in fact the good and the bad, as everywhere else, mingled together, until the com- posite result made it hard sometimes to predict which would survive, or whether all were not plunging into common ruin. But all through this seething chaos of elements, there were those gleams of light that have been described. The true leaven was in the meal and the issue was safe. A soil was preparing into which in due time the seed of home missions, foreign missions, and Christian education, was to fall and from which a harvest of Christian civilization should spring to make glad the aty of God. With all its unwinnowed chaff, was there ever in his- tory such a sifting of precious seed for the planting of a nation! — Pilgrims and Puritans, Moravians and Hugue- nots, Covenanters and Churchmen, Presbyterians and Baptists, Lutherans and Quakers, displaying many ban- ners, but on them all the One Name : seeking many goods, but holding one good supreme — freedom to worship God, as the Spirit taught and as conscience interpreted. Such were our prehistoric home missionaries. Is it presump- tion to claim that, by the will of God, they were begot- ten and born, they were schooled and hardened, they were chosen, guided and led, they were ruled and over- ruled,to be the fathers and founders of the true America? The Preparation 19 Mr. Bancroft, summing up the story of the Colonial period, bears this testimony which may well close our review of the prehistoric era: "Our Fathers were not only Christians but almost unanimously they were Protestants. The school that bows to the senses as the sole interpreter of truth, had httle share in colonizing our America. The colonists from Maine to Carolina, the adventurous companions of Smith, the Puritan felons that freighted the fleet of Winthrop, the Quaker outlaws that fled from jails with a Newgate prisoner as their sovereign, — all had faith in God and in the soul." II NEW ENGLAND IN SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHT The year named is chosen only because it marks the beginning of organized home missions in America. It be- comes us therefore to inquire why and how a movement of such meaning came to its birth when and where it did. New England was now a hundred and eighty years old; "Separatist" was a name forgotten, "Puritan" had lost its technical meaning. John Robinson proved himself a true prophet when he assured the Pilgrims that "the unconformable ministers of England" would have no quarrel with them when both met in the wilder- ness of the New World; and so it proved. The church at Salem was organized by the Puritans on strictly Con- gregational lines, and the church of Pljmiouth was there, by its delegate. Governor Bradford, to give and to re- ceive the right hand of fellowship : thenceforth there were no more Puritans as such, no more Separatists as such, but only " Congregationalists." From the date of that auspicious union which has been called "the beginning of a distinctly American Church history," * the Congregational order, continually rein- forced by the rapid emigration of Puritans from Eng- land, began to take form and to gather momentum. In ten years from the planting of the Salem church, Con- ' Leonard Bacon. 20 New England in 1798 21 gregational churches in New England numbered over thirty. Reliable statistics of subsequent growth are almost wholly wanting, but from the twin plantings at Plymouth and Salem we know that Congregational churches in 1798 had come to number, in Massachusetts alone, more than three hundred, and in New Hampshire more than one hundred. Vermont at that time had seventy-five churches, made up largely of emigrants from Connecticut; and Connecticut from the beginning was as distinctly Congregational, with certain eccentrici- ties, as Massachusetts itself. Rhode Island had made but little progress Congregationally. It is a fact therefore to be noted that before the close of the eighteenth century the entire Southern and much of Northern New England w^as sown with Congregational churches. No such growth of Church power had been witnessed in any other part of the New World. No ecclesiastical establishment bound these church units together, save that of a common faith and polity. Fel- lowship between them, however cordial, was rendered difficult by distance and the inconveniences of travel. The well-worn simile of "the rope of sand," so often em- ployed by critics of the Congregational system, might have applied here if anywhere, to describe the hopeless disintegration of churches having no bond of union more tangible than that of moral fellowship ; l^ut here again it failed. Even sand may be fused by fire, and that is pre- cisely what happened during the last half of the eight- eenth century. "The Great Awakening," as it is generally known, reached New England in 1740 with the first \asit of George Whitefield. He was then a young man of twenty- five, but the fame of his eloquence had preceded him. 2 2 Leavening the Nation Churches were never built to hold such multitudes as thronged to hear him. On Boston Common he preached to audiences of twenty and even thirty thousand. On his tour through other sections of New England he preached "one hundred and seventy-five times in public beside exhorting frequently in private." The way for his coming and success had been to some extent made ready by the remarkable revival of five years before, which, beginning at Northampton, had spread up and down the river from the Northern to the Southern limit of Massachusetts, and extended into Connecticut. The great leader of the movement was Jonathan Edwards, and the central truth of his preaching was Justification by Faith, the same doctrine with which Luther, long before, had split the Church of Rome. Surprising con- versions followed his sermons, which appealed chiefly to the reason, though marked with intense fervor in their delivery. Whitefield's oratory was directed chiefly to the emo- tions. The commonest exhortations on his lips had singular power to melt the hardest men. Immense numbers followed the preacher and great were the re- sults. '/Magistrates and civihans, merchants and me- chanics, women, children, servants and negroes, all were religiously affected and many were converted." Spuri- ous excitements there were, as always where deep feel- ing is stirred. The youthful orator frequently forgot himself and was severely, though justly, condemned for censorious speech and extravagance of manner, and his chief helpers, Tennent and Davenport, particularly the latter, were charged with un-Christian attacks upon the Church and the clergy. But when the excitement was past and the dust of the campaign had settled, it was New England in 1798 23 confessed by all, except confirmed anti-revivalists, that the spiritual life of the Congregational churches of New- England had experienced a resurrection. Volumes have been written in denunciation of this Great Awakening which have called out other volumes in its defence, but a candid and conservative historian of a later period thus sums up the result, which the judgment of the present day confirms. "It was pre- eminently a work of God's grace; carried on with great power and productive of vast results. Whether we re- gard the deep sleep from which it roused the churches throughout the land, the number of hopeful converts (estimated by some as 50,000 in New England) with which it replenished them, or the new life it breathed into their pastors and teachers, we are forced to this conclusion. . , . The death-blow which it gave to the 'Half- Way Covenant' and to the custom of admitting unconverted members into the Church and into the min- istry, the boimds which it set to the growth of Armini- anism, Pelagianism and Socinianism, and the promi- nence which the doctrines of grace have ever since held in the system of New England theology, these are among the abiding effects of that revival. Princeton and Dart- mouth Colleges grew indirectly out of it; as also the mission of David Brainerd to the heathen and the monthly concert of prayer for the world. Even the dis- orders wliich attended it, those fanaticisms, strifes, and separations which gave so much grief to its friends and disgust to its enemies, were not without their practical uses." ^ The early fruits of the Great Awakening were a sur- * J. S. Clark, "Congregational Churches in Massachusetts," p. 172. 24 Leavening the Nation prise and disappointment. A rapid religious develop- ment throughout New England was expected, and might have been reasonably predicted. Good men went still further in their hope, and even Edwards cherished the belief that the scenes of the great revival presaged the dawn of the Millennium.^ The first apparent result, however, was an exciting and extended theological con- troversy, in which Edwards was a leader. It is not within the scope of this narrative to enter into that strife, but enough to say that it resulted, on the one hand, in the birth of a distinct school of New England theology, and, on the other hand, aided by the reaction of the Great Awakening, it precipitated the Unitarian defec- tion which finally drew so sharp a line between evangeli- cal and unevangelical Congregationalists. The spiritual benefits of the Awakening were further arrested if not wasted by seven years of war with the Mother Country and by other years of political agitation incident to the reorganization of the government. It is httle wonder during this Revolutionary period, when even the weapons of theological strife were ex- changed for the musket and sword, that church life should have declined. Yet, more than one historian has noted, not always with the same clearness of Dr. I;. W. Bacon ^ that " the quickening of religious feeling, the deepening of religious conviction, the clearing and defin- ing of theological opinions that were incidental to the Great Awakening, were a preparation for more than thirty years of intense political and warhke agitation." It is not to be forgotten also that the theological refor- mation of 17G0-70 cleared the churches of abuses that ^ A. E. Dunning, "Congregationalists in America," p. 261. ^ " History of American Christianity," p. 181. New England in 1798 25 would have blocked forever the wheels of missionary progress, had they remained, and that the war with all its moral evils, including the importation of French infidelity, opened a theater of home missionary en- deavor such as the world had never yet seen, where the evangelistic fervor and the patriotic zeal which have been the breath and blood of Home Missions from the beginning found an unrivaled field for their display. These results were visibly aided near the close of the century by a series of notable revivals, particularly in Massachusetts and Connecticut, of a different and more quiet type from those of 1740. They proved to be the gentle rain which brought to life many buried seed, and which, in the words of Dr. Griffin, ''swept from New England its looseness of doctrine and laxity of disci- pline and awakened an evangelical pulse in every vein of the American Church." Before proceeding further let us take a rapid view of conditions of the country in 1798. Vermont had sepa- rated from New York; Maine was still a part of Massa- chusetts. The five New England States held a popula- tion of 1,300,000. Congregational churches were an overwhelming majority, in nearly every state. Other churches were on the ground, but as yet in the earliest stages of development. In Massachusetts there were three Universalist churches, six Quaker, eleven Episco- pahan, sixty-eight Baptist, three hundred and thirty Congregational. Roman Catholics were represented in Boston by one church, which was the only one in the state. In other portions of New England the proportion of churches was about the same. Outside of New England, the eleven remaining States showed a population of about 4,000,000 making the en- 26 Leavening the Nation tire population of the country a Httle more than 5,000,- 000 souls. The western boundary of the United States followed the course of the Mississippi, from its source nearly to the Gulf of Mexico. Of territories there were four: the "Territory Northwest of the Ohio River;" the "Territory of Indiana;" the "Territory South of Tennessee;" and the "Territory of Mississippi." All were practically uninhabited, having a population of one and a half to the square mile, and that was Indian. The people clustered along the Atlantic seaboard from Maine to Georgia, and the center of population was within a few miles of the spot where the city of Wash- ington now stands. All the rest of America as we know it to-day was divided about equally between France and Spain, and our great Western empires of the present lay unnamed and unknown in the unexplored depths of "New Spain" and the "Province of Louisiana." Under these conditions, physical and spiritual, the Home Missionary movement began. It would be con- venient for the historian if such movements began sharply, but back of the river lie the hidden springs, and back of the organized movement of 1798 was a series of sporadic efforts, from which that movement took final and organized form. As early as 1774 we find the General Association of Connecticut discussing "the state of settlements now forming to the Westward and Northwestward of us, who are destitute of the preached gospel, many of whom are our brethren emigrants from this colony." ^ Following the discussion steps were taken to send two missionaries to their relief, the men were even designated and a sub- • E. P. Parker, "Historical Discourse" on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Connecticut Society, p. 7. New England in 1798 27 scription begun for their support, when the War for Inde- pendence arrested the movement. Later when the war issue was settled the missionary issue was revived. " Settlements to the Westward and Northwestward " were multiplying, and "our brethren emigrants from this colony" were increasing. Thus for ten years, previous to 1798, home missionary work had come to be attempted in new settlements by individual churches, but only in a desultory way. Applications sent back from old neigh- bors and parishioners, who had moved westward, and coming always with great earnestness, could not be dis- regarded, and Connecticut pastors went forth again and again under the auspices of their several churches or local associations, and were received with cordiality and gratitude.* As early as 1793 nine pastors were sent out by the General Association of the State, for the term of four months, to labor in the new settlements of Vermont and New York. They were to receive four dollars and a half a week, and four dollars more for the supply of their pul- pits. In 1794-96 a larger company went out on the same terms, and among them some of the wisest and ablest pastors of the State. In all, before 1798 twenty- two ministers, all but three of them Connecticut pastors, had served as missionaries in Vermont, New Hampshire and New York, and the cost of the effort had been less than $4,000. But these "guerilla methods," however valuable and however honorable to the churches employing them, were only preliminary to the mustering of the Home Missionary Army. A sentiment was springing up in all ' E. P. Parker, "Historical Discourse." 28 Leavening the Nation the churches and declaring itself, in many ways, in favor of organic action, and which culminated in June, 1798, in the Constitution of the Missionary Society of Connecti- cut; and so the river of organized American Home Mis- sions began its course. Something of the spirit of its founders speaks in the preamble and fom'th article of their Constitution: "The general Association of the State of Connecticut, impressed with the obligation on all the friends of Chris- tianity to propagate a knowledge of its gracious and holy doctrines, also encouraged by the late zealous exertions for this end in sundry Christian bodies, cannot but hope the time is near in which God will spread His truth through the earth. They also consider it a thing of great importance that some charitable assistance be ex- tended to new Christian settlements in various parts of the United States. The salvation of these souls is pre- cious. The happiness of the rising generation, and the order and stability of civil government are most effec- tually advanced by the diffusion of religious and moral sentiments, through the preaching of the gospel. In deep feeling of these truths, having by prayer sought the direction of God, in the fear of His great name, they have adopted the following Constitution of a Missionary Society." "Article 4. The object of this Society shall be to Christianize the heathen of North America, and to sup- port and promote Christian knowledge in the new settle- ments within the United States." The good example of Connecticut was followed one year later (1779) by Massachusetts, when the "Massa- chusetts Missionary Society" was formed on the same broad basis as that of Connecticut. In the language of New England in 1798 29 its charter, its object was "to diffuse the gospel among the heathen (Indians), as well as other people, in the re- mote parts of our country where Christ is seldom or never preached." It is to be carefully noted that these societies, while bearing the names of the States in which they originated, and supported by the States whose names they bear, were not for the benefit of Connecticut and Massachu- setts. There is no more striking or potential fact in early home missionary history than this. These socie- ties were local only in name; in their genius, sympathies, and methods, they were genuinely national. Their charter was to Christianize the heathen of North Amer- ica and to promote Christian knowledge in the new settlements of the United States. But there were no heathen in Massachusetts and Con- necticut save a few Indians, and both commonwealths had long outgrown the character of "new settlements." Hence it happened that of the more than one hundred thousand dollars subscribed by the churches of Connec- ticut to their society, in the first thirty years, or until it turned over its direct missionary work to the American Home Missionary Society, no part of that fund was ex- pended in Connecticut, except for the few Indians named; and of its nearly two hundred missionaries, not one did a stroke of missionary work in and for the State which commissioned and supported them. Into the wilds of New York and Ohio they went; among the heathen of Vermont and New Hampshire they labored; the new settlements of Illinois and Indiana received them; they penetrated into Kentucky and Tennessee and made their way down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico; — anywhere and everywhere in the 30 Leavening the Nation United States, except in Connecticut and Massachu- setts. Our New England fathers were not only Christians, they were patriots and statesmen. Their eyes were not shut to the moral wastes within their own borders; but they had a keener vision for a deadlier peril, the peril of outside barbarism. They seem to have been haunted with a prophetic dread of new States growing up and coming into the Union, without churches and schools, without Christian homes and a Christian sabbath. Hence these wise men of the East inaugurated their home-missionary policy; a policy which was embodied in a phrase invented by them, and often heard on their lips, "the welfare of the regions beyond." Think how much a[quarter of a million dollars might have done for Connecticut and Massachusetts, put into schools and churches ! Yet, so far as the record shows, not a miserly Pharisee among them was heard to suggest "Wherefore this waste? " and apparently no one was reminded of that convenient Scripture text, or pretext, for selfish- ness, as it is often misquoted, " If any provide not for his own, he is worse than an infidel." The very breadth of their missionary conception forbade the narrow inter- pretation. New York was their own; Vermont and Ohio were their own, and doubly so because their people were Uke sheep in the wilderness, without shepherd or fold. The time came, both in Connecticut and Massachusetts, when the care of their own wastes became imperative, and in these later years that demand has steadily grown. Home missionary funds are no longer sent exclusively to the regions beyond. This is as it should be. But few will doubt that the early devotion of these States to Paul D. Van Cleef, D.D. Late President of the Board of Domestic Missions of the Reformed Church and a member of that Board forty-seven years from 1855. New England in 1798 31 the new settlements made them aU the more quick to see and prompt to relieve their own destitutions, and fewer still will deny that the continued plea of the na- tional need in connection with that of the State has been the "longer lever" without which, Dr. Leonard Bacon was fond of declaring, the State alone could never have lifted its own load. All honor to the humanity of these early founders, so broad and unselfish; to their wisdom, far-seeing and prophetic; and to their noble example which, for more than a hundred years, and to this hour, has been the guiding star of home missionary policy. New Hampshire in 1801, Maine and Vermont in 1807, promptly followed the lead of Connecticut and Massa- chusetts. Thus within ten years of the first movement New England was organized in every part for home mis- sions. The three States last named were animated with the same broad spirit of Connecticut and Massachusetts. If they attempted less for the new settlements to the westward than their elder neighbors, it was only because they were themselves new settlements, needing more help than they were able at that stage to bestow. With their growth in wealth and strength, no body of churches has been more loyal to national home missions than those of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. To the same fruitful decade belongs the origin of Bap- tist home missions in New England. Its genesis is sin- gularly Uke that of the Congregational. "The Massa- chusetts Domestic Missionary Society," the first organi- zation of its kind among American Baptists, dates from 1802. Its object as defined by the Constitution was "to furnish occasional preaching and to promote the knowl- edge of evangelistic truth in the new settlements of these United States, or fiu-ther, if circumstances should render 32 Leavening the Nation it proper." The organized movement was preceded, as in the case of Connecticut and Massachusetts Congre- gationalists, by sporadic efforts on the part of individual churches. Indeed, the significant feature in all these early organizations is that they were natural outgrowths of an evangehstic spirit within the churches, and in no single instance were they forced upon the churches by outside influences. Baptist Home Missions, like Con- gregational, looked beyond the place of its birth, send- ing its missionaries into Maine, Lower Canada, western New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri. The story of present-day missions in New England, and of events which have made it home-missionary ground, second only in need and in the number of its mis- sionaries to the Western States and Territories, belongs to a later chapter of this history. Thus far we have been privileged to treat of New England, as the mother of the home-missionary idea, and the base of home-mis- sionary supplies, both of money and of men. It is time to transfer the reader from the New England base to the field and to the front. m THE EARLY WEST Nothing better illustrates the vast and rapid expan- sion of America during the nineteenth century than the history of "sectional nomenclature." "The West" has had a new definition in every decade. "To the west- ward," named in the preamble of the Connecticut So- ciety, was the State of New York, and " northwestward " was Vermont. Of a much earlier period, it is related on good authority that a surveyor was commissioned in Massachusetts to lay out a highroad from Cambridge towards Albany, as far as the public good required. His road came to an end twelve miles from Boston in the town of Weston, and the report made to the Govern- ment was, that the work had been pushed into the wil- derness as far as the public need would ever require. A good many pieces have been added to that road, and be- fore each such addition "the West" has steadily re- treated. At different times it was on the banks of the Charles, the Connecticut, and the Hudson ; on the shores of the Great Lakes, in the Mississippi valley, on the tops of the Rockies, and it stopped at the Pacific only be- cause it could go no farther. Beyond that line the East began again. Nor has this vague conception of the West been always due to the provincial shortsighted- ness of New England. The writer remembers, not twenty years ago, visiting a primary school in Southern 33 34 Leavening the Nation Wyoming, from whose Avindows the peaks of the Rockies were visible. To his question addressed to the children, how many of them were born in Wyoming, only two hands went up. To the further question, how many of them would like to grow up in Wyoming and help to make it a grand State, not a hand was raised ; and when the catechism was brought to a close with the bewildered inquiry, "Where then are you going?" with a united shout they replied " West." At the opening of the century the northern half of New York and its western third were practically un- settled and only partly explored. The rich valleys of the eastern and central portions held a population of less than 600,000, making it the third State in the new Union, Virginia and Pennsylvania only exceeding it. The prevailing church in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey at this time was Presbyterian. Presby- terian emigration from the old world, beginning early, had reached a significant figure before the middle of the seventeenth century. From 1680 to 1690 large numbers were driven by persecution from Great Britain, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Moravia, and still later in the same century, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the number was swelled by the arrival of Huguenots from France, Belgium, and Switzerland. Many of these exiles made their homes in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, clustering in isolated set- tlements, maintaining religious services, but as yet too scattered and weak to organize presbyteries or churches. The first Presbyterian church was gathered in Philadel- phia in 1690; the formation of "The Old Presbytery" of Philadelphia followed, and was followed in turn by in- creased emigration from Scotland and a marked in- The Early West 35 crease of missionary enthusiasm among the ministry and laity. Not until after the Revolutionary War, in 1789, the General Assembly was organized. The whole church, at that time, "consisted of one hundred and seventy seven ordained ministers and one hundred and eleven licentiates, two hundred and eighty-eight in all, with four hundred and nineteen congregations of which two hun- dred and four were vacant." ^ Whether the home-missionary idea originated west of the Hudson, and was imported into New England, or starting in Connecticut and Massachusetts worked its way towards Pennsylvania and New York, is a small matter either way, by the side of the fact that at the same moment when the individual churches of Southern New England were sending out their pastors four months at a time to comfort the new settlements with the gospel, the first act of the General Assembly, just organized, was a unanimous resolve "to send forth missionaries well qualified to be employed in. mission work on the frontiers for the purpose of organizing churches, administering ordinances, ordaining Elders, collecting information concerning the state of rehgion in those parts, and pre- paring the best means of estabhshing a gospel ministry among the people." Meanwhile the Reformed Church of America had not been idle. As early as 1786, in the same fruitful decade that witnessed the first movements of the Congrega- tionahsts of Connecticut and the Presbyterians of Pennsylvania and New York, the Reformed General Synod appointed a committee "to devise some plan for •"Historical Sketch of Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, 1802-1888." 36 Leavening the Nation sending the gospel to the destitute locahties." Contri- butions were taken up in all the churches, enabling min- isters and licentiates to go out on short tours, preaching and organizing churches. Their visits and labors ex- tended beyond New York to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and even to Canada. The plan, thus inau- gurated and always more or less desultory in its work- ing, continued until 1822, when to the joy of all con- cerned the ''Missionary Society of the Reformed Dutch Church" was orcranized to embrace both domestic and foreign missions. It cannot be too often and gratefully noted that the Congregationalists of New England, the Presbyterians and Reformed Churches of the middle section, and the Baptists of Massachusetts, by a simultaneous impulse, born of the Spirit, started to do the same thing at about the same time, and, so far as the record shows, with no knowledge of each other's purpose, certainly with no preconcerted plan. In 1802 the General Assembly ap- pointed a "Standing Committee of Missions to prosecute the work in its name and to nominate missionaries sub- ject to the confirmation of the Assembly;" and it is this date, 1802, and the appointment of this committee which are accepted by the Presbyterian church, as the time and the act in which organized Home Missions, on the part of that church, began. One year earher, however, 1801, the famous "Plan of Union" between Congregationalists and Presbyterians went into effect. It continued for fifty years. For that reason and because of its consequences, and of the min- gled praise and criticism it has encountered, we shall do well to look into its origin and its operation. The Presbyterians of the West and the Congrega- The Early West 37 tionalists of New England were much the same kind of people. In worship and belief, in spirit and temper, in everything but church polity, they were essentially one. Both were of Puritan descent, and of Calvinistic theol- ogy. It would have been difficult then, even as now, to distinguish between a Presbyterian sermon and a Con- gregational sermon, unless by a slightly differing em- phasis on certain truths. The utmost good feeling and Christian fellowship existed between them. Presbyte- rians, settling in New England, dropped into Congrega- tional churches as naturally as Congregationalists of a later day, emigrating westward, found themselves at home in the Presbyterian fold. Indeed, during the clos- ing decade of the century something hke organic union came to pass between the General Assembly and the General Associations of New England ; delegates were ap- pointed from each to the other and these delegates were accorded the privilege of voting. The opening of the Missionary Century found both of these churches, hands clasped, struggling with the same problem; how to preempt, or at least to overtake, the new and rapidly multiplying settlements with the means of Christian civilization. No rivalry entered into the struggle but only a strong sense of the need of prompt, united, action. Love of humanity and love of country were the ruling motive of both, and every thought of denominational supremacy was buried under the all- absorbing issue whether the New America should be heathen or Christian. Under such conditions, partly inherited and partly created by the times, some plan of union between Con- gregationalists and Presbyterians on home-missionary ground was to be desired and became inevitable. The X 38 Leavening the Nation particular plan adopted, and supposed to be the creation of the younger Edwards, was fathered by the General Association of Connecticut and proposed by that body to the General Assembly, and whatever its outcome, good or bad, this fact concerning its origin is not to be for- gotten. The purpose of the plan was to establish as far as possi- ple a uniform system of Church government for Presby- terians and Congregationalists on home-missionary ground. The terms, by mutual agreement, provided that a Congregational church with a Presbyterian pastor and a Presbyterian church with a Congregational pastor should each retain its own polity, while the pastor, if he came into disciphne, should be tried by the body to which he belonged ; or, if both parties could not agree to this, by a mutual council, composed of an equal number from both denominations. Where churches were alto- gether Congregational or Presbyterian they might main- tain their own polity without reference to any plan of union. ^ The advantages of such a compact in new settlements, where the people were few and more or less divided on denominational Hnes, are easily obvious. They would need but one house of worship, one pastor, one creed, one confession. In the choice and support of ministers and in all acts of worship they were one; while in all ques- tions of discipline or polity they were two, by mutual agreement. Ideally, the scheme was wise, economical. Christian; both parties entered into it with entire good faith. Per- haps no compact was ever made with a more honest * A. E. Dunning, "Congregationalists in America," p. 322. The Early West 39 purpose by the contracting parties, and the terms of the agreement were meant to be absohitely fair and impartial to both. Had it been adopted as a tentative scheme or temporary expedient, with a time limit of ten, or even twenty, years, the Plan of Union would be eulogized to-day as a triumph of Christian comity, worthy of the profound insight of its supposed author. But, for several reasons, it operated in the end less favorably for Congregationahsts than for Presbyterians. "The latter were nearer to the scene of missionary labor; their denominational spirit was more assertive than that of the Congregationalism of the day; their presbyteries were rapidly spread over the missionary districts and the natural desire for fellowship, where the points of separa- tion seemed so few, led Congregational ministers to accept the welcome offered." ^ Moreover, strange as it may appear to us who have witnessed the marvelous development of the West, the early fathers of New Eng- land had only the faintest conception of its possibilities. To them the Hudson river was the meridian of the United States. In the comprehensive words of Professor Walker, "These framers seemed to have little thought that the scanty settlements to which the Plan of Union was to apply would grow to be amongst the strongest American communities, and that what was well enough as a compromise arrangement by which feeble bands of Christians could be associated on the frontier would have a different look when the churches formed under it grew vigorous." 2 The essential weakness of the Plan of Union, so far as it affected CongregationaUsm, is here revealed. 'WiUiston Walker, "CongregationaUsts" (American Church History Series), p. 318. ^ Ibid., p. 317. 4© Leavening the Nation It was a plan without thought, hope or faith as to the future of America; a hitching of her home-missionary wagon to a stake instead of a star. Moreover, these disastrous tendencies were promoted by a singular delusion on the part of the New England leaders of that day, Presbyterianism had never proved indigenous to the soil east of the Hudson, and by an illog- ical parity of reasoning, Congregationalism was assumed to be equally foreign to soil west of that river. Hence it was not uncommon for New England pastors to advise their emigrating members "to be loyal Presbyterians at the West." Students in the Seminary were taught that "Congregationalism is a river rising in New England and emptying itself South and West into Presbyterian- ism." In 1829 the directors of the American Education Society recommended all young ministers going west to unite with Presbyteries and "not hold on upon Congre- gationalism;" and it was publicly acknowledged, at that time, that one half of the young men from Andover be- came Presbyterian ministers.^ What wonder, with the wise men of the East so blinded to the possibilities of the West, church leaders so content with the good showing of New England Congre- gationalism, and so faithless about its fitness for new communities, what wonder that the Plan of Union, from being an equitable arrangement between two equal and fair-minded partners, became the instrument of enrich- ing one of them at the cost of the other! It is certainly the historical fact that for fifty consecutive years the Congregationalists of New England deliberately planned and consistently labored to promote Presbyterian * A. E. Dunning, "Congregationalists in America," p. 327. The Early West 41 churches in the new settlements, and that their money was so freely poured into the treasury of the Home Mis- sionary Society for this purpose that when the plan was dissolved at Albany in 1852 it was found that " while two thirds of the beneficiary churches were Presbyterian, two thirds of the money was coming from Congrega- tional sources;" ^ which led a conservative historian (though, needless to say, an ardent Congregationalist) to exclaim: "We have been well called the Lord's silly people." ^ Nevertheless the Plan of Union has many redeeming features. It was a generous and most unworldly arrange- ment, in which neither party took an advantage which the other did not freely concede. Ecclesiastical courtesy can produce few finer illustrations. At whatever cost to the Congregational order, Puritan principles, which are above all interests of church polity, were so much the more widely disseminated; and if it be true that Congregationalism is poorer by two thousand churches, many of them among the strongest of the land, it is an honorable poverty, which, like that of the Apostle, has made many rich. Western New York and Northern and Southeastern Ohio were the first points of attack by the now organized forces of the Home Missionary Army. Most of the early settlers of New York were from New England, and at least four organizations were united in supplying their reUgious needs — the Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire societies, and the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, among which by far the largest share fell to the Missionary Society of Connecti- > Dr. J. E. Roy. ' Dr. J. S. Clark. 42 Leavening the Nation cut. Before the century opened, nineteen churches, all Congregational, had been gathered in that region, and before 1815 sixty more of the same order had been added. During the same period, twenty-six Presbyterian churches had been established, in all one hundred and five Puritan churches in less than twenty-five years, all of them, needless to say, supported by home-mis- sionary funds.* But in Northern Ohio a yet more significant opening had been made. A large region skirting Lake Erie, known as the "Western Reserve," had gained the name also of "New Connecticut," because of the preponder- ance of Connecticut settlers. At the beginning of the century the tract so named contained about fourteen hundred inhabitants, mostly emigrants from Southern New England. In 1804 it had four hundred famihes; one year later the four hundred had become eleven hun- dred, nearly one half of them from New England. In less than thirty years, ninety churches had been planted, all of them by home missionaries sent out and supported by Connecticut and Massachusetts. David Bacon, Joseph Badger, Thomas Robbins, and others not less worthy, are names that Ohio will never cease to honor, and to whose heroic labors she owes not a little of her moral strength among the commonwealths of the Union. In one of their early reports, the trustees of the Connec- ticut society indulge this prophecy: "The time is not far distant when the religious and Uterary institutions of New Connecticut which have been planted and fostered by this society will be reckoned among the brightest ornaments and purest honors of the parent state" ^ — a ' Congregational Quarterly, 1859, p. 153. * E. P. Parker's "Historical Discourse," p. 21. The Early West 43 prediction so grandly fulfilled that, in the abundance of the harvest, both sower and reaper may share the honors and rejoice together. To a slightly earlier period belongs the first settlement of Southeastern Ohio at Marietta, imder the lead of Manasseh Cutler, a Congregational minister of Massa- chusetts. Though the colony began in 1788, and was supplied with regular religious services, it was not until 1796, two years before the Connecticut Society was formed, that the first church was organized. Of its thirty-two charter members, all but one had been mem- bers of Congregational churches in New England. Thus in Northeastern and Southeastern Ohio, at about the same time, the leaven of home missions had been hidden in the meal and great were to be the results. To sum up in a sentence the work of the Missionary Society of Connecticut at the end of the thirty years, two hundred missionaries had been employed whose joint labors were equivalent to five hundred years of ordinary service by one man, and four hundred churches had been established in the new settle- ments of the land. With what wear and tear of body, with what sacrifice of comforts in the wilder- ness, with what patience of hope and courage of faith and labors of love, no words could ever portray. Our foreign missionaries receive and deserve much sym- pathy on account of the distance of their fields from home and friends, and the hardships of travel by sea and land; but it may be questioned if the remotest station of our foreign boards is not, to-day, more accessible than were the new settlements of America at the opening of the nineteenth century. Not a mile of railroad had been built. The river, the stage-coach, the emigrant 44 Leavening the Nation wagon, and the saddle were the only conveniences of travel, and to these tlie missionary added footsore and weary tramps from settlement to settlement. It is not easy, in these days of rapid transit, to con- ceive of the perils and the hardships of locomotion in those early times. But something of the reality is re- flected in the touching notes read from the pulpits of New England every Sabbath day, asking the prayers of the church for some family, or group of families, about starting on the long and hazardous journey into the West. In most instances they were bound for Western New York or Northern Ohio. The need of home-missionary effort in the early West, and the nature of the work done, are constantly reflected in the reports of that day. Within a few miles of New York City, on the western bank of the Hudson, in a community of one hundred and seventy-nine families, containing more than a thousand souls, four hundred and eighty-three only could read the Scriptures. "Among them all," says the missionary, "I found 101 Bibles and 53 Testaments ; the nmnber of families destitute was 95, and only 84 out of the 179 were in possession of the Scriptures. I have had the pleasure of distributing 285 Bibles and of hearing some heads of families read them, who, a few months ago, were not able to spell a word. Now according to their ability they are willing and do contribute to the support of the gospel and save what they give (to use their own expression) from their grog money." This was Eastern New York. But from the interior the story was much the same. "My field is a region des- titute of everything that could encourage an attempt to estabhsh civil or religious order. The Sabbath is spent The Early West 45 in hunting, fishing, neighborhood visits, and such hke; the discharge of guns is to be heard near by and afar off. After preaching one Sabbath a few individuals were con- sulted as to the expediency of continuing. The thing appeared almost unwarrantable, yet they resolved to try. The result is a church of twenty-eight members, a Sabbath-school well attended, weekly meetings, and the monthly concert of prayer for the conversion of the world." Again and again reports from Western New York, and its infant settlements, are brightened by such tidings as the following: "Fifty-six souls converted, twenty-one of these heads of famihes, and the remainder young persons of both sexes." "Our church starting with fifteen char- ter members has increased to 100." "Last Sunday the house was filled, say from two to three hundred, though the weather was bad. The burden of support falls heav- ily on a few. People with an income of $200 are paying $30 for the privilege of the gospel." "The whole moral face of things has been altered in this village within two years." In the midst of revival scenes one missionary writes: "I rarely retire to rest before midnight and rise again at 5 or 6 in the morning. It is a delightful work; about 100 have been added to the church." In R triumphs of sovereign grace have been glorious; about 60 are indulging the Christian hope." These are but samples. If aU the records of destitution, of labors and successes, scattered now through the files of the Connecticut and Massachusetts societies, the Missionary Committee of the General Assembly, the General Synod, and the Bap- tist Society at Boston, and covering the first ten years of organized home missions, could be gathered up and the 46 Leavening the Nation world could contain them, they would constitute a "Book of the Acts" of modern apostles, not one whit less inspiring than the journeys of Paul or the triumphs of Peter, James, and John. Indeed, they would be a continuation of the same. IV THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY— ORDINANCE OF 1787 Next to the Declaration of Independence and the Con- stitution of the United States, no early event in American history is more significant or far-reaching in its in- fluence than the famous Ordinance of 1787. The Decla- ration severed connection with the Mother Country. The Constitution laid the basis of a new confederation. The Ordinance was the beginning of government under the Territorial system. It applied specifically to the "Territory Northwest of the Ohio River," including the present States of Ohio, Indiana, IlUnois, Michigan and Wisconsin. No one man has a clearer claim to honor as the pro- moter of that epoch-making ordinance than Manasseh Cutler. Born in Massachusetts, by turns a storekeeper, lawyer, clergyman, physician, army-chaplain, an author of astronomical, botanical, and medical treatises; a pioneer, a State legislator and member of Congress; honored by Washington with a commission as Judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio, which he declined, and round- ing out his busy life as a Congregational pastor in Eastern Massachusetts, for the better part of seventy years, no finer illustration of that New England vigor and versa- tility, to which the new country stands so deeply in- debted, could possibly be named. 47 48 Leavening the Nation It was as a member of the Ohio Company of 1786 that, with prodigious energy, he raised and led a resolute band into Southeastern Ohio, after obtaining from the Na- tional Government the grant of a million acres of land in the Northwest Territory, and the passage of the Ordi- nance of 1787. Then and there the first step in National expansion was taken which was to end only at the Pacific. It is not too much to claim that the Ordinance of 1787 was the birth of American Nationalism. Yet it is doubtful if even Manasseh Cutler, seer as he was, had more than the dimmest vision of the future of the North- west Territory. The story of its occupation and the conditions that governed it, though at present they can only be outlined, go far to explain its commanding influence. A tract of 250,000 square miles, lying, wedge-shaped, between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, sud- denly opened its wide doors and invited the world to enter. The immediate government was Territorial with certain provisions for future Statehood. Slavery was peremptorily forbidden by the Ordinance. Vital to the future as this prohibition may have been, there was another condition " at least equally potential," namely, "the guarantee that these new national possessions should not be governed as independent provinces " but should be treated as nascent States. Here was the initial of that poUcy, now familiar to every American schoolboy, under which one Territory after another has cast off its swaddling-bands, and made good its claim to full Statehood, until the raw material of States has become practically exhausted. The early settlement of this great domain was not without resistance on the part of fierce Indian tribes en- The Northwest Territory 49 couraged by Canadian authorities in spite of our treaty with the Mother Country. An Indian war followed, continuing with more or less vigor down to 1810, when peaceful possession of large tracts in Ohio and Indiana was secured and settlement in earnest began. Three distinct streams mark the era of occupation, each of which contributed powerfully to make the North- west Territory what it is. First of all. New England and New York sent numbers of their people into Northern and Southern Ohio and even over into the eastern edge of Indiana. They were met here by a new stream coming up from the South, not of the planter-type, but from the middle and lower classes, with httle thrift and less am- bition, and which, by the lack of these qualities, has left its mark on Southern Ilhnois and Southern Indiana to this day. But meanwhile the attractions of the more northern regions began to be felt. Their earher posses- sion had been delayed by the hostility of Canada and the inconveniences of travel. But the sudden development of navigation on the Great Lakes and the digging of the Erie Canal opened a broad way from New York and New England towards Michigan and Wisconsin. Fortunately, the hardships of travel were still enough to deter all but the more sturdy and adventurous from joining in that exodus. Certainly it means very much, in the light of events, that the northern section of the Northwest Territory, including Southern Michigan and Wisconsin, Northern Indiana and Illinois, and Northern and Eastern Ohio, were preempted by a class of men and women inured to hardships, enlightened by the best traditions of New England and New York, imbued with patriotism, and behevers in the future of the American 50 Leavening the Nation "Nation." Here was splendid material for the "Key- stone of the American Commonwealth." ^ Just at this point enters a third stream, the German current, which was destined to affect most intimately the future of the Northwest Territory, Not that German immigration to America then began. Far from it. Before 1700 German refugees in considerable numbers began to arrive, settling first in Pennsylvania. Eighty years later there was a second flood made up of exiles expa- triated by persecution and war, but who found no West, at that time, to attract them. But after the opening of the Northwest Territory a new tide from Middle Europe set in and, this time, it was directed cliiefly to the region under review and particularly to Wisconsin, whose State Constitution had made specially liberal terms to for- eigners and otherwise sought to attract them. So rapid indeed was German immigration into Wisconsin that the dream of certain enthusiasts of a "German State" among our commonwealths was a favorite one, and might have been attempted but for the rapid increase of emigration from New York and New England which put an end to such visions. Had America in 1800 been given the choice of foreign elements to settle in the North- west, it could not have made a better selection than the Germans. They have prove(i thrifty and conservative, peaceful and patriotic, loyal to the American theory of government and responsive to the calls of public duty and danger. If some of their social habits are at variance with Puritan ideals, they have seldom attacked these, but are content to be left undisturbed to the enjoyment of their own national customs. • Professor F. J. Turner. The Northwest Territory $1 The reader who now cares to open a map of the United States and to note the position of the Northwest Terri- tory and its connections, will find reason to agree with Professor Turner in the opinion already quoted, that here is the " Keystone of the American Commonwealth." To the north a chain of Great Lakes stretching arms in every direction until they touch the shores of eight contiguous States, and open a watery highway from the heart of the nation to the outside world; on the south and west two noble rivers, offering free and easy navigation for thou- sands of miles. Into the magnificent delta thus formed there is thrust this imperial domain, as if to become the economic and poUtical center of the Repubhc. For many years it has been a vast recruiting-ground for the gathering of those forces which were destined to win and subdue the greater and then imknown West. Southward also it has had a mission in tempering the fire of Southern sentiment, and saving border States to the Union. For more than forty years the center of popu- lation, as determined by the census, has been located in the Northwest Territory. From a population of one and a half to the square mile, in 1800, it has reached 16,000,- 000, or more than one fifth of the population of the whole country. Since 1860 it has been the center of American manufactures. But its noblest product has been men and women. Of the seven citizens elected to the presi- dency since 1860, six were from the Northwest Terri- tory and "the seventh from the kindi'ed region of New York." The most prominent leaders of the Gvil War, in State and field, were from the same fruitful region — Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Stanton, Chase; and a million soldiers were its contribution to the rank and file of the army. 52 Leavening the Nation Here, too, the final battle between slaver}'' and freedom began, and here, also, it was practically settled. In the conflict of principles which preceded the shock of armies, Lincoln and Douglas were the champions of the two con- tending parties, and the issue of both conflicts was really determined when Mr. Lincoln laid down the self-evident proposition that "a house divided against itself cannot stand; no government can endure permanently, half slave and half free." Take away from our national arch this "Keystone," with its Yankees from the East, its Hoosiers from the South, its Teutons from Middle Europe, its wealth, manufactiu-es and commerce, and above all its men and women, with what they have done and what they stand for, and the Union would crumble of its own weight. Would there be any Union? If this lesson in American history should seem to any like a digression from the orderly course of our narrative, it is only apparently so; for with the opening of the Northwest Territory Home Missions received a new birth. It was then that its friends began to fuUy realize its meaning and the grandeur of its calling. Hence, from that time onward, there is scarcely a western State which the home missionary army has not entered while it was yet a Territory and usually in the first and feeblest stage of its settlement. Chicago was a struggling hamlet when Jeremiah Porter preached the first sermon ever heard on the western shore of Lake Michigan, and Milwaukee was a vil- lage of shanties when the first home missionary ap- peared on the ground. It was the opening of the Northwest that cured the provincial shortsightedness of New England and gave her leaders a new and more con- tinental view. The quaint boimdaries of America as The Northwest Territory 53 described at a later period would have been well appre- ciated even on Andover Hill at that time — "bounded on the North by the Aurora Borealis, on the East by the rising sun, on the South by the equator and on the West by the Day of Judgment" The churches of the East awoke quite suddenly to the fact that the future of America was not to be determined in New England, although New England would always have a long arm in shaping it; but that America's "judgment day" was in the West, and no time was to be lost, and no sacrifice to be comited dear, in hurrying forward the Christian forces that were to determine that future. President Dwight of Yale College expressed in 1816 something of this affectionate sohcitude. "Unfeeling indeed," said Dr. Dwight, "must we be, if turning our thoughts to the West did not awaken a multitude of tender recollections and anxieties in our minds. Our fathers were your fathers; our parents and yours grew up together. High and momentous are the destinies of your settlements. The early habits of a people are hke the first roads in a new country which it is extremely difficult to alter after the inhabitants have long been accustomed to them, and have built their houses and shaped their farms by them. Upon the decisions of a few depend the interests of millions in after-times. It devolves upon you to lay out the streets and plant the foundations of hterature and rehgion and to give shape to the institutions of society." ^ The tender anxiety that breathes in every fine of this address has been a growing sentiment for the past eighty years. The possibihties, the needs, and the perils of the *QHoted by E. P. Parker, "Historical Discourse," p. 20. S4 Leavening the Nation West have been the theme of couiitless missionary ad- dresses which have inspired the noblest eloquence of the greatest orators of the Church, and it is a theme that never grows old. With the opening of the Northwest Territory, this new birth of home missionary interest began. It crossed the Mississippi with a new race of emigrants bound for the further West; it has swept through the Louisiana Purchase from Missouri to the Canada line, and over the Rockies and the Sierras to the Pacific coast. It forced its way even into the South be- fore and after the war. A movement so marked and so potential more than justifies this general review of the opening of the Northwest Territory, and requires of us now a more detailed history of its development by States. THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY— OHIO, IN- DIANA, AND ILLINOIS Home missionary beginnings in Ohio have been briefly touched upon in connection with New York because of their close relations ; but they deserve a fuller notice, as part of the history of the Northwest Territory. Early in 1788, a company of New England pioneers set out for the Muskingum, headed by General Putnam of Revolutionary fame. A little later, they were joined by Dr. Manasseh Cutler, another leader who performed most of the journey in a sulky in less than thirty days. Their course took them along the miUtary road across Pennsylvania and over the Alleghanies. They were mostly soldiers, going West to draw their pay for mili- tary services, in the shape of Ohio lands. Upon reach- ing the Youghiogheny they went into winter quarters, and waited for spring, before continuing the journey by water. Here they built a barge and christened it "The Mayflower." It was the second of its name, and its builders had inherited something of the spirit of the Plymouth pilgrims. Reaching Fort Harmar on the 7th of April, 1788, they landed, forty-eight persons in all, and the new settlement of Ohio began. It was a propitious beginning. "Respect for law, reverence toward God, love of country, unshaken faith 55 $6 Leavening the Nation in their own abihty to do whatever they set their hands to, distinguished one and all." * Two of their first acts were to stake out a parsonage lot and to set apart two townships for a University. Before the end of June they had fixed on a name for the new city, calling it Marietta after Marie Antoinette and in gratitude for what France had done for America in the late war; and on the Fourth of July they celebrated Independence with a procession, speeches, and a bar- becue. Their first county, which took in about one half of the present State, they named after Washington. The chief peril of the colony came from the Indians who resented the advent of white faces on their ances- tral hunting-grounds, and it required seven years of fighting, with the cost of many valuable lives, to secure a treaty with the natives, by which about two thirds of the State of Ohio was thrown open for peaceful settle- ment. Meanwhile, in 1796, Moses Cleaveland and a company of about fifty persons reached the Western Reserve on the shore of Lake Erie. Its settlement, however, pro- ceeded slowly, owing to the continuing title of Con- necticut, which was not considered as good as that of the United States. Later, Connecticut surrendered all claims to Western lands, and the settlement of the Erie shore began in earnest. Thus hopeful beginnings were made in Northeast and Southeast Ohio. Virginia had reserved certain lands between the Scioto and the Little Miami, known as the " Virginia[Mihtary District," which was being settled at this time by emigration from Ken- tucky and Virginia. Hence it happens that in different »S. A. Drake, "Making of the Ohio River States," p. 155. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois 57 quarters of the State there began, and continues to this day, a marked distinction in the manners and customs of the people. At the end of ten years from the passage of the Ordi- nance of 1787, there was a thin fringe of villages along the north bank of the Ohio with a white population of about 5,000, and these were the elements of a great State that was to be. Now began to be realized the beneficent provisions of the Ordinance. No slavery could enter, but ''rehgion, morality, and knowledge being essential to good government, and the happiness of mankind" was "forever" to be encouraged.^ Nathan Dane and Manas- seh Cutler built better than they knew when insisting upon these conditions, for^no State ever began life under a grander charter, and, to their honor, let it be remem- bered that the first settlers of Ohio beheved in and guarded these provisions, incorporating them, with the utmost vigilance, in the State constitutions of 1802 and 1851. While these events were transpiring in Ohio, two vast counties were laid out to the west, one of them, Knox county, covering substantially the present area of In- diana, and the other, St. Clair county, embracing the present territory of Illinois. WiUiam Henry Harrison was made governor of Indiana in 1800, when the popu- lation had risen to 5,000, about equally divided east and west of the Wabash. In the old French settlements slaves were held in violation of the Ordinance, and deter- mined efforts were made to legaUze the institution. But this could not be done in the face of the Ordinance, and Congress had no power to revoke the slavery clause of * Language of the Ordinance. 58 Leavening the Nation that instrument. But one effect of the conflict was to discourage the rapid settlement of Indiana. Slave- holders were afraid to bring their human property into a territory where it would become legally free, and Northern families, who abhorred slavery, were equally timid about making homes where the hated institution might be forced upon them in spite of law. But a yet more serious barrier to early growth was the bitter hostility of Indian tribes led by Tecumseh, a chief of influence. Many of the natives were disposed to yield peaceful possession to the colonists and to sell them land for a song. Tecumseh held that such transfers, and all treaties made by separate tribes with white settlers, were void. The United States government, on the other hand, held them to be binding; the result was war, in which Harrison on one side and Tecumseh on the other were respective leaders. The issue came to decisive adjustment in the battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, after which settlement rapidly increased. In three years be- tween 1811 and 1814 the population advanced from 25,000 to more than 60,000 and Indiana was seeking admission to the Union as an independent State. More fortunate than her two neighbors on the east, Ilhnois, in her early days, succeeded in escaping the horrors of Indian warfare; although, later in her his- tory, she was to suffer in the Black Hawk Campaign. In 1810 she had 12,000 white inhabitants, who increased in number so rapidly that eight years later she was ready for Statehood. At that time two thirds of the State was wilderness. "There was a trader or two at Peoria, at Chicago just two, whose families with the garrison, newly set up there, eagerly looked forward to the arrival of the government Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois 59 schooner, that once a year brought news from the out- side world and supphes for the fort." ^ These conditions improved after the building of the National Road, and the opening of steam navigation on Lake Erie and the Ohio River. The three and a half million acres of Ilh- nois land voted by Congress to the soldiers of 1812, proved an alluring bid to immigrants, and the further grant of one section in each township for the support of schools, and two per cent on the sales of public lands for internal improvements, insured peculiar advantages to settlers and stimulated their coming. Before tracing further the home-missionary develop- ment of these three now organized States, it is impor- tant to take note of the radical change in home-mis- sionary policy which took place in 1826, and which was hastened, chiefly, by the demands of the Northwest Territory. Hitherto, there had been no organized National So- ciety. State societies had been doing national work, each in its own way. But several missionary organizations, working independently, had resulted in an unequal dis- tribution of men and money. Some sections were over- supplied and others were left destitute. Moreover, the laborers sometimes came into conflict with each other. Gradually the machinery of 1798 and 1799 had been out- grown, on the one hand, by the increasing demands of the West, and, on the other, by the rising tide of missionary zeal at the East, and it became increasingly evident that some more economical and comprehensive system must be devised. The germ of the new plan developed in 1825. » S. A. Drake, "Making of the Ohio River States," p. 248. 6o Leavening the Nation Nathaniel Bouton was at this time taking a post- graduate course at Andover. In company vnth Aaron Foster of the senior class and Hiram Chamberlain, also of the Seminary, he took stage at Andover, in the latter part of January, 1825, to attend a funeral at Newbury- port. Conversation turned upon the growth and needs of the country, and to the mind of Mr. Bouton the idea of a national society presented itself with great force. The same evening Mr. Bouton and Mr. Chamberlain con- tinued the discussion in a private room in Dr. Porter's house on Andover Hill, and Mr. Bouton, holding a key in his hand and placing it high on the wall, exclaimed with great animation and emphasis, "Why not strike a high key at once, and say a National Domestic Mission- ary Society?" A few weeks later, Aaron Foster, who had never for- gotten the stage-coach discussion, delivered an address before the Porter Rhetorical Society, on Domestic Mis- sions, advocating earnestly the necessity of a National Society for sending out missionaries, and especially for the settlement of pastors in distinction from itinerant workers. A few days later the Society of Inquiry, which up to this time had been chiefly interested in foreign missions, held a special meeting at which John Maltby, of the senior class, read an essay on the "Necessity of increased exer- tion to promote missions in our Western States." The leaven of the stage-coach discussion was still working. Said Mr. Maltby : " We want a system that shall be one — one in purpose and one in action — a system aiming not at itinerant missionaries alone, but at planting, in every little connnunity that is rising up, men of learning and influence, to impress their character upon these com- Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois 6i munities — a system, in short, that shall gather the re- sources of philanthropy, patriotism, and Christian sym- pathy throughout our country into one vast reservoir from which a stream shall flow to Georgia and to Louisi- ana, to Missouri and to Maine." It is not to be wondered at, under this rising interest at Andover, that six young men of the senior class should have applied at this time for ordination as home mis- sionaries. The ordaining council met in September, 1825, at the Old South Church, Boston. Distinguished pastors from several New England States were present, and before they separated, at an informal meeting at the home of Dr. Wisner, it was resolved that "the formation of a National Home Missionary Society was desirable and practicable." Three months later, another meet- ing was held at Boston, when a constitution was adopted "as suitable to be recommended" to a meeting there- after to be convened for the purpose of organization. The cause of this delay was honorable to all concerned. The United Domestic Missionary Society of New York was then four years old, representing, for the most part, the Presbyterian and Reformed churches. No rival organization was to be thought of, but only how to bring this new and vigorous society of New York into union with the proposed National organization. To this effect correspondence was opened. The New York Society welcomed the overture of the Boston brethren wiih great heartiness. A convention was called to meet in New York, Wednesday, May 10th, to organize "an American Home Missionary Society." Thus, for the first time, the name which afterwards became so dear and familiar took historical form. In that convention were gathered one hundred and 62 Leavening the Nation twenty-six ministers and laymen from thirteen States of the Union. They were Presbyterian, Associate Re- formed, Reformed, and Congregational; yet they came together with no sectarian ends to gain or to desire. The Boston constitution, with shght amendments, was adopted. The United Domestic Missionary Society of New York laid down its name and identity, and became the American Home Missionary Society, and, on the 12th of May, 1826, the history of that organization began, with the hearty good-will and perfect fellowship of the four constituent denominations. How wisely those early foundations were laid is proved by the few essential changes which have been foimd necessary in the lapse of time. The constitution of 1826 is, substantially, that of to-day. One by one, three of the original partners have dropped out, the Associated Reformed Church quite early, the Presby- terian and Reformed churches when their growth and the growing needs of the coimtry demanded the organi- zation of separate boards of their own. But the union, while it lasted, was one of loving and hearty fellowship, and its memory is still blessed. Home Missions in Ohio, as we have seen, date from the very beginning of the centiu-y. Joseph Badger, the pioneer in this field, appeared on the Western Reserve in December, 1800, and his first church was organized at Austinburg, in October of the following year. Other missionaries were associated with him, but mostly as itinerants, for three or four months at a time. It was not until Nathaniel Bouton's idea of a "permanent min- istry," under "national direction," became operative, that real growth began; or, more exactly, it was then that a certain creeping decay was arrested; for, when Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois 63 the American Home Missionary Society was organized in 1826, one half of the churches on the Reserve con- tained less than twenty-five members each, and most of them were without a permanent minister. In the next twenty-five years, two hundred churches had been planted by the Society, and supphed, not by itinerant missionaries, but, in the prophetic words of Maltby, by "men of learning and influence," who were impressing their own character upon the growing communities of the State. The new settlements along the Ohio River had suffered from the same cause, aggravated however by emigra- tion of a not very high or hopeful character from the South. In 1828, the Society, by a special exploration, discovered and reported, that in six continuous counties "no minister was employed, and in many communities not an individual professing godliness could be found." This story of destitution was spread abroad among the churches, and missionaries were sent in for permanent and regular work. The change that followed was swift and wonderful, and out of it grew schools, churches, and, not the least in its beneficent influence. Marietta College, — all the direct result of well - organized missionary effort. But not in the Reserve and River districts alone were these things true; the whole State was cared for. Mis- sionaries increased in six years from sixteen to eighty. Their labors were supplemented by Baptist and Meth- odist workers in large numbers, and probably no one State of the Union ever received a more generous mis- sionary culture than Ohio, between 1825 and 1850. "The money thus devoted," says one of its early pastors, "is not among the things that perish with the using. It 64 Leavening the Nation is still doing good where it was first expended, and wherever the influence of these churches is, or will be, felt throughout the world." Not the least of the harvest which sprang from this generous sowing is found, to-day, outside of the State. Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, and the Pacific Coast have received about a million sons of Ohio and their descendants, who migrated from the home- missionary communities of the Buckeye State, to re- plant, in the younger West, the moral ideals which had elevated their own life and character. The progress of Indiana, considering all its drawbacks, has not been less striking than that of Ohio. The results are poorer for several reasons, notably the mixed ele- ments of its population. Its southern counties were peopled early by emigrants from the southern side of the river, and they were not distinguished for secular or spiritual energy. The State on the north was less acces- sible than its neighbors because of its very limited lake front and the absence of good harbors. Hence immi- gration became "straggling and heterogeneous." The result was the establishment of society upon an irre- ligious basis, and the preoccupancy of the ground with thorns, which it has cost a long and laborious hus- bandry to subdue. In 1826, in a population of 250,000, Indiana had only twelve resident Presbyterian and Congregational minis- ters and forty-five languishing churches. In ten years, under the impulse of a national society, the mission- aries had increased to thirty, and in ten years more to sixty. By home-missionary pastors the college at Craw- fordsville was started, and from their ranks four pro- fessors and most of its trustees were dra'WTi. Baptists and Methodists, South and North, have done a large Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois 65 missionary work in the State, the former showing about eight hundred churches, and the latter nearly two thou- sand. Northern Congregationalism has proved most foreign to the soil, and for many years encountered special difficulties from a hostile, or at best an unsympathetic, Southern sentiment. It was fortunate during that period in having for a leader Dr. Nathaniel A. Hyde, of Indianapolis, who was not merely the pastor of Plym- outh Church, but, by common consent, the pastor in general of the State. By nature he was a concihator and skilled in meeting the most rabid opposition with "tact, diplomacy, and good nature," ^ yet without sacri- ficing liis firmly imbedded Northern convictions. Talcing into account its beginnings and early environ- ment it is a grateful surprise to find Indiana standing alongside of Ohio in the ratio of its religious forces to its population, and even slightly in advance of Illinois. One third of its people are found in the membership of its chiu-ches, and all but the smallest fraction of these have been created by home missions, and without such help would have had no existence. First glimpses of religious destitutior in Illinois come from Mills and Shermerhom in 1812. On their way to New Orleans, under appointment by Massachusetts and Cunnecticut, " they learned of and reported " a population of 12,000 in IlHnois Territory, and no Presbyterian or Con- gregational preacher among them, five Baptist churches with a membership of 120, and five or six Methodist preachers with a following of 600 members. Two years later, in 1814, Mills and Smith started on a second trip * E. D. Curtis, Home Missionary, vol. 74, p. 117. 66 Leavening the Nation through the Southwest, taking v/ith them Bibles and tracts, and a supply of French testaments. At Shaw- neetown, Illinois, they made a stop, and afterwards journeyed across country to Kaskaskia, then the capital of the Territory. Here, in a population of about 100 families, they fovmd four or five Bibles.^ The report of this visit led to the appointment of Salmon Giddings as a missionary to St. Louis, from which point he reached out, like a true missionary, and established churches at eight different points over the river in lUinois. In 1821, Rev. Gideon Blackburn, the able and devoted Presbyterian minister at Louisville, Kentucky, came over and conducted an important re- vival at Shoal Creek, with marked results. It was in connection with this visit that he selected, with ad- mirable foresight, a large tract of land which is now the site of Blackburn University, at CarUnville. The year 1824 was the period of IlUnois' encounter with the slave power. In spite of the Ordinance, the utmost vigilance of the people was required to prevent the encroachments of slavery. In the face of the Mis- souri Compromise, then in the fourth year of trial, the time was thought to be propitious for fixing the great evil upon the constitution of IlUnois. In the discussion and disposal of that issue, the scattered missionaries and their young churches took an active part; and no man was more prominent, as a leader, than John M. Peck, a Baptist missionary sent out by the Massachusetts (Bap- tist) Missionary Society. "His plan of organizing the counties, by a central committee with branches in every neighborhood, was carried out by his own exertions and * J. E. Roy, Home Missionary, vol. 42, p. 181. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois 67 personal supervision, and was greatly instrumental in saving the State." ^ Freedom won by a majority of 2,000 votes in a total of 12,000, and home missions, though at that time conducted in a rather desultory way, was largely responsible for the victory. The real development of Congregational and Presby- terian churches in Ilhnois began in 1826, with the new National Society. Yet, of its 130 missionaries, only two, at that time, were located in Illinois, E. G. Howe and John M. Elhs. But it was the beginning of organized progress, and in that was its promise and hope. In ten years the two had increased to thirty-two, and in ten years more to ninety-two. They were not itinerants but pastors of learning and influence, identified with the lives and interests of the people. The first sermon ever heard in Chicago, then Fort Dearborn, was preached in the carpenter's shop of the fort, by Jeremiah Porter, in 1833, from the prophetic text, "Herein is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit." The entire population, Indian, French, and American, did not exceed 300; yet, in three months from Mr. Porter's first service, he organized the first church of Chicago, with twenty-seven members. Their first house of worship cost S600, and was dedicated in January, 1834, with the mercury 29° below zero. In eighteen months, the church came to self-support. This venerable and beloved pioneer lived to greet the Columbian Exposition. To no other man in the world could that event, with its brilliant throngs and its mar- velous products of human achievement, have had the same personal interest as to Dr. Porter. From the ' J. E. Roy, Home Missionary, vol. 42, p. 184. 68 Leavening the Nation White City of 1892 to rude Fort Dearborn and its car- penter's shop, — what a retrospect for the memory of one man ! He passed away in 1893, at the ripe age of ninety, and at his burial in Beloit, his pastor, Dr. Hamhn, preached from the text of Mr. Porter's first sermon at Chicago, " Herein is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit." Few men have personally witnessed so much fruit from so humble a seed, and fewer still have had a more honorable part in so rich a harvest. The narrative has carried us a little in advance of one event which, more than any other, happily influenced the religious and educational development of the State. The "Illinois Band" was the first of its class. It fur- nished a model, in later years, for the Kansas, Iowa, Dakota, and Washington bands, and, because it marks a peculiar form of missionary effort, and was the first of its kind, it deserves a more extended notice. Dr. Joseph E. Roy, for many years field secretary of the American Home Missionary Society, and at present district secretary of the American Missionary Associa- tion at Chicago, has told the story of the Illinois Band. His opportunities for accurate information are so rare, and his account is so carefully condensed, that we prefer to transcribe it almost without change. "Here now," says Dr. Roy, "comes in the wonderful, providential coincidence, in behalf of Christianization in Illinois. Mr. Ellis, while living in Kaskaskia, had con- ceived the idea of founding a Christian seminary. It had been located at Jacksonville, whither he had re- moved to take charge of the church in that place and to help in the seminary. A half-quarter section had been secured for a site, and a subscription of $3,000 had been Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois 69 raised. In his report to the Society, published in the Home Missionary for December, 1828, Mr. Ellis made a brief statement of the seminary project, and appealed to the East for aid and for missionaries. ''Meantime, God had been preparing, at a distant place, another train of causes to fit into this occasion. Before the Society of Inquiry in the theological department of Yale College, Theron Baldwin had read an essay upon Christian Evangelism. An association was proposed whose members should go as a band to some newly open- ing part of the country, to plant churches and an insti- tution of Christian learning. Just then Mr. Ellis's re- port came to hand. It fired enthusiasm. Mr. ElHs was written to for more information. Early in 1829, seven young men signed their names in solemn pledge, as the Illinois Association, to go out to that State, of which there was less known then than we now (1869) know of Washington Territory. Their names were Theron Baldwin, Mason Grosvenor, John F. Brooks, Elisha Jenney, William liirby, Asa Turner, and J. M. Sturtevant. In consultation with the professors at Yale they concerted a plan for putting the seminary upon a regular college basis, and for raising at the East, in be- half of the scheme, $10,000, which after Mr. Ellis had gone on was soon secured. "President Sturtevant, in his quarter-century address, says: 'Great assistance was derived, in the prosecution of this work, from the cooperation of the American Home Missionary Society, especially from their able and effi- cient secretary, Rev. Absalom Peters, and the lamented Rev. Charles Hall. These gentlemen, together with many other active and influential friends of the Society, were consulted in the very outset by the yoimg men, and 70 Leavening the Nation the enterprise received from that quarter warm sympa- thy and cordial support.' " Soon were added to this band names of William Carter, Albert Hale, Flavel Bascom, Romulus Barnes, and Lucian Farnham. Every one of these twelve apostles, except Grosvenor, upon the completion of their seminary coiuse came on to Illinois. All came under the cominission of the Society, with outfit furnished, and the current missionary salary of $400 pledged. It is also to be said that this Illinois Band came out four- teen years before the Iowa Band, and, so leading the way, had shown how to do the thing. "In 1829 Messrs. Baldwin and Sturtevant, designated in their commission to 'the State of lUinois,' came on and set up the college, Mr. Sturtevant becoming an instruc- tor, and Mr. Baldwin locating at Vandalia, the capital. There, his first convert was the late Hon. William H. Brown of Chicago, whose estate has since paid over the sum of $70,000 to Home and Foreign Missions. There, too, was hung the first Protestant church-bell that ever rang in Illinois. Two years at Vandalia, four or five in the agency of the Society, and six in the principalship of Monticello Seminary, together with his experience in founding Illinois College, had given Mr. Baldwin such a knowledge of the elements of the Western problem that, becoming in 1843 the secretary of the college society, he attained the title of ' the Father of Western Colleges.' " * Illinois College, founded by a band of young mission- aries from New England, is but one in the long column of institutions similarly planted. It was fortunate in securing for its first president Dr. Edward Beecher. Its * Home Missionary, vol. 42, p. 186. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois 71 first class had but two students, but one of them was Richard Yates, afterwards the famous war governor of Illinois. Dr. Sturtevant was, for fifty-six years, con- nected with the college as teacher, professor, and presi- dent; a man of the keenest foresight and great mental vigor. His son, Dr. J. M. Sturtevant of Chicago, in a recent article on the lUinois Band, remarks : ^ "It is not easy for us at this time to reahze how much courage and faith were implied in this undertaking. To-day, when lUinois is the third State in the Union in population, the plan made by these young men seems feasible and easy. In those days, the journey from New Haven to central Illinois consumed from four to six weeks. The whole State had at that time less than 150,000 in- habitants, most of whom were poor people from the Southern States. Wealthy immigrants from that re- gion passed through the free State of Illinois and settled, with their slaves, in Missouri. At that time the popu- lation of Chicago did not include more than five or six famihes. The whole northern half of the State was a nearly unbroken wilderness. It was believed that the greater part of it would never be thickly inhabited, for the lack of timber wherewith to build houses and to fence the farms, and because of the supposed impossi- bility of making good roads over that rich prairie soil." Later in the same article Dr. Sturtevant adds: "The Illinois Band was fortunate in the time of its coming to the West, just before the great stream of Eastern immi- gration began to pour into the State by the way of the Great Lakes, and not long before the opening of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, the introduction of rail- * Home Missionary, vol. 73, p. 177. 72 Leavening the Nation roads and modern fencing, turned the beautiful wilder- ness into a fruitful garden. They were fortunate in finding the way prepared for them by earlier missionaries of the same society which sent them out, and a noble band of Christian laymen who rallied around them. They were also fortunate in the helpers that came to them, such as Edward Beecher and Truman M. Post, and a host of others, whom I may not mention. Abraham Lincoln regarded the faculty and early gradu- ates of Illinois College as among his chosen counselors." From whatever point we view it, therefore, the Illinois Band, in the character of its men and in the time of its coming, must be regarded as one of those providential movements of which the history of the early West is so full; the flowering of that home-missionary interest which was planted by the Connecticut and Massachu- setts Societies in 1798-99, which took practical form in the General Assembly of 1802, was fully organized in the joint convention of Congregational, Presbyterian, and Reformed churches in 1826, and has ever since been pouring its consecrated money and men into the hfe of the West. THE NORTHWEST TERKTTORY— MICHIGAN AND WISCONSIN The "Territory of Michigan" and "Michigan Terri- tory" have included at different times the present State of that name, Wisconsin, Indiana, part of Minnesota, and even a strip of Ohio, The latter was exchanged in 1836 for what is now known as the Upper Peninsula. No part of the Northwest Territory won its Statehood through greater stress and strain than the State of Michigan. It has already been noted that the early settlement of the Northwest was delayed by the unfriendliness of Great Britain and the more active hostiUty of the Indian tribes. Michigan, from its isolated position and its proximity to Canada, was among the chief sufferers from these causes, until that intrepid pioneer, George Rogers Clark, after playing a conspicuous part in the settlement of Kentucky determined to put an end to these conditions. With a small company of less than 200 men he marched across country from the borders of Virginia to the British post at Kaskaskia, broke into the fort and compelled its capitulation to the United States. The French settlers at Cahokia, upon learning of the captiu-e, surrendered voluntarily and Vincennes quickly followed suit. The English rallied and recaptured the latter stronghold, but were in turn driven out and the 73 74 Leavening the Nation English cordon of posts, by which Great Britain sought to enforce her claim to all territory north of the Ohio, was effectually broken. The treaty of peace with Eng- land indicated unmistakably that the northern boundary of the United States was to be the line of the Great Lakes; but it had pleased the English to regard the southern peninsula of Michigan and south to the Ohio as exempt, and there is little reason to doubt that but for the reso- lute course of Clark it would to-day be a part of Canada. After this treble victory, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes, nothing remained to be desired but the pos- session of Detroit, and this was finally conceded by the Enghsh government, as it became more and more evident that its people were likely to be American rather than English. Thus by wars and fightings, by diplomatic dealings with agents of the British government, and most of all by the resolute courage of Clark and his little army, the heart of the Northwest Territory was secured to the American Union. There remained, however, a settlement with the In- dian tribes who stubbornly adhered to their right of pos- session. They resented the presence of every white face north of the Ohio, and in this attitude of hostility they were secretly encouraged by their Enghsh allies. It was not until 1795 that a final truce was signed by which a generous strip of Eastern Michigan and all claims to the posts of Detroit and Mackinaw were surrendered to the United States. Meanwhile Mr. Jay had negotiated a treaty with Great Britain by which all British garrisons were to be withdrawn from the limits of the United States, and on July 11, 1796, nine years after the famous Ordinance of 1787, "the American flag was for the first time raised above Detroit and the laws of the United Michigan and Wisconsin 75 States and the Northwest Territory were extended over the Michigan settlements." ^ Nine years later, in 1805, Michigan was set off from Indiana and became a Territory by itself. Population had gathered slowly and was divided between French, English, and American. Detroit was the metropolis; the people were mostly Catholic; but the missionary care and instruction they had received under the French control had been withdrawn, and ''their piety scarcely went beyond profession." ^ The total population did not exceed 4,000. But the significant and hopeful fact was that the new Territory, now a ward of the United States, was under the wise and beneficent terms of the Ordinance of 1787, which provided that as soon as it could show 5,000 male inhabitants of age, it would be entitled to elect a Territorial legislature and begin the career of a self-governing people. The appointment of an incompetent governor, the friction that followed be- tween the governor and his nearest counsellor, the Chief Justice, and more particularly the War of 1812 which re- opened active hostilities from Canada, chilled and de- ferred the fulfilment of these hopes; and it was not until Detroit had been taken by the British and retaken by the Americans, not until after Perry's brilliant victory on Lake Erie and the debris of the second war with Great Britain had been cleared away, that the normal Ameri- can life of Michigan began. It was heralded by the appointment of General Lewis Cass as governor; and perhaps no greater blessing ever *T. M. Cooley, "Michigan" (American Commonwealth Series), p. 118. ' Ibid., p. 141. y6 Leavening the Nation befell a new settlement. During his administration, cheap lands were brought into the market; immigration was encouraged ; roads were built into the interior which up to this time had never been critically surveyed; the Upper Peninsula was added to the Territory, and some- thing of its mineral wealth began to be known; repre- sentation in Congress was effected; counties and town- ships were organized; the printing-press and newspaper appeared; the smoke of steamships was seen on Lake Erie; and last and most of all, the Erie Canal was com- pleted in 1825, and Michigan connected by a highway with the Atlantic and the East. In twenty-five years population had advanced from 4,000 to 34,000, and the future of Michigan as an independent State was practi- cally assured. Meanwhile home missions had begun as early as 1809. Rev. John Monteith, a Methodist pioneer, was preaching to Protestants, without distinction of sect, at Detroit. Congregational and Presbyterian missions began in 1826 and Baptist in 1832. In that year there were three mis- sionaries of the Baptist Board in Michigan, and twelve of the American Home Missionary Society. Their work was embarrassed by the mixed elements of the population. The French and Catholic leaven was everywhere appar- ent. Churches were few and scattered, and a day's jour- ney to meeting was not uncommon. The circuit-rider became a familiar figure. Camp meetings and revivals of doubtful utility were frequent. All these were be- ginnings, crude, simple, often objectionable, yet contain- ing germs which the soberer sense of later times was to bring to flower and fruit. The rehgion of new settle- ments is much like their homes, rough and uncouth; but give both time, and the cabin develops into a palace, Michigan and Wisconsin 77 and the crude faith of the frontier into orderly Christian worship. Perhaps nowhere in the Northwest Territory, outside of Michigan, have home missions and popular education been more closely identified. Michigan's educational system has been described as "four-square" and it might be added, with a home missionary at each corner of the square: John Monteith, the Methodist pioneer; Father Richard, the Catholic priest; O. C. Thompson, a mission- ary of the Presbyterian Church, and John D. Pierce, a Congregational pastor commissioned by the American Home Missionary Society. All these men were preachers, with supreme faith in the gospel ; yet all of them had the breadth of vision to see that religion without knowledge is dangerous, and that public opinion, in any self-govern- ing state, to be safe, must be enlightened. It was in 1817 that Monteith and Father Richard with the help of the Chief Justice of the Territory drew up "an act to establish the Catholepistemiad, or the Uni- versity of Michigania." ^ That the plan was crude and ambitious its name would indicate; yet "it grasped certain principles which from this time became incor- porated in the polity of the Territory and subsequently of the State." The fundamental thought in this rather airy structure was State responsibility for the education of its people, and this, not in the rudiments of education .alone, but in the higher branches of learning. The act provided that fifteen per cent, should be added to the Territorial taxes for the support of the institution. Education was to be non-sectarian, and to insure this provision, Mr. Monteith, the Methodist, was made presi- *T. M. Cooley, "Michigan" (American Commonwealth Series), p. 310. 78 Leavening the Nation dent, and Father Richard, the CathoHc, his assistant. They might be trusted to watch each other. Interest in the endeavor was not confined to the white settlers, for in 1817 we find the Ottawas, the Chippewas, and the Pottawatomies, contributing six sections of land from their then scant reservations for the new college. It might be thought that this ambitious and, in some respects, pedantic scheme began at the wrong end — a University without students, a great finishing school without its supporting chain of academies, high schools, and other preparatory institutions. But these wise men had anticipated the dictum of the Concord philosopher, "Hitch your wagon to a star," and the result proved the wisdom of the saying, for the next step after laying the corner-stone of a University was to empower the trus- tees "to establish from time to time such colleges, acad- emies, and schools as they may think proper." ^ It is further to be noticed that these prophets of education saw so far in advance of the pubhc sentiment of their times, that the doors of the new university were opened to both sexes, and have never since been closed in Michi- gan. Such were the Territorial ambitions with respect to education. The new State inaugurated in 1837 did not discourage, but confirmed and promoted the scheme, though stripping it of some of its spectacular features. There was no longer a " Catholepistemiad of Michigania," but there was a "University of Michigan" which has set the pace and supplied the model for other States. The "star" was still drawing the " wagon," though the latter had become a stately coach. > T. M. Cooley, "Michigan," p. 313. Michigan and Wisconsin 79 In 1831, John D. Pierce had been commissioned as a Congregational missionary, and began work in Jackson, Calhoun, and Eton counties. He solemnized the first marriage and officiated at the first funeral in western Michigan.^ He was a man of vision, but not a dreamer, adding to intense missionary enthusiasm, practical sense, and a knowledge of affairs. He and his young wife, a lady of intelligence and refinement, travelled widely over their difficult field, and thus he was fitted by a rare ex- perience for a peculiar service, whose importance he did not himself realize. He and General Isaac E. Crary, afterwards Michigan's first representative to Congress, were drawn together by a common interest in public education, and it was by Crary's influence in the Consti- tutional convention that education was made an inde- pendent department of the State government. By his influence lands granted by the general government for school purposes were turned over to the State govern- ment, rather than to the separate townships, and the State was led to guarantee that these should be held sacredly in trust for this purpose. To the credit of Michigan it should be added that no part of these lands has ever been lost, squandered, or misappropriated. By General Crary's influence, also, John D. Pierce was made first superintendent of public instruction. The scheme formulated by the new superintendent was simple but comprehensive, and so wisely drawn that to this day it stands without radical change. It is unsectarian, but provides for the impartial representation of all churches, both in the governing boards and in the teaching force. The regents of the State university were to be elected » T. M. Cooley, "Michigan," p. 318. 8o Leavening the Nation by popular vote with State officers as ex-officio mem- bers, and its support to be derived from the income of university lands. The scheme included departments of literature, science, law, arts, medicine, and such others as time might require. Preparatory schools in all parts of the State were to be established and the doors of the university and all its branches were thrown open to both sexes. No hasty review of these movements can do them any justice. We cannot but marvel to see a young State, populated only along its margin, almost unexplored in its forest depths, heterogeneous in its population, isolated practically from its sister commonwealths, and with everything in the great task of development to be under- taken, thus so wisely and deliberately forelaying its scheme of education for generations unborn. Such in- sight and foresight compel admiration for the early set- tlers of Michigan, and reflect special honor on the home missionary leaders who initiated the movement. It is no extravagant praise to say with the historian of Michi- gan, that "its founders took position in advance of the thought of their day," "that no commonwealth in the world makes provision more broad, complete or thor- ough," and "that the new States of the Union, in fram- ing their educational systems, have been glad to follow the example of Michigan, and have had fruitful and satisfactory success in proportion as they have adhered to it." ' Michigan is still a frontier State, none more so, and, Maine only excepted, none equally so. Like Maine also its frontier is on the west and on the north. Beginning ' T. M. Cooley, "Michigan," p. 328. Michigan and Wisconsin 8i its history with a mixed population, it has never become entirely homogeneous. In the southern counties first settled, it begins to show decaying villages and coimtry churches depleted by emigration. These perpetuate missionary conditions. The "stump district," so-called, covers that considerable portion of the lower peninsula which is passing from a lumbering to an agricultural and manufacturing community. Lumbermen and their tem- porary shanties have vanished, and new settlements with all the missionary needs of the frontier are coming in. The "Copper Country" of the North with its thirty- three different nationalities, presents another condition demanding another treatment. Thus, from the mis- sionary point of view, there are three Michigans and a triple problem to be solved.^ Yet few States have responded more worthily to home missionary culture. The Methodists have found it a quick soil in which fully 1,600 churches have taken root with a membership rising 100,000. The Baptist Home Mission Society has planted over 500 churches, the Con- gregational over 350, the Presbyterian 260, and the Reformed Church about 100. After sixty years of con- tinuous home missionary effort, Michigan stands abreast of New Hampshire and Iowa in the Christian per cent, of its population, and perceptibly in advance of South Dakota, Nebraska, Oregon, and Washington; this is nearly aU home missionary fruitage ; for not one in ten of its churches has been started without the help of organized home missions.^ ' W. H. Warren, "Seventy-fifth Annual Report of the Congre- gational Home Missionary Society," pp. 85, 86. ' For a graphic description of missionary conditions and life in Michigan, nothing better has been pubUshed than W. G. Pudde- foot's book, "The Minute Man on the Frontier." It is largely an autobiography. 82 Leavening the Nation The early story of Wisconsin is embraced in that of Michigan with which it was identified until 1836, when the Territory of Wisconsin was formed. Twelve years later, in 1848, it became a State, being the seventeenth in order admitted under the Constitution. Home mis- sionary work began with the organization of the Terri- tory, and received a marked impulse in 1840, by the horseback journey of Stephen Peet, who began his own work at Green Bay in 1836, where he had established a church, which is among the first, if not the very first, organizations in Wisconsin. The missionary journey of Mr. Peet kept him in the saddle most of the time for six weeks, during which he covered six hundred miles of travel and visited thirty-one different settlements. His course was southwest from Green Bay, following Fox River and the east shore of Winnebago Lake, to Fond du Lac and Frankfort, and finally led him to Madison, the young capital of the Ter- ritory. At this point he changed his course to the south- east, to take in Beloit, Racine, and Milwaukee. Two years before the organization of the Territory, the population was estimated to be about 10,000. In 1840, at the time of Mr. Peet's exploration, it had reached 30,000, and was increasing at the rate of 4,000 a month. The newcomers found homes chiefly in the southern and eastern counties, and nineteen-twentieths of them were from the Eastern States. Mr. Peet's narrative was printed and widely read and for a time home missionary interest seemed to concen- trate upon Wisconsin. Its climate was healthful; its rolling lands were beautiful and productive; its timber belts were favorable for home building; its extensive lake shore made it accessible, and only a short canal be- Thomas J. Morgan, LL. D. Corresponding Secretary of the American Baptist Home Mission Society from 1893 to 1902. Michigan and Wisconsin 83 tween Fort Winnebago and the Wisconsin River was needed to connect Lake Michigan with the Mississippi. It was humorously said at the time that "navigation could be opened from Green Bay to the Mississippi at less expense than it would cost the government for Congress to talk about it." The Peet narrative, scarcely more than sixty years old and well within the memory of many readers, is full of surprises. One can hardly resist a rising sense of himior as he reads that "Beloit is a thriving village on the Rock River where are mills and several stores and a population of 250 and destined to be a place of considerable busi- ness." Racine gives promise also of being "a, place of some importance, present population 250." As to Milwaukee, it is granted "to be a point of great im- portance, both in itself and on account of its influence on the interior with which it must be connected in its business in a thousand ways." "Geneva is a thriving little place," while "Madison (the capital) is a flourish- ing village" of less than 300 people, who have no church as yet, "but an interesting Sunday-school in operation." It is only thus by turning back a few leaves of history that we are enabled to realize the vast and rapid growth of a western commonwealth. To us, in our superior knowledge; these naive revelations bring a smile; but to the churches of the East, in 1840, the look was forward, and a rare exercise of faith had to supply the substance of things that are so clear to the backward vision of these days. One of the first responses to the published narrative of Peet was a conditional promise of $1,000 to the Ameri- can Home Missionary Society enclosing $250 "towards the support of ten missionaries for the ten stations men- 84 Leavening the Nation tioned in the report of Rev. Stephen Peet." "As soon as I am advised that they have occupied the ground four months, I will pay $250 more, and a hke sum when they shall have labored eight months, and a Uke sum at the completion of one year." The gift was anonymous; and that it was not the overflow of a full purse, is made sufficiently plain in the postscript, "always provided that I am alive and enabled at the several periods men- tioned to appropriate the funds without depriving my family of the necessaries of hfe." The religious development of Wisconsin has been affected more than that of many Western States by the preponderance of foreign elements. It was here that a "German Commonwealth" was at one time seriously contemplated and might have been attempted but for the fortunate increase at that time of emigration from the East. While it is still an American Commonwealth which proved its loyalty in the Civil War by raising 96,000 troops for the Union army, it is a foreign State in the majority of its people. More than one half were born in other lands, and if the children of foreign-born parents be included, the foreign element may be said to rule the State. Ten years ago a conservative writer having inti- mate knowledge of the conditions declared: "In parts of the State foreigners are so solidly massed that they do not feel the permeating influence of American ideas and religion. On the contrary, they take the aggressive and aim to force foreign ideas and to control honors, as, for instance, in substituting parochial for public schools and absolutely forbidding the use of the English language in them." ^ ' T. M, Grassie, Home Missionary, 1890, p. 117. Michigan and Wisconsin 85 Such conditions create an undeniable handicap to home-missionary progress. All the more credit there- fore to the home-missionary army for results achieved in the face of such obstacles. Sixty years have passed since Mr. Feet's memorable trip, and Wisconsin, with all its doubtful environments, stands abreast of Ohio, New York, and Minnesota in the percentage of its Christian population, and has outstripped Vermont, Illinois, Michi- gan, and Pennsylvania. Congregationalists have gath- ered 250 churches and brought 176 of them to self-sup- port. Presbyterians have planted nearly 200 churches. Methodists are represented in the State by 800 churches, Baptists by 250, the Reformed Church by 75, and Epis- copalians by 140. Almost without exception these points of Christian influence were created by organized home missions,* and nowhere in the Northwest Terri- tory has the leaven of the kingdom proved more pene- trating or productive than in the State of "The Wild Rushing River." Here must end our review of the Northwest Territory, In parting, we are impressed with the comment of Pro- fessor Turner, "The men and women who made the Middle West were ideaUsts, and they had the power and will to make their dreams come true." The wilderness and forest which they subdued are crowned to-day with the populous cities they saw in their dreams, and their log cabins have expanded into the palatial homes of their early visions. Yesterday, a pioneer province, the Middle West is to-day the field of industrial re- sources so vast, that "Europe, alarmed for her indus- tries in competition with this new power, is discussing ' H. W. Carter, "Seventy-fifth Annual Report of the Congrega- tional Home Missionary Society," p. 83. 86 Leavening the Nation the pohcy of forming protective alhances among the nations of the Continent." In this swift and unparalleled development what has saved the old Northwest from a vulgar, selfish, and ut- terly godless materialism? More than one reply to that question is possible; but it is no extravagance to claim that to a widely diffused system of education, and to consecrated home-missionary endeavor, the escape has been primarily due. Clear and distinct among the ideals of the very earliest settlers was that of the school and the church, ideals which no dazzling mists of prosperity have ever obscured. The leaven of education and religion was faithfully hidden in the growing meal. Every schoolhouse built and opened has taught, from one generation to another, the value of mind over matter, and every church planted by home missions has been the nucleus of that devotion to law, order, moral hving, and patriotic virtue which are the chief characteristics of the people of the old Northwest.^ 'See a suggestive article byE. H. Abbott, "Religious Life in America," Outlook, Nov, 8, 1902. vn THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE— MISSOURI, IOWA While the Northwest Territory was still in the first stages of occupation, even before its early settlers had obtained peaceful possession of the soil, the area of the nation was suddenly expanded by the purchase of an immense tract, hitherto known as Louisiana or New Spain. Up to 1800 it was a Spanish possession, when it was ceded to France. Three years later it passed, by purchase, to the United States. The price paid was about $15,000,000. This expansion of national terri- tory, to the extent of a million square miles, was des- tined to be epochal. The event was due, in part, to the firmness and fore- sight of President Jefferson; in part, to the boldness of Livingston and Monroe, who acted largely on their own responsibility, as agents of the United States; not a Httle, to the pecuniary necessity of Napoleon, and his spiteful desire to prevent English occupation of the tract; and, most of all, to the logical necessities of a growing nation, whose Western progress could not be arrested by the Mississippi River. Mr. Roosevelt, in his "Winning of the West," insists with repeated emphasis, that neither the government nor its commissioners are to be chiefly credited with our possession of this valuable addition, but that the people 87 88 Leavening the Nation themselves, who had passed over the river in large num- bers, were the real agents in the transaction. There is much of truth in that view. Without Jefferson, Living- ston, or Monroe, Louisiana would ultimately have been ours ; not, perhaps, without a war with France, in which the United States would have held every advantage and was certain to win. Napoleon was shrewd enough to see this, and poor enough to prefer ready cash to the doubtful glory of a costly war. Livingston and Monroe were brave enough to interpret their instructions as to the purchase of the mouth of the Mississippi for $2,000,- 000, to cover the purchase of the whole western valley of that river for $15,000,000; all had a share, and there is glory enough for all who bore any part in the grand result. The purchase of Louisiana gave us the mouth of the Mississippi and undisturbed possession of its entire course. It doubled the national area by a stroke of the pen. It carried our western boundary from Lake Superior to the Rocky Mountains. Thirteen States and Territories, more truly empires, have been carved out of the Louisiana Purchase. They include the great corn and wheat belts that are capable of supplying the world with food, and their underground treasures are among the richest of the globe. Fifteen milUon dollars were a trifle for such a possession. Our whole development as a nation has been vitally affected by this purchase. The war of the Revolution gave us freedom; that of 1812 gave us commercial inde- pendence; but the purchase of Louisiana "changed the national center of gravity." Up to this time America had been facing the East from whence it came. With the opening of the Louisiana Territory it faced about, Missouri, Iowa 89 and for the last hundred years the star of American empire has been taking its way towards the Western Sea. Obvious as all these advantages have been made by events, it is both amusing and instructive to recall the dismal prophecies of some of the leading statesmen of 1803. Said a Connecticut representative in Congress, "This vast unmanageable extent, the consequent dis- persion of our population, and the destruction of that balance which it is so important to maintain between the Eastern and Western States, threaten, at no very distant day, the subversion of our Union." A senator from New Hampshire was equally despair- ing. Said he: "Admit this western world into the Union, and you destroy at once the weight and im- portance of the Eastern States, and compel them to es- tabUsh a separate, independent empire." A Virginia representative believed that "this Eden of of the New World would prove a cemetery for the bodies of our citizens," and a Delaware senator of the period predicted that the incorporation of Louisiana "would be the greatest curse that could befall us. Our citizens will be removed to the immense distance of two or three thousand miles from the capital of the Union, where they will scarcely ever feel the rays of the General Govern- ment; their affections will become alienated, they will gradually begin to view us as strangers, they wiU form other commercial connections, and our interests will become distinct; and, even if this extent of territory was a desirable acquisition, fifteen milUons of dollars was a most enormous sum to give." One hundred years have passed and the nation is mak- ing ready to celebrate, at St. Louis, the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. Would that the Jeremiahs of 1803 go Leavening the Nation might be there, and that some of their descendants of 1903 might be persuaded to open their eyes to the teach- ing of history! Every fear of those foreboding states- men has been disappointed, and the hopes of the young nation at that time are more than justified. Thirteen States or Territories cover the Louisiana Purchase, of which Oklahoma is the well-loved Benjamin. They contain one sixth of the population of the country, a peaceful, prosperous, loyal, and homogeneous family, on which "the rays of the General Government" never cease to fall, and from which it gathers wealth and strength. The cattle, alone, on the thousand hills of Wyoming are worth two millions of dollars more than was paid for the whole of Louisiana in 1803. Schools, colleges, seminaries, churches, and Christian homes, all of the highest type, dot the whole surface of what was once Louisiana, and from the Mexican Gulf to the Can- ada line, it constitutes, with its double and triple tiers of commonwealths, the backbone of the nation. From this extensive purchase Missouri was admitted to the Union in 1821 as a slave State; Iowa, as a free State, in 1846; they are among the first fruits of National expansion. Because of this fact, and for the reason that they present striking home-missionary contrasts, they are here grouped together. Before the admission of Missouri, of the twenty-two States constituting the Union, ten were slave States. When the question came up of adding another common- wealth to the slavery column, the ominous phrases "State Rights" and the "Balance of Power" began to be heard, for the first time, in Congress. In the debate over Missouri, the compromise first proposed by the opponents of slavery was, that no slaves should, after Missouri, Iowa 91 its admission, be brought into the new State, and that all children born in it, subsequent to its admission, should be free at the age of twenty-five. Obviously, these conditions, had they been adopted, would in time have made Missouri a free State, and must have power- fully affected its history. Unfortunately, they were rejected, and another com- promise, satisfying to both parties for the time being, but which proved revolutionary in the end, prevailed. Missouri was admitted with the sacred provision that thus far and no farther should slavery ever encroach upon territory north of 36° 30'. Thus a Hne, beheved to be hard and fast, was drawn between slavery and free- dom, and Missouri was to be the only State above that line. "The North had got a hne and the South had won a State." The old fable of the camel's nose within the traveller's tent might have been applied to the situation; and only thirty years were needed to justify its truth. St. Louis at this time was largely French in popula- tion and customs. The Catholic clergy ruled in rehgion; boys were taught in the parish schools and girls in the nunnery. French Creoles, in employ of the fur-trading companies, and adventurers, chiefly from the South, made up the balance of the population. Outside of St. Louis, the State was being rather rapidly occupied by a different class, many of them from the North. In 1816 only thirty families were to be found on the left bank of the Missouri, which, in three years from that time, had increased to eight hundred families. As we have already seen, the home-missionary pioneer had appeared in Missouri as early as 1814. In that year Samuel J. Mills and Daniel Smith, sent out by the mis- sionary societies of Connecticut and Massachusetts, set 92 Leavening the Nation forth on horseback, crossing Pennsylvania and Ohio, Southern Indiana and IlHnois, and so to St. Louis. Here they found "a village of 2,000, three fourths of whom were Catholics." From these men the people heard, if not the first, among the first Protestant sermons on that side of the Mississippi.^ Two years later, Rev. Salmon Giddings followed Mills and Smith over the same track, and, after eighteen months of hard labor, organized the first Presbyterian church of St. Louis, consisting of nine members, five of whom were Massachusetts Congregation- alists. As pastor of this church, and as missionary in general for Missouri and Illinois, Giddings fulfilled an arduous ministry to the time of his death in 1828, and during those twelve years, succeeded in gathering only five churches in Missouri, The beginnings were as feeble as they were few. New England religion and Yankee preachers were not popular, and Protestantism was above all other things abhorred. The tables of the American Home Missionary Society, for thirty years, from 1827 to 1857, do not show, in any one year, more than thirty missionaries in Missouri, and for most of these years not one half that number. Dur- ing the war period this force was reduced to zero, but after the return of peace it rose rapidly to nearly seventy. Considering the mixed and often hostile elements of the State, it is a matter of wonder, and even of congratula- tion, that Missouri has yielded anything like the harvest it has. In the percentage of its religious forces, it is in advance of New Hampshire and of Maine, and a close second to its free State neighbor Iowa. It is true, indeed, that these forces are not always of a 'Baptist pioneer preachers had crossed the river before 1800, Missouri, Iowa 93 very high order, especially in the rural portions of the State. In St. Louis, Kansas City, and in other cities and large towns, are found good and strong churches, main- tained at the highest standard. To say nothing of its living ministry, there are no more honored names in American church history than those of Salmon Giddings, John M. Peck, Truman M. Post, Artemas Bullard, and Constans L. Goodell of St. Louis, and their memory is a benediction to the State. But to the church life of much of rural Missouri there is a certain Southern cast insepa- rable, as yet, from the early training and crude tastes of the people. Yet, with increased Northern immigration, and especially with improved schools and higher insti- tutions of learning, better standards are beginning to prevail. It is quite probable that religious "organization" has been pushed unduly and education too Uttle, until "religious forces," reckoned by the number of churches, means less in Missouri than in some other States. Still it must be granted that for a State so heavily handi- capped in its origin, overshadowed so long by the bar- barism of slavery, and so sadly distracted by the fortunes of war, Missouri has shown itself unexpectedly responsive to missionary culture. Its great weakness is the lack of a substantial substructiu-e of popular education. This lack was not as clear to the missionary organizations of 1820 as it is to-day: but experience has taught wisdom and there is good sense and sound truth in the judgment of one home-missionary superintendent, based upon years of observation, who declares : "To do effective work in Missouri we must train a con- stituency. We must resort to first principles and begin to do as our fathers did on New England soil, — plant the 94 Leavening the Nation schoolhouse alongside of the church. We must get near to the cradle to begin. You may have religion flourish without education, but not the Christian religion. Better to have missions that will in time grow into churches, than to start with a weak church, in an environment unpropitious, which sooner or later degenerates into a mission or dies altogether." ^ Passing from Missouri to Iowa, we enter a new zone. Historically, Iowa may be pardoned some confusion as to her parentage and descent, and even a doubt as to whether she was ever born, like other States, or hke Topsy, "just growed, " Few States have passed through so many Territorial transformations. During the Revo- lution she was Spanish soil; in 1801 she had passed to Napoleon and the French; in 1803, as a part of the Louisiana Purchase, she came under American control. Later, from 1812 to 1821, she was joined to Missouri, as part of Missouri Territory. In 1834 Michigan claimed her as part of the Territory of that name, and two years later, in 1836, she was a corner of Wisconsin. It was not until 1838 that Iowa ceased to be a part of anything, and came into possession of a name and identity all her own. It was in view of this varied history that Senator Grimes remarked, in the United States Senate in 1836, "I have lived in three different Territories, under three different Territorial governments, although I have resided in the same town all the time." The early maps of Iowa indicate but a small fraction of the present State. They show a narrow strip of land running along the Mississippi some two hundred miles and about forty miles in width. This was the tract ob- * A. K. Wray, Home Missionary, vol. 72, p. 117. Missouri, Iowa 95 tained by Gen. Scott's treaty with Black Hawk in 1832. Other Indian reserves were added by purchase in 1837, and 1842; and thus the present bounds of the State were fixed and defined. Early settlement, owing to Indian hostilities, was slow. In 1838 only fourteen counties had been organ- ized and Fort Atkinson was still needed for their pro- tection argainst the natives. Des Moines, the future capital, was a straggling line of log barracks as late as 1846, "with a permanent population of four families and about twenty souls." Few prophets at that date dis- cerned the future prosperity of Iowa. The late President Magoun, referring to the short- sightedness of our public men as to the possibilities of the West, remarks : " It is instructive to remember that a President of the United States had once so little antici- pation of the settlement of Iowa — to say nothing of the great States beyond it — that he proposed to distribute the soil among Indian tribes; the Iowa portion of this immense proposed reservation is now a commonwealth of 2,000,000 souls. Now and then one dies who was the first man, woman, or child, in one of its oldest towns, and there are survivors who have seen the whole of its wondrous progress from the beginning." Probably to Burton G. Cartwright belongs the honor of being Iowa's first missionary and preacher. In the spring of 1835 he was ploughing up the soil of Burlington during the week, and preaching on Sundays.^ The first result was a Methodist class of six members. That same year, at Danville, the first Baptist church was organized and three or four Presbyterian and Methodist fainilies * G. F. Magoun's "Asa Turner and his Times," p. 178. 96 Leavening the Nation arrived at Dubuque, and started a united prayer-meet- ing. Out of this grew a Methodist class of four, and these two classes — ten persons in all — were at that time the total of Protestant bodies in Iowa. Religion was npt in great demand, though sorely needed. The Dubuque Visitor remarks editorially, "an- other minister is wanted here, one who can reason, preach, sing, and enforce the fourth commandment." ^ In response to that call, Rev. Cyrus L. Watson, a New- School Presbyterian missionary, commissioned by the American Home Missionary Society, began work on the first day of January, 1836. In three years a Presbyte- rian church was organized, which, three years later, be- came the Congregational church of that city where the late Dr. J. C. Holbrook filled a long and peculiarly useful ministry. In 1837, Rev. J. A. Reed, for many years a leading home-missionary worker in the State, preached the first sermon at Keokuk, then a settlement of about a dozen buildings. Rev. J. A. Clark was an early home-mission- ary preacher at Burlington in 1838. From this date church growth was rapid for a new settlement. In six years thirteen Congregational churches had been planted and about the same number of Presbyterian. Baptist churches at that time were fewer than either, although in ten years more they numbered fifty. The Methodists had eighteen ministers, and 500 members, the Episco- paUans three ministers, and two hundred communicants. It was at this time that Asa Turner came from Illinois, and entered upon his work as pastor of the Denmark church. His advent was destined to have large results. * G. F. Magoun's "Asa Turner and his Times," p. 179, Missouri, Iowa 97 By common adoption, he was known, and is still affec- tionately remembered, as "Father" Turner. He was indeed the patriarch of Congregational Iowa, and in every fiber of his generous frame, he was a born pioneer. "Strong mother-mt, quick and keen perception, unfal- tering loyalty to truth and right, fearlessness, shrewd judgment of men and things, practical benevolence, tender, childlike piety, and unquestioning faith," * were the qualities that gave him instant and abiding hold upon all classes of people, a hold that never weakened during the thirty years of his most fruitful ministry. His love for Iowa was a passion. "I see but one objec- tion to it," he said. "It is so beautiful there might be an unwillingness to exchange it for the paradise above." Among the first to be associated with Turner, was Reuben Gaylord, a college friend at Yale. He was soon followed by Julius A. Reed, another graduate of Yale of about the same period. To these three men, Congrega- tional Iowa owes much of the remarkable church growth which marked the two decades from 1838 to 1858. More than sixty Congregational churches were planted, some of them, to-day, the strongest churches of the State. But no account of this period would be complete with- out a more extended notice of the Iowa Band, which, among all the missionary bands from the East, must ever hold an honorable distinction. It was fortunate in the character of its members, fortunate again in the field of its choice and in the time of its entrance, and, it may be added, especially fortunate in its forenmners, Turner, Reed, and Gaylord, Hitchcock, Holbrook, and Emerson. The names of the Iowa Band, in the order of their ages, 'G. F. Magoiin's "Asa Turner and his Times," p. 191. 98 Leavening the Nation are here recorded: Harvey Adams of Vermont, Edwin B. Turner of Illinois, Daniel Lane of Maine, Erastus Ripley of Connecticut, James J. Hill of Maine, Benja- min A. Spaulding, Alden B. Robbins, and Horace Hutch- inson, all of Massachusetts, Ephraim Adams of New Hampshire, Ebenezer Alden of Massachusetts, and William Salter of New York City. The first suggestion of a " Band" appears to have come from Horace Hutchinson. In company with two of his seminary class at Andover, he one day remarked: "If we and some others could only go out together, and take possession of some field, where we could have the ground and work together, what a grand thing it would be ! " It is pathetic to remember that the hps which were the first to suggest the band idea, were the first to be sealed by death, after a brief ministry of two years. His great work was the casting of this seed-thought into the minds of his brethren. Out of the suggestion of Hutchinson grew the circle of prayer for light and guidance. There were difficulties in finding a private room for the meetings, which were solved, at length, by the choice of an alcove in the semi- nary library. There were no means of lighting, and they met and prayed in the dark. Occasionally a strange step was heard entering, but who it was would be un- known until a new voice was heard in prayer.^ Con- ference mingled with those petitions. Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and even Missouri were canvassed. When Iowa was first named, little could be said because little was known, until Father Turner's breezy letter, in response to their inquiries, brought them needed fight. * "The Iowa Band," by Ephraim Adams, p. 11. Missouri, Iowa 99 The decision being made, a farewell service was ap- pointed at the Old South Church, Andover, in September, 1843. It was not for ordination; they wisely decided to postpone that to the time of their active entrance upon the work. Dr. Leonard Bacon came from New Haven to preach the farewell sermon, and Dr. Milton Badger gave them the charge in the name of the Home Missionary Society. The arrival of this band of workers in Iowa, in the early autumn of 1843, was an event in the religious his- tory of the Territory. No such accession of missionary forces at one time had ever been witnessed in any west- ern State. Their ordination at Denmark was almost more than the ordained ministry of the region could well manage. There were not enough of them to perform all the parts, and the charge to the candidates had to be assigned to an unordained licentiate, which prompted one of them to remark, "that he didn't know about being charged by a brother who wasn't more than half charged himself." Judging from the subsequent exe- cution of the Iowa Band, that charge must have been exceptionally good and strong. Unlike the Yale Washington Band and some others, the Iowa brethren made no attempt to perpetuate their organization upon the field. The last meeting of the Band, as such, was in Father Turner's study the day after ordination. From there they scattered, being guided in the selection of their fields of labor by the counsel of Turner and Reed. Distances were great, and the opportunities of future communion infrequent; but a peculiar bond of fellowship survived, and still survives, even though only two ^ of the original eleven are left to * Ephraim Adams, William Salter. loo Leavening the Nation live over those battles and victories of sixty years, which must be forever associated with all that is best in the history of Iowa. "It is not too much to say that their combined influence has given character not only to their denomination in the State but to the State itself. Los- ing their Uves they found them. The first men are the historic men. They themselves have been built into the commonwealth that hes between the two great rivers." *■ The work of the Iowa Band has never been exploited by its members. Their estimate of its value has always been singularly modest and conservative. Dr. Ephraim Adams, one of its two surviving members, has told its story in a charming volume, but he has left others to magnify its labors. Dr. Wilham Salter, the other sur- vivor, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his pastorate at Burlington in 1896, and in an excellent anniversary sermon succeeded in making no allusion to the Iowa Band. Such modesty was characteristic of its spirit. From the beginning its members cast in their lot with the earlier workers on the ground without the least assumption of leadership. "They did all the good they could, and made no fuss about it," and their reward has been great in the love and gratitude of the Iowa churches. Let others praise them. Says Dr. Wilhston Walker: "Through their influence, and that of Turner, Congre- gationalism took deep root in Iowa while the State was still in the gristle." Says Dr. Dunning: "The churches increased but slowly in numbers till the work began of the Iowa Band. They said, ' If each one of us can only plant one good and permanent church, and all together *J.E. Roy in Dunning's "Congregationalists in America," p. 438. Missouri, Iowa loi build a college, what a work that will be ! ' They nobly fulfilled their mission." One peculiar service performed by the band deserves passing mention in any review of Iowa's religious history. Says Dr. Julius A. Reed: ''In addition to their various labors there was one thing which the providence of God permitted them, rather than their brethren, to accom- pHsh. They settled the question that Congregational- ism was to become a power in Iowa, indeed, in the West, and was to enjoy the sympathy and aid of eastern churches. It was claimed that western Congregation- alists who refused to become Presbyterians were un- sound in the faith or were 'radicals,' a synonym for everything bad. But the band represented six States and eight colleges; were graduates of Andover whose soundness in the faith none questioned; making their journey westward, and speaking on the Sabbath at Buffalo, they attracted attention throughout the North, as a Hke party now would if on their way to Africa. It was dangerous to call them cranks, and a good share of New England at once gave their confidence and sym- pathy to Iowa Congregationalism. Their coming to Iowa had this effect." Only one of the band appears to have spoken freely of this striking feature of their work, and his words, coming as they do from the senior member of the little company, in his eighty-eighth year, have impressive force. Says Dr. Harvey Adams: "The eleven young men who con- stituted the Iowa Band, remained without changing their denominational relations. This one fact encour- aged others to come. There were fifteen Congrega- tional churches in Iowa when we came, but they soon began to increase here and elsewhere in the West more I02 Leavening the Nation rapidly. Objections to their organization had ceased. In 1843, the great body of our churches was in New England. Fifty years later more than three fifths were outside of New England. The band was providentially used to inaugurate a change in home-missionary man- agement by which our churches were multiplied many times faster than ever before." From such testimony it is made clear that not the least of the great services rendered by the Iowa Band is the part they were enabled to bear in restoring Congrega- tional self-consciousness to the churches of New Eng- land. The West would be vastly poorer in its rehgious and educational life but for that timely renaissance, and chief among the agencies to which that recovery was due, is this band of Andover pilgrims, who were directed to the western bank of the Mississippi in 1843 with the Pilgrim polity as well as the Pilgrim faith glowing in their hearts. "After the Band," says Dr. T. O. Douglass, " came scores and hundreds of other missionaries of hke faith and consecration, by whose coming deserts have blossomed, and by whose influence, in large degree, Iowa has become the peerless State she is to-day." ^ To sum up the results of sixty years of home-mission- ary culture in Iowa, one third of her people are found in the membership of her churches, a larger ratio than in Maine, or New Hampshire, or Vermont, and not far be- hind that of Massachusetts, and Connecticut. That all denominations have shared generously in the work, and reaped richly of the reward, is seen in the fact that Metho- dists are able to call the roll of 1,600 churches. Baptists 500, Presbyterians 520, Congregationahsts 300, Episco- * Seventy-fifth Annual Report of the Congregational Home Missionary Society, p. 85. Missouri, Iowa 103 palians 100, and the Reformed Church about 70. Not without reason, in the moral strength and stabiUty of her citizens, Iowa has come to be known as the "Ver- mont of the West," a name that reflects equal honor upon both States. VIII THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE— KANSAS AND NEBRASKA The reader who is curious to place his finger upon the geographical center of the United States, will find that point within the two compact squares occupied by the States of Nebraska and Kansas. A middle line drawn from north to south will cross a similar line from east to west, not far from the city of Omaha, Lines drawn from the extreme northeast to the southwest and from the northwest to the southeast will cross each other not far from the same point. These are merely geographical accidents. But to many thoughtful minds, it has seemed more than an accident that the spot where all territorial lines thus bisect should have been destined for the trial and settlement of an issue, which more than any other in our history, has affected the welfare of the nation, from its center to its outermost rim. A few facts simply stated are necessary to the histori- cal setting of home missions, as they relate to these two commonwealths. To older readers they are sufficiently familiar; it is for the benefit of a younger generation, that has been born since 1860, that the story is briefly rehearsed. In the summer of 1821, Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave State, but with the sacred stipulation 104 Kansas and Nebraska 105 that all other territory north of 36° 30' should be for- ever free. This was the "Missouri Compromise." For thirty years it continued to be law, until, in the spring of 1850, under the lead of Senators Dixon of Kentucky and Douglas of Illinois, the Missouri Compromise was set aside, and the principle was substituted that the people of the Territories have plenary jurisdiction over all their domestic institutions, slavery especially included. This was the "repeal of the Missouri Compromise," and affected, as it was intended to affect, the question of slavery in the proposed new Territories of Kansas and Nebraska. At once the whole land was torn with a passionate discussion. The aggressive purpose of the slave power was plain and undisputed. Whatever new territory should in the future be added to the national domain was to decide for itself the issue of slavery. " Popular Sov- ereignty" was the sounding name of the new doctrine and "Squatter Sovereignty" was what it meant. For if new Territories were to be made slave or free by a popular vote, then the Border States were bound to rush in voters for the settlement of that issue, and the more distant and free States were bound, by legitimate immi- gration, to meet and overpower them. Such was the disturbing issue which the slave power, eleven years before the Civil War, chose to thrust upon the Nation. Mr. Douglas, its author, well understood how it would be received at the North. " I shall prob- ably be hung in effigy," he said in a speech before Con- gress, and a few years later he declared in another speech at Springfield, Ohio, "In those days I could travel from Boston to Chicago by the light of my own effigies." The principle of popular sovereignty being thus established io6 Leavening the Nation by law, "the Kansas-Nebraska Bill" was passed and the great struggle began. Whom the gods would destroy they first dement. The immediate effect of the Kansas-Nebraska legislation was startling. "It utterly overthrew the Whig party and reduced the Democratic party from a national to a sectional rank." Four years later, in 1856, a Republican party at the North which had no existence in 1852, had grown strong enough to cast 1,300,000 votes. Even then the blind eyes of the slave power could not read the handwriting on the wall. Reforms never go back. From the Free Soil to the Republican party was easy and natural. From Frankhn Pierce and James Buchanan to Abraham Lincoln was a necessity. Rebellion, seces- sion, war, emancipation, followed in logical order, and the final outcome of popular sovereignty in Kansas was a new nation, purged of slavery in every part. Such were the brief steps by which the slave power in America, afflicted with judicial blindness, rushed upon self-destruction; and looking calmly back upon the theater where the last act began, we can hardly resist the conviction, that without the Kansas-Nebraska chapter in our national history, the United States might to-day be still trying "the dubious experiment of building up a nation half slave and half free — a house divided against itself. Previous to its organization as a Territory, Kansas had attracted little of the westward tide of migration for permanent settlers. It was scarcely more than a thor- oughfare for emigrant wagons bound for New Mexico, or the Pacific coast, filled with a "heterogeneous intermit- tent mob trooping across the plains without stopping." '■ 'Spring's "Kansas" (American Commonwealth Series), p. 21. Kansas and Nebraska 107 It would almost seem as if Kansas had been reserved, intact, for the express and unhindered trial of the ex- periment of popular sovereignty, to which the Nation had been challenged by the slave power of the South. The first comers (they can hardly be called settlers) were from over the Missouri border. They were in haste and were not proposing a lengthened stay. To notch a few trees or arrange a half dozen rails on the ground and call it a cabin, to post a scrawl on a tree threatening to shoot all intermeddlers/ these were the rude methods of the squatter. His home was in Missouri ; he had run over into Kansas to vote and fight for slavery. For several months this element had things their own way, undis- turbed, and a good degree of confidence grew up both in Missouri, and in the entire South, that the Douglas specific would work, and that Kansas was marked out for a slave State. Indeed, that fear, mingled with de- spair, prevailed widely in New England. Even the Abolitionists confessed in their chief organ, ''the fate of Kansas is sealed." But there were a few stout hearts that kept courage, and under the lead of such men as Eli Thayer, Amos A, Lawrence, Dr. Samuel Cabot, John Lowell, Nathan Durfee, Dr. S. G. Howe, Edward Everett Hale, Horace Bushnell, and Benjamin Silliman, an Emigration Com- pany was organized in New England "for the planting of free-labor towns in Kansas." Ten companies of emi- grants were despatched in 1854-55, comprising about 1,500 souls, and $150,000 had been raised and expended for their equipment. These were "the unholy combinations in New Eng- 1 Spring's "Kansas," p, 26, 1 08 Leavening the Nation land/' "the hot-bed plants," so bitterly denounced by- Mr. Douglas, and Senator Green of Missouri, These sons of New England planted Wabaunsee, Osawatomie, Man- hattan, Topeka, and Lawrence, of which the chief was Lawrence. The slave elements from Missouri estab- lished Leavenworth, Atchison, and Lecompton, which latter they made their capital. Between these two par- ties the great issue was now joined, and the whole nation looked on with intensest interest. Something of the spirit of the North at this time is reflected in the words of William H. Seward uttered in the United States Sen- ate: "Come on then, gentlemen of the slave States! Since there is no escaping your challenge, I accept it in behalf of freedom. We will compete for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give the victory to the side that is stronger in numbers as it is in the right." The struggle over "bleeding Kansas" continued three years, marked by illegal voting, violence, arson, and bloodshed. Governor Charles Robinson headed the Free Soil party politically, and his house was burned to the ground. John Brown led in the field with the fury of a fanatic, and became the terror of border ruffians, since he had no scruples about fighting the devil with fire. The slavery party elected their own men by intimidation and violence, formed a constitution including slavery, and enacted laws for its defence. The free labor party framed a constitution prohibiting slavery, and elected their own legislature and State officers. Their leaders were arrested, and indicted for treason; their news- papers were destroyed or suppressed, and United States troops were called out to disperse their legislature. So for three years the conflict raged with victories on both sides, the North furnishing emigrants, Bibles, and Kansas and Nebraska 109 Sharp's rifles, and the South contributing ruffians, blud- geons, and bowe knives, until in 1858, the contest was virtually settled by the rejection of the slavery constitu- tion at the polls. Three years later Kansas was ad- mitted to the Union, a free State, and immediately there followed the greater struggle, to which that of Kansas was only a preliminary skirmish, and by which the slavery issue was finally and forever settled in America. Home missions in Kansas began with its beginning. In 1854, Rev. S. Y. Lum preached the first sermon ever heard by the white people of the Territory. He came under a broad commission from the American Home Missionary Society, "to proclaim the gospel in Kansas," and like Abraham he went forth not knowing whither. Providence led him to Lawrence. A month after his arrival Plymouth Church was organized with seven members, and is the oldest church of any denomination in Kansas. The Pioneer Hotel was its first sanctuary and the people were gathered for service by the ringing of a large dinner-bell. In 1856, while the historical struggle was at its height, four young men in Andover Theological Seminary or- ganized a "Kansas Band." They were Sylvester D. Storrs, Grosvenor C. Morse, Roswell D. Parker, and Richard Cordley. Two of them, Storrs and Morse, were born and educated in New Hampshire, while Cordley and Parker came from Michigan, in the old Northwest Terri- tory. For two years a Kansas prayer-meeting was held every Wednesday evening in Storrs' room, and was largely attended by the students. In the summer of 1857, the four were graduated, and ready under the com- mission of the Society, "to preach the gospel in Kansas/' with a pledged salar}^ of no Leavening the Nation Storrs began at Quindaro, and afterwards served churches in Wyandotte and Atchison. But his great work was as superintendent of missions in the State, for twelve years, during which he organized more than one hundred Congregational churches. Parker labored suc- cessfully in Leavenworth, Wyandotte, and Manhattan. Morse estabhshed himself at Emporia, then the extreme frontier, and after building up a strong church, was made Superintendent of Pubhc Instruction and is remembered as "the father of the State Normal College." Cordley was stationed at Lawrence as pastor of the church or- ganized by Mr. Lum, where he still ministers, having been twice recalled from other churches to the people of his first love. These four men are the fathers of Congregational Kansas. They all took part in the early struggle for which they had been ordained by two years of constant prayer on Andover Hill. Their mark is found on every forward religious movement of the State. Richard Cordley alone remains to tell the story of home-mission- ary beginnings in that troubled Territory, and the reader will look in vain to find a more graphic picture of those early conditions than the following from the pen of Dr. Cordley : "The first sanctuary of Plymouth Church, Lawrence, was the 'Old Hay Tent,' consisting of two rows of poles brought together at the top, and the sides thatched with prairie hay. The room was also used as a general sleep- ing apartment, the trunks, bunks, and boxes of the lodgers serving for seats on Sunday. The minister had to build his own house. It was built of shakes. These were spUt from logs, and nailed to a frame, covering sides and roof. It was well ventilated, but not blizzard-proof. Cyrus Dickson, D.D. Corresponding Secretary of the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church from 1S70 to 1881. Kansas and Nebraska iii A blanket of snow on the bed, and a carpet of snow on the floor were no unusual thing in the morning. The in- mates wore their winter wraps while cooking over a red- hot stove, and water often froze on their clothing while their faces tingled with the heat of the fire. But it was 'hke priest, like people.' They all fared alike, and there was no murmuring. " During the border ruffian troubles of 1855-56, Mr. Lum took his place with the rest in the defense of the town, and bore his full portion of the burden and the loss. His horses were stolen by the ruffians, and they once took him prisoner, and threatened to hang him, but finally released him without harm. These disturbances continued for three years, during wliich time the town was thrice beseiged by armed Missourians, and once was sacked and pillaged. The church kept on as it could, meeting sometimes in a Httle close room, where they roasted, and sometimes in an open shanty, where they froze. Often they could not meet at all, and often the men were called out during service by an alarm of com- ing danger. In the spring of 1857, Mr. Lum resigned on account of ill health, and the church was pastorless for several months. " I did not go to Kansas till late in the autimin. Reach- ing Jefferson City, the end of the railway, November 19, I took passage in a steamboat for Quindaro. It turned bitterly cold that night, and with low water, high wind, and a river full of floating ice, the steamer made slow progress. In four days she only made eighty miles, when the captain gave up the trip and put us ashore. We hired a mule team to take us the rest of the way. Starting Monday morning in the bitter cold, we ended our journey the last of the week in a drenching rain. 112 Leavening the Nation But troubles were not yet over. There was no public conveyance to Lawrence and I hired a colored teamster to haul me and my goods over. We started Tuesday morning from Quindaro, and reached Lawrence about noon Wednesday. " The town seemed smaller than I had expected to find it, but I soon found it was not so small as it seemed. Every house and shanty, sod cabin and tent was filled to its utmost capacity. They were not the driftwood of the frontier, but people who had come with a purpose. Business and professional men had left their business, and come to this far country under the inspiration of an idea. College students just graduated or before graduation, had turned their backs upon the career they had marked out for themselves, and come to Kansas at the call of freedom. It was no uncommon thing to find college graduates and men of culture driving a team in the street, or chopping logs in the woods, or living in a shake shanty, 'far out upon the prairie.' Like all men consecrated to an idea, they were ready to make sacrifices for it. At whatever cost of toil or treasure, or life, Kansas must be a free State. The town was so full that my study for three weeks was in a carpenter's shop, and I prepared my sermons with three carpenters hammering away a few feet from me. I slept meanwhile in the unfinished gar- ret of the same building. But I was no worse off than other people, and had no occasion to find fault. " Plymouth Church was three years old, and had twen- ty-two resident members. They had begun to build a house of worship. It was of stone, substantial and well built, and of good size. They had inclosed the building, put in the windows and laid the floor, and then were compelled to stop for want of funds. The windows had Kansas and Nebraska 113 been put in without casings, the walls and ceilings were without plaster, and the doorway had been closed up with rough boards, one board being left to swing for an entrance. The winter winds used to laugh at these loose boards, and run in through the cracks, and cool the ardor of the congregation. The roof was said to be a good one, but in spite of that the snow would sift through and powder the heads of the worshippers. The seats were rough benches, and around the walls a row of seats had been made by placing boards on nail-kegs and boxes. The pulpit platform was simply a pile of rough lumber which was forever threatening to tip over and spill the preacher out. It required careful balancing to keep one's poise on such a foundation. But the church was as good as the houses the people lived in, and nobody complained of it or made that an excuse for absence. The congregations were good and very inspiring. It was a wide-awake lot of people who found their way to Kansas at that time, and they were as wide awake in church as anjrwhere else. " There was not much money in the country, and we finished our church by piecemeal, a httle each year. Our first effort was to put in the outside door and 'stop the draft.' This cost only thirty dollars but it required the canvass of the whole community to secure it. Then came the plastering, the casing of the windows, the gal- lery, and the pulpit, and finally the pews, all occupying five years. In 1862 the building was complete, and the church assumed self-support. In 1861 the war broke out, and Kansas was in the focus of it. One call for troops followed another, and regiment after regiment marched away. From a population of 100,000, twenty thousand men went forth to war. In some neighborhoods, not an 114 Leavening the Nation able-bodied man remained, and in some churches, not a single male member was left at home. "In the midst of the war came 'Quantrell's Raid,' August 21, 1863. In four hours three hundred bush- whackers laid the town in ashes, and left one hundred and fifty dead upon the streets. There remained more than eighty newly made widows, and two hundred and fifty newly made orphans. Plymouth Church suffered heavily. Sixteen members of the congregation were killed, and nearly all the members were made homeless and penniless. The Sabbath after, the remnant gathered in the church. There were men in their shirt-sleeves that had not saved a coat, women in sunbonnets and shawls and children in whatever they could be wrapped. One might say that the entire wardrobe of the congre- gation was in the church that morning. Rev. G. C. Morse of Emporia, whose brother-in-law was among the dead, was present and conducted the service. Neither of us felt like saying anything, and no one felt that any- thing needed to be said. Mr. Morse read Psalm LXXIX, which seemed to have been written for the occasion, and then he offered a prayer and dismissed the congregation. " The town was rebuilt as rapidly as possible, and the church slowly recovered. The Home Missionary Society came promptly to the rescue, and made the church a grant which carried them through one year, when they again took upon themselves the whole burden. " The spiritual progress of the church during these years was very slow, but there was real gain. The prayer- meetings were held in private homes and were small, but were sometimes marked by real power. The excite- ments had drawn Christians away from spiritual things, and many had become indifferent. As the interest in- Kansas and Nebraska 115 creased they returned to their places. One by one they would drop into our meetings and add themselves to our effective force. There was no general revival, but every now and then some one heard the word and came forward and acknowledged Christ. The pastor's wife, meanwhile, met the girls every week in the parlor, and in ten years, between thirty and forty of these were added to the church, and have been effective workers for Christ in different sections of the State. " When peace returned, the progress was more rapid. In 1867 a more general revival began to manifest itself, which continued in varying degrees for several years. It is not easy to say just what occasioned it. It was the culmination of all that went before, the harvest of many seasons of sowing. A new church now became a neces- sity and the present edifice was erected at a cost of $45,000." We have allowed Dr. Cordley to tell the story at some length. It might be duplicated in many other towns and cities of Kansas, but would gain nothing by repeti- tion. The home-missionary problem was entirely new in the history of western immigration. In other States the hard conditions of nature were to be overcome. In Kansas the inhumanity of man was added. In this respect the settlement of Kansas resembles most nearly the experience of the Pilgrim fathers in the Plymouth woods, who went to church every Sabbath with the Bible in one hand, and the musket in the other, ready to build up a Christian colony with the one, and to defend themselves against barbarous enemies with the other. Upon the early settlers of Kansas devolved the same double burden, and to their honor be it said they proved themselves to be worthy sons of honored sires. li6 Leavening the Nation Baptist home missions began in the same troubled period, two missionaries being established in 1854. The growth of the denomination under home-missionary culture has been extremely gratifying. More than six hundred churches have been planted with a membership of 35,000. Methodists have been even more successful, with their fifteen hundred churches and 100,000 commu- nicants. Presbyterian organizations number more than five hundred, and Episcopal more than one hundred. In spite of its bloody and tumultuous beginning, Kansas by faithful home-missionary labor ranks high among the States in the percentage of its rehgious forces, one quarter of her people being professed Christians. That result has not been accomplished without a generous outlay of money. " Nearly every Congregational church in the State has been aided by the Home Missionary Society. Its donations to the State aggregate about three quarters of a million dollars. The investment was wise, for the spiritual fruitage is abundant, ever increas- ing and of eternal value, three fourths of the churches having become self-supporting." * Nebraska, made a Territory at the same time with Kansas, was fortunate in escaping the peculiar trials that beset her more southern sister. Her stake in the issue of popular sovereignty was the same, but to Kansas fell the brunt of the battle with slavery. She was happy also in her free State neighbor Iowa, on the east. No border ruffians troubled her from that quarter. Hence the settlement of Nebraska proceeded in an orderly way, and according to the natural methods of western immi- gration. Yet for some reason it was not very rapid at ' L. Payson Broad, Seventy-fifth Annual Report of the Con- gregational Home Missionary Society, p. 89. Kansas and Nebraska 117 first. Its soil is no less productive than Kansas, but its climate is more northern. Moreover, the eyes of the nation were concentrated upon Kansas. In 1858 only a few Nebraska settlements had been started on the Nemaha, Saline, Big Blue, and Elkhorn, and "all would not have made one good-sized town." ^ The main tide of western travel at this time, but not later, was more to the south. As late even as 1872 the London Times openly discouraged emigration to Nebraska, urging the Red River country instead. The city of Omaha, however, was a marked exception to all these conditions. In 1854 it had one log house, two years later it had a population of 700. That was only a beginning. From a log cabin in 1854, to a popu- lation of 145,000 in 1894; from 60,000 in 1885, to 140,000 in 1890, constitute a record of growth unparallelled by any other city in the nation. Its natural location has much to do with this phenomenal progress. Omaha lies in the very gateway to the West, at a middle point be- tween the Atlantic and Pacific. Thirteen trunk lines of railway enter the city and radiate from it to every quar- ter of the land. Thus by necessity it becomes a great distributing center, as well as the metropolis of a rich agricultural and manufacturing State. Among the missionary pioneers of Nebraska, Reuben Gaylord was an honored leader. Born among the hills of Norfolk, Connecticut; graduated from Yale College in the class of 1834, an instructor for three years in lUinois College, licensed to preach in 1838, an early appli- cant for a home-missionary commission to Iowa, it was in that State that he and Asa Turner laid foundations, prepared the way of the Iowa Band and helped to plan 'S. A. Drake, "The Making of the Great West," p. 322. ii8 Leavening the Nation Iowa College. For seventeen years he made full proof of his Iowa ministry, and having established his work there, turned with the instinct of a pioneer, to the harder frontier of Nebraska. Some men seem born for rough- ing it, and need the buffeting of stormy conditions to call out their full strength. Such a man was Reuben Gaylord. In the midwinter of 1855, he started in a two-seated wagon, with his family, five in all, one of them a babe of ten months, to cross the State of Iowa, 300 miles. Over roads deep with mud, across unbridged streams made almost unapproachable by steep banks, against piercing winter winds, in the face of intense cold, through a coun- try poorly supplied with hotels, and these so crowded that accomodation was often denied, losing a wheel now and then, but never losing heart, this brave man and his brave family reached the Missouri River opposite Omaha, on Forefathers' Day, 1855, devoutly grateful to be counted worthy of suffering with the Pilgrims, if he might thus extend their faith and principles. On Christmas day the missionary and his family crossed the river on the ice, and began their new life in a half- furnished, wholly unplastered house set up on four blocks, weather below zero. What faith these men had in the power of their message and in the certainty of their mission ! At the post-ofhce in Omaha Mr. Gaylord found his commission, with a pledge of $600 salary, not one half of what it actually cost him to maintain his family. The only religious organization in the place, at that time, was a Methodist class of six members. The reception of the missionary was scarcely warmer than the weather. The people were worldly and half crazed with the fever of Kansas and Nebraska 119 speculation. There is one living to-day who relates how, passing by the rough chapel where he preached, he heard the voice of a man, in prayer, and looking in through the window, saw Reuben Gaylord, on his knees in the httle pulpit praying God to send him an audience.^ It is not too much to beheve that the beautiful edifice and the flourishing First Church of Omaha are the an- swer to that prayer. It was in that church founded by Gaylord, that such men as Dr. Sherrill, Dr. Duryea, Dr. Warfield, fulfilled their memorable ministries, and from it as the mother church have sprung more than two hundred such churches in all parts of the State with a total membership of 15,000. Presbyterians, with their 278 churches and 15,000 members; Baptists, with 300 churches and the same number of members; and Methodists, with 740 churches and a membership of 45,000, are all fruits of the same home-missionary movement that began with the opening of Nebraska as a Territory and have followed its development as a State. The Christian proportion of Nebraska's population is for various reasons smaller than some other States, but it has one jewel in its crown to which Dr. Bross thus alludes: "Faith, hope, and heroic effort have gone into the work thus far. De- voted men and women have prayed and wrought that the State might be Christian. These influences have had to do with making a commonwealth, which for years has shown the lowest percentage of illiteracy of any State in the Union." ^ ^ Dr. Geo. L. Miller of Omaha, who witnessed the incident, adds, in a personal letter to the author: "It was Reuben Gaylord, the brave Christian soldier who brought Sunday into Omaha and the trans-Missouri country." ^ H. Bross, Seventy-fifth Annual Report of the Congregational Home Missionary Society, p. 45. IX THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE— MINNESOTA AND THE DAKOTAS Minnesota came into its State domain by a road almost as tortuous as that of Iowa. Its northeastern third was originally part of the Northwest Territory and had the requirements of the Ordinance of 1787 been strictly observed, would be included to-day in the State of Wisconsin. The remaining two thirds were a part of the Louisiana Purchase. At different times it has been one with the Territory of Wisconsin and the Territory of Illinois, and at the time of its own organization as a Ter- ritory it included about one half of the Dakotas. Little by little it shrank on one side and expanded on the other, until in 1858 it was welcomed into the Union with its present magnificent area of 83,365 square miles. Following that event, settlement, long delayed, leaped forward with magical rapidity. When made a Territory in 1849, it had scarcely 6,000 people. Ten years later (1860) it had 172,000. The State census of 1865 shows 250,000 and the national census of 1870 raises the figure to 438,000 which has since that year mnltiplied nearly four times. The population in 1900 was 1,751,395. Obviously, Minnesota must possess exceptional at- tractions to account for this mighty growth. A climate dry, bracing and healthful, a soil wonderfully produc- tive, washed on the east by Superior and penetrated Minnesota and the Dakotas 121 through nearly its entire length by the Father of Waters, abundantly wooded and rich in mineral deposits; — with these for special features, Minnesota lacked nothing to attract the eye and inspire the hope of the eastern emi- grant. Something of the character of its early American set- tlers may be inferred from the make-up of the first Terri- torial legislature. Four of its members were from Can- ada, two from Maine, three from Vermont, one from New Hampshire, two from Connecticut, three from New York, two from Pennsylvania, two from Michigan, one each from New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, Ohio, and Missouri, — twenty-four in all and two thirds of them from New England or the Middle West. With no per- sonal knowledge whatever of these early legislators, it would be safe to assume that a body thus derived might be trusted to deal intelligently with all questions of public interest. Furthermore, the young Territory appears to have been equally fortunate in its first governor. The opening note of his inaugural message is an appeal for a stringent temperance law, accompanied with some plain words upon "the disreputable and demoralizing business of liquor selHng." It was a brave and timely note, and without discounting in the least the sincerity of Governor Ramsey, we may presume that his message reflected the sentiment of the majority of the people. The entire document, closing with an appeal for "liberty and law, rehgion and education," was the prophecy of a Christian commonwealth, a prophecy amply fulfilled, and afford- ing the best evidence that the Puritan spirit, in its mi- gration to the Mississippi and beyond, had lost none of its early virility. 122 Leavening the Nation At this time, the rehgious needs of St. Paul, "a little town," were supplied by a Catholic priest and four Protestant missionaries — Episcopal, Methodist, Bap- tist, and Presbyterian. Romanists were in the majority, and were even then planning for a cathedral. Contri- butions of money from Boston enabled the Presbyterians to erect a small building, the only Protestant sanctuary, at that time, north of Dubuque. St. Anthony's Falls, now Minneapolis, was an outstation for an occasional service; where the proprietors allowed no one to settle without an iron-clad promise to sell no liquor. Within a few months of Territorial organization, we find further proof of the enlightened spirit of the govern- ment in their report on education. "Virtue and intelli- gence," it declares, "are the only pillars on which repub- lican governments can safely rest." "Man should be educated for eternity." "Morality and religion should be regarded as the most essential elements of education and should hold their due prominence in every institu- tion of learning. The sublime truths and precepts of Christianity should be impressed, urged, and clearly explained, as presented in the Bible, and as taught and illustrated by its Divine Author; and bigotry, fanati- cism and narrow-minded sectarian prejudice, be forever excluded from every temple of knowledge, and con- signed to that dark oblivion to which the progress of light and knowledge are hastening them." We beg the reader to note, this is not an extract from some preacher's Sabbath morning sermon, but is taken from a legislative report of Minnesota's Committee on Education. Thus far we have failed to discover any other utterance of its kind so complete and unequivocal, and so clearly demonstrating that the early spirit of Minnesota and the Dakotas 123 New England, which it was the effort of Home Missions to plant in New York, and the Northwest Territory, had taken root in the pubhc life of the newer West, and was propagating itself now beyond the River and on- ward towards the Pacific. The fifth of April, 1852, witnessed a temperance vic- tory that revealed the moral spirit of the Territory; the passage of a law by popular vote prohibiting the manu- facture and sale of intoxicating hquors. It was the Maine law transplanted. On the Sabbath previous to the vote, the Roman Catholic bishop and every Protes- tant missionary made their pulpits ring with temperance sermons. Every pubhc officer and every editor in St. Paul, except one, voted for prohibition. St. Paul was the Gibraltar of the opposition, and although whiskey was freely used as a bait, yet in a total vote of 674, the rum party triumphed by a bare majority of twelve; a victory that was robbed of all harm by the overwhelming temperance vote of the county. In all these friendly conditions of pubhc sentiment, Home Missions fomid a pecuhar support, such as had been enjoyed in no other field of the West hitherto opened. Four Protestant missionaries were rapidly laying fovmdations: E. D. Neill, at St. Paul; J. C. Whit- ney, at Stillwater; Charles Seccombe, at St. Anthony; and Richard Hall, at Point Douglass. The combined population at these points did not exceed 3,000. Of subsequent developments. Dr. L. H. Cobb, in his review of "Forty years of Home Missions in Minnesota," re- marks : " Men at all accustomed to life in the West, especially when great movements of population are going on, wiU not need to be told the exceeding difficulty and dehcacy 124 Leavening the Nation of the work from this point and even from the very first. Many of the emigrants brought the faith and pohty of the Pilgrims. Others brought the faith and pohty of a large number of other denominations. Some of them left their faith and polity, if they had any, in the places from which they came, certainly it did not appear when they reached the wilderness wilds of Minnesota." ^ The multipHcity of denominations represented in the early tide of immigration, to which Dr. Cobb here al- ludes, proved in Minnesota, and has proved in most new States, an embarrassing home-missionary problem. People religiously trained, naturally prefer their own church to any other, and in a strange, new country, far from home, this preference rises to a longing, which they are ready at almost any sacrifice to gratify. In a rapidly growing settlement this spirit of denominational enter- prise is often wise and praiseworthy. Nevertheless mistakes are inevitable ; churches are sometimes planted that will not be needed, and money and men are wasted that might, wdth clearer vision of the future, have been saved. The hamlet does not always expand to the town, nor the promising town to the city, as was expected. The railroad that was coming, does not come, but passes by on the other side. A certain margin of waste is thus inevitable in the planting of churches, as in other less valuable sowing, and the time for wise weeding is sure to come. We do not say that Minnesota has been a sinner or a sufferer above all others in this respect, but her rapid growth and the large element of church people in that growth specially exposed her, for a time, to the peril of ^Church Building Quarterly, vol. 19, p. 167. Minnesota and the Dakota s 125 too many churches, — too much leaven for the meal, — in a given population. Time has settled most of these problems and has taught the wisdom of making haste more slowly, for the sake of greater permanency. It is to be remembered that the home-missionary de- velopment of Minnesota began actively, at a time when the historic Plan of Union, between Congregationalists and Presbyterians, was in its last stages. It was for- mally abandoned in 1851, and since that date each of these denominations, with mutual good-will, has carried on its missionary work independent of the other. The two Congregational pioneers of this period were Richard Hall and Charles Seccombe. For nearly twenty years, Mr. Hall acted as Missionary Superintendent, and the permanent fruits of his labors appeared in the planting of one hundred and six churches and in the building of fifty-two houses of worship. Father Hall still hves, an honored minister in the State of his adoption, enjoying in a serene old age, the reward of his early labors. Few missionary pioneers have sown their life and strength more Uberally, or have lived to witness a grander har- vest. Father Seccombe began work as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of St. Anthony's Falls, in 1850, under the Plan of Union. One year later he organized the First Congregational Church of the same place and served the American Home Missionary Society from that time, both in Minnesota and South Dakota for many years. During all these years in both States and in the East, he was highly honored as a typical western worker. His missionary addresses were heard with pleasure, and his intense earnestness and evident consecration gave bis words pecuhar power. 126 Leavening the Nation Minnesota has been fortunate from the first in her Missionary leaders. Father Hall left a model of wise administration which subsequent superintendents have been glad to follow. From 1874 to 1881 the position was filled by Dr. L. H. Cobb, who saw seventy churches planted under his direction ; by Rev. M. W. Montgomery for three years between 1881 and 1884, when thirty new churches were added, several of them in populous cen- ters; by Dr. J. H. Morley, from 1884 to 1899, a period which witnessed the organization of 149 churches. The present Superintendent, Dr. George R. Merrill, for some years a Minneapolis pastor, has brought to the work, besides personal qualifications of a high order, an inti- mate acquaintance with the conditions of the field. Few States have enjoyed the lead of stronger men, and eminently worthy of a place among them is Rev. George A. Hood, who acted as Superintendent during the tem- porary disabihty of Mr. Montgomery. Another leader of eminence was Dr. David C. Lyon of the Presbyterian Board, who has been styled " The Father of Presbyterianism in the Northwest." Between 1867 and 1885, with headquarters at St. Paul, he was Synodical Missionary for Minnesota and Dakota. " His sagacity in locating churches was remarkable. An evi- dence of this is the fact that only one of the churches he organized has ever been disbanded." ^ His gift of tact was quite as remarkable as his sagacity. On one occa- sion, in a new and rough community, he had posted a notice on a saloon door announcing divine service at half past ten and half past seven the following Sunday. Re- turning to the same place later, he found another notice * "Home Missionary Hero Series," Presbyterian Board, No. 8. Minnesota and the Dakotas 127 under his own, announcing a dog-fight at half past ten and a cock-fight at half past seven. As he paused to read he was surrounded by a rough and dangerous gang who waited for what might follow. Having read their counter notice carefully through, he turned to them good-naturedly and remarked, "Well gentlemen, you can have your choice," a treatment so courteous and unexpected that many of them were won to come to and hear him preach. Fifty years of home missions in Minnesota — and what are the results? Four Protestant Missionary Boards have invested more than two million dollars in churches and kindred agencies. The visible fruits appear in the fact, that Minnesota in the ratio of its church-going population, ranks in the same class with Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Indeed, these four States constitute a class by themselves in having more than forty-one per cent of their population in church connection. All which this splendid ratio imphes in the moral, social, educational, and civic life of a Western State will be inferred by every reflective mind, although it may not be tabulated to the eye. Minnesota has justified the proud motto of its State Seal, "L'Etoile du Nord" (the Star of the North). Many causes have united to give her this honorable promi- nence among American commonwealths; but when all are summed up it will be found that not the least among the forces contributing to the moral and pohtical strength of Minnesota, are her churches and kindred institutions, which were planted, and have been nurtured and developed, almost without exception, by the agency of organized Home Missions. West of Minnesota lie two immense squares which 128 Leavening the Nation were formerly one and known as Dakota. The name is obviously of Indian origin and means "The Confederated Tribes." Previous to its organization as a Territory in 1861, it was included with Wj'^oming, Montana, and Nebraska, in the Territory of Nebraska. Eight years later Wyoming and Montana were set off by themselves and Nebraska had come to Statehood, but up to the time of the separation the whole area, excluding Nebraska, of 390,000 square miles, held a white population of less than 3,000. Two years later, 1870, Dakota reported 15,000 and Wyoming 9,000. This sudden expansion was nothing new in the development of the West, and is sur- prising only in the fact that no event in particular had occurred to account for it. The fear of Indian raids had somewhat abated, and the prospect of railroad development was reasonably assured; but the immediate cause of Dakota's sudden advance in population was not as apparent as in some other States. Yet it was well founded. The early settlers soon discovered that Dakota, however limited in its forests and mineral treasures, possessed an untold wealth in the capabihties of its soil, and for that class of immigrants, either native or foreign, who knew the art of farming, it was a mine of productive power. Its soil, almost uniformly rich, and often from fifteen to twenty feet in depth, needed only "to be tickled with a hoe to laugh with a harvest." The "Bad Lands," so called, are but 75,000 acres in a total area of 97,000,000 acres. After nearly thirty years of Territorial govern- ment, Dakota became two States, which were admitted to the Union in 1889. Meanwhile the population had risen from 15,000 to more than half a million. The home-missionary problem in the Dakotas was Minnesota and the Dakotas 129 complicated from the start by the scattered condition of its settlements. Cities were few; large towns did not gather rapidly; and the great majority of the people were distributed across the prairies on farms and ranches which singly were often as large as an eastern township. This made the planting of churches slow and difficult, and operated against their speedy development. In- deed, not a few friends of Western Home Missions at the East, feared a failure of the effort, or looked for success only after years of costly investment. Joseph Ward was not among the timid and unbeliev- ing. Born in Perry Center, New York, in 1838, which was itself a colony from the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts, he inherited New England blood, and the ideals that go with it. His parents had emigrated from Massachusetts to the far west of Central New York, at an early date; and when the son came to the choice of a field for his own hfework, it was a natural sequence that turned his steps towards the newer West. "On graduating from Andover in 1868, calls from several inviting churches were proffered him, but the positions seemed too easy to suit his zeal for hard work. The little hamlet of Yankton with its nucleus of em- bryo church fife was set before him, and the ' elect lady ' who was to be the closest helper in all his toil, and to make their home the warm shelter it has been for so many of God's servants. After never-to-be-forgotten confidential interviews on Andover Hill and in the Bible House, Yankton was chosen as the opening, calling for the hardest work." ^ The personaHty of the man was a large element of his ' A. H. Clapp, Home Missionary, vol. 62, p. 460. 130 Leavening the Nation power. He had the physical presence of a leader; man- liness clothed him as with a garment, and breathed in every utterance of his lips. Confidence is said to be a plant of slow growth, but the power of inspiring confi- dence was given to Joseph Ward almost instinctively; and to the end, the faith of the people in him never wavered. During an early visit of Dr. A. H. Clapp to Dakota, he found himself one day in the same car with the then governor of the Territory and their conversa- tion fell upon the Yankton pastor. The Governor (an Episcopalian) said with much earnestness: "Ward has more influence than any other man in this Territory. He can do just what he pleases with its people. They call me ' Governor,' but I have not a tithe of his power here." It would have been easy for Joseph Ward to content himself with the care of his own church or at most with the development of his own order; and to many men it would have been enough, but not for him. His mind was of that larger mold, in which commonwealths are forecast and fashioned. He was by choice a missionary and pastor, but he was also a citizen, with New England ideals and with the power and will to make his dreams come true, even in the virgin soil of an embryo State. In his gifted nature, he was something of the statesman and much of the seer, but nothing of the politician. Office, he never sought, though it often sought him ; and had he chosen he might have won distinction in the councils of the nation. He preferred to lay the hidden foundations of future States which would be standing firm when political honors should have vanished, for- gotten. For seven years, between 1882 and 1889, the problem Minnesota and the Dakotas 131 of Statehood was a burning question. The affairs of the Territory had fallen into the political keeping of corrupt men. The people were waiting to be aroused, inspired, combined, and marshalled into a fighting majority for honest government and civic righteousness. Leaders of tact, sincerity, and incorruptible integrity were the need of the hour. The future of two States hung on the issue, and one convention followed another, ending in repeated defeats. Through all that seven years' war Joseph Ward was a trusted and indispensable leader. By com- mon consent it is agreed that more than any other one man, he influenced the people to right final action. As chairman of the committee on education, he shaped the new constitution in this important matter. He pro- posed and advocated the prohibition clause which event- ually prevailed, and made a strong fight against special legislation, bribery, corruption, and unequal taxation. It was an inspiring sight in those days to watch the conflict between this knightly champion of high ideals and the small politicians of the hour. The people were ready to be won by the best leadership. They had faith in the honesty and the wisdom of Joseph Ward, and around him, the humble missionary, rather than any other man, the best public sentiment ralhed, and won a moral and political victory which abides to this hour. This is no partial verdict of his denominational friends and brethren. Judge Hugh J. Campbell, an active par- ticipant in the excitement of those days, has given this testimony : "When at times the scale seemed to waver and public sentiment to be in doubt as to the legality and propriety of the movements which were proposed, it was more than anything else the colossal weight of his great per- 132 Leavening the Nation sonal character and influence that ralUed to its flag the popular sentiment of the State. That South Dakota is to-day a State and has a star upon the flag of this mighty Union of States, is due to the influence and character of Joseph Ward. If South Dakota ever rears in her temple of Statehood any statues in memory of her sons who have done the State signal service in critical times of dan- ger, and have helped most to shape her destinies for good, foremost and highest among them all will stand the noble, genial, powerful, form of Joseph Ward." It might seem that such a record were crown enough for any man. But the redeemed and purified State of South Dakota is not his only nor his chief monument. The last eight years of his life were devoted to that most arduous, disheartening, and potential of all labors, the planting and upbuilding of a Christian college. His calling to this task was manifestly a divine summons. Yankton College had become a necessity, and Joseph Ward was the Lord's anointed to be its founder and champion. With all his natural zeal and optimism he threw him- self, body and soul, into this new endeavor. A double constituency was to be created: a constituency of stu- dents within the natural feeding-ground of such an in- stitution, and a supporting constituency in the far East. Probably no man in his position was ever more successful in both directions. His unusual gift of inspiring confi- dence served him well. But the field he had entered was crowded with competitors, all needy and all worthy of relief. The day of princely gifts to colleges had not dawned. He was one among many gleaners, and the leavings were small. His visits to the East and his ardent appeals for help won many friends for the college, Hi^ Minnesota and the Dakotas 133 journeys among the churches of his own State inspired many youth of both sexes to covet a hberal education. Between the two, the perplexities of administration en- grossed all his remaining strength, even to the breaking- point. Teachers must be found in full sympathy with his high ideals, and provision for their payment must be devised. Buildings must be put up, and money must be forthcoming for their erection. Dr. D. F. Bradley, who was Dr. Ward's successor in the Yankton church and an ardent friend of the college, has well said: "It is no pastime to build a college, and especially to build without material. Yankton College was built by Dr. Ward, as if he himself quarried the stone, hewed it into shape, carried it to its place, mixed its mortar with his blood and sweat, fashioned its fair proportions, covered it with its roof, warmed it with his own zeal." Says another:* "The material results of eight years' labor of Dr. Ward as President of Yankton College, aggregate in land, buildings, library, apparatus, endow- ment, and scholarship funds, more than $100,000. But that is, and ever will be, the smallest results of his labors." His noble wife who shared the burden, and knew its crushing weight, as no other could, has added: "I think it was a loving Providence that honored us with the privilege of standing in the front. I do not think we were presumptuous in taking the position we did, namely: we will put in ourselves and all we have until, in other ways, God carries on the work. I think so much was needed from some one; for an institution that is to live must have life literally put into it." Yankton Col- * Prof. John T. Shaw. 134 Leavening the Nation lege is in a sacred sense the Hving monument of its first president, who died to give it hfe. If his remains were buried beneath its walls, no inscription would be so be- fitting as that which marks the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren in the crypt of St. Paul: "Si monumentum re- quiris circimispice," "If you seek his monument look around you." The Dakotas for nearly ten years were fortunate in the services of Stewart Sheldon as general missionary and superintendent. Mrs. Sheldon was the sister of Joseph Ward and mother of Rev. C. M. Sheldon of Topeka, whose writings have compassed the world. The close family tie between Sheldon the superintendent and Ward the pioneer gave peculiar strength and unity to the home-missionary administration. In Dr. Ward, the superintendent found a wise, farsighted counselor, and in Mr. Sheldon the fervent spirit of Ward found a con- servative, judicious ally and agent. It is Uttle wonder under a partnership so exceptionally fehcitous that churches multiplied rapidly, passing the two-hundred mark in less than fifteen years. Little wonder also that this splendid leadership in Dakota should have inspired some of the brightest young men of the seminaries to cast their lot into this promis- ing field. The most significant movement of this kind was the gathering of the Yale Dakota Band, in 1880. In this as in almost every other band movement, the final decision was effected by the report of one student who had spent a vacation month upon the field. Aden B. Case was the avant coureur of the Dakota Band. He came back inspired, and had the rare power of inspiring others with his own ardent faith. The Band as finally organized was made up as follows; Minnesota and the Dakotas 135 Aden B. Case, 111.; Pliny B. Fisk, Vt.; Philip E. Holp, Ohio; William B. Hubbard, 111.; George Lindsey, Scot- land; John R. Reitzel, Pa.; Charles W. Shelton, Conn.; William H. Thrall, 111.; George W. Trimble, Ohio. It is worthy of notice that only two of these men hailed from New England. The larger part came from points within the early home-missionary belt, settled, developed, and to a large degree evangelized by New England in- fluences. The Dakota Band may be regarded as repre- senting the second generation of Home Missions, catch- ing up the torch committed to their fathers by Con- necticut and Massachusetts, bearing it on to the Dakotas, whose enlightened children in turn shall pass it on to the newer West. The farewell meeting of the Band was held in Boston at Park Street Church where parting words were spoken by Drs. Withrow, Duryea, and H. M. Storrs. A visit was made to Plymouth Rock, and from the graves of the first organized band of American home missionaries, these youthful pilgrims went forth in the spirit of the Fathers, and with their great "hope and inward zeal of laying some good foundation." Their coming was at a time of pecuhar need and prom- ise. "The long trains of immigrants sweeping into the Territory every day ; the thousand homesteads a day that were taken up for consecutive weeks by these people ; the new towns springing up as if by magic, on every hand; the notice from the trunk-hne railroads that no freight could be received for shipment into the Territory, as thousands of loaded cars were then sidetracked along the line waiting for transportation; the rush and the whirl of that new life where everything was new, everything formative, and everything being formed — only those 136 Leavening the Nation who have hved it can undertand, and no word-painting can give even a faint representation of what it meant." * The new force was soon distributed under the skilled direction of Mr. Sheldon and Dr. Ward, and when at work they stretched in a line from the banks of the Big Sioux on the east to the Missouri on the west, a distance of a hundred and fifty miles. Twenty years have passed. Eight of the Band are living, six of them engaged in home-missionary work, and five under commission of the Home Missionary Society. Supt. Sheldon was suc- ceeded by Rev, H. D. Wiard, and he in turn by Rev. W. H. Thrall of the Band. Rev. C. W. Shelton after fruitful service in Dakota was needed for the Society's special work at the East, and for several years has been its well beloved and efficient eastern field secretary. Most that has been narrated of missionary work in Dakota applies to the Territory before division and State- hood. North Dakota is now a separate State, under separate missionary direction. For fifteen years Rev. Henry Clay Simmons was its untiring superintendent — a man of large pattern in body, mind, and spirit — tempted by his zeal and physical strength to bear burdens which probably shortened his life ; a man who spared not him- self in the cause he loved, but was instant in season and out of season; who won the warmest friends by the power of a genuine sympathy, and was beloved as few in his position are, for many noble and manly qualities of character. The closing years of his life were given to Fargo College, and in its service as president, he fell, like a faithful soldier in the front line of battle. Rev. G. J. Powell, who succeeds Dr. Simmons as * C. W. Shelton, Home Missionary, Jan., 1901, p. 192, Minnesota and the Dakotas 137 Superintendent, remarks that "North Dakota has a population that takes to rehgion," This verdict finds confirmation in the tables of Dr. Carroll, often quoted in these pages; while the religious forces of South Da- kota show a ratio of 26 per cent, to its population, that of North Dakota rises to 33 per cent., identical with that of Ohio, in advance of Illinois and Iowa and quite be- yond that of Michigan. For this cheering result the State is indebted in no small degree to the excellence of the original stock. "Scandinavians, Americans, Cana- dians, Germans, in the order named make up the popu- lation. The Scandinavians, healthy in body, strong and sound of mind, Protestants in religion and readily Amer- icanized, are a substantial people. The Americans are from New England, and States one remove from Yankee- land, New York, Ohio, and from regions between. The Canadians are from the Protestant province of Ontario. Fully half the Germans are from Russia, and more readily than any other foreigners they can be gathered into churches." * In spite of the early unfavorable con- ditions growing out of a mixed and scattered popula- tion, few home-missionary investments have paid a larger dividend than that of the Dakotas. * Diamond Jubilee Report, p. 50. X THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE— WYOMING, MONTANA, IDAHO Wyoming may justly divide with its neighbors on the north, south, and west whatever distinction may belong to a "Mountain State." A glance at the map will justify such a claim. Along its boundaries it is guarded by mountainous ranges, which shoot their long spurs down into its center. The State has an altitude ranging from 3,500 feet, the lowest, to nearly 14,000 feet, the highest, with a mean elevation of 6,400 feet. The Continental Divide runs through its western portion, and in the extreme northwest, the marvelous geysers, cataracts, and canyons of Yellowstone Park, have won for Wyo- ming the name of "The Wonderland of America." The buried treasures of its hills, so tardily discovered, are fabulous in extent and value; while the sheltered and fertile valleys that divide them afford grazing the year round to cattle and sheep, whose assessed value is $13,000,000, and the annual wool cHp of 27,500,000 pounds is valued at $3,500,000. Such wealth of nature and such commercial values seem to assure the per- manent growth and prosperity of the State. Wyoming was made a territory in 1868, from portions of Dakota, Idaho, and Utah, and forms an almost per- fect square of 98,000 square miles. Twenty-two years later (1890) it was admitted to the Union as a State. 13S Wyoming, Montana, Idaho 139 For obvious geographical reasons, its growth in popu- lation has not been rapid. The agricultural area, though fertile, is small compared with other States, and the facilities of travel and transportation are necessarily limited. With the exception of Nevada, it contains the smallest population of any State in the Union, about 93,000. The settlement of this unique region was long delayed. For nearly half a century Wyoming was nothing but a highway of travel between the great plains and the Pacific, the only white residents being fur traders and mihtary men. Montana, Idaho, Utah, and even Ne- vada, were being prospected and peopled while Wyoming, with equal attractions, was httle better than a trail over which caravans made their way to more fortunate re- gions. A sufficient explanation may have been the im- placable hostility of wandering Indian tribes, who felt themselves called to be the special guardians of its under- ground treasures, against the invasion of whites. From 1844 to 1868, the Territory was the continuous scene of Indian warfare, which treaties were powerless to suppress. White settlements were impossible, except in the immediate vicinity of some mifitary fort. Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball, with a com- pany of 143 Mormons, were the first white settlers at Fort Laramie in 1847. They did not tarry long, but passed through to Salt Lake. Later a small company of Mor- mons, fifty-five in number, made a more permanent residence at Green River, within the present boundaries of Wyoming, but considered at the time as a part of Utah. Eventually they retired also before the advent of United States soldiers. It was not until 1867 that the real settlement began, 140 Leavening the Nation when a company of 700 persons camped on Willow Creek and laid out South Pass City. Gold was the at- traction, and several mining districts in the vicinity gave commercial importance to the settlement. But a new factor now appeared which was to do more for Wyoming than its buried gold and silver, or its coal and iron, had thus far effected: America's most potent pioneer, the railroad, was headed for Wyoming. Construction gangs of the Union Pacific appeared in 1868, and Cheyenne entered on its variegated career as a railroad town. Wyoming home missions began with Cheyenne when the town was described as "a permanent camp in the desert with no garden, no trees, no weeds." At the re- quest of Dr. J. E, Roy, at that time field secretary of the American Home Missionary Society, Rev. E. W. Cook explored this camp in the desert, and foimd a band of nineteen ready to be gathered into a church. "The new organization was 400 miles from the nearest Congrega- tional church on the east, 1,200 miles on the west; while if one started by the northern route, he would be obliged to travel 2,300 miles to reach one." ^ Social and moral conditions were such as might be expected from the mixed elements of the settlement. At the end of one year, with a population of 5,000, seventy of the first eighty burials in the cemetery had been from violent deaths, "shot, stabbed, poisoned, or hung." Robberies and assaults were of daily and nightly occurrence. Constituted authority was powerless, and the Vigilance Committee ruled the town and dispensed summary judg- ment. Here was good soil for missionary effort, and in the Rev. and Col. J. D. Davis was found a missionary well * W. B. D. Gray, Home Missionary, May, 1902, p. 19. Wyoming, Montana, Idaho 141 equipped for such a field. As a private soldier in the Civil War, he had borne the colors of his regiment on the battle-field of Shiloh, where he was left for dead. For the last thirty years he has served the American Board as a foreign missionary in Japan. Under the brief min- istry of Mr. Davis, solid foundations were laid when Josiah Strong succeeded him in 1871. His pastorate of two years was a period of cheering growth and of rising moral tone in the community. Cheyenne ceased to be known by the sulphurous sobriquet it had previously, and, in public opinion, justly borne. A much longer pastorate than that of either Dr. Davis or Dr. Strong, was that of Clarendon M. Sanders, a man of marked tact and adaptability, who brought the church to self-support, saw its present fine edifice erected, and left it only to fill out the balance of his wonderfully active life as home- missionary superintendent of Colorado. From the mother church at Cheyenne, which for a long time was the only Congregational church, have sprung a dozen churches of the same order, at Sheridan, Rock Springs, Buffalo, Lusk, Big Horn, and other points. Population tended to gather at spots, far apart, along the southern borders, and in the northern sections of the State. Thus missionary work and need divide quite sharply into three kinds, requiring picked men for each — mining camps, railroad towns, and ranches. Distances between stations are long and difficult to overcome, and especially unfavorable to that ecclesiastical fellowship so essential to the best development of church fife. Yet in the face of all these hard conditions the message of the home missionary has won its way, and more than holds its own. One hundred and forty-one religious organizations have been established by the various home 142 Leavening the Nation boards of missions, Baptist, Congregational, Episcopal, Methodist, and Presbyterian, and one-fifth part of the population is in church connection, — a result which in spite of early history and natural obstacles is better than that found in Washington, and not far behind that of Oregon, South Dakota, and Colorado. While Idaho, as at present constituted, was never a part of the Louisiana Purchase, it is convenient and almost necessary to treat of its missionary conditions in connection with those of Wyoming and Montana. It was created a Territory in 1863, from portions of Dakota, Nebraska, and Washington. As such, it embraced the present area of Montana, and nearly all of Wyoming, an immense tract of 326,373 square miles. Statehood, and its present area of 84,000 square miles, came in 1890. We may here note in passing one of those errors which explain why history must be so often rewritten. Pre- vious to 1898, the official map of the United States, and many school maps, without reason or authority, repre- sented the Louisiana Purchase as including the State of Idaho. It was in July of that year that Mr. Hermann, Commissioner of the General Land Office, called the attention of Hon. Cornelius N. Bliss, then Secretary of the Interior, to the error, and by an able historical re- view proved beyond all question, that Idaho, together with Oregon, Washington, and portions of Montana and Wyoming, were never acquired by the United States through the Louisiana Purchase. Mr. Hermann re- quested the correction of the official map, in accordance with the facts as presented, and the request was promptly complied with by Mr. Bliss. Present Idaho, not the Territory originally constituted, belongs unquestionably to that vast northwestern corner of the national do- Wyoming, Montana, Idaho i43 main, acquired by discovery on the part of Capt. Robert Gray of Boston in 1792; by explorations of Lewis and Clark in 1805; by the Astoria settlement of 1811; and finally confirmed by the concessions of the Florida Treaty of 1819. It was never a part of Louisiana. If any questions were possible as to the attractions of Idaho or the causes that led to its settlement, they would be dispelled by a brief study of any good early map. Such names as "Silver City," "Ruby City," "Placer," "Quartz/' " Oro Fino," and not least signifi- cant among them "Poorman's," clearly indicate a "treasure State," and prepare us to meet once more the familiar conditions which marked the beginnings of Cahfornia, Colorado, Nevada, and Wyoming. Indeed, Idaho had more than its share of the plagues of a treas- ure State. "Society was chaotic and had in it a liberal mixture of the infernal. Gamblers abounded, prostitutes threw other women into the shade." ^ The number of murders in Boise County alone, in 1864, was more than twenty, with assaults and robberies a long list. It is estimated that m Idaho, then including Montana, no less than 200 outlaws were executed by vigilant committees between 1861 and 1866. Idaho City was burned and sacked by the mob in 1865, and murders and massacres of the most shocking character were common. In addition to these familiar features of a new mining State, a large migra- tion from the South, then in rebellion, brought another class of troubles. Pohtical control of the Territory passed into the hands of a disloyal element. The "left wing of Price's army" became dominant in society and » H. H. Bancroft, vol. 31, p. 421. 144 Leavening the Nation at the polls. Political corruption and official dishon- esty followed, and few of those who had the handling of pubhc funds, came out of office with clean hands. And to fill up the measure of Idaho's afflictions, one fourth of the population before 1880 were Mormons. They not only practised and defended bigamy and polyg- amy, but their preachers taught that all laws for the suppression of these evils were unconstitutional, be- cause an interference with religious liberty. To break their power, the legislature of 1884 made a law embody- ing a rigid test oath for every voter, which required him to swear or affirm that he was not a bigamist or polyga- mist, and that he had no connection with any organiza- tion promulgating these tenets. This act nearly dis- franchised the Mormons, only a few hundred of them coming forward to take the oath. It will thus be seen that Idaho had a manifold battle to fight before winning a peaceful and orderly Statehood. The better elements were there, though overborne and obscured for the time. It is said of the character of her permanent residents, that they have been from the first a reading community, and that more books of the better class may be found in the homes and camps of Idaho than in many towns of a hke population in the older States. Twenty newspapers were published in 1884, and their number has greatly increased since that time. CathoUc Indian missions in the present bounds of Idaho began long before it had a Territorial existence. A Protestant mission was estabhshed by the American Board in 1836, on the Clearwater. The first church erected in the Territory was by Gathohcs at Idaho City in 1863, and the first Protestant church, Methodist, one Wyoming, Montana, Idaho 145 year later. The Catholics were first also at Boise. Their influence was strong, and this with the growing power of the Mormons, discouraged Protestant enter- prise. Prior to 1871, only three Protestant churches and four Sunday-schools had been established, and in three years these had increased to fifteen. In October, 1872, the first Congregational missionary appeared in Boise after three other denominations had tried and failed, and organized a church in 1873. After a brief existence it followed its predecessors to an early grave. Later, in 1891, a second and more successful attempt was made, resulting in one of the strongest churches of the State. Along the course of the Oregon Short Line, promising churches have been established by the various boards, while in the North, the needs of the mining population, especially in the Coeur d'Alene region, have attracted and are rewarding missionary activity. Rev. J. D. Kingsbury, D.D., by the request of the Executive Committee of the Home Missionary Society, has recently made an extended tour of this section. His discoveries and conclusions throw valuable light upon the needs and the promise of missionary work in Northern Idaho. "The Cceur d'Alene country," says Dr. Kingsbury, "has a population of 15,000. The canyon cities of Wardner, Burke, Gem, Mullan, Mace, and Murray yield wealth untold. There was never greater need of the gospel. A httle time ago nearly every one was utterly without it. The saloon is there, the brothel, the den of shame, the gambling hells, and no gospel. What won- der that life goes wrong! "I went into a mining town where pistol shots were heard every half hour, two fights in two days, blasphemy 146 Leavening the Nation and debauchery in the drink-houses and no faint echo of the gospel in all the place. I went into the saloons, and said to the men, ' I am to preach in the Opera House ' ; they rephed, ' That's right, elder, we need it.' Blotched, filthy, delirious, yet sobered at once by the very thought of religion, to which early years were no stranger, and saying, 'Give us your hand, elder, we fellers need it.' " I went into Mullan with my missionary, one fair day in May, piloted by our veteran Rev. Jonathan Edwards. We found five disciples of Christ, who said, 'We have waited for some Christian man to come along.' I said, ' I am the man; late it may be, but here is the mission- ary, and we are ready for work.' We secured a hall; the people came gladly; the hall was filled. The miners came. The Spirit of God was in the place, and hearts were touched. There was a pecuhar tenderness, and men and women testified to the love of God. A church was formed. They called my missionary, Rev. E. Owens, as pastor, and he accepted at once, giving up the plan of a fourth year of study. A house of worship was built, costing $2,000. They paid all but $600. On the fif- teenth day of December, scarce seven months from the time of entering the place, we met to dedicate the beau- tiful house of God. The church was thronged, the in- terest deep and tender. The httle mining city had a new atmosphere. Songs of Zion took the place of the ribald songs of the street. The spirit of prayer filled all hearts. It was a transformation. We had hoped and prayed and labored, expecting great things; but the re- sults were so much greater than we were looking for that we forgot our own feeble service, and said reverently in our hearts, Behold what God hath wrought." Closing his report, Dr. Kingsbury adds: "Let it not Wyoming, Montana, Idaho 147 be understood that the places I have cited are few, far from it; never such increase in mining as now. The prospectors are in all the mountains. Idaho is being transformed; new mines in the Coeur d'Alene and in the valley of St. Regis; Buffalo Hump has its new story. There come tidings of a new Cripple Creek at Thunder Mountain, 20,000 people eagerly waiting for spring time, when they will throng there to build new cities." While mining appears to overshadow other interests, creating peculiar missionary demands, yet mining is not all of Idaho. Commissioner Hermann, after a recent visit, is reported as saying: "It is my belief that Idaho is soon to take its place among the commercial States, and will henceforth be known in the great markets of the United States. The sheep and the grains as well as the minerals will always be a great factor in her develop- ment; but one thing that impressed me more than all else was her great and growing orchards, and the prom- ise of phenomenal development along that line." Rev. R. B. Wright of Boise, a resident of years, testi- fies: "The East is learning that Southern Idaho, instead of being mostly Great Snake River Desert, and Broken Lava Plateau, as it is marked on the government map, is a phenomenal agricultural country, and when covered with water, is almost capable of supplying the nation with fruit, and wool, and meat, besides a goodly portion of its precious metals." Mountain barriers are still to be overcome by roads and a passage from south to north wiU not always re- quire a detour of 600 miles through corners of Oregon and Washington. The future of Idaho, with its magnifi- cent domain, as large as New England and half of New York together, is a more unsolved problem than most 148 Leavening the Nation western States. The gospel has had a hard struggle with natural conditions, but its stakes are now firmly planted, and it will go on to lengthen its cords. Already it has a body of 250 religious organizations, which gather into their membership thirty per cent of the pop- ulation. All of this practically is the fruit of Home Mis- sions and its work is only begun. Under a patient and faithful culture, Idaho is destined one day to be in truth what its name implies, "The Diadem of the Mountains." Montana was set apart from the Territory of Idaho in 1864, and admitted to the Union in 1889 in the goodly company of North and South Dakota and Washington. Its early conditions and history are strikingly similar to those of Idaho, of which it was a part — the same moun- tains; the same buried wealth; the same broad plains and plateaus with their unlimited grazing; the same struggle with Indian tribes and reckless adventurers ; the same early years of excesses, vices, crimes, and their violent suppression by vigilantes; the gradual recovery of law, order, and morality; and the gradual ascendency of permanent settlers who have made Montana the peer of any western State in loyalty, enterprise, intelligence, and thrift. One factor in the chaotic elements of early Montana was destined to enter into the very blood and sinew of the State. It is a far cry from Montana to Missoim, Ken- tucky, Virginia, and the borderland of the South. But in the order of Providence, the majority of these early pioneers were destined to come from these regions. They were both drawn and driven northward — drawn by the discoveries of gold, and driven by the uncomfort- able conditions of the Civil War at home. Over the plains through Utah or up the Missouri River, from Wyoming, Montana, Idaho 149 three to four months of travel brought these southern emigrants in great numbers to the borders of Canada. Here they met another stream from New England and the Middle West. Of the mingling of these streams and of its final outcome, Mr. J. H. Crocker discourses in an entertaining article published in the ''New England Magazine " of February, 1900. "There was no little friction for a time between these two classes. The old settlers representing both sides, now mellowed and reconciled by the passing years, in- dulge in reminiscences that represent the first mining centers as veritable rebel camps. Angry discussions often ended in blows or pistol shots; and the 'Cause,' while waning, after Vicksburg and Gettysburg, was still triumphant in the gulches of Montana. But out of this rough and stalwart mixing of Northerner and Southerner has come a peculiar and pleasant social product. The Northern heart has been warmed, and the Southern mind has been quickened. The one has become more hospit- able, and the other more intellectual. It has been a game of give and take on both sides; both have been enriched and blessed, and the result is a society with a heartiness seldom found among the New England hills, and with an intellectual alertness seldom met south of the Ohio River. The Yankee is still a Yankee, but emancipated from many of his limitations; the South- erner is still a child of the sun, but freed from many of his prejudices. Both human plants have been repotted and cross-fertilized. . . . Conditions have been favorable. Strong natures and rugged types met in a free and un- conventional competition. The wildness of the frontier life fostered liberty; the hardships developed sympathy; the newness stimulated originality; the glorious climate 150 Leavening the Nation put vigor into the slower Southern blood, while it exerted a mellowing influence upon the New England intensity of temperament. The descendant of the Puritan as he looks about himself; and notes with satisfaction the libraries, schools, and charities, of this remote land, may well exclaim with pride, The genius of New England is supreme even here! But with no less satisfaction can the Southerners say, as they stand in a group by them- selves, We have at least melted the ice off these Yankees." Mr. Crocker has here described with a free hand a feature of Montana society which has often impressed the thoughtful tourist. Among the providencies of the Civil War which have excited the wonder of reverent students of history, the fact is not unworthy of recogni- tion, that just when North and South were putting two types of civilization into deadly conflict upon the field of battle, Providence was directing two streams of im- migration, representing both sides of the conflict, around the contending armies into this far Northwest, where by mingling, they came to know each other, and knowing, learned the lesson of mutual charity, and discovered for themselves, and for the nation North and South, the common ground of peace and unity. Says the kindly critic from whom we have already quoted: "Montana history is not free from blemishes that sadly blot its pages. Its political activities include some base methods and ignoble agencies, alas ! not absent from some other States, that bring a sense of shame, not free from fear lest the days pass without repentance. Par- tisan feuds and personal enmities have too long held the people in thrall. Mammon has a powerful scepter, while too many have surrendered to animal instincts and live but to feed the brutal passions. These evils are Wyoming, Montana, Idaho 151 incident to communities so new, so robust and so rich. The great remedial agencies are also at work." Remembering the early history of Montana and the social and moral drawbacks described, it is a pleasant surprise to find among these remedial agencies now at work, 273 churches and religious organizations. For missionary work in Montana is not only expensive, it is beset with difficulties. The church life, and still more truly denominational enterprise, make but a faint appeal to its people. "But, on the other hand, true Christian manhood is respected, and the gospel of Christ is meas- ured, by what it accomplishes. If the Church can dem- onstrate its power to uplift men, to make them sober and industrious, cause them to become better husbands, fathers, and citizens, it will receive a liberal support." ^ The Congregational Home Missionary Society entered the State in 1882 at Billings. The settlement was named after Frederick Billings of Vermont, and the first church was built by his generous donation of S10,000. Churches at Big Timber, Helena, livingston, Great Falls, Red Lodge, Colimibus, Missoula, Butte, and at other points, have followed. Methodists are doing a generous share of this remedial work, Baptists, Presbj^terians, and Epis- copalians as well. ''Yet all the church buildings in Butte combined would not seat one twentieth of the population. Thousands of men, to say nothing of wo- men and youth, never darken their doors. But they go somewhere. There are about 225 saloons. The lead- ing daily paper of the city gives $11,250 as a low estimate of their daily receipts. Whole squares of the town are given up to houses of prostitution, and gambling dens, if ^W. S. Bell, Home Missionary, Jan., 1902, p. 152. 152 Leavening the Nation not open to the pubhc, are easily found." ' Against such systems of iniquity, the few and scattered chiu-ches resemble an almost forlorn hope, yet one quarter of the people of Montana are gathered in these churches to-day. That proportion steadily increases from year to year. It is only a question of time and of patient continuance in home-missionary endeavor when the Christian stock of the Mountain State shall outnumber the forces of evil. * W. S. Bell, Home Missionary, Jan., 1902, p. 155. XI THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE-COLORADO, OKLAHOMA One hundred years ago, at the time of the Louisiana Purchase, that vast tract, beyond a narrow fringe along the western bank of the Mississippi, was terra incognita, except to the native Indians and the neighboring Mexi- cans. What they knew of it was inaccessible knowledge to its new owners, who now had before them the gigantic task of exploration and settlement. Three years later, 1806, Colorado was barely entered, not explored, by Zebulon Montgomery Pike of New Jersey, an ex-officer of the Revolutionary army. With a party of seventy-three whites and Indians he sailed up the Missouri and the Osage, crossed the country to the upper waters of the Arkansas, and ascended these, until the blue summit of a very high moimtain appeared in the northwest. It was the peak that now bears his name, rising near the center of the present State of Colo- rado. Leaving his boats, he thought to reach it by an easy march, but learned, as later tourists have often dis- covered, that Colorado distances are deceptive. After many hours of painful approach through deep snows, he and his party turned back to camp when fifteen miles from the base of Pike's Peak. No further exploration of the Rocky Mountain region was attempted until 1819, when by direction of Secretary 153 154 Leavening the Nation of War Calhoun, an expedition of mihtary men and scientists reached the South Park by a different route from that of Pike. It was the report of this expedition that gave rise to an error which was perpetuated for years upon every school map in the country, and which sensi- bly checked the tide of western migration. The whole region between the thirty-ninth and forty-ninth parallels, and for 500 miles east of the Rockies, was miscalled "a waste of sand and stones," and was designated as "The Great American Desert." "This impression was to some extent the key which kept Colorado a locked treas- ure house until Oregon and California had both been settled, and proved to be rich agricultural countries even where they had appeared as much deserts as Colorado."* The next government expedition, under Fremont in 1842, found no advance of settlement in Colorado. It was in 1846 that the "Mormon battalion," being driven out of Illinois at the point of the bayonet, tarried one winter at Pueblo, but went on to Utah in the spring. As late as 1853 the white population was exceedingly scanty, and clustered around the forts for protection against Indians. It was really the reflex of the human tide which had been pouring into Cahfornia for gold, that finally opened the treasures of Colorado to the world, and gave the first impulse to its settlement. About this time (1852), the first definite discovery of gold was made by a Cherokee cattle-trader from Mis- souri. Other discoveries followed previous to 1860, which resulted in the organization of Arapahoe county and the settlement of Aurania, which may be regarded as the beginnings of Colorado. But the early emigra- ' H. H. Bancroft, vol. 25, p. 349. Colorado, Oklahoma 155 tion was checked and the claims of Colorado seriously discounted by lying reports of a rich gold find near Pike's Peak. The story, sent out broadcast, produced a sort of craze at the East that set in motion thousands of emi- grants toward Pike's Peak, soon to be followed by a panic of returning and enraged gold-seekers. A familiar legend on the canvas cover of the emigrant wagon going westward at this time was, "Pike's Peak or bust," and the owner of at least one returning wagon, the type of many, had the candor to add the word "Busted." Of the 150,000 persons en route for Colorado across the plains in the spring of 1859, it is estimated that 50,000 were turned back by unfavorable reports, and of the 100,000 that reached the base of the mountain, less than 40,000 remained there. This check in settlement, however, was only for a time. There was gold and there were other values in Colorado which could not be discounted. Between 1860 and 1870 population advanced from 34,000 to 40,000, and during the next twenty years cUmbed to 412,000. The latest census shows more than half a million. The early features of society were of the usual kind in rapidly set- thng mining regions; — vice, crime, violence, outlawry, impotency of the law and the temporary substitution of self-appointed committees of safety; yet all the while, gathering and gradually strengthening, a permanent, self-respecting, and public-spirited people which have made Colorado as clean and safe a commonwealth as Vermont or Connecticut. The Territory was organized in 1861 from parts of Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Utah. Statehood followed in 1876, for which reason Colorado is known as the "Centennial State." It has an area of 103,925 156 Leavening the Nation square miles, with three natural divisions — the moun- tain range — including the Park system, — the foothills, and the plains. About one third of the State, once in- cluded in the Great American Desert, is grazing and agricultural; the dryness of the cUmate makes it a favorite resort for invalids. With the first considerable movement of population toward Colorado, the home missionary took the trail. Two years before Territorial organization, in 1859, open- air meetings were held at Gregory Diggings by Lewis Hamilton, and a union church composed of all denomi- nations was formed. One year later, G. W. Fisher, a Methodist, organized a church at Central City, so called because it was the center of the gold-mining region. A church of the same order was also organized at Black Hawk in 1862. Presbyterian churches were gathered at Central City and Black Hawk in 1862-3. The American Home Missionary Society opened the first Congregational chiu"ch of the Territory in Central City in 1863. William Crawford was pastor, and was succeeded by E. P. Tenney and others. A house was erected at a cost of $12,000, but the church was closed in 1876. Baptists began in 1864, closing in 1879. More than one Episcopal church at the same place had a simi- lar fate. Such records are not imusual in mining regions where the people come and go, and often more frequently go than come. The most promising outlook is often suddenly clouded by a few removals among the support- ing membership of a missionary church. Mr. Crawford, writing of his field in 1863, remarks: "Perhaps there are some who think our society is so rude and wicked that there is no living here in com- fort. Wicked enough and rude enough it is, but not Colorado, Oklahoma 157 wholly so. In few places will one meet with more well- informed and cultivated people or with pleasanter fami- lies. Our people demand and can appreciate good preaching. Many of them have been accustomed to the best. Thus, when our church of twenty-one mem- bers was organized, we found that we had one deacon from the Tabernacle Chm-ch, New York City, one from Cambridgeport, one from Worcester, and one from Nor- ridgewock, Maine; yet, with so much good material, the church was pleased to elect two deacons who had not before borne the title." It was a church of such promise that languished and died by continuous blood-letting, in sixteen years. Church planting in Denver has had a hardier growth because of more stable conditions. The mother Congre- gational church was bom in 1864, and around it have sprung up thirteen churches, some of them among the strongest in the city, and all of them of home-missionary planting. The vigorous church at Colorado Springs dates back to 1874 and that of Boulder to 1864. These are the pioneer churches of Congregational Colorado. Later years have swelled this number in the State to more than eighty. Early Colorado was fortimate in the character of its church leaders; among them Dr James B. Gregg, a Har- vard graduate who has occupied the pastorate of the First Church of Colorado Springs for 20 years. In this time he has seen the growth of the State almost from the beginning and has been a wise and active counsellor in its religious development. Rev. B. F. Perkins was General Missionary in 1878 when he organized the church of Silverton. He was succeeded by Rev. Stewart Shel- don, whose labors in South Dakota in connection with 158 Leavening the Nation his brother-in-law, Joseph Ward, are recorded else- where. It was in the spring of 1878 that Colorado received a superintendent in the person of Joseph W. Pickett, whose work was greatly prospered, and whose memory is still blessed among the churches. His field was an immense district including Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, and Idaho, covering half a million square miles. If one man were ever born to fill such a diocese, Mr. Pickett could do it. Eighteen months of service were given him before his tragical death, and four months only of that period were spent in liis home with his family. The other fourteen were consumed in travel on foot and in mountain stages, now in the Black Hills of Wyoming and South Dakota, now on the plains, and again among the mountains of Colorado. His energy was indomitable; his strength seemed exhaustless. Yet he had not the physique of a giant. The zeal that never slacked for a moment was fed from two sources — a hopeful spirit with which Providence had liberally endowed him, and a rare consecration which was re- newed hourly by prayer and communion with God. One has said of his sagacity: "He understood men and knew how to take hold of them. He never needed a second introduction. The drivers of the stage-coaches on which he travelled knew him. He could call them by name and tell you much of their history." He knew and loved Colorado well and had a boundless faith in her future. On the fly-leaf of Fossett's "Colorado," which he presented to his wife on her birthday, he wrote: "Shall it be our daily prayer, my dear wife, that as I have given you this book and written your name upon it, so Christ will give us this State that we, when fife's Colorado, Oklahoma 159 work is done, may give it to him with His own name written in endiu-ing characters on all its mountains, valleys, and precious things." ^ Often he would take his Bible and go up on the moun- tain side, and looking down as Christ did upon Jerusa- lem, plead for the mining camp at his feet. His memory will have no nobler monument than his work in the Black Hills — seven churches, five ministers on the ground, four church buildings, three parsonages, an Association, a Bible Society, and an academy, all the work of about one year.^ Joseph Pickett was not beyond the temptations which beset those who dwell in a land of gold, but he had the whole armor of God with which to ward them off. "On one occasion in the Black Hills, going over from Lead City to Central, he discovered some fine specimens of ore and gathered them up in his handkerchief. But find- ing himself pondering upon them and their probable value, and upon making a mining claim, and perceiving that the matter was taking some hold of his mind, and that it might distract his thoughts, he at once shook his handkerchief to the winds, and repeating aloud his motto, knelt upon the ground and renewed his consecra- tion to his life work." ^ The motto to which Dr. Salter here alludes was from Paul to the Philippians : " This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching out to those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." *R. T. Cross, Funeral Address; Dr, Salter's "Memoirs of Joseph W. Pickett," p. 140. ' Ibid., p. 141. 3 Ibid., p. 148. i6o Leavening the Nation This beautiful, active Ufe, since it must go out, ended in a mercifully sudden death by the overturning of the stage-coach on which he was descending the mountains toward Leadville. Like Elijah, he was caught up in a flash of time to a great reward. But his mantle fell upon Colorado and the Black Hills; and many a despairing worker who never saw Joseph Pickett, and of whom the Superintendent never heard, has taken a new lease of courage from the story of his brave spirit and his flaming zeal. Mr. Pickett was succeeded in the spring of 1880 by Charles C. Creegan, who served as superintendent of the same great field another eighteen months. In that time besides visiting New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah, and the Black Hills, he organized chiu-ches at Buena Vista, Alpine, Gothic, Crested Butte, Gunnison, Breckenridge, Kokomo, Robinson, Red Cliff, Durango, Rock Spring, and Provo, and assisted in organizing, at Highland Lake and West Denver, eighteen churches during the first twelve months of his service. In October, 1882, he was called to the secretaryship of the New York Home Missionary Society, leaving his enduring mark on the home-missionary history of Colorado. Addison Blanchard followed Dr. Creegan. Meantime the field had been divided and Colorado and Wyoming made a separate district. During the three years of Mr. Blanchard's supervision, churches were planted at Oak Creek, East Pueblo, Green River, Buffalo, Sheridan, Big Horn, and three new churches in Denver. But his chief care was strengthening and establishing churches already organized, some of which had been seriously weakened by the depression of mining interests. In this and in all his work he proved an apt and successful Colorado, Oklahoma i6i superintendent. For twenty-one months succeeding Dr. Blanchard, Roselle T. Cross, while still pastor at West Denver, acted as superintendent of Colorado, alone ; during which Olivet Church, Denver, was gathered, Park Avenue Church resuscitated, and Montrose, Julesburg, Otis, Hyde, and a second church at Cheyenne were organized. Clarendon M. Sanders and Horace Sander- son, worthy successors of the early leaders, have brought these beginnings to strength and have added many to their number.^ One or two samples taken from Colorado may serve to illustrate the working and the value of Home Missions, — not that they are peculiar or infrequent, but because they are examples of quick growth in a field of more than ordinary difficulties. Boulevard Chiu-ch, Denver, in twenty years has grown from a feeble band of seventeen to a membership of 350, and has a Simday-school of 540 members, which has been called the "Star of the State in merit and numbers." Plymouth Church, Denver, from hke feeble beginnings, has in nineteen years, chiefly under the ministry of Dr. F. T. Bayley, attained to a membership of 600, and is the largest of its order in the State. It has contributed more than $8,000 to missions, its latest gift being $1,100. To the Home Missionary Society, which mothered the church in its infancy, it contributed during the last twelve months $750. These are instances from the city. One example from the mining camps must suffice, and as this one fairly illustrates the methods of home-mis- sionary work in the whole Rocky Mountain district, it * For a graphic account of conditions at this time, see a series of twenty articles by R. T. Cross in Home Missionary of 1895-96- 97. i62 Leavening the Nation will bear a more careful study. Cripple Creek is a name become famous in the mining world; but its early mis- sionary history is not the least among its claims to re- nown. Twelve years ago, it was a small farming com- munity of a dozen people known at Freemont. To-day it has a population of 50,000. In these twelve years, it has unearthed treasure to the value of $104,000,000, which has paid $25,000,000 in dividends. In the winter of 1892, Supt. Sanderson started for Cripple Creek, following a large tent, organ, chairs, lamps, and singing- books, which had been sent on before. He found saloons and gambling dens already established, but no gospel in any form. The place was crowded, but the Superintendent found a room where he could bunk with eleven others, with one small window for ventilation which was closed at night to avoid the draft. By permission of the owner he appointed his first service at a just completed store. There were no stoves in the camp, and the heating problem was solved by piling up a foot of gravel on the floor, building the fire upon it, and covering the whole with a tin barrel fur- nished with a smoke-pipe. Two preaching services and two Sunday-schools were held on the first day, and the hungry people would have welcomed more. On the second Sunday, services were held in another store and during the week lots for permanent occupancy were contracted for and lumber was bought to build the frame of a large tent. Over this frame the canvas was drawn, the sides and ends were boarded up, and the name, "Whosoever Will," painted over the entrance. Ninety out of a population of a few hundred responded at the first service. In one corner of the Whosoever Will tent the Superintendent made a little room for him- Colorado, Oklahoma 163 self, 8 by 10, and here he ate, studied and slept, "when he was not sawdng wood." On the second Sabbath, 141 were present, ninety per cent. men. They loved to sing and they sang. The sound rolled out over the camp, and made almost needless the metal triangle which served as a church-bell. They hstened also and approved. "Don't apologize for the truth, pardner," said one rough miner. "Give it to us straight." Famihes began to come in, and no day- school for children. The Superintendent offered the tent for a schoolhouse if the people would pay for a teacher, and rashly promised to saw the wood. The school attendance the first day was about twenty, and one entry in the missionary's diary for the day reads, * ' Sawed wood five hours . " The Whosoever Will tent was opened every afternoon and evening as a free reading- room, game-room, and a place for men to write letters. Before this there was hardly a room in town where one could write a letter home, unless it were a saloon. A mother wTote: "Will you look up my boy in Cripple Creek. I have just received a letter from him and it was written on a saloon letter-head. He was a good boy when he left home, but I fear for him now." It was thus that the church at Cripple Creek began its career as a "rescue mission," a feature which it has always magni- fied. The present pastor, Rev. G. W. Ray, preaches on the street three or four times a week, gathering an audience of five hundred men in a few minutes. A volunteer choir and chorus go with him to sing. Several of the most in- fluential people of Cripple Creek have been gathered by these methods into the church, which nimibers now over 200. Their missionary contributions last year were $915. 164 Leavening the Nation They support a foreign missionary. They have pur- chased lots and built a chapel on the west side for Sun- day-school and religious services. Two thousand dollars have been expended in the foundation of a boys' gym- nasium, and ten thousand more are in sight for a build- ing. The seed from which this vigorous tree started was a very small grant of home-missionary money. In spite of fire which destroyed both church and parsonage, and the homes of many of its members, in spite also of busi- ness depressions and frequent removals, the cheap "Whosoever Will" tent of ten years ago is to-day re- placed by $15,000 worth of property; and not least of results, six persons have gone out from Cripple Creek Church into active Christian work. Mr. Sanderson, in closing the account from which this narrative is con- densed, exclaims, "Do Home Missions pay? Yes, a thousand per cent, annually." ^ Colorado State is scarcely more than twenty-five years old. Six hundred and fifty religious organizations have been opened, nearly every one by the agency of organ- ized Home Missions. Their places of worship have a seating capacity of 125,000, and represent a property value of $5,000,000, and more than one fifth of the people are found in the membership of the churches. Look back at the early conditions; remember the natural barriers; the long delayed settlement; the quahty of the first comers; the chaos of elements to be subdued, assimilated or thrown off ; the slow birth of order, law, and moral standards ; the fever of mining that demoral- izes the best of men, and taints the best in any man ; — and the wonder grows that Colorado, in those religious 'See E. H. Abbott, Outlook, Oct. 11, 1902. Colorado, Oklahoma 165 forces which measure the moral strength of a common- wealth, should stand, as it does, abreast of the three agricultural States of Nebraska, Kansas, and Oregon. Oklahoma. — With Oklahoma we reach the last frag- ment of the Louisiana Purchase to be organized as a Territory. The name is interpreted to mean "Beautiful Land." A quaint report made by a Spanish explorer who visited the region in 1662, describes it as "pleasant fields, that not in all the Indies of Peru and New Spain, nor in Evu-ope, are to be found scenery so pleasant and dehghtful and covered with buffalo or cows of Cibola, which cause notable admiration; with many and very beautiful rivers, marshes and springs, studded with luxu- rious forests and fruit trees of various kinds which pro- duce most palatable plums; large and fine grapes in great clusters and of extremely good flavor like those of Spain and even better; many mulberry trees to raise silk; oak, elm, ash, and poplar trees with other kinds of trees; useful and fragrant plants, clover, flax, hemp, marjoram, high enough to hide a man on horseback; abundance of roses, strawberries without end, small but savory; many Castihan partridges, quails, sandpipers, turkeys, and pheasants; deer, stag, or elk in very great numbers, and even one kind of them as large and de- veloped as our horses. Through these pleasant and delightful fields we marched throughout the months of March, April, and May, and on the Kalends of June arrived at a large river they called Mischipi." ^ Two hundred and thirty years later, in 1890, these pleasant fields were organized into a Territory of the United States, and strange as it may appear, little more 'Encyclopedia Britannica, "Oklahoma." 1 66 Leavening the Nation was known about them among their white owners, save that the early stories of their fertility and beauty had not been exaggerated. The Territory, as at present constituted, contains 39,000 square miles, 6,000 more than Maine, and 2,000 less than Ohio. At the time of the Civil War, Creeks and Seminoles held possession under treaties of 1856, but the benefits of these treaties they had forfeited by entering into alliances with the Southern Confederacy. For this reason the United States Government demanded the return of the western half of the Creek reserve, and all the Seminole holdings, and transferred both tribes to reserves further east. The tracts thus recovered appear, by the language of the new treaty, to have been desired by the Government for the use of other Indian tribes or for f reedmen ; but they were never used for these pur- poses. Thus it came about that Oklahoma, before 1880, had returned to its original status of " public lands," and was in a condition to be opened for settlement at any time and in any way provided by the national Govern- ment. As was natural, certain restless and ambitious men sought to anticipate the permission of Government. Cattle-traders in considerable numbers were grazing their herds in the Territory without the right to do so. Rail- roads had also obtained a right of way through the country. Encouraged by these liberties, in the fall of 1880, an organized company of 600, under David S. Payne, with 325 wagons, attempted to rush the whole question of settlement by taking possession of the land. Payne and his party were driven back by United States troops. Four or five similar attempts at illegal occupation were made, all of which were defeated by Colorado, Oklahoma 167 government soldiers. It was not until April of 1889 that the Territory was declared open for settlement, and the great rush began. The story of that invasion has growTi familiar by many rehearsals. The following picture, from the pen of Richard Harding Davis, pre- serves better than many others the striking features of that event: "The history of the pioneers and their invasion of their undiscovered comitry, not only shows how far the West is from the East, but how much we have changed our ways of doing things from the days of the Pilgrim fathers to those of the modern pilgrims, the 'boomers' and ' sooners' of the end of the century. We have seen pictures in our school-books of the Mayflower's people kneeling on the shore, the long, anxious voyage behind them and the rock-bound coast of their new home before them, with the Indians looking on doubtfully from be- hind the pine-trees. I should like you to place in con- trast with this, the opening of Oklahoma Territory to the new white settlers three years ago. These modern pil- grims stand in rows twenty feet deep, separated from the promised land, not by an ocean, but by a line scratched in the earth with the point of a soldier's bayonet. The long row toeing this line are bending forward, panting with excitement, and looking with greedy eyes towards the new Canaan ; the women with dresses tucked up to their knees, the men stripped of coats and waistcoats for the coming race. " And then, a trumpet call, answered by a thousand hungry yells from all along the line, and hmidreds of men and women on foot and on horseback, break away across the prairie, the stronger pushing down the weak, and those on horseback riding over, and in some cases 1 68 Leavening the Nation killing, those on foot, in a mad, unseemly race for some- thing they are getting for nothing. "These pilgrims do not drop on one knee to give thanks decorously, as did Columbus, according to the twenty- dollar bills, but fall on both knees and hammer stakes into the ground, and pull them up again, and drive them down somewhere else at the place which they hope will eventually become a corner lot facing the post-office, and drag up the next man's stake and threaten him with a Winchester because he is on their land which they have owned for the last three minutes. And there are no Indians on this scene. They have been paid one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre for land which is worth five dollars an acre as it lies, before a spade has been driven into it or a bit of timber cut; and they are safely out of the way." Four years later, in September, 1893, before all the disputed claims of the first invasion had been settled in the courts, Oklahoma was enlarged by the opening of the Cherokee Strip, and still wilder scenes, such as were never witnessed before in the history of American settle- ments, were enacted. The tract was exceptionally rich; the fame of Oklahoma land had spread; multitudes were attracted, and it is estimated that fully 200,000 men and women were lined up at the different points of entrance, ready at the risk of life and limb to join in the mad scramble for land. From the story of an eye-witness,* who viewed the scene near Hennessey, and who took part in the rush for a short distance, we are enabled to realize some of its striking features: "The horsemen and those in light vehicles were lined ' Superintendent J. H. Parker. Colorado, Oklahoma 169 within a hundred-foot strip along the border for miles, and the heavier teams loaded with merchandise of all sorts, lumber, household goods, tents, buildings fitted and ready to be put together, barrels of water, stacks of cooked food, etc., were arranged in the rear, to follow the owners who were to race for claims and town lots. On the railway were forty palace stock-cars attached to three engines. As this train moved into position, it was literally filled and covered, sides and top, with living humanity, as fast as men and women, impelled by the wildest frenzy, could scramble into place. Every part of the cowcatchers and engines was black with men anxious to be near the front to jump and get a little advantage. Eleven minutes before twelve o'clock, a false signal was given and in less time than I can pen it, the prairie was alive with the myriad racers. The few soldiers were utterly powerless to stop the rush, and away in the distance went the wild crowd. The rush and the roar of thousands, the whistle of the engines, and the rumbling of the immense train, the shouts of excited drivers, the noise of the moving wheels, the rearing and tossing and neighing of excited horses, the discharge of firearms in every direction and the clouds and clouds of dust raised by tliis moving mass, all conspired to make impressions upon those who witnessed the grand and awful scene, never to be erased. My companions and my horses, with myself, caught the excitement and we followed for a mile or more " Many thousands went in before the legal hour through collusion with the soldiers. Two hundred and fifty horsemen, ten minutes after twelve o'clock, rode into the town site of Perry, when the honest thousands were miles away, riding for this goal of their ambition. 170 Leavening the Nation The whole scheme by which this land was opened has aided, intentionally or not, the gambler, the adventurer, and the dishonest speculator. Fraud, bribery, and false swearing have been the rule. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been expended by the Government and by the people, worse than uselessly, and scores of lives have been sacrificed in the rush. " Thousands of men and some women jumped or rolled or fell from the trains, running at the rate of twelve or fifteen miles an hour, to secure a claim or lot. Some broke an arm or leg or both ; a few were killed. Many got more real estate upon their faces and persons than they had to keep or sell that night. Others were re- warded in getting splendid claims and valuable lots for their efforts and risks. The Rock Island right of way is fenced through the Strip with a five-wired barbed fence. Through this, most found a serious difficulty in making their way. I saw one man with a big piece out of his trousers. He said he hung on the fence and vainly struggled to extricate himself, while a woman crawled through and got the claim he was after. One man leaped the fence, stuck his flag in a choice piece of ground and then pulled out a skirt and sunbonnet from under his coat and donned them. Women's rights are respected on the Western plains, he argued with himself. Two young men and a young woman raced from the train for the same claim. She caught in the fatal wire. The rival male claimants staked at the same moment. They then ran and extricated the struggling lass, took her stake and drove in into the ground, pulled theirs up, lifted their hats, and went to seek other quarter sec- tions." There were home missionaries in that throng, "follow- Colorado, Oklahoma 171 ing the people," and staking out claims, not for them- selves but for the Church and the Master. Enid, Paul Creek, Perry, Woodward, and Pawnee, were thus oc- cupied on the first afternoon. In these places religious services were held by them the next day, which was the Sabbath; and Monday morning the work of gathering and organizing churches began with the bank, the store, and the saloon. In August, 1901, occurred another opening, attended with the same excitements, although on a smaller scale. Three new coimties were organized, and churches were among the first institutions planted in the new towns of Anadarko, Hobart, Lawton, and Addington. Let it be remembered that this Territory is only thir- teen years old. "The oldest girl born in Oklahoma is not out of short dresses." ^ Between 1890 and 1900, the population advanced from 61,834 to 398,245, a gain of 500 per cent., surpassing all other records for that decade, and probably for any decade in the liistory of American settlement. The growth of religious forces has kept pace with the march of population. Already Oklahoma has 200 religious organizations representing a church mem- bership of over 6,000. More than eighty Congregational churches have been planted, with their Simday-schools and Endeavor societies, and their more than 3,000 com- mimicants. Thirty Presbyterian churches have taken a good start. Baptist, Methodist, and Episcopal mis- sions are represented by fifty more. Colleges and acade- mies have sprung up in the path of these religious move- ments, as they always will. Society has outgrown the gristle stage, and is setthng into permanent types. The ' J. H. Parker, Home Missionary, April, 1902, p. 300. 172 Leavening the Nation reign of the "bummers" who are always found on the top of the first wave, is over and the "stayers" are in control. Oklahoma is ready for Statehood, and is sure to win it; and leavened throughout as it is with the quickening forces of education and religion, it is destined to hold an honorable place among the commonwealths of the East and West. Here must end our survey of the Louisiana Purchase. Thirteen States and Territories, rich in soils and mines, have divided among themselves that immense tract which Napoleon was more than willing to sell to the United States, and which holds to-day more than one sixth of her population. That these thirteen States are one, in the elements of loyalty, intelligence, and moral stability, with the thirteen colonies from which they sprang, is due in large measure to the mother care of the East. Her best blood, her wealth, her traditions, and institutions have been lavishly outpoured between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, and when in a few months the one hundred years of possession shall be worthily celebrated in St. Louis, the whole story will not be told without a generous and grateful recognition of the moral, educational, and religious forces that have sprung from organized American Home Missions. XII THE SOUTHERN BELT It begins with the southern boundary of Pennsylvania. Not far below that line one is confronted with a type of civilization so distinct from that of New England and the newer West, as almost to defy belief that they belong to the same country. Climate has intensified the differ- ence, but early colonization and the "Barbarism of Slavery" have had more to do with it. Thirteen years before the Mayflower dropped anchor in front of Plymouth, three little vessels were moored to the trees on James River, and the settlement of Virginia began. It it conceded they brought "the germ of a Christian church." ^ Robert Hunt, the chaplain of the expedition, and Richard Buck, who succeeded him, after Hunt's too early death, were men of God, and there is evidence that the intrepid Captain John Smith could both pray and preach, but their following was mixed. The bulk of the party were not the men to lay enduring foundations. The whole story of Southern civilization is vividly epitomized in the statement^ that this entire company of 105 "was made up in the proportion of four carpenters to forty-eight gentlemen." In eight months only thirty-eight of the 105 survived, and these were about to abandon the enterprise, when reinforcements ' L. W. Bacon, " History of American Christianity," p. 38. 2 Ibid., p. 39. 173 174 Leavening the Nation arrived. But the newcomers were no improvement, "fitter to breed a riot than to found a colony/' said Captain Smith. Again the experiment was reduced by death to sixty, and again reinforced before anything like stability began to appear. This was in 1610. During the next decade the history of Virginia is a strangely mixed one. Beginning as a Puritan colony, its religious development was hindered by the character of the material received from England — "poor gentlemen, tradesmen, serving-men, libertines, and such like," and at one time a company of a hundred convicts, which drew from Captain Smith the protest that their coming "laid one of the fairest countries of America under the scandal of being a mere hell upon earth." The decade, however, was marked by things good and bad. The population rose to 4,000; the first body of representative legislation in America was established; the authority of the Church of England was confirmed ; attendance upon church twice a Sabbath was made com- pulsory; laws against extravagance in dress were passed; tobacco was made the legal currency, and, most ominous portent, the first Negro slaves were landed at Jamestown. Sixteen months later the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, and another "continental divide," social and moral, began. It is not necessary to follow in detail the settlement of other Southern colonies. Maryland, we have already seen, began as Roman Catholic, but under the tolerant spirit of Lord Baltimore and his son, aided by immigra- tion, the rule passed into Protestant hands. But, both in Virginia and in Maryland, the Church of England was recognized as the official church, and, just when New England was filling up with churches, each of which was The Southern Belt 175 a spiritual commonwealth, and a school of independent thought and action, bound together by ties of common interest, the churches of the South made themselves distant members of an English establishment, out of sympathy with the spirit of the New World and too far away to exert any helpful control. The Carolinas have a distinct Protestant origin, dating back to the middle of the sixteenth century. Much later, the Northern border became the home of Puritans driven out of Virginia by persecution. Numbers of Baptists appeared about 1680; two ship-loads also of Dutch colonists from New York. French Huguenots, compelled to fly by the recall of the Edict of Nantes, arrived soon after that event, and there was consider- able immigration of Scotch and Irish, the most valuable acquisition the South ever received. Quakers were estimated in 1710 to contribute one seventh of the popu- tion; all these were good timber for a substantial colony, and poor material for conformity to the Church of Eng- land. Yet for years the trail of the ecclesiastical ser- pent was over them all; and, though its rule was for the most part only nominal, yet its petty attempt to force ecclesiastical law upon the people, was a heavy clog to religious progress, although in the end, it served to unite the Carohnas more than any other one cause, in the struggle for national independence. Georgia is the one bright spot in the early South. "The foundation of other American commonwealths," says Dr. L. W. Bacon, ''had been laid in faith and hope, but the ruling motive in the founding of Georgia was charity, and that is the greatest of these three." ^ Ogle- thorpe's Colony was an open asylum for the persecuted. ^ "History of American Christianity," p. 122. 176 Leavening the Nation Because of its charitable aspects it enjoyed the favor of the government, and has the distinction of receiving an appropriation of 10,000 pounds from Parliament, the only grant of the kind ever made to an American colony. It has other glories, for it declared absolute freedom in religion, prohibited by law the sale of alcoholic liquors, and condemned as unchristian the system of American slavery. Among the early comers were men whose services to religion are incalcuable, and whose names are known around the world — the two Wesleys, John and Charles, and George Whitefield. We shall have more to say of Georgia. Enough has now been indicated to account in part for the Southern type and its sharp contrast with that found north and west of Pennsylvania; but when all other causes have been considered, one stands out supreme — slavery. No social structure was ever yet made strong with only two classes, "gentlemen and slaves." Slave- labor bred a race of "gentlemen" who despised work. Thus the keystone of the social arch was wanting — that great middle class, intelligent, industrious, skilled in labor, and self-respecting — the real strength of every self-governed nation. Not the "town," which appeals to the common pride and enterprise of its dwellers, but the "plantation," which is essentially aristocratic, be- came the unit of Southern society. It cost a civil war for North and South to understand this difference be- tween them, and to learn the lesson of mutual charity. In the very genesis of Southern history, it began, and was intensified by generations of slavery until it resulted in making us really two nations under one flag. Let us thank God the flag did not become two like the nations, but the nations are becoming one like the flag! The Southern Belt 177 It would be a grave error to regard the Southern Belt as home-missionary ground, in the same sense with Washington, Idaho, and Oklahoma. The religious ele- ments of the South are larger in proportion to the popu- lation than in any other section of the Union, outside of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. North Carolina stands nearly abreast of New York in the number of church edifices and in the proportion of church membership. Measured by the same standard, Ala- bama and Georgia are twice as religious as Oregon and Washington. Virginia has seven times as many church edifices as New Hampshire, in a population only four times larger. South Carolina has a greater ratio of church communicants than Connecticut or Massachu- setts. It is safe to say also that in the observance of the Sabbath, and in regular attendance upon religious services, the South might furnish an example that would rebuke the looser practices of the North and West. Home-missionary conditions, therefore, so far as they exist at all, are essentially different from those found in the Central and Western States. Yet for many years before the war, the Northern home missionary, south of the Mason and Dixon line, was a familiar figure. He was a Baptist, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, or a Congre- gationalist, and behind him stood the missionary socie- ties of these names, supporting his work. Large church growths were the result, especially of Baptists, Metho- dists, and Presbyterians, and they might have continued to this day but for that arch disturber of peace, that touchstone of churches and parties, American slavery. The tables of the American Home Missionary Society at that time reveal a portent, which might have been recognized as a prophecy had men been wise enough to 1 78 Leavening the Nation read its meaning ; we refer to the steady dropping out of its missionaries from the Southern States. In 1856, five years before tlie first gun of the Civil War was heard ^ the Society pubhcly declared "No more slaveholders in home-missionary churches," and from that hour began withdrawing its more than fifty workers from the South- ern field. The "irrepressible conflict" had begun. Indeed, the South Carolina force expired much earlier and was never renewed. Then quickly followed Florida, North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. One by one these States were abandoned by the home missionary, not willingly, but under compul- sion of proslavery sentiment, which neither the Society nor its servants could tolerate, until in 1857 one Georgia missionary, a lone sentinel, was left to represent the Society in the Southern Belt. From that point stretches a dreary blank until, in 1867, a new South and a new civilization began to dawn above the smoke of war. Great were the ecclesiastical disruptions growing out of the slavery agitation. North and South lines were run directly through the Methodist, Baptist, and Pres- byterian churches. The Methodist division came in 1844, the Baptist in 1845. Thenceforth they were South and North, slavery and antislavery. The earlier split of the Presbyterain body into New and Old School, while largely a theological division, had the slavery issue be- hind it, as appears in the fact that the New School re- mained firm in their antislavery principles, while the Old School enjoyed the support of Southern sentiment on that question. All these upheavals were over the question whether slavery was right or wrong, and whether slaveholders were entitled to membership in the churches. The answer of the North in every in- The Southern Belt 179 stance was unequivocally given: "We can never be a party to any adjustment which would imply any appro- bation of slavery." The war followed and its issue introduced at the South a home-missionary problem absolutely new, and one that continues to absorb the interest of Northern churches to an extraordinary degree. Four million slaves were suddenly set free, not only from physical bondage, but from the shackles of long-enforced ignorance. Govern- ment opened its bureaus of relief, and the churches hurried forward their teachers and preachers. These were not weU received by the crushed, but still unconquered white South. All the contempt poured out upon the Yankee soldier was transferred to the Yankee teacher and missionary. Social ostracism was not the only penalty they paid for their humane mission; violence to their persons and destruction of their property were not infrequent in the early years of their missionary en- deavors. An ugly spirit of caste prejudice included the Negro teacher and with Negro, and young women, refined in spirit, and dehcately reared in the best homes of the North, suffered from neglect and from open indignities. Among the notable agencies created and held in re- serve for such a time as this, was the American Mission- ary Association. It took form in 1846, absorbing at that time several smaller organizations, kindred in spirit. It began with no denominational ties, being, rather, an eclectic body, supported by the growing number of those in all denominations, who held advanced views upon the iniquity of human slavery, and more especially upon the methods of dealing with it. There were two kinds of " abohtionists " in those days. Both, with the whole heart, hated slavery as "the siun i8o Leavening the Nation of all villainies." But while both were sincere, one class was often intolerant and vituperative, while the other, no less radical in spirit, preached, prayed, and agitated. There was a third and by far the largest class who con- stituted the real antislavery army of those days; cau- tious and conservative as they felt became them in an issue so vital to the nation. They were followers rather than leaders. It cost reproach, suspicion, and a degree of persecution to be an antislavery leader, and these things they never endured. Their policy was rather to watch events than to force them. At suitable times they acted with great energy, as witness the petition to Congress of 3,050 New England ministers against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. But while they were not leaders, they were the rank and file of the anti- slavery army, without which, leaders would have been helpless. The founders of the American Missionary Association were among the "leaders." They stood for "abolition" in the Church, for the overthrow of slavery in Christian ways under Christian leadership, and meanwhile, for all possible aid and comfort to its unfortunate victims. "Especially did the founders of the American Mission- ary Association see deeper into the issues of the day than either the foes or the friends who thought lightly of their objects and methods. They chose for their methods the preaching of the gospel and the work of Christian education; and these were exactly the forces which have been most pervasive and permanent." '■ Great credit is due to the clearness of their moral vision, and great honor has come to them as the advanced skirmish line of the antislavery host. * Secretary F. P. Woodbury. The Southern Belt i8i The Association began its work in 1846 with two de- partments, home and foreign. In 1854, seventy-nine of its missionaries were located in foreign lands, including Africa, Siam, and Sandwich Islands, Jamaica, Egypt, and Canada. But with the transfer of the American Indians to its sole care, its foreign work was turned over to other societies. Thus it has come to pass, that what differentiates the Association chiefly from its colaborers in the United States is its special care of neglected races. Its beneficiaries to-day are the Negro, and the Mountain Highlander of the South, the Indian of the plains, the Chinese of the Pacific Coast, and the West Indian of Porto Rico. That there was room and need for such an agency is proved by its growth and its record. Indeed, nothing in the history of the Civil War seems to have been more clearly providential than the instant readiness of this Association, at its close, to move forward, without an hour's delay, to the succor of the war's chief victims. It was a life-boat all manned and equipped on the shore, and ready to be launched the moment the ship struck the rocks. The story of its work can only be outlined here. Berea College, Kentucky; Hampton Institute, Virginia; Fisk University, Tennessee; Atlanta University, Georgia; Tugaloo University, Mississippi; Talladega College, Ala- bama; Straight University, Louisiana, and Tillotson CoUege, Texas, are among the fruits of its planting in the line of higher institutions of learning. To these are to be added thirty-three graded Normal schools, and about the same number of primary and common schools, for the blacks; twelve schools among the Mountain Whites; five among the Indians of the West; twenty-one Chinese 1 82 Leavening the Nation schools on the Pacific Coast; one school at Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, and two schools favorably opened in Porto Rico. In many of these 110 institutions, special attention is given to farming, industrial teaching, and domestic training. To its educational work there is added as an essential ally, the Church. Among Negroes the Society is supplying 173 churches; among the High- landers fifty-five, and twenty in its Indian department —in all 248. The Association has been fortunate in its leaders, both lay and clerical. Among the former no one justifies more honorable mention than Lewis Tappan. "To him more than any other man does the Association owe its existence. He was deeply interested in the antislavery missions that preceded it and that were united in its formation; and he was prominent in the movement which rescued the Amistad captives from the grasp of slavery, and which served so largely to arouse the nation to the arrogance and potency of the slave power. His pecuniary benefactions to the Association, though large, were the smallest of his contributions to it. For years he gave his unrequited services as treasurer; and the best efforts of his hand, head, and heart were devoted to the furtherance of its objects." * Among the executive officers of the Association, none have been longer or more honorably connected with its affairs than Dr. Michael E. Strieby. For thirty-five years, between 1864 and 1899, he held the office of corre- sponding secretary, to which towards the close of his hfe was attached the title of "Honorary." He had reached his fiftieth year before this door to his greatest hfe work opened. A graduate of the first class at Oberlin, he • Twenty-seventh Annual Report, p. 18. The Southern Belt 183 represented always, and cherished to the last, the best traditions of that famous school. During his two suc- cessful pastorates at Mt. Vernon, Ohio, and Syracuse, New York, he was always something more than the tech- nical pastor and preacher. He was a reformer from his birth; the champion of "human rights and progres- sive theology." ^ He was not only antislavery and anti- hquor, but anti-everything that oppressed or degraded humanity; and he had all the courage of his principles. At an antislavery convention in Syracuse, where he presided, an attempt was made to stop a certain speaker. "While I live," said the chairman, "this man shall have the right to speak," and he had it.^ Every antecedent of his life, therefore, was fitting him to be the executive officer of a society pledged to the defense of human rights against organized usurpation, and by a choice, as inevitable as it was providential, the man and the office met when a new secretary was needed for the American Missionary Association. For thirty- five years, and to the end, he magnified and honored the office, and the following pen picture, from one who knew him thirty years and colabored with him intimately in church and missionary work, could not be bettered: "Peaceable, benign, wise, progressive, even radical, and no less wise when radical, sound-minded, wide-looking, large-planning, he was the guiding spirit of our Congre- gational churches in the most Christlike work they have undertaken for down-trodden but rising humanity. God needed, and so God found, such a man for such a work." ' ' President Fairchild. ^ J. E. Roy, " Sketch of the American Missionary Association." ^ W. H. Ward, American Missionary, vol. 53, p. 5. 184 Leavening the Nation Among the first to enter upon this new home-mission- ary field, were the Northern Baptists, Before the war closed they had their mission in the District of Columbia where slavery was abohshed by act of Congress in 1862. Two years later several missionaries and four- teen assistants were under commission in five different States; Virginia, North Carohna, South Carolina, Ten- nessee, Louisiana, and in the District of Columbia. For a time the Baptist work was embarrassed by a multi- plicity of organizations and by consequent friction be- tween them. But with the harmonizing of these inter- ests and the delegation of all colored missions to the American Home Mission Society, a new impulse was given to the work. In 1867 fifty ordained ministers, one sixth of the whole number employed by the Society, were in commission to labor exclusively among the blacks. Thirty of them were colored preachers. Two years later nearly 4,000 children were being instructed in the Society's schools. But its main work has been the support of higher institutions and the education of colored preachers. Shaw University, Richmond Institute, Wayland Semi- nary, Leland University, Nashville Institute, Bishop College, are but a part of the Society's educational equip- ment, either under its full direction or controlled by a majority representation on their boards of trustees. These schools are open to both sexes, and to all colors. Pastors' wives. Christian mothers, and teachers in great number have gone out from them to be a blessing to their race. But the development of trained preachers at home, and of missionaries for Africa, has been kept uppermost in the purpose of their founders. The results are abundant and extremely gratifying. The Southern Belt 185 At the opening of the war, colored Baptists at the South numbered something less than 400,000. In 1862 the man who could read was a curiosity. Twenty years later the colored Baptists of the South were issuing eight rehgious papers.* Under patient, devoted, and con- tinuous missionary labors, colored Baptists have come to number in the sixteen Southern States, not far from 1,500,000. Previous to 1866, Methodists had cooperated with various societies for the instruction of freedmen ; but in that year, their own Freedmen's Aid Society was estab- Hshed, and received during the next twelve months con- tributions to the extent of nearly $40,000. At the end of thirty-five years it had invested $4,000,000 in its Southern educational work. It has twenty-two schools among the blacks, of which ten have a collegiate grade, one is a theological seminary, and eleven are academies. The colleges enroll from three to four thousand students, the academies, more than 1,500, and there are about 100 students preparing for the ministry. They have also schools and academies for the needy whites, and both classes together number over 8,000 students, of whom 220 are preparing for the ministry and 223 are studying medicine, while in manual training and trade schools are to be found more than 1,500 colored students. Enough has been said to indicate the supreme interest of the Northern churches in the rehgious and educational enlightenment of the Southern blacks thus thrown upon ^ their care by the issue of the war. There was never before a demand so sudden, so vast and overwhelming. Well it was that the home-missionary army in all its • H. L. Morehouse, "Historical Sketch, Baptist Home Mission Society." 1 86 Leavening the Nation divisions stood organized and equipped to meet it; that churches were prompt to support the missionary forces thus put in motion, and that consecrated men and women were not wanting to throw themselves into the work. It appalls one to think what might have resulted had that crisis found us less ready, — if years of negro misrule and license, unchecked by immediate education and rehgious restraint, had followed the war. To or- ganized Home Missions, more than to any other one agency, the country owes its escape from that serious disaster. But freedmen's missions were not the only outcome of peace in the Southern Belt. A new South had opened. Inmiigration began; skilled labor was in demand; land was cheap; manufactures, almost unknown before, were started with Northern capital ; railroads were built, and upon this wave of progress, the orderly movement of Home Missions, interrupted by agitation and war, was resumed. Florida filled up so rapidly from the North and West, as almost to lose its character as a Southern State, and with this migration came the Northern spirit, the Western enterprise, and the needs, educational and religious, of both. In 1876, the Congregational Church in Jacksonville was born. New Smyrna preceded it twelve months, and Daytona followed it by the same interval. In ten years churches of this order multiplied from three to over fifty. From being the smallest State, Congregationally, it has advanced, in spite of fires and frosts, to be the twenty- second on the roll, passing Oregon and Indiana, and ranking close to Colorado in the number of its churches. With scarce an exception, they are of home-missionary planting. So also is Rolhns College at Winter Park, and Michael E. Strieby. D.D., LL.D. Secretary of the American Missionary Association from 1864 to 1895. The Southern Belt 187 the vigorous Chautauqua Assembly. At Tampa the home-missionary women of the State, long before the Spanish War, opened a mission in a colony of 4,000 Cubans, which grew into a church, and this church, after the deliverance of Cuba, became the nucleus of a flour- ishing church in the city of Havana. Says Superin- tendent S. F. Gale: "In 1883 the Florida inventory showed three missionary pastors and five churches, strictly the result of the Society's initiative and aid. Meantime, to 1900, every ten weeks a church has been planted. In the seventeen years, the five have increased more than seventeen-fold. The ministerial list carried into the new century fifty-two names. Half as many men have been ordained. Florida home missions is or- ganized and w^orking up to date and standard. Em- phatically its life and means of growth are the gift of the Society upon which it must still depend." Texas and Western Louisiana are Southern scarcely more than in name, so rapidly have other elements come in since the close of the war. The rapidity of those movements is almost beyond belief. Twenty years ago Texas was the eleventh State of the Union in the rank of its population. To-day it is the fourth. "This inflow of life is not from abroad but from the older States," ^ and chiefly from the North and West. Missionary movements have followed on but have never overtaken the demand. The "open doors" are still more numer- ous than the closed. But perhaps the most astonishing developments of a ^ Sec. W. Choate, " Open Doors," published by the Congrega- tional Home Missionary Society, especially illustrating condi- tions in Texas. See also Diamond Jubilee Report by Luther Rees, pp. 67, 68. l88 Leavening the Nation missionary character have been seen in Georgia and Alabama. The story of Congregationahsm in Georgia has more than one romantic chapter. Seventy-five years after the landing of the Pilgrims, a colony of New England Puritans emigrated from Dorchester, Mass., to South Carolina, and planted in that State the " Dor- chester Church," so called, about twenty miles from Charleston. There it lived and prospered for fifty years, until, in 1752, the majority of the church made a second migration to Georgia, the minority remaining in South Carolina, and maintaining their life as a church until 1861. The Georgia contingent planted anew at Midway in that State, and entered upon a career which, probably, no other church of any name can parallel. Through all the years of slavery, it was a church with- out a color line, 800 of its members at one time being slaves. It has sent out more than 100 ministers of the gospel. Its standard of purity and its dis- cipline were severely maintained in times that tried men's souls, and during the Revolutionary War, when Georgia refused to send a delegate to the Continental Congress, this church sent its own delegate to that body; and it was the Massachusetts blood of this old Dor- chester-Midway Church that powerfully influenced the State of Georgia to enter the Union. "It gave to the nation two of the signers of the Declaration of Inde- pendence ; the first Minister Extraordinary and Plenipo- tentiary that ever entered the Imperial court of China from any nation; six congressmen, and among other blessings, the mother of a Vice-President of the United States. It gave to the State its first institution of higher learning, four of its governors, several judges in The Southern Belt 189 its courts, State officials of many kinds, mayors of cities, educators in large numbers, including several college presidents. It gave its own name to one of the coimties of the State, and the names of its members to five other comities. It gave to the Church six foreign mission- aries, bishops, and other officials. It gave to the world the first inventor of that blessing to womankind, the sewing-machine." ^ Its influence was boundless, and is still felt in Georgia and in the nation. It is sometimes questioned whether the soil of the South is congenial to Puritan Congregationalism. There is little the matter with a soil that could give this Con- gregational tree such teeming hfe and fruitage. So thought Rev. J. H. Parker and Dr. J. E. Roy when, in 1882, they gathered the Piedmont, now the Central church, in the city of Atlanta. Here, after Mr. Parker's retirement, that stalwart preacher. Dr. Zachary Eddy, felt honored to bear the Society's commission, and here he did some of the best work of his long and useful hfe. Three other chiurches of the same order quickly sprang up within the city Umits, and there for a time, the bounds of the Georgia work seemed to be reached; but it was not to be. There are streams that disappear in the earth, and after long courses under ground, suddenly burst again to the surface. The Old Midway Church was buried but active. Her memory, and the presence of three new churches of the same spirit, led to a discovery — a mutual discovery it might be called — on the part of the Home Missionary Society, that scattered over the State of Georgia was a large body of Christian believers known » F. E. Jenkins. 190 Leavening the Nation as Congregational Methodists and Free Methodists, evangehcal in faith and Congregational in government; and the discovery, on their part, that without knowing it, they belonged, in spirit and practice, to a family of 5,000 such churches scattered throughout the United States. The mutual discovery was a mutual surprise and de- light. Immediately the law of elective affinity began to work. In natiu-al ways, and without the slightest ex- ternal pressure, the two bodies drew together, until, in 1869, forty of these churches in Georgia and Alabama joined with the four chm-ches of Atlanta, in organizing the United Conference of Georgia, which has since been recognized by the National Council and stands in full and perfect fellowship with the Congregational churches of the United States. These discoveries were not confined to Georgia and Alabama. In North Carolina, Western Florida, Texas, and Louisiana, the story was repeated, on a smaller scale, of churches not only made in the Congregational image, but yearning with the spirit of kinship for recogni- tion and adoption. Not less than 120 such churches in the Southern Belt have thus been drawn into fellowship, and many of them have enjoyed the substantial aid of the Home Missionary Society. It has been the writer's happiness, more than once, to spend days of sacred privilege among these humble churches, meeting them in their plain, unpainted sanc- tuaries, and breaking bread together vmder the branches of the oaks where so many of them stand. To a North- ern Congregationalist everything about the scene was strange; faces, names, and forms of speech were un- familiar. But there was no mistaking the spiritual kin- The Southern Belt 191 ship and the genuine fraternity. Never, East or West, have I seen more real devotion or more enthusiastic and intelligent sympathy with the Pilgrim faith and polity. Whatever else may be lacking in these coimtry churches of the South, their loyalty to the gospel of Christ, and their attachment to the fundamental prin- ciples of Congregationalism, cannot be doubted. Their ministers are not often fairly educated, and in the poverty of the people, are compelled to supplement their salaries by manual labor. But they have a certain rough eloquence and a good knowledge of the contents of the Bible, though little familiar with systematic theology. But a hopeful sign, everywhere visible, is a demand on the part of the people for a higher class of preaching. The chiu-ches are in advance of the preach- ers in this demand, and there is large promise in that fact.^ From the forgeoing review, imperfect as it must be, the conclusion is irresistible — there is a " New South." For years that phrase was a legend slow to materialize. But time is rapidly finishing what the war only began. A "New South" there is to-da3^ A generation has passed away. The old bourbon, and many things for which he stood are dead. The adult South of the present knew not the war and to them it is a tradition almost without meaning. Meanwhile, a generation of intelligent, enter- prising, skilled, and progressive Southerners have come upon the stage. Northern blood and enterprise have been imported, and have struck root in the soil; so that it is no exaggeration to say that the New South is domi- nated, socially, politically, and commercially, by a race ' See a valuable article by A. T. Clark in Home Missionary, March, 1902, p. 264. 192 Leavening the Nation of men and women of middle age, that is in close touch, if not identical, with the best hfe and traditions of the North.^ Secession, root and branch, is dead; "Confederate States" are embalmed in history; veterans of the old war scatter flowers indiscriminately on the graves of both armies; a new war has knit North and South to- gether in a common defense; a chief magistrate, repre- senting the highest religious and political ideals of the North, is enthusiastically welcomed in what was the burning center of rebellion forty years ago; the Negro left on our hands as a threatening problem, is solving his own future through education and religion; the old hne of division and distinction is obliterated, and the whole South is as open as North, East or West, to every ministry of civilization, and to every evangel of religion. ' For strong confirmation of this view see article by Super- intendent F. E. Jenkins, Home Missionary, September, 1902, p. 203. XIII THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST— OREGON AND WASHINGTON Oregon, as we know it to-day, was admitted to the Union in 1859, the twentieth State to be recognized under the Constitution. But the Oregon of history in- cluded much more than the present State of that name. It embraced Washington, Idaho, parts of Montana and Wyoming, and British Columbia as far north as 54° 10'. The struggle for its possession covered more than 200 years, enlisting five great nations, Spain, France, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States. Spain, France, and Russia, one b}'' one, dropped out of the contest, and between 1818 and 1846, the territory was occupied jointly by Great Britain and the United States. In that year, by treaty with England, our government aban- doned all claims north of the 49th parallel, and Eng- land yielded all rights south of that line. Thus the "Northwestern boimdary question" was settled and the purely American development of Oregon began. This important event which filled out the northwestern cor- ner of the national map, and is here dismissed with a sentence, required "fifty-four years, two months and six days" ^ to accomplish. One chapter in the early annals of Oregon is celebrated * W. Barrows, " Oregon," p. 282. 193 194 Leavening the Nation in story and song, and calls for no extended rehearsal here, although it cannot be passed by with a mere allu- sion. We need not enter into the controversy of the histo- rians as to the part actually taken by Dr. Marcus Whit- man in saving Oregon to the United States. It is quite possible that some claims have been set up for him by admiring friends which he never made for himself, and it is more than probable, that in seeking to modify the extravagance of such claims, some writers have unjustly minimized his real services. Truth lies somewhere be- tween the two, and time, which settles most questions, may be trusted to determine the merits of this one. But concerning his character as a Christian hero and patriot there can be no two opinions. Marcus Whitman is no myth. His marvelous ride is historic ; his purpose in making it cannot be disputed, and even had it utterly failed, the spirit that prompted the endeavor, and the bravery and endurance that achieved it, deserve the admiring gratitude of every right-minded American. In the month of March, 1836, there was a quiet wedding at the home of Judge Stephen Prentiss, in Plattsburg, N. Y., and his accomphshed daughter, Narcissa, became the wife of Marcus Whitman, M.D. With Rev. H. H. Spalding, Dr. Whitman was under commission of the American Board as missionary to the Nez Perces In- dians in the Territory of Oregon, then the joint posses- sion of Great Britain and the United States. One month later these two men with their young brides, Mr. Wilham H. Gray, two Indian boys and two teamsters started on their long journey. The Secretary of War at Wash- ington issued passports to them as if going to a foreign country, commending them "to the friendly attention of Oregon and Washington 195 civil and military authorities, and if necessary, to their protection." By wagon and saddle they reached the Ohio River, sailed down the Ohio to the Mississippi, up that river to the Missouri and on to Council Bluffs, where they landed with their outfit to penetrate the wilderness beyond. On the Fourth of July, 1836, three months from home, they reached the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, the Continental Divide. Here, facing the magnificent panorama spread out before them, they laid their blan- kets on the ground and unfolding the stars and stripes, opened their Bibles, and kneeUng in prayer, took posses- sion of the sunset half of the continent "in the name of God and the United States." The Hudson Bay Company at this time held the prac- tical monopoly of Oregon, and were interested for selfish reasons in preventing emigration from the East. For years they had circulated false reports which reached the United States by way of the English press, repre- senting the entire Northwest as a wild and inhospitable region, fit only for Indians and wild beasts. They opposed the coming of the Whitman party, and said there were no roads, that their canvas-covered four- wheeled wagon could never be got over the mountains, and that no women could possibly live through the perils of the journey. Seven times that wagon was barely rescued from rolling down the canyon. Dr. Whitman took off two wheels and put them in the wagon, and with the two remaining wheels pushed on. Fording rivers was a frequent experience. At one place, a dried elk skin was the novel ferry-boat. The passenger lay flat on the skin, and Indian women, swimming, held the ropes in their teeth and pulled the party across, one by one. 1 96 Leavening the Nation The journey of six months and 3,500 miles ended at last at Fort Walla Walla (Beautiful Valley), where they were kindly welcomed by the Indians. Some twenty- five miles from the Fort, Dr. Whitman and Mr. Spalding built houses of logs, with rough doors and windows. The bedsteads were of board frames nailed to the side of the house, and covered with husks and blankets. In three years they had a school of fifty Indian children, and had taught many of the natives how to farm their land. On the 200 acres cleared, they had planted the seed brought from the East, and raised wheat, corn, and a large variety of vegetables. Three buildings and a small grist-mill had been erected. The Indian lan- guage was reduced to writing, and the first book in the Nez Perces tongue was printed on a press sent from the East by way of the Sandwich Islands, and around the Horn. The first home letters reached these young brides at the end of two and a half years. The Indians proved friendly, and Dr. Whitman's services as a phy- sician were appreciated by the white people of the region. In the early fall of 1842, while visiting a patient at Fort Walla Walla, he was invited to dine with the traders. During the meal, a herald came in with the exciting news that a large party of emigrants from Red River were on their way down the Columbia to take possession of Oregon. The interest was intense, for the future of Oregon lay with the nationality that should settle it. A young Jesuit priest sprang to his feet and triumphantly proposed a toast: "Hurrah for Oregon! She is ours now. America is too late; we have got the country." This incident is introduced not, as some have used it, to explain the determining motive of Dr. Whitman's winter journey across the continent, for at the time it Oregon and Washington 197 occurred that journey was already planned. The in- cident illustrates the state of public feeling on the Pacific coast with respect to the possession of Oregon, and may have had its influence upon Dr. Whitman's course. Another, and perhaps the leading, motive of his journey was a missionary one. Incited by the Hudson Bay Company and certain Jesuit priests, who were their agents, some of the Indians had become hostile; a lack of harmony also had arisen between the missionaries themselves as to the management of the mission. For these reasons the American Board had ordered the dis- continuance of the station at this point. It was the hope of Dr. Whitman by a personal visit to Boston, to secure the rescinding of this order, and his resolution was taken, even without the sanction of the Board, and at the risk of their displeasure, to make the journey. To the strenuous objections of his fellow missionaries he replied: "I was a man before I was a missionary, and when I became a missionary I did not expatriate myself. I shall go if I have to sever my connection with the Board." But that another motive lay warm in his heart, and was possibly even paramount to his missionary zeal, is made evident by his parting words as he mounted his pony for the East: "My life is of little worth," said he, "if I can save this country to the American people." It was on the morning of October 3, 1842, that he set forth, with Amos Lawrence Love joy for his companion and an Indian for guide. In eleven days they made 640 miles to Fort Hall, Idaho, where the British captain in command tried to stop him, telling of heavy snows, and Indians on the war-path. Here Whitman turned 1,000 miles out of his direct course towards Santa Fe by an unknown road. The guide deserted. Whitman and 1 98 Leavening the Nation Love joy pushed on. In the face of Winding snows, and through icy rivers out of which horse and rider came cased in a mail of ice, they reached Bent's Fort on the upper Arkansas, January 3, 1843. Whitman's hands, feet, and face were frost-bitten. Here Lovejoy gave out, but not Whitman. He had printed matter circulated, telling of the wealth and fertility of Oregon, and to all emigrants on the trail he gave glowing accounts of the Northwest country. At St. Louis he exchanged the saddle for the stage, and after two months hard riding reached Washington, March 3, 1843. Before Whitman left Oregon to cross the continent, the Ashburton treaty was under discussion in the United States Senate, and was approaching a decisive vote. Whitman's anxiety had been to reach Washington be- fore that vote, which he then beUeved was to settle the possession of Oregon. Upon reaching St. Louis, he learned that the treaty had been signed, but, to his sur- prise and joy, that it did not include the Oregon ques- tion ; that was still an open issue, and his mission might not be too late. With this hope he appeared in Wash- ington in March, 1843. Concerning his interviews with President Tyler and Daniel Webster, and what influence his representations may have had, there has been much discussion, growing chiefly out of an abundant lack of direct testimony. Dr. Whitman himself does not appear to have been very communicative on the subject. There is no reason to doubt that he held more than one interview with the Washington authorities; that he pressed his well-known views of Northwestern resources and possibilities; and as little reason to question that the testimony of such a man, enhanced in value by the heroic effort he had made Oregon and Washington 199 to deliver it in person, was of influence upon the Govern- ment. One of the severest critics of the Whitman episode declares to the contrary: "That he influenced American diplomacy in any way is not only destitute of evidence but intrinsically improbable." Another critic, who is on record as saying that "the arrival of Whitman in Wash- ington was opportmie," declares at a later period that "there is no evidence that Dr. Whitman reached Wash- ington City during the spring of 1843." His arrival was "opportune," but he never arrived. So much for the uncertainties of history.^ That President Tyler was favorable to Whitman's view of the value of Oregon is attested by his subsequent public utterances; but that he said distinctly to the in- trepid missionary, "If you can show that the mountains can be crossed by wagons I will see that the land is not given to Great Britain," is left in considerable doubt. Nevertheless, it was clearly a part of Whitman's plan, and always in his mind, to stimulate emigration towards the Northwest; and after his official visit to the mis- sionary rooms at Boston that matter occupied his whole attention. Whether he alone gathered the nearly 1,000 emigrants, with their wagons, flocks, and herds, and personally led them from the lower Mississippi to the Columbia, is scarcely worth the heat of a discussion, since it is certain he promoted the movement by word of mouth, by printed circulars, and in every other way possible; he accompanied the party, serving them with * The best and probably the final word on the Whitman con- troversy is -found in Dr. W. A. Mowry's " Marcus WTiitman" and Dr. Myron Eells' " A Reply." Both are conservative and accurate. 200 Leavening the Nation valuable information and inspiring their courage, and in the latter stages of the journey he was their personal leader and guide. Almost a year after parting from his wife, she looked out one day from her cabin door and saw the great caval- cade winding down the mountain. It was the first news of her husband she had received, and day by day her heart had grown heavier with the question, "Does he live?" By this timely arrival the Americans outnum- bered the English. Oregon was in a fair way to be saved. A few months passed ; the Oregon treaty was signed and became law; three new stars were assured to the coun- try's flag, and the name of Whitman was added to the roll of American heroes. Alas that so soon the hero and his no less heroic wife were to wear the martyr's crown! Three years after his return from the East, Dr. "Whitman, his wife, and twelve of his associates, were brutally murdered by the Indians whom they were seeking to serve. The causes and mo- tives of the massacre are exceedingly mixed, but the calmest judgment of wise and cautious men has long been agreed that the hostility of the agents of the Hud- son Bay Trading Company towards American missiona- ries and immigrants was one efficient cause of that tragic event. One month and five days before the murder of Whit- man, George H. Atkinson and Mrs. Atkinson sailed from Boston by the bark Samoset for Oregon, imder commis- sion of the American Home Missionary Society. They arrived at Honolulu Feb. 26, 1848, where they remained three weeks waiting for a vessel for Oregon. Thus it was nine months from leaving Boston, after a voyage of 18,000 miles, that they arrived at their field of labor. Oregon and Washington 201 News of the Whitman massacre reached them at Hono- lulu, and they were urged by friends there to abandon home missions as a dangerous venture, and to give themselves to foreign work. Forty years later, in commenting upon this kindly meant advice, Atkinson remarked, "To save our own country is of more worth to humanity and to God's kingdom than to toil for an effete and dying race." The population of Oregon at this time was about 7,000, gathered chiefly in the Willamette Valley, at Vancouver, and on the Cowlitz River. ^ Excitement over the Whit- man massacre and the execution of his murderers, and the transition from a provisional to a Territorial govern- ment, were unfavorable to the development of missionary work. The discovery of gold in California which soon followed, still further demoralized society. The young blood, needed just then at home for foundation laying, was drained off to the gold mines of the South ; the cost of living, from the same cause, was a further embarrass- ment. Much money was needed for the building of churches, schools, and academies, but there was little to spare for these purposes, with "board at fourteen dollars a week, eggs at two dollars a dozen, and plain cups and saucers at twelve dollars a dozen." The population also was far from homogeneous. The Eastern contingent was small, yet with all the thirst of the East for schools and churches ; the Western elements were large, and the Southern even larger. These, espe- cially the latter, brought in a type of civilization not the most favorable for the upbuilding of a stable common- wealth. There was little real preference for slavery, ^ Myron Eells' "Sketch of the Life of Dr. Atkinson," from which many of the following facts are derived. 202 Leavening the Nation but strong sympathy with Southern ideals. Their taste in rehgious matters was distinctly lower than that of Atkinson. The wild excitements of camp-meeting were preferred to the orderly and continuous services of the church. The proverb, "like priest, like people," was reversed, and a class of preachers came in, not to elevate the taste of the people, but to gratify a taste already depraved. The parson who thanked God he was "not edicated " became too common a figure. It took some years for these incongruous elements to mingle; indeed, the population of Oregon never lost a certain sectional cast and became definitely homogeneous until after the Civil War. These conditions all combined to make early home- missionary work difficult and slow of fruit. A less plucky or less consecrated man than Atkinson would have yielded to homesickness and sought pastures new and more congenial. It has been said that he found two languages among the people, "a power of religion," "a heap of education," and "a right smart chance of Chris- tians"; but there were many also from the East who talked the same moral vernacular that he did, "and among them Aarons and Hurs to hold up and strengthen his hands." Dr. Atkinson's missionary service divides sharply into three periods — fifteen years as pastor at Oregon City, nine and a half years as pastor in Portland, and fifteen years as General Missionary and Superintendent of Home Missions. Yet in all these relations he was first, midst, and always a missionary — and he was more: he had been gifted with something of the far vision of the seer, and with not a little of the judicial temperament of the statesman. Oregon and Washington 203 When the Boston Board of Trade and the New York Chamber of Commerce would know of the prospects and possibihties of the far Northwest, they passed by the pohtical orator and the corporation promoter, and called on Geo. H. Atkinson, the missionary, to instruct them. He was neither overwhelmed by the compliment nor confused by the demand. His address before the Chamber of Commerce, over an hour long, is a history, a prophecy, and an oration in one. Of commerce he spoke as a merchant prince might speak; of railroads, with the famiharity of a corporation president, of re- sources, like a capitalist. Wise men hstened to him as to an oracle, and thanked him for valuable information; yet he was only a missionary. A series of articles by him, published in the Oregonian, attracted the attention of Congress and the Government; and well might, for they traversed every interest, present and prospective, of the State he loved: lands, crops, climate, rivers, harbors, mining, geological formations, grading of railroads, exports, imports, tonnage, lumber, coal, lime, iron, fish, grasses, soils, fruits, cereals — of all of them he wrote with a marvelous personal knowledge, and as an expert might write. Yet all these interests were but the avocations of a busy life. He was always and above all other things a missionary. When at the close of forty years of labor a grateful people gathered about his grave. Dr. T. Eaton Clapp, his successor in the Portland pastorate, used these words, whose fitness no one conversant with his busy life could deny: "In unwearied devotion, in indomitable industry, in varied learning, in patient self-sacrifice, in high mo- tive, in pure philanthropy, in loyalty to God, in eminent usefulness, for forty unbroken years, all in all, can his 204 Leavening the Nation activity be matched thus far in our history? Measured by the highest standards, does he not he before us thus far the most eminent citizen of Oregon? " It was a lofty eulogy, but time has approved its truth. When Dr. Atkinson reached Oregon in 1848, he found two Presbyterian ministers, Rev. Lewis Thompson and Rev. H. H. Spalding; two Baptist ministers and two churches, three Cumberland Presbyterian ministers, a number of Methodists, with six missionaries and twelve or fifteen local preachers, some Campbellites, and numer- ous Catholics. He found also four Congregational min- isters and two churches, one near Hillsboro, of which Rev. J. S. Griffin was pastor, and one at Forest Grove, with Rev. Harvey Clark as pastor. All these churches together numbered about thirty members — enough for leaven. Atkinson took charge at Oregon City, then the capital, began in a private house, and removed thence to the court-house. Being forced out of these quarters by the needs of the government, the people bought land and built a church, at the cost of about $4,000. It was the first church edifice to be dedicated. He himself shoul- dered the debt, from which for ten years he was never free. For fifteen years his connection with this church con- tinued, until called to the First Church in Portland. The membership had grown to fifty, and the Home Mission- ary Society had invested $7,600, At Portland Dr. Atkinson remained nine and a half years. Then began his service as General Missionary, which developed quite naturally into the Superintend- ency of the State. For fifteen years he was the organ- izer of churches, the pastor of pastors, the wise, cautious and successful promoter of gospel and educational in- Oregon and Washington 205 stitutions. His missionary joiirneyings took him from the lower Cohimbia to Puget Sound, to the Idaho Une, and frequently to the far East. His yearly travel averaged 10,000 miles. He saw the Congregational churches of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho increase from 12 to 104, and their membership from 400 to as many thousands. With the true New England instinct his interest in education was second only to that in church planting. Before leaving Boston in 1847, he purchased $2,000 worth of school-books for Oregon. The Territory at that time had no common-school system. He was made first school superintendent of Clackamas county, and, later, county superintendent of Multonomah county. In Portland the ''Atkinson School" is at once the fruit and the memorial of his services to that city. He estabhshed the Clackamas County Female Seminary, and, by de- voting his spare time as a teacher in the institution, freed himself from burdensome debts incurred in church building. He founded Steilacoom Academy and served as a trustee for Fidalgo and Cheny academies. Before leaving Boston in 1847, he made the acquaintance of Theron Baldwin, the eminent college builder. That interview brought fruit in the opening of Tulatin Acad- emy at Forest Grove, which has since grown into the flourishing Pacific University. When Whitman Semi- nary was incorporated in 1859, he was one of its trustees, and remained the faithful friend of Whitman College to the end of his life. We have dwelt with some minuteness on the career of Dr. Atkinson for the reason that he was truly the pioneer missionary, and easily the chief promoter of Oregon's early development — social, commercial, educational, and 2o6 Leavening the Nation religious. It is not often given to one man to sell his life so dearly or to leave so broad a mark upon an infant State. Other leaders came to share his labors, but never to dispute the palm he had so worthily won. Prominent among them was Rev. Aaron L. Lindsley, D.D., LL.D., who has been called the "Presbyterian Statesman of the Pacific Northwest." After successful pastorates in New York and Wisconsin, in his fiftieth year and in the prime of his strength and experience, he crossed the plains in 1868 to take charge of "the little Presbyterian church" in Portland. "His coming marked the beginning of a new era in religious work in the Pacific Northwest. He planned with far-seeing wisdom, flinging himself into the work with whole- hearted zeal." He found a church of eighty members fainting and discouraged. He left it one of the strongest churches of the denomination. From being a feeble infant of the Home Missionary Society it became "the Mother of Home Missions." Out of it grew eight churches in Portland alone. Its benevolent contribu- tions under Dr. Lindsley' s ministry amounted to a quar- ter of a million dollars. Outside of Portland he or- ganized twenty-two churches and dedicated as many buildings. Said one: "He must found colleges, create Presbyteries and Synods, inaugiu-ate missions, and organize awakened desire into permanent institutions." Alaska and its natives specially awakened his sympathy, and when missionary fvmds failed to inaugurate work in that Territory, he began it at his own expense and that of his church. In company with Dr. Sheldon Jackson and Secretary Henry Kendall, he visited the North and helped to locate the strategic points. It has been worthily said of him that "his contributions to the Oregon and Washington 207 intellectual and spiritual interests of the Pacific North- west are beyond computation, and no true history of this region can be written without giving him a large place." * The last years of his life were spent as a professor of^- Practical Theology in the San Francisco Presbyterian Seminary. Would that all professors of theology might be as well qualified by experience to inspire the hearts of young men ! Concerning the recent home-missionary history of Oregon, Superintendent G. F. Clapp remarks: "In ten recent years forty-five churches have been organized, thirty-six of which remain unto this present day, but some are fallen asleep. The home-missionary churches received into fellowship dm-ing this period more than five thousand persons, nearly two thirds of them on con- fession of faith. This is something to be devoutly grate- ful for. They have sustained more than forty Sunday- schools, into which are gathered three thousand young people. They are sustaining twenty-eight Christian Endeavor Societies, with an enrolled membership of more than seven hundred. Nearly all the chm-ches which were lost might easily have been saved but for the finan- cial stress which curtailed the available funds for their support. One or two were not fortimately located, or the center of their constituency was removed, and one or two cherished a 'Kentucky friendship,' till their record was a repetition of the historic felines of Kil- kenny." Six years before Oregon was admitted to Statehood, Washington, including Idaho, had been set off as a Terri- tory. This was in 1853. It remained a Territory until ^ " Home Missionary Hero Series," Presbyterian Board of Missions. 2o8 Leavening the Nation 1889, when it became a State under the Constitution. Thus during most of the period of Dr Atkinson's mis- sionary superintendency, down in fact to 1888, his dio- cese included not only Oregon but Washington and Idaho. It was then (1888) that his immense field was divided according to State lines and Reuben A. Beard was made missionary superintendent of Washington and Idaho, Atkinson retaining charge of Oregon until his death. Since 1883 he had been relieved of part of the burden by the appointment of two most efficient gen- eral missionaries — C. C. Otis for the Puget Sound region, and N. S. Cobleigh for Eastern Washington. At the time of Dr. Beard's appointment, Washington was preparing for immediate Statehood. Its settlement had been hindered for many years by mountain barriers and the slow development of railroad communications. But with the opening of the Northern Pacific in 1883, population was suddenly and marvelously accelerated. In 1853 Washington had less than 4,000 inhabitants ; in 1860, 11,500; in 1870, 24,000. In 1875 population had reached only 36,000. This was before Statehood or railroads. In 1880 it had leaped to 75,120, and ten years later, in 1890, to 349,390. The census of 1900 reveals a population of 517,672. At this stage Dr. Beard was fully justified in writing: "The eyes of the world are upon this State as they never were before upon any part of our country. During the month of February last, a newspaper reporter made inquiry of passengers who were passing through Chicago with tickets for points west of the Mississippi River, and found that, out of 9,300 such, 7,850 were bound for the State of Washington. The growth is simply phenome- nal and unparalleled, and while it is doubtless true that Oregon and Washington 209 the country will be overboomed, the bottom can never drop out, as has sometimes been true in other rapidly growing sections. The variety and extent of the natural resources make such a result impossible. Values may be pushed too high, are so now, but a drop in prices will only affect individuals who have tried to get rich through mere speculation. Every kind of material necessary to the production of manufactured articles is here within easy reach, and when the manufacturer has his goods ready for sale, he has access to the markets of the world. This State is at once a mine, a market, and a garden. Professor Hart of Harvard College, in a recent article on the "Rise of American Cities/' attempts to show that all future great cities will grow up out of present cities, great or small, but facts such as I have given compelled him to add this modifying sentence: "There will be no more surprises, except, perhaps, in the Puget Sound region." Toward meeting this new and almost unprecedented demand, home-missionary labor and capital were prompt- ly directed. In 1871 the American Home Missionary Society had eight missionaries in Washington. In 1901 it had eighty-five. For years between 1880 and 1900, its annual appropriation to Washington was more than double that made to any other single State or section of the land, and it is still notably in excess of most of its apportionments. Under this generous cultiu-e nearly 140 churches and stations have been opened, and a goodly proportion of these have reached or are approach- ing self-support. The interest of the East in Washington was noticeably advanced by the voluntary offer of six young men of Yale Divinity School to form a Washington Band. They were members of the class of 1890. During the 2IO Leavening the Nation previous summer vacation three of them had done serv- ice for the Home Missionary Society in North Dakota and Colorado. They came back inspired with missionary zeal, and soon inspired others with their view of the needs and opportunities of the West. They were well quahfied to succeed in the best pulpits of New England, and were sought by such; their deliberate choice of Western work was one of pure desire to put out their talents and acquirements where they were most needed, and would tell most for the country and the kingdom. Thus the rapidly growing towns of Eastern Washington attracted them, and followed by the earnest counsels of Dr. R. R. Meredith, and the tender, consecrating prayer of Dr. A. H. Clapp, they started for their distant fields of labor. One feature of the Yale Washington Band was to a degree peculiar, though not wholly untried by the earlier band of Dakota. They proposed to carry their identity as a Band into the service; accordingly they were so located that, while each man held his distinct field, it was possible by easy connections to help one another, and, if the occasion arose, to rally the entire band at any one point for united effort. The plan proved invaluable for fellowship, for study and discussion, and above all, as it soon appeared, for united evangelistic effort. The workers knew and understood each other thoroughly, and their campaigns for the upbuilding of their several churches had the enthusiasm and unity of six men who saw eye to eye. More than ten years have passed. Four of the Band are still in the Pacific Northwest: Rev. S. B. L. Penrose, President of Whitman College; Rev. Edward L. Smith, pastor of a growing church in Seattle; Rev. John T. Oregon and Washington 211 Nichols, pastor of the Edgewater Church of the same city; Rev. Wilham Davies, late of Nome and Douglass, Alaska. Rev. Lucius O. Baird was called from the Coast to the strong church at Ottawa, 111. ; and Rev. G. E. Hooker, after exceptional success in Washington, has given himself to the study of sociological problems. The estimate of the work accomplished by this devoted com- pany, as summed up by Rev. E. L. Smith, is well within the truth, but all too modest. ''The results have not been startling, but they have justified abundantly the hopes and expectations of the Washington Band. There has always been the heartiest cooperation with the other ministers on the field. There has been no jealousy, only mutual appreciation and friendship. The common meetings of the Band, under the evident needs of the communities, became seasons of earnest evangelistic effort, in place of anticipated retreats for study and dis- cussion of theological themes. But God has always led, and the following has been a delight." ^ Thirty years are long enough to make or mar the destiny of a young and rapidly growing commonwealth. At the end of thirty years of home-missionary endeavor, it is the privilege of a home-missionary worker who has not spared some of the best years of his life to the Wash- ington work to bear this testimony: ''To-day Washing- ton is a well-organized commonwealth taking an honor- able place in the sisterhood of States. In its four corners are well-built cities, and distributed throughout the State are towns of lesser proportions, but equally well built, all of which compare favorably with similar cities and towns in the older States. Investments are equally secure and remunerative. The State is provided with a * Home Missionary, Jan., 1901, p. 194. 212 Leavening the Nation good public-school system, which is so well worked that, except in the most isolated communities, children can re- ceive an education fitting them for the ordinary respon- sibilities and privileges of life. Besides the common schools, the State has a well-equipped university, an agricultural college, and three normal schools. Private and denominational academies and colleges are located in different parts of the State, well in the lead of which is Whitman College, with four academies as feeders. The home and social life of the people is like that of the older States — not equal in the wealth of attainment, but fully equal in the purity preserved and the high ideals towards which all are striving." ^ This noble result has not been gained by accident. Left to itself, the early wild rush of immigration would have gravitated to barbarism in many forms. But the home missionary, inspired and sustained by the churches of the East, many of which were themselves the fruit of home-missionary sacrifice, followed swiftly on the track. Every division of the Church took part in the effort, and all have had their reward. Methodists were not slow, and they have 240 churches with a membership of 13,000. Baptist home missions are represented by 100 churches and 4,000 communicants; Presbyterian, by another 100 churches and 4,500 members; Congrega- tional, by 130 churches and a membership of over 6,000, In thirty brief years a new State, as wild as nature ever made, and a population as heterogeneous as fate ever threw together, shows a percentage of religious forces equal to Nebraska, only a little lower than Colorado, and rapidly gaining upon the long established common- wealths of the East. * A. J. Bailey, Home Missionary, April, 1901, p. 247. XIV THE MEXICAN CESSION— CALIFORNIA Among the States entered by the home missionary, CaUfornia, by its natural features and its early history, holds a unique position. With the occupation of Iowa and Wisconsin in 1833, the westward home-missionary movement appeared to reach a temporary limit. For the next eleven years it made Httle advance territorially, when in 1846 it leaped, at one bound, to the Pacific Coast. Two missionaries in that year made their way aroimd Cape Horn, by the Sandwich Islands, to Oregon, and two years later, in 1848, the home-missionary history of California began. Cahfornia is one of the few possessions of the United States obtained by conquest. The popular conception runs that it was ceded to our Government for $15,000,000 as part of the spoil of the Mexican War. But unless Professor Royce, in his elaborate volume in the series of "American Commonwealths," is greatly at fault, this is not the whole truth. Before the war with Mexico began, it is probable that California, while still a Mexican pro- vince, was invaded by Captain John C. Fremont with secret instructions from the Washington authorities to coerce it with a military government; which was done while the territory was yet in the possession of a peaceful neighbor. There is much evidence also that the scheme was inspired in the interest of slavery, and with the 213 214 Leavening the Nation ultimate purpose of extending its domain. If the latter supposition be correct the plot was signally defeated by the action of the First Constitutional Convention in 1850, which voted unanimously that the new State should be forever free from the curse of American slavery. Cahfornia is an empire for size second only to Texas in area. Twenty States like Massachusetts would not fill it. Transfer it to the other side of the map, letting it stretch from the northern point of Maine down the Atlan- tic coast, and its southern border would penetrate the State of Virginia. Lying as it does north and south, it has every grade of climate — from the ice and snow of the middle temperate zone, to the heat and verdure of the tropics. Its soil is phenomenal in productive power. Everything in California grows large. It is the paradise of great fruits and vegetables, of big trees and big stories. Never is it safe to doubt one of the latter, for it will be instantly overmatched by a greater, and however in- credible, they are generally true. Never has any State been born into the Union with greater agony than California. The crucial year of its early history was 1849. Then while a mere possession of the United States, without State law or even Territorial government, gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill. Like a flame the news spread around the world. Within twelve months the previously scanty population was in- creased by the arrival of 200,000 immigrants, representing every State in the Union and nearly every land under the sun. Around Cape Horn, across the Isthmus, by the long overland routes, and over the sea from the ends of the earth they came, with one consuming passion for gold. They were of all kinds — the good, the bad, and the California 215 very bad; of which the latter was a formidable propor- tion. Here was a new and gigantic home-missionary problem. For the most part this mob of gold-seekers were not typical Western immigrants. They had httle interest in the development of a new State. They were not seeking to found homes, but only to amass their pile and to retm-n as quickly as possible from whence they came. In the total absence of law each man was a law unto himself, and might was right. Without governor to rule over them, with no comets to administer law, with no law to be administered, terror and disorder w^ere inevitable. The "Vigilance Committee" took the place of the court — a court in which an irresponsible body of men made itself at once prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner. Every accused person had a trial with some semblance of fairness, and probably few, if any, suffered innocently; indeed there was no necessity, since the guilty were everywhere abundant and easy to find. Yet this im- promptu tribunal was but a rough image of justice, necessary as times were, and perhaps the only possible in the emergency. But these were dark days in the early history of CaUfornia. For many lurid months social and moral chaos reigned, out of which, with the help of an excellent State Constitution in 1850, the birth of order was slowly and painfully evolved. It is still a keen delight, and becoming rarer every year, to meet with one of these original "Forty Niners," especially if he happens to be in a communicative mood. One will hear more strange bits of experience out of real life than novelist ever dreamed, and will come away feehng as he used to feel when a boy in rising from an Arabian Night's Entertainment. 2i6 Leavening the Nation While these strange things were transpiring, — indeed, before the wild rush toward the Golden State had fairly- begun, — a humble event occurred in New York City of which httle mention has been made by the historian of the period; yet it was one of the "things that are not" which God employs to bring to naught "things that are." Two missionaries were commissioned at the Bible House to begin labor in California. These two men, J. W. Douglas and S. H. Willey, sailed on the first day of December, 1848, by the first steamer that ever carried passengers for California by the way of Panama. One of them, Mr. Willey, was destined for Monterey, then the seat of what government there was ; and the other, Mr. Douglas, for San Francisco. After exciting experiences by sea and land, they reached their destination in the latter part of the following February, having been nearly three months on the way. Here they were welcomed by T. D. Hunt of Honolulu, whom the people of San Francisco had elected to be "Chaplain of the town for one year." Mr. Hunt was thus the first missionary on the ground. On the eighth of September, 1850, this humble force was strengthened by the ordination in Broadway Tabernacle of James H. Warren. Dr. Joseph P. Thompson preached the sermon; Dr. Richard S. Storrs voiced the fellowship of the churches; and Dr. Milton Badger, then Senior Secretary of the American Home Missionary Society, gave the young candidate his charge. Among other things. Dr. Badger counselled him, though rivers of gold ran at his feet, never to stoop and drink of the poisoned stream, but rather to die a poor man, if by so doing he might point others to the true riches. With this charge ringing in his ears, Mr. Warren and his devoted wife entered upon their fife-work in the California 217 Golden State. These more than fifty years he has never really laid off the harness of service. Fourteen years a missionary, painfully laying foundations; twenty- seven years a missionary superintendent, travelhng tens of thousands of miles; "in journeys oft," planning, build- ing, cheering, comforting, sowing with tears and reaping with joy, never himself discouraged, and charged with a surplus of good- cheer which he poured into the fainting hearts of his brethren — few men have done more to the honor of Home Missions than Dr. Warren. He survives in a hale old age to tell the story, and, it is hoped, to put that story into a valuable and enduring form. Those early days of California may seem in this rapid age hke very ancient history; but let it be remembered that Dr. S. H. Willey and Dr. J. H. Warren, who witnessed the very genesis of the State, and have borne a conspicuous part in its religious development, are alive to-day, still working, even while they rest, under the spreading branches of the tree whose seed they planted in 1849. In June, 1898, just fifty years from his arrival on the coast. Rev. Dr. Willey was present at the Seventy-second Anniversary of the American Home Missionary Society, held that year in Cleveland, Ohio, He was received with all the honor due to a veteran, making an extended and most valuable address upon the conditions as he found them in 1849. For the following facts the author is chiefly indebted to that address. Two branches of business overshadowed all others — mining and furnishing supphes for miners. San Fran- cisco was a rough, ungraded town of from eight to ten thousand people. Thirty thousand miners were at work in the foot-hills of the Sierras. There was not a Protes- tant church or house of worship or school of any land in 2i8 Leavening the Nation all California. The mass of the people scarcely knew the Sabbath from any other day. Ships were arriving daily, passengers were landing and pitching their tents among the sand-hills about the town, remaining only long enough to fit themselves for the mines. They were strangers from many lands, speaking many tongues, and the confusion and the excitement were intensified by strong drink and gambUng. Around the bay of San Francisco, settlements were springing up in need of the gospel ministry, and the mining camps were in still greater need; but the condi- tions were strange and unexampled. Small bands of Christian disciples were found in several places, but their stay was uncertain and their means small. Land titles were almost worthless, and the building of churches and schoolhouses was at the builders' risk. A rough court- room, a canvas tent, a rude carpenter's shop had to suffice for a sanctuary, and these had but slight attrac- tion for men absorbed in pursuit of gold. Part of the missionary's duty was to go from camp to camp soliciting gold-dust by the ounce for the building of the church. But everything was against permanent effort along missionary lines. "California is a bubble that will soon burst," was the cry of the East, while local opinion was pretty much agreed that all it would ever be good for was mining, not fit therefore for family life, and not worth a serious missionary effort. Some elect souls there were who believed in the future of California as a great State, and had nearly completed a church building, importing the lumber, every stick of it, from Maine around Cape Horn. Within a few weeks of its dedica- tion the entire business section of the town was swept by fire, and although the church was spared, the builders California 219 were bankrupt. At a fearful rate of interest, money to complete the structure was borrowed, and thus the enter- prise for years was seriously crippled by debt. On Sun- day, one week after the dedication, the fire alarm sounded again in the midst of the morning service, and most of the town spared by the first conflagration was swept away. Before midsummer of '49 five churches had been or- ganized in San Francisco — Congregational, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Episcopal — numbering from ten to twenty members each. The Baptists were first to dedicate a church building. The missionary force at this time did not exceed twenty in the whole State, often hundreds of miles apart, and compelled by their small numbers to almost wholly neglect the mining camps. It was then that the Pacific came to life as a travelling missionary. It was eagerly received and read in the camps, and suppHed the want of the hving preacher to a remarkable degree. This was in 1851, and it still sur- vives. Education was not forgotten. A Christian college was planned in the early days, and sustained for twenty years solely on home resources without aid from the East. Meanwhile society changed and improved. Men found that California was good for something besides mining. Many sent for their famihes. Women and children began to appear in the Sunday gatherings. More missionaries were needed, and the missionary societies of the East were senchng them out. Churches multiplied and grew and their influence appeared in the better morals and manners of the community. The early conditions of a commonwealth, like the en- vironments of a child, have lasting consequences. Speak- ing of the crucial decade, 1846-1856, Professor Royce, 220 Leavening the Nation a native Californian and not chargeable with prejudice, comments as follows: "Everything that has since hap- pened in California, or that ever will happen so long as men dwell in the land, must be deeply affected by the forces of local hfe and society that then took their origin. We Americans showed in early Cahfornia new failings and new strength. We exhibited a novel degree of care- lessness and overhastiness, an extravagant trust in luck, a previously unknown blindness to our social duties, and an indifference to the rights of foreigners whereof we cannot be proud. But we also showed our best national traits — traits that went far to atone for our faults. As a body, our pioneer community in California was persistently cheerful, energetic, courageous, and teach- able. In a few years it had repented of its graver faults; it had endured with charming good humor their severest penalties; and it was ready to begin with fresh devotion the work whose true importance it had now at length learned — the work of building up a well-organized, per- manent and progressive State on the Pacific Coast. In this work it has been engaged ever since, with fortunes that always, amid the most remarkable changes, have preserved a curious likeness to the fortunes of the early days, and that in numerous instances have led to a more or less noteworthy and complete repetition of cer- tain early trials, blunders, sins, penalties, virtues, and triumphs." ^ Southern California at this time was but lightly affected by the excitement at the North. It was almost a foreign country, having few English-speaking residents. For eighteen years, from 1849 to 1867, the southern section of ' "California," American Commonwealth Series. Henry Kendall, D.D. Corresponding Secretary of the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church from iS6i to 1892. California 221 the State was almost wholly without any organized Protestant influence. Dr. Warren, in 1865, reports "one Protestant minister and one Protestant house of worship." The country was given up to Popery, Mormonism, and almost complete destitution of religious privileges; "and yet," adds Dr. Warren, "it is the best country on which the sun shines." Rev. Alexander Parker was the first missionary on the ground in 1866. Ten years later Superintendent James T. Ford remarks: "Then (1866) the closed store on the Lord's day was a singular excep- tion to the general rule; now the open store is the excep- tion. Then every grocer must furnish whiskey and wine for his customers, or forfeit his business ; now treating to secure custom is a practice left so far back in the past as to be almost forgotten. Then a revival of religion mov- ing a whole commimity was a thing rarely if ever heard of in Southern California ; now crowds gather to hear the evangelist, and he finds a susceptibility to religious im- pression not exceeded in the most favored places of the East. Then church members were an unfashionable few, in many places not one in twenty of the people; now in several of our more prominent towns more than one third of the people are counted on the church lists." These rapid and marvelous changes are due in the judgment of Superintendent John L. Maile to two causes —a large immigration of Christian people, and the dona- tion of large simis of money by various home-missionary boards that the beginning of settlements might be ac- companied by a preaching ministry and the prompt organization of churches and Sunday-schools." ^ It would require a long chapter to describe the effect ^Home Missionary, Jan., 1902, p. 163. 222 Leavening the Nation of the opening of California upon the churches of the East. The Northwest Territory had been recognized as a great opportunity and the Louisiana Purchase as a providential expansion. Home missionaries were flying upon the track of immigrants that were pouring into these newly acquired possessions. But neither of them ap- pealed to the imagination or to the missionary spirit of the churches in the same degree as California. The Pacific had been reached; a new world lay beyond; gold had been discovered; the ends of the earth were flocking to California; a region rich in strange beauty and glowing with a romantic history had been suddenly opened. The papers of the day, both religious and secu- lar, were full of the matter. California became the theme of sermons and missionary addresses without number. The strategic position of the new Territory was even then clearly discerned by the orators of the church, and this was pressed with great earnestness upon the people as a motive to home-missionary endeavor, for the sake not merely of the nation, but of the nations. "The acquisition of California," said Dr. Badger in 1849, " has devolved upon the American churches a new duty. The magnitude of this duty does not consist in the extent of the country, nor even its admitted resources, but chiefly in its position on the globe. The great depos- itory of means of human improvement are concentrated on this side of the globe ; while the great mass of heathen- ism lies as far as possible on the opposite side of Asia and in the islands of the Pacific. What more probable than that the next step of Providence toward the enlighten- ing of the heathen world will be to take some advanced position far on towards the strongholds of paganism, from whence those great auxiliaries of the gospel, com- California 223 merce and civilized intercourse may act with directness and vigor? Such an advanced post is the western coast 0} America." Something of the same far vision was before the eyes of Dr. Geo. B, Cheever, when in the same year he made his pulpit ring with these words: "The Coast of the Pacific is to be lined like the Atlantic with the villages and cities of a Christian civihzation. We have hardly as yet had time to think of this. We have been laboring eastward to beleaguer the kingdoms of darkness with our camps of light; to get access to China and the midnighted Spice Islands of the Eastern Seas; and now is God going to advance upon them across the ocean from the west. The way of speediest, most electric, communication be- tween America and Eastern Asia will soon be from Cali- fornia to the Chinese seas. It was with some reference to a time like this that the Sandwich Islands have been so long preparing. Those may yet be God's great ma- rine depots of missionary power, and centers for the world's missionary commerce." And again it was Isaac H. Brayton who came across the continent in the early fifties from his California mis- sion field to echo the same sentiment at the annual meet- ing of the Home Missionary Society. ''What a vision now arises before me! dream-like in beauty but certain as destiny ! It is not a vision for many days ; its fulfill- ment is already progressing. I see the four great com- mercial centers whose cities belt the globe, London, New York, San Francisco, and Shanghai, brought by steam into quick and constant connection. Along a rambling track, across our continent, pours a stream of commerce, a tide of travel. I see the Pacific alive with vessels. They visit every island; penetrate every 224 Leavening the Nation province of Asia; old prejudices give way; new thoughts infuse life into the slumbering islands, and wake up the dormant East. On these passing and repassing ships I see the nations astir. Swarthy Turks come to fill Chris- tian temples on our shore. The old Orient receives light from the glowing Occident. The beams shimmer across the sea; they touch the islands; they begin to rise in their dawn over Asia. Night flees away; morn- ing comes." It was not here and there but everywhere and contin- ually at the East that these prophetic views were dis- seminated which quickened the missionary zeal of the churches, and with them more immediately practical motives were not forgotten. The Independent of Jan. 4, 1849, founds an appeal for more generous support of missionaries upon the current cost of living on the Pacific Coast — "common clerks on a salary of $2,500 and board! laundry, eight dollars a dozen; hotel waiters receiving $1,700 per year, and a missionary's board six dollars a day." So by the combined appeals, patriotic, prophetic, and practical, some of the largest givers to home missions were moved to treble and quadruple their donations to the missionary boards. Reactions came; they were bound to come. Like all young States, Cahfornia was overboomed and had to suffer the penalty of forced and unhealthy growth. This was true both in her material and spiritual development. Within twenty years of the discovery of gold we begin to hear of ''premature and delusive prosperity." "This is a foreign mission," writes one. "The State has never been settled, only inhabited and plucked. Few care to hear the gospel, fewer have cared to pay anything for it, and fewest of all have had a heart to work and strive California 225 together for it." This instabihty of Christian endeavor was fearfully discouraging to the workers, and at times almost threatened to stop the work. The labor of "gathering" had to be done ''over and over and over again." When a claim gave out, the miner and his family were off for a better prospect. If others came in they had to be "gathered" anew only to be scat- tered again. Outside the mines the imcertain titles to lands kept the would-be settler on the move. A prom- ising missionary eagerly called from the East to take an important field arrived only to find that one half the church that called him and pledged his support had moved away while he was en route. These unstable conditions began to tell not only upon the courage of the faithful few who clung to the ideal of a Christian commonwealth, but also upon the faith of Eastern givers on whom they relied for help. In 1858 we find the Association and Synod of Cali- fornia discussing the question whether home missions in that State should be deemed a failure. After a thor- ough review of all discouragements and drawbacks, they reached this Christian conclusion: "That if any people ever needed the gospel it is just such a people, and if such a people are to have the gospel it must be sent to them even though it be unasked." To such an attitude on the part of men thus burdened with a sickening sense of failure there could be but one response from the mis- sionary boards. "It would be a crime and a blunder," they said to leave California to herself. "A glorious harvest," they told the churches, "awaits our hand if we endure to the end " ; and with new motives they sum- moned the friends of home missions "to put generous harvests under the sod for the garner of the future." 226 Leavening the Nation That future is our present. California's day of small things and disheartening reaction is over. What is the harvest? In 1899 the Congregationahsts of the State celebrated their semi-centennial. The story re- hearsed on that occasion reads like a fairy tale. Men and women were present who had witnessed the begin- nings and were a part of all that followed. The Con- gregational hosts were numbered, and though they are not the largest tribe of the Pacific Israel, they are per- mitted to call the roll of more than two hundred churches with nearly 20,000 communicants, who, with their prede- cessors gone to glory, have contributed a round million of dollars to the benevolences of the Church. Nine tenths of these churches are of home-missionary origin, and have been nurtured by the stronger churches of the East at a total cost of $600,000. When Dr. Badger in Broadway Tabernacle charged the youthful Warren, not even he, with all his Christian optimism, caught any vision of such results, and not the most hopeful friends of home missions in the East dreamed at that time of the marvelous story then beginning to unfold. Congregationahsts are but one division of the Home Missionary Army on the Pacific Coast, and not the largest. Baptists have 165 churches and a membership of 12,000; Methodists 600 churches and a membership of 40,000; Presbyterians 276 churches and 20,000 com- municants; Episcopahans more than 100 churches and a following of 10,000; and the Reformed Church is not without its representatives. Not one in ten of these churches would have had courage to be born without home-missionary help. Their total membership, with that of other religious forces not named in this summary, is only a little less than 300,000, — a moral force that is California 227 leavening the private and public life of the Common- wealth. In spite of its Spanish origin, its tumultuous birth into the Union, and its eariy days of disorder and instability, California ranks to-day, in the per cent, of its reUgious forces, abreast with Kansas, in advance of Oregon and Washington, and within easy hail of New Hampshire and South Dakota. XV THE MEXICAN CESSION— UTAH, NEW MEXICO, ARIZONA Utah, deriving its name from the Yutah tribe or nation, its early occupants, was set apart as a Territory in 1850. It formed a part of the large tract acquired from Mexico as the fruit of our Mexican War. After forty-six years of struggle for Statehood it was admitted to the Union in January, 1896. With its 85,000 square miles it is the smallest State in the group to which it belongs, having about the area of Kansas. Little was known of the region down to 1800, except by Spanish explorers. "Early in the nineteenth century we find United States fur hunters standing on the border of the Great Salt Lake, tasting its brackish waters and wonder- ing if it is an arm of the sea." ^ To James Bridger, leader of the party, is ascribed the honor of that unique discovery. With the opening of Oregon and California in the early forties, the overland trail led through Northern Utah and the region became somewhat better known. Over this route came Wliitman and Lovejoy on their heroic jour- ney to Washington in the winter of 1842, and one year later Fremont and Kit Carson reached Salt Lake, and for a while beheved themselves to be its discoverers. » H. H. Bancroft, " History of Utah," p. 18. 228 Utah, New Mexico, Arizona 229 But thus far Utah was a thoroughfare only, without homes or permanent residents. The actual settlement began in 1847 with the arrival of Brigham Young and a company of Mormons, or, as they preferred to be called, " Latter-Day Saints." The company consisted of 143 per- sons, including three women. They had seventy-three wagons drawn by horses and mules and loaded chiefly with grain and farming implements. The journey hither had been one of faith, with no certain destination in view. Visions had been given to their leader, and when questioned by his company whither they were going and when their journey would end, his only reply was that he would know the spot when he should see it. It was on the twenty-first of June, 1847, that they reached a bench or terrace among the mountains, from which the hghted valley, the winding river, and the sparkhng lake came suddenly into view. Their leader was confined to his litter by an attack of mountain fever, but sitting up in his bed he surveyed the scene. His own testimony is: "The spirit of light rested upon me and hovered over the valley, and I felt that there the saints would find protection and safety." His vision was realized, and to his followers he said simply: "It is enough. This is the right place. Drive on." Whatever spiritual delusions blinded these people, they were practical, far-sighted pioneers. Tn thirty days they accomplished more, says Willford Woodruff, "than can be found on record concerning an equal number of men in the same time since Adam. We have travelled with heavily laden wagons more than a thousand miles, over rough roads, mountains and canyons, searching out a land, a resting-place for the saints. We have laid out a city two miles square and built a fort of hewn timber 230 Leavening the Nation drawn seven miles from the mountain, and of sun-dried bricks or adobes, surrounding ten acres of ground, forty rods of which we covered with blockhouses, besides plant- ing about ten acres of corn and vegetables." These first comers were the vanguard of an army. On July 4 of the same year a much larger company left Illi- nois for the new City of Zion. It numbered about 1,550, and included 588 wagons and about 2,000 oxen, besides horses, cows, and sheep. And thus it was that Utah, al- most unknown to the world, was preempted by a colony of strange people, differing radically from all other Western migrations. "There is only one example in the annals of America of the organization of a commonwealth upon the principles of pure theocracy. There is only one ex- ample here where the founding of a State grew out of the founding of a new rehgion. Other instances there have been of the occupation of wild tracts on this continent by people flying before persecution, or desirous of greater religious hberty; there were the Quakers, the Huguenots, and the Pilgrim Fathers. Rehgion has often played a conspicuous part in the settlement of the New World, and there has been present at times in some de- gree the theocratic, if not indeed the hierarchal idea; but it has been long since the world, the old continent or the new, has witnessed anything like a new rehgion suc- cessfully estabhshed and set in prosperous running order upon the fullest and combined principles of theocracy, hierarchy, and patriarchy." ^ The story of this sect, its origin, its tenets, its amazing growth from a humble beginning of six converts, its migration from New York to Ohio, from Ohio to Mis- >H. H. Bancroft, "History of Utah" (preface). Utah, New Mexico, Arizona 231 souri, from Missouri to Illinois, the revelation of polyg- amy made to its leaders in that State, the furious perse- cution that followed, resulting in the violent death of Joseph Smith and the final migration of the church to the wilds of Utah — all these are more than thrice told tales, grown trite by repetition. With so many versions of the story, all of which are so easily accessible, another rehearsal here would be superfluous.^ What more directly concerns us is to note the abso- lutely new demand made upon Home Missions by this strange sect and its teachings. The home-missionary movement began with families emigrating from New England to the early West. Their old neighbors in Con- necticut and Massachusetts followed them with mission- aries who were to put in the schools and churches, while the pioneers cleared the land and built the cabins. It was a division of labor in which the home missionary undertook the spiritual part — a kindly fellow^ship as wel- come to the new settler as it was indispensable to the success of his enterprise. With the growth of foreign immigration these conditions were sensibly changed, and home missions enlarged its sphere. Alien masses were not only to be Christianized by a gospel new to them, but * Books of reference are almost ^\athout number. H. H. Ban- croft devotes 600 pages of his 26th volume to the story of Mormonism, \Adth apparent fairness to all sides. M. W. Mont- gomery's "Mormon Delusion," as its name implies, is a searching expose from a gentile point of view. Josiah Strong's 7th Chap- ter ("Our Country") is a calm, convincing statement of the Mormon peril. In Dr. Do3'le's "Presbyterian Home Missions" is an admirable condensed account of the story. The League for Social Ser^^ce has a series of anti-Mormon leaflets compiled by competent authorities. Rev. J. D. Nutting of Cleveland, O., has issued anti-Mormon literature of great value. 232 Leavening the Nation they were to be assimilated with the body pohtic and transformed into genuine and loyal American citizens. It was a new and delicate undertaking, but its possi- bihty has been fully demonstrated. The problem introduced with Mormonism was unlike either of those named. Here were people of New Eng- land ancestry setting up a theocracy, a hierarchy, and a patriarchy in the very heart of the home-missionary belt ; defending and practicing, in the name of religion, a con- ception of marriage "which originated in the twihght of the race, and which for many years has survived only in the darkness of heathenism " ; ^ a hierarchy also highly organized, diabolically active, and amazingly successful in winning converts ; hostile in every fiber to evangelical religion, to constituted government, and to the highest American ideals. For the sake of the Mormon himself, for the sake of the gentile living within his gates, for the sake of innocent children born into this evil estate, and for the sake of America and the Kingdom of God on earth, home missions heard and heeded the call of this imprecedented need and peril. It is claimed by some that Mormonism has the same standing among the sects as Congregationalism, Presby- terianism, Methodism, or Universalism, and that it is entitled to the same tolerance and respect; that it is permitted to win its way with other denominations by the reasonableness of its claims and by its skill in en- forcing them. The reply to this plausible plea is well made in the "Ten Reasons why Christians cannot fellov*^- ship with the Mormon Church," issued jointly by the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists of Utah and given here in a condensed form : * Dr. Strong's "Political Aspects of Mormonism," p. 4. Utah, New Mexico, Arizona 233 1. The Mormon Church unchurches all Christians. 2. The Mormon Church places the Book of Mormon and the Book of Doctrines and Covenants on a par with the Bible, equally inspired and binding. 3. The Mormon Church makes Joseph Smith a Prophet of God, and all who reject him, heretics, 4. The Mormon Church makes faith in the Mormon Priesthood essential to salvation, and denial of its au- thority a damnable sin. 5. The Mormon Church teaches a doctrine of God that is anti-scriptural, dishonorable to the Divine Being, and debasing to man. 6. The Mormon Church teaches that Adam is God, and that Jesus Christ is his son by natural generation. 7. The Mormon Church is polytheistic. It teaches the pluraUty of Gods. 8. The Mormon Church teaches an anti-Biblical doc- trine of salvation, 9. The Mormon Church believes in polygamy. The doctrine is to them both sacred and fundamental. 10. The Mormon Church teaches that God is a polyga- mist. To publish the articles of such a creed may almost demand an apology. The only justification is the abun- dant testimony it affords that Mormonism is fatal to the spiritual life of its converts, an enemy to the sanctity of home and the purity of society, a menace to American civihzation, and, therefore, to be actively opposed like every other manifest public evil. In 1849 a State government was organized under the name of Deseret. Congress refused to recognize it, and created in its stead a Territorial government, of which Brigham Young was appointed governor. The popu- 2 34 Leavening the Nation lation at this time was about 11,000. In ten years it rose to 40,000; in 1865 it was 80,000, one fourth of which were Indians. Gentiles to the number of four or five hundred were settled in Salt Lake City, and it was with this nucleus that organized home-missionary effort began. Significantly, the first demand for a Christian ministry, publicly voiced, comes from General P. E. Conner, com- manding the Federal forces in Utah, himself a Catholic. "To me," says General Conner, "it has long been a source of no little surprise that while the several denominations of the Church send their missionaries to the uttermost parts of the earth to redeem mankind, it has never been seriously thought that here, between either verge of this great continent, is to be found the grandest field for mis- sionary labor. Leaving out of view, entirely, the wants and religious necessities of the soldiers of this command and Gentiles congregated here, the Mormon people them- selves have greater need of missionary labor than any other people or community on the face of the earth," It was this appeal, significant in itself and still more so from its source, which led the American Home Mis- sionary Society to detach Rev. Norman McLeod from the Denver field, and instruct him by telegraph to open a mission in Salt Lake City. His coming was heartily welcomed. The Daily Union Vidctte, published by the officers and soldiers of Camp Douglas, hailed the event as follows: "The Eastern stage which reached here Monday night, brought to our city the Rev. Norman McLeod, who proposes to organize here a congregation for divine worship. It is not doubted that his zealous efforts in behalf of Christianity will be warmly seconded by the American and loyal citizens of Salt Lake, and that ere long we shall boast a thriving church and con- Utah, New Mexico, Arizona 235 gregation." The report of Mr. McLeod's first service, as given by the same paper, contains the following: "Sunday, Jan. 22, 1865, will ever be a memorable day in Utah. If we mistake not, when the anniversaries of battles, of bloody fields, and heroic struggles shall have been forgotten, yesterday will be remembered with praise and thanksgiving. A new era has dawned. It was a novel thing to hear the word of the hving God proclaimed in Utah, to hear the preacher lift up his voice in behalf of our country, and teach Christ and Him crucified. We were grateful to see that the large congre- gation was not entirely composed of so-called Gentiles, but many of the Saints were present." This first attempt to plant the gospel in Utah, though so heartily welcomed, was short-Hved, but vigorous to the end. A church of 18 members and a Sunday- school of over 200 children were organized; large con- gregations came to listen to the missionary. Mormons in great numbers were drawn to hear his anti-polygamy and anti-Mormon lectures. The leaders threatened that the bold preacher should never leave the Territory alive, and on the whole the promise of the future was bright. Unfortunately, General Conner and his force were re- moved at this time to Denver. In their absence vio- lence took courage, and one of the first victims was Dr. King Robinson, McLeod's right-hand man and the su- perintendent of his Sunday-school. Both men were cor- dially hated by the Mormon leaders, who were believed to be responsible for the murder of Robinson, although the deed was never brought home to them through the courts. Without military protection Christian worship became unsafe. Mr. McLeod was not permitted by the Society to risk his fife by continued service, and the mis- 236 Leavening the Nation sion was abandoned after two years of plucky endeavor. Six years passed before he returned to Salt Lake as a missionary. He then gathered what remnants of his old chiu-ch survived, organized them anew and soon called about him a congregation of 800 to 1,000. This was the second birth of Congregationalism in Utah, which re- sulted in the flourishing First Church, Salt Lake, with its present membership of nearly five hundred, of which Dr. C. T. Brown is pastor, and where Dr. W. M. Barrows began his ministry. In the interval between 1867 and 1873 came the Pres- byterians to Utah. Secretary Henry Kendall and Shel- don Jackson carefully explored the ground, and Rev. Mr, Hughes began work at Corinne in 1869. In 1871 the same Board entered Salt Lake City, Josiah Welch or- ganizing the first Presbyterian church. The year 1875 was signahzed by the opening of the first interior mis- sion, under D. J. McMillan, who settled at Mt. Pleasant. Six years of perilous and self-denying labor on the part of Dr. McMillan were rich in results. Four churches were gathered in the very heart of Mormondom, and twenty schools established with 1,500 children of Mor- mon parentage. From the very beginnings of missionary effort in Utah one need was made overwhelmingly apparent, that of Christian schools. Mormon schools were strictly nur- series of the Mormon Church. Children of Gentiles could not attend them without danger of contamination, and for Mormon children there was no hope, in such schools, of Christian enlightenment. The system of unsectarian education was not yet born, and was only a vague hope of some distant future. For these reasons missionary zeal in Utah incUned strongly toward educational effort. Utah, New Mexico, Arizona 237 The hope of the people was felt to be in the children almost alone. The churches themselves were to be re- cruited from the young, who were to be drawn by mis- sionary effort within reach of Christian instruction. It was this imperative demand that led, in 1879, to the organization of the New West Education Commission with headquarters in Chicago. Already in Boston steps had been taken towards founding academies at Salt Lake City, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque, and Colorado College, to her lasting credit, assumed their support until the Commission, after its organization in 1879, relieved it of the obligation. But free Christian schools to be scat- tered widely throughout both Territories were regarded as equally important and as absolutely essential to the academy interests, and it was to this work that the Com- mission gave its first energies. In three years it had bought or built schoolhouses in Salt Lake City, Ogden, Lynne, Turton, Himtsville, Morgan, Coalville, Hooper, Farmington, Centerville, Bountiful, Lehi, and Provo. In ten years the Commis- sion was holding property to the value of $162,700, partly in fee simple and partly by agreement for Christian uses. It had seven academies, four of them incorporated, twenty-four free schools with seventy-six teachers and 3,277 pupils. The Congregational churches responded Hberally to its appeals, and the receipts, which in 1880 were about $3,000, climbed before 1890 to $75,000 per year. Among the founders and early friends of the Society were Dr. F. A. Noble, first president. Dr. Simeon Gilbert, first vice-president. Col. C. G. Hammond, its first treas- urer. Dr. E. F. Williams, W. E. Hale, Esq., and Dr. G. S. F. Savage. For more than ten years Rev. Charles R. 238 Leavening the Nation Bliss was its only secretary, and to his wise foresight and tireless devotion, more, probably, than to any other personal influence, the Commission owes its remarkable growth and usefulness. Among its early missionaries were Lydia Tichenor, Edward Benner, and Henry E. Gordon; Miss Tichenor's visits among the churches of the East and her fervid appeals were an important factor in rousing public interest. Economy and even greater efficiency might have re- sulted had the important work of the Education Com- mission been directed through the Home Missionary Society, and the schools of one society and the chm-ches of the other been made a common interest under one management. It is no fault of the Commission that they were not. Twice the work was offered to the Home Missionary Society and twice declined because of what was then deemed, by its managers, a constitutional bar- rier. In the light of experience, the same question aris- ing to-day would probably receive a different treatment, and, at any cost to charter or constitution. Christian schools and Christian churches in Utah and New Mexico would be made a joint enterprise under one adminis- tration. In 1893 the New West Commission was united with the Congregational College and Education Society, which since that date has directed the educational work in Utah and New Mexico which the Commission so grandly began. Meanwhile public-school systems in both Territories relieve in some measure the demand, although so long as Mormonism and Romanism are what they are the free Christian school in Utah and New Mexico will be a growing rather than a diminishing need. Utah, New Mexico, Arizona 239 What has home missions accomplished for Utah? The question is often heard, and often it seems to be asked with an almost hopeless accent. What of the night? is the hail of the churches to the watchmen on the Utah wall, and the old answer was never more perti- nent, "The morning cometh and also the night." It is the characteristic of leaven that once hidden it works silently and continuously. The leaven of a trans- forming gospel has been faithfully hidden in the mass of Utah heathenism. Nearly one hundred Christian churches have been planted and more than 5,000 com- municants testify to their power. Christian schools to the number of seventy-five have been opened, many of them in the very heart of Mormonism. The Presbyte- rian Home Board reports to the last General Assembly that "powerful missionary agencies are riving the stu- pendous Mormon system to atoms. Mission schools have led to public schools. Preaching has resulted in hundreds of conversions and the organization of many churches. Many of the young people who have been reached by our schools have renounced the doctrines of Mormonism, a still larger number have had their faith shaken though they have remained in the Church. Others have come out bravely for Christ no matter what it cost. Hundreds of girls who have attended our schools have refused to become polygamous wives, and the young men have asserted their independence of priestly authority." The Presbyterian Board speaks for all the missionary Boards in this matter. There is progress, though against heavy odds. The morning cometh, though the shadows of the night hang so black and forbidding. Mormonism spreads like a rank weed; but a new soil is being created by home missions. Gen- 240 Leavening the Nation erous harvests are being put under the sod for future garnering, and the Christian people of America who will have faith in the future and faith in the gospel of light, and who will continue to show their faith by their works, shall yet see a new and Christian Utah. Crossing the southern borders of Utah and Colorado, one finds himself in a land so strange in the type of its people and their customs, that only with difficulty can he fancy himself in the United States and under an Ameri- can government. The new and the old, the very old, jostle strangely together. It is but a short ride from Kansas to the border of New Mexico, but in that brief space the traveller passes from the highest civilization of the twentieth century into a land where the savagery of the sixteenth century still Ungers almost unchanged. This, however, is only a first impression. Further acquaintance discovers that the old is yielding to the new; that the leaven of the railroad, the schoolhouse, the church, the mission, and above all of the American home, is silently disintegrating the old type ; and that it is only a question of time when New Mexico and Arizona shall be as genuinely American as Kansas, Colorado, or even Minnesota. These two Territories divide with Florida the distinc- tion of being the earliest populated region of the New World. As early as 1526, not forty years after Colum- bus, the country was entered by the Spaniards and numerous ruins of Spanish towns and buildings testify to the presence of their early colonies. By some, a pre- historic civilization has been claimed for these regions; but their architectural remains differ so widely from the Aztec ruins of Mexico and Central America that this theory is widely disputed. All relics yet discovered Utah, New Mexico, Arizona 241 seem to point to Spanish origin. The Spanish posses- sion of New Mexico came to an end in 1822 with the in- dependence of Mexico. Thenceforward the region we are considering became a part of the RepiibHc of Mexico, until in 1846 it was possessed by the American Army under General Kearney, and, under the stipulations of the treaty that followed, was transferred from Mexico to the United States. "New Mexico's population represents three distinct civihzations and three distinct periods of history. Here are found the real aborigines of the country, the Pueblos, a name given alike to the people and their dwellings. They are a sedentary race in contrast with the tribal or wandering Indians. This people, the Pueblos, are slowly disappearing; numbering now about 8,000, while fifteen years ago they were some 9,000. Nominally Roman con- verts, they are, rather, worshippers of the forces of nature, the sun, the clouds, the wind and rain, keeping up their heathen dances in most of the pueblos. An industrious, orderly, peaceable people, they become good citizens, in many instances leading the Mexicans in the intro- duction and use of the arts of civilized life. Among this people are 2,000 children of school age. "The second element, and numerically by far the largest, is the Spanish-Mexican. With a few families of pure Spanish blood, the great proportion of the more than 100,000 who compose this class are of mixed Spanish and Indian blood, speaking the Spanish language, inheriting the traits of character and physique that belong to both the Spanish and Indian type, — 'dark complexion, black hair and eyes, short and slight of stature, slow, quaint, picturesque and dreamy.' A contented and unam- bitious people, with that easy-going contentment and 242 Leavening the Nation that lack of aspiration which three centuries of the ab- solute rule of a priesthood must produce. And such a priesthood! Once in the history of New Mexico the whole company of her priests were expelled from the land because of the corruption and immorality of their lives, and the French Jesuit was invited to take their vacant places. " Into the midst of this Spanish-Mexican life have come, in the last decade or two, some twenty thousand or more from the East and North, and these constitute the third element of New Mexico's population — the American immigrant. The new hfe has brought in modern insti- tutions — the railroad, which has fifteen hundred miles of its iron track in the Territory; the Christian school, which has come through the labors of several denominations; and the Christian Church, represented by the larger eccle- siastical bodies." * Thus have the old and the new, the meal and the leaven, been brought together, and a hopeful ferment has begun which is as certain in its result as the same contact has proved in the early West, in the Northwest Territory, in the Louisiana Purchase, and on the Pacific Coast. In the native New Mexican, our missionaries find a prepared foundation often wanting in the native Ameri- can—an intense rehgious nature. "They possess a spirit of reverence and devotion that I could wish were more prevalent among Americans in general." ^ Mr. Heald adds: "It is a great pity that this devotion is largely lavished upon Santos, pictures and images, many of them » See Home Missionary, Sept., 1893, p. 258, article by Secre- tary Washington Choate. » J. H. Heald, Home Missionary, Oct., 1901, p. 95. Utah, New Mexico, Arizona 243 of the rudest sort. Religious sentiment is strong, but seems somehow to have failed to couple on to the ten commandments." Here, indeed, is the missing hnk which is to be supplied by the Christian education which has been denied this people and their ancestors for many- hundreds of years. It was a sad but suggestive confession made by a prominent Cathohc priest to our missionary, Birlew: "I want to give you some disinterested advice. Don't waste your time working for these people. You see that we Catholics have been working for them 300 years and have never been able to do anything with them." To which the missionary of Christian education replied: "When we have worked for them 300 years, if we don't succeed any better than you have, we will get out, and give somebody else a chance to try." ^ "Some of us," says Mr. Heald, "have seen the Peni- tentes go forth on Good Friday lashing their bare backs with cruel scourges and cactus thorns, or staggering under the weight of a great cross, perhaps to be bound and Ufted thereon in imitation of our Lord. We be- lieve that those who are capable of such self-inflicted suffering for a mistaken superstition, are capable also of real self-sacrifice, and we hope to see the day when they shall go forth bearing the real cross of Jesus and wifling to suffer for righteousness' sake," — a hope and faith in which all who believe in the power of the gospel and in organized home-missionary effort will fervently join. The home missionary entered New Mexico in 1849 in the person of W. H. Read, and the Baptist Board have the honor of commissioning him. His work was opened at Santa Fe, but meeting with vicissitudes, it was soon abandoned. The American Missionary Association * Home Missionary, article by E. Lyman Hood, p. 204. 244 Leavening the Nation sent W. G. Kephart in 1850. "To reach Santa Fe, he had to ride a thousand miles in an ox-cart, the time consumed being three months." ^ He was succeeded by D. F. MacFarland, who in 1866 estabHshed a Pres- byterian church and a mission school at Santa Fe. The school is now the Santa Fe Boarding School which has been such a blessing to Mexican girls. The first fruit of the Baptist mission was J. D. Mon- dragon, captain of the Penitentes in Taos Valley. By chance he wandered into the mission church and heard a sermon. Obtaining a Bible, he read and studied it for seventeen years and was taught to give up the supersti- tious practices of the Penitentes, and afterwards became an evangelist among his own people. " Jose Y. Perea was the first Mexican ordained to the Presbyterian min- istry. At an Eastern college he imbibed Protestant views. During a vacation period he broke the images in his father's house, and was soundly whipped for it." ^ After sixteen years of exile on account of his Protestant views, he returned to New Mexico and was ordained a minister among his own people. Father Gomez, a lead- ing CathoHc, was another fruit of early home missions. Being impressed by the sight of a Bible, he travelled by ox-cart one hundred and fifty miles to get one, selling his ox to make the purchase. Unaided he studied the book and gave up Catholicism. These early conversions indi- cate a certain hunger for truth that may cause surprise. Yet it would be stranger still if people who had been mocked for years with the forms and shadows of spiritual Ufe should not welcome the substance when once placed before them. 1 Doyle's "Presbyterian Home Missions," p. 212. 2 Ibid., p. 213. Utah, New Mexico, Arizona 245 Similar instances might be muUiphed to show the hope- fulness of missionary effort among these people. Lorenzo M. Ford was a full-blooded Pueblo Indian. His mother, on her dying bed, caused him to swear solemnly never to forsake the Roman Cathohc reUgion. After her death a Spanish Don carried Lorenzo off as a slave and abused him. During the Civil War he ran away and joined the 2d Colorado regiment. The captain of his company lived at Akron, Ohio, and with him Ford returned to that State. At Hudson he was converted and joined the Congregational Church. His chief struggle in forsaking the Cathohcs was the vow made at his mother's death- bed; but even that yielded before the stronger claims of his new faith. After a course of study at the Training School in Juarez, he was commissioned as a missionary to his own people at San Rafael, New Mexico. From one of his missionary letters we quote a single incident: "We came to a httle ranch and found a young man and his wife working at their wheat, I asked him if they would keep us over night and feed our horses. He very kindly said, 'With great pleasure,' for he thought we were missionaries. They then left their work and came to the house with us. One of us read a sermon of Dr. Talmage to him, and he seemed very much pleased with it. At the supper-table I asked him if we should ask a blessing, 'Yes; if you hke,' said he. In the morn- ing we read the Bible to him and explained some things he did not understand; he would ask us questions to find out the truths of God. He told us he wanted this Christianity. 'It is the one I want, and my wife also.' He told us about Father B coming to him and charging $18 for a blessing on his wheat. The last time he came he had told him he would pay no more for his 246 Leavening the Nation blessings, 'You are no more than man, and have no power to forgive sins.' So the Father told him if he did not pay he would take his name off the books of the church roll. He said to the Father: 'You can take my name off the church roll, but you cannot take my name off the Lamb's Book of Life in heaven, for Jesus put it there.' We went on our way rejoicing. These poor people could not read a word, but their love for the crucified Saviour was strong." The conditions here de- scribed remind one of the foreign field, and of the won- derful victories of the gospel when brought for the first time to souls hungering for truth and unhardened by its appeals. Presbyterian missions in New Mexico reflect honor upon the wisdom and dihgence of their Board. Their work includes three Presbyteries in the Synod of New Mexico, sixty-two organized congregations, — of which twenty-seven are American, twenty-nine Mexican, — with a total membership of 3,500. There are thirty-eight ordained missionaries, twenty- two evangelists and helpers, sixty commissioned teachers and 1,500 enrolled pupils. These congregations have raised during the past year nearly $29,000 for missions and church ex- penses. Methodists show a total of sixty organizations, forty- two church edifices, and 2,500 commimicants. Baptists, Congregationalists, and Episcopalians are doing a smaller work, but of the same kind, educational and rehgious combined, and with constant and most cheering tokens of success. The conditions in Arizona do not differ essentially from those found in New Mexico ; the same mixed popu- lations, only a larger relative proportion of American Utah, New Mexico, Arizona 247 settlers, drawn thither by the richer mines and the larger possibihties of the soil. Both these Territories are knocking for admission to the household of American commonwealths — Arizona, with a population of 113,000, and New Mexico, with 122,000. Various agencies have combined to make them fit for Statehood — natural re- sources, raihoads, a pubUc-school system since 1883, an American element which now controls both Territories commercially and pohtically, and, not least among them, Protestant churches, established by home-missionary efforts, in all the larger towns and Christian schools, in which the children of the native population are being trained for future citizenship. XVI ALASKA, CUBA, PORTO RICO Territorially, Alaska is no mean possession, com- prising as it does one sixth of the area of the United States. It fell to Russia in 1741 by right of discovery. About the year 1800 the Russian- American Fur Com- pany obtained from the Emperor Paul the exclusive right of hunting and fishing throughout the domain, and Sitka, "a rude collection of log huts," was made the capital. These conditions held almost without change until 1867, at which time the native population did not exceed 27,000, and the civihzed inhabitants were less than 1,500, divided about equally between Russians and Americans. It was then that negotiations began between the United States and Russia for the purchase of this tract. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, was the author and ardent advocate of the measure. To the people of the United States almost nothing was known of the re- sources of the country; it was called "the frozen North," and it seemed an even chance whether the sum paid to Russia, $7,200,000, would ever return even a fair inter- est. The astonishing sequel of the Alaska Purchase is now familiar history. "Seward's folly," as Alaska was humorously called at the time, has demonstrated the far-sighted wisdom of that patriotic statesman. Since 1867, Alaska has suppUed-^furs, fish, and gold 248 Alaska, Cuba, Porto Rico 249 amounting to $150,000,000, about equally divided be- tween the three. United States capital invested in Alaska approaches $25,000,000, besides other millions invested in transportation. Annual shipments of mer- chandise to Alaska aggregate more than $12,000,000, and have amounted since the purchase to more than $100,000,000. Population has increased from 30,000 to 75,000, including a large floating element of miners. While the fur-seal industry has declined, the fishing in- terest has taken its place, and Alaska is now supplying one half the salmon of the country. These are not guesses, but the verdict of experts employed by the government, whose findings are accepted and endorsed by the Treasury Department at Washington. For some reason not quite clear home missions were slow in entering. Ignorance of the country and an ex- aggerated idea of the rigors of the climate may account for this in part. But a more potent reason may have been that when this new door at the North was opened, all the home boards were struggling wdth new conditions at the South and West, thrown upon them suddenly by the close of the Civil War. Whatever the reason, it was fully ten years after the purchase before the church began to reahze its duty and opportunitiy in Alaska. For years the Greek Church had held the ground with its schools and missions, and nearly one half the natives were included in its churches. After the transfer, churches and schools were generally closed. Europeans in the fur trade returned home. "The Lutheran mis- sionary and his flock abandoned the Territory, and the land was left without law, government, teachers, preachers, schools, or charities." * *S. H. Doyle, "Presbyterian Home Missions," p. 114. 250 Leavening the Nation It was Sheldon Jackson, the stalwart pioneer of the Presbyterian Board, in 1877, who led the way to Alaska and established the first American mission at Fort Wrangel, leaving on the ground, as the first missionary in the Territory, Mrs. A. R. McFarland. From this be- ginning, in twenty-five years there have grown "two presbyteries, eight native churches, four white churches with over a thousand church members, eight native and three white Sabbath-schools, one training-school, four- teen mission-school teachers, one hundred and fifty-one pupils, and a hospital which requires the services of five workers." Next to the Presbyterians, the American Missionary Association, thirteen years later (in 1890) established a school at Cape Prince of Wales in the far North. "Already a Christian mart.yr has been sacrificed to the work. The most westerly point of land over which the Stars and Stripes float is occupied by this mission-school. The Eskimos, eager for instruction, crowd the building night and day, or rather during the twenty-four hours, as the days are scarcely divided by fight and darkness. It was found necessary to turn away pupils, who insisted on coming so continuously that the teachers found no opportunity for rest." * Four missionaries, two of them native Eskimos, are carrying on this work. The Congregational Home Missionary Society in connection with the Sunday-school Society entered Alaska in 1899, at Douglas, across the channel from Juneau. Here was the greatest stamp-mill in the world, and 2,000 people with no church. "At Douglas," said the missionary, "we hunted about for a suitable room and found nothing but a dance-hall; but we hired it. The ' Secretary C. J. Ryder. Alaska, Cuba, Porto Rico 251 First Congregational Church was born in that dance-hall three months later. There on a table where the miners were wont to gamble we spread the snowy cloth and broke the emblems of our Lord. After nine months we dedicated a beautiful church edifice, the finest in Alaska, valued, with the lots, at $5,000." Leaving H. Hammond Cole at this point. General Missionary Wirt went over the White Pass and down the Yukon to St. Michael's,, on the south shore of Norton Sound. Crossing to the north shore he came to historic Nome. It was a time of intense mining excitement. From three to five thousand men were digging treasure out of the sands along the beach. An epidemic of fever was over the camp. Men were sick and dying without help. The people hailed the coming of the mission- ary, raised money for a hospital, church, and reading- room combined, and in a few weeks one hundred and twenty-five patients had been received and cared for, a church of forty-one members, thirty-five of them men, had been organized, which assumed self-support almost from the start, and a valuable library had been gathered for the free use of the camp. At Valdez, on Copper River, the Endeavor Mission Church was organized in 1900. Rev. D. W. Cram and wife, both ardent Christian Endeavorers, gave it this prophetic name, up to which the church is aiming to five. In response to this spirit on the part of the people, Chris- tian Endeavor Societies of the North and West have contributed largely to its support. Valdez holds an important position, is growing rapidly, and promises to be one of the largest if not the very largest town in new Alaska. Thus following the lead of the Presbyterians of 1877, 252 Leavening the Nation Baptists, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, and Moravians working together in perfect harmony have raised the missionary standard in the great Northwest. It is the last Northwest in American history. That name, beginning in Vermont, was passed on to Michigan and Wisconsin, was transmitted later to Montana, Idaho, and Washington, and ends its career in Alaska, the latest and the only real Northwest Territory. How soon, with its strange mixture of races, it will be fit for Statehood, only a wise prophet would venture to predict; but that day is as sure to come as it has come in New Mexico and Oklahoma; as it came in IlHnois and In- diana, which at one time seemed further from Statehood than Alaska seems to-day. The fitness of Alaska for such promotion will not rest alone upon its wealth or its population; it must be determined by the intelligence, the education, and the moral stabiHty of its people. These are the factors which make States worthy of a place in the American Union, and these conditions are being created and are to be suppUed in ever-growing measure by the agency of organized home missions. Cuba. — The echo of the last gun of the Spanish- Ameri- can War had hardly died away before the Congregational Home Missionary Society sent two delegates to the island to inquire into its moral and religious needs, Cuba was not American soil, but only the temporary ward of the United States. Hence the charter of the Society was amended by the legislature of New York to include in its field the "West Indies." Dr. J. D. Kings- bury and Rev. E. P. Herrick landed in Cuba in January, 1899. They came as spies of an unknown country. Some foregieams of the situation had reached them through the Society's Cuban Mission in Tampa, but their Alaska, Cuba, Porto Rico 253 reception exceeded every hope or expectation and over- whelmed them with grateful surprise. Before leaving the steamer at Havana, they were wel- comed by a httle company who "almost carried them in their arms to a still larger number at the landing who expressed their joy in words of no uncertain sound." In their intercourse with the people, these visiting breth- ren soon discovered that the Cuban population, as dis- tinguished from the Spanish, were in a state of radical revolt from the Cathohc Church and its priesthood. Wrongs and abuses long endured and insolently inflicted had produced a natural reaction, and the people in their distress were driven directly to God for the sympathy and help denied by their spiritual leaders. This was the almost universal sentiment. In the higher circles of society the fact of this revolt was clearly recognized. Professors in Havana Univer- sity confessed without reserve: "If Protestantism can be known it will be received; the way is open. The crimes of the priests are known; they can never be for- gotten; humanity revolts. The Cubans welcome Prot- estants; their religion is hke American statesmanship, like American civihzation, or American war; it is for the brotherhood of man. The people are disgusted with the customs, the duplicity, the selfishness, the lusts of the priests. They fear them no longer. The Spaniard is the worst man on earth and the priest is the worst Spaniard." The mayor of Havana, a Cuban patriot, gave them a hearty reception. "You will be welcomed by my people. You give and do not receive. The Catholics do the opposite. Your mission is like your generous people, and though I am a Catholic, I give you a hearty and 254 Leavening the Nation sincere welcome. If I can aid you with letters of intro- duction or in any way I shall be most happy." At Matanzas the same signs of interest and the same hearty welcome were experienced. At Bolondron, Dr. Kingsbury was met by the mayor of the city and the city officials with a brass band playing welcome music. Three little flower-girls in white presented him flowers. A throng of people escorted him to a place of meeting where, after a sumptuous breakfast, a ser\dce was held, and the freedom and largeness of the Protestant faith were explained. The people responded, "That is the religion we want." Said Dr. Kingsbury, "I could have organized a church of a hundred members that day." At Guanabacoa, Mr. Herrick was enjoying a similar experience. " Editors, lawyers, teachers, and cultivated people made up the audience. They expressed a great satisfaction in hearing of the ' Uberty religion,' and in- sisted upon having another meeting." At Gienfuegos, a city editor had published Mr. Herrick's tract setting forth the simple articles of Protestant faith, and the priest had cursed the delegation in his church, — which made the people smile. A public hall was secured, and at the last meeting there were two hundred present and great enthusiasm was manifested. Perhaps no missionary journey since the days of the apostles was ever more significant or successful. Cuba was wide open to American Home Missions, and almost unentered. The Baptists, under Rev. Mr. Diaz, were established in Havana with a church of some 2,000 mem- bers. In the province of Santiago they have also twelve points, at San Luis two points, and the same number in Puerto Principe. Christians and Episcopalians have ob- Alaska, Cuba, Porto Rico 255 tained a footing, and very recently Presbyterians have opened work at three points on the island. The result of this visit was the appointment of Mr. Herrick to take up his residence in Cuba and to open missionary work in Havana. In this endeavor he was assisted by J. M. Lopez, then pastor of the Spanish- American Church in Brooklyn, who spent several months on the island. The Brooklyn church and the Cuban church at Tampa furnished a hopeful nucleus in large numbers of their membership who returned to Cuba after the declaration of peace. The Central Church in Havana opened with a charter membership of 130, which has grown to nearly 200, with a Sunday-school of over 200, and a Christian Endeavor Society of seventy members. Rev. A. De Barritt, after successful labor at Vedado, a suburb of Havana, was established at Cienfuegos, where he has built up a large congregation. Mr. Herrick was suc- seeded at Havana by G. L. Todd, a Massachusetts pastor, while he himself went on to Matanzas to open a hopeful work in that city. Charles W. Frazer was transferred from Key West, where his ministry was greatly blessed, to Guanajay, a Cuban city of 9,000, where he is laying foundations for an important church. At San Antonio De Los Banos, a city of 13,000, a successful church has been instituted by C. S. Ventosa, a native Cuban. At Guanabacoa, four miles from Havana, with a population of 15,000, H. B. Someillan, another native Cuban, is pastor over a church which began with twenty-five members and is rapidly increasing. No other Protes- tant organization is on the ground. These are the beginnings of a new work, and in all the years of home-missionary history, even in the early days 256 Leavening the Nation of the West, no warmer welcome was ever given to the gospel, and no brighter promise ever cheered the hearts of the workers. Eleven Protestant denominations are now established on the island. In a field so broad, with needs so overwhelming, conflict is impossible. Twenty- five cities and towns are occupied with thirty-one central stations and fifty outstations. Sixty-one pastors and teachers and fifty-eight other workers make up the missionary force. There are seven church edifices, with a combined value of $150,000 and a church membership of nearly 3,000. Sixteen young men are preparing for the ministry ; sixty-five Sunday-schools, with over 3,000 children and more than 200 teachers, are connected with the missions, and several of the denominations support day-schools as well. Not only is this work conducted on lines of Christian comity, but provision is made to let brotherly love con- tinue. At the first Evangelical Conference ever held in Cuba, Feb. 20, 1902, it was resolved almost unanimously that wherever one denomination is holding regular services in a town of 6,000 people or less, no other denomi- nation shall enter for work, and that two denominations may hold a town of 15,000 or less.* Rev. George L. Todd of Havana, in reporting this historical conference, adds : "The mayor of the city (Cienfuegos) was unable to be present, but his assistant came as his substitute. His address was a hearty welcome and wonderfully well de- livered, brimming full of good thought and choice ex- pression. Among other things, he said that previous to American occupation it would have been impossible for a layman hke himself to have spoken at a religious * Home Missionary, April, 1902, p. 317. Alaska, Cuba, Porto Rico 257 gathering. This gathering marks the freedom which we now enjoy without the fear of physical harm or social ostracism." When in the logic of events the "Gem of the Antilles '' shall become an integral part of the United States, as many beheve it must, it will owe its freedom from Span- ish tyranny to the intervention of the American Govern- ment. But its fitness for a place in the enlightened, liberty-loving family of American commonwealths will be chiefly due to two forces — free public education and home-missionary culture. Porto Rico. — At the opening of the Spanish- American War httle was said or thought of Porto Rico. Cuba and her wrongs was the burning question. Yet not far away in the same seas was an island nearly half as large as the State of Massachusetts, as Spanish as Cuba, and the victim of Spanish misrule for nearly four centuries. It fell an easy prey to the American army under Gen- eral Miles in 1898; indeed, it appeared more than glad to surrender to the United States. Simultaneously with the visit of Dr. Kingsbury and Mr. Herrick to Cuba, a delegation from the American Missionary Association, consisting of Dr. A. F. Beard and Dr. W. H. Ward, sailed for Porto Rico to explore its needs with reference to missionary work. They found a population of 900,000, about equally divided between whites and colored. Only 100,000 of the people can read, and of these less than 15,000 can also write. The delegation made a very complete tour of the island. Says Dr. Beard: "We visited many schools in many places. With one exception, we found no buildings con- structed and set apart for educational use. Public schools are in private houses. In many towns the Span- 258 Leavening the Nation lards had substantial buildings for the miUtary which kept the people down, but no schoolhouses. Seldom did we find in any schools desks, and there were only backless benches. One reading-book sufficed for a class, being passed from one pupil to another. The schools are ungraded and but a small portion of the pupils get be- yond reading and writing and these pupils are among the exceptional few." "We found churches," says Dr. Beard, "but no people in them. Here is the church which for 400 years has had an unhindered opportunity, and here is the fruitage. In our sense of the word home, there are none among the masses of the people of Porto Rico." These visiting brethren were the first to make anything hke an exhaus- tive study of the island in the interest of home missions ; but they found the Young Men's Christian Association represented in San Juan by "a capable minister" labor- ing among the United States soldiers. A large theater had been secured in the city for rehgious services, which were well attended, and where sermons were preached in Spanish and Enghsh. To the question " What does Porto Rico most need? "4 Dr. Beard's answer is comprehensively given — "Salva- tion. But anyone can see it is not enough to preach against such darkness at this. Righteousness needs knowledge as much as knowledge needs righteousness. The hope for the Christianity of these people in the gen- erations to come must be through Christian schools: schools with earnest Christian teachers in different cen- ters, schools where the Bible shall be the first lesson of every day; schools furnished with modern appointments and appliances, graded and supplied with text-books, not catechisms; schools that shall be object-lessons to the Alaska, Cuba, Porto Rico 259 people, while experienced teachers in their home Ufe shall also show how homes are to be made the centers of refining and civiUzing influence." The same eager welcome from the people was met in Porto Rico as in Cuba, although the readiness for church life is not as marked in the former as in the latter. But the need of churches is even greater. The people are practically without churches and must be made ready- by education to feel their need and their blessing. The return of Drs. Beard and Ward and their report on the situation were followed by prompt action on the part of the Association, seconded by earnest appeals and ready contributions from the churches. In a few months schools had been opened at Santurce, a suburb of San Juan, and at Lares in the mountain region. Congrega- tional churches were established at Fajardo, Humacoa, and Lares, where old people, middle-aged and youth crowd the services and httle children fill the Sunday- schools, The Association has at the present time a force of seven American teachers divided between Santurce and Lares, with 300 enrolled scholars. Great eagerness is manifested on the part of the children, and willingness to help on the part of the people. "The children prove themselves about as bright as American children, quick in their perceptions, with good memories, weak in arithmetic, not good thinkers or reasoners." * One great need is that of practical industrial education to teach these people how to do something, of which they are now helplessly ignorant. The next step of the Asso- ciation will be to open industrial schools, Presbyterians entered Porto Rico in the summer of »Prof. C. B Scott. 26o Leavening the Nation 1899, at Mayaguez, organizing their first church of eleven in April of the following year. From this as a center, M. E. Caldwell and his assistant, J. W. James, reach out with services to four neighboring towns. Two schools have been opened at Mayaguez, with seventy enrolled scholars. At Aguadella, in a population of 8,000, a church of sixty-two members was gathered in Feb., 1901, and the pastor, J. L. Underwood, holds services at five neighbor- ing outstations. Here also is a school of fifty pupils. The Presbyterian Church of San Juan was organized in 1900 by Dr. J. M. Greene, and a building was erected in the same year at a cost of $7,000 — the first Protestant church building in Porto Rico. "After less than three years," says Dr. Doyle, ''we have in Porto Rico to-day three organized churches, eight missionaries, a dozen outstations, four schools, eight teachers, and a medical mission — a most creditable work for the time in which it has been wrought." ^ Besides the CongregationaUsts and Presbyterians, the Baptists have two American ladies devoting part of their time to teaching, and the Christian Church has a school at San Juan with three teachers from the States. Yet before any of these figures shall be published they may all need revision. The Porto-Rican work is in its earhest stages; the opportunity is unbounded, the need immeasurable. Present investments might be doubled and trebled within the next twelve months without the slightest fear of waste. No more ideal missionary field was ever opened to the American churches than Cuba and Porto Rico. If these islands were on the other side of the globe their need atid promise would thrill Ameri- * "Presbyterian Home Missions," p. 257. Alaska, Cuba, Porto Rico 261 can Christians. They are at our doors ; and nearness is a severe test of missionary zeal. Since after long years of protest our Government has been moved at length to end the intolerable oppression of Spanish rule, shall not the Christian churches of America hasten to set its victims free from the heavier bondage of ignorance and superstition? XVII HOME MISSIONS AND THE IMMIGRANT PROBLEM To realize the nature of the problem some of its amaz- ing conditions should be understood. At the opening of the nineteenth century, in a territory of less than a milUon square miles, were Uving about 4,000,000 people substantially of one blood. Fifty years later, in 1850, the national area had trebled in extent, and popula- tion had multiplied nearly eight times. Still we were substantially people of one blood. Up to 1840 the total immigration from all quarters had not exceeded half a million. Then began the flood. During the next thirty years we took in about 6,000,- 000 foreigners. Driven on the one hand by famines and oppressions at home; drawn on the other by the de- mands of labor in a new and rapidly developing country; by hberal homestead laws and cheap transportation; they came and continued coming, — every comer making himself an agent to bring others, and sending home money for the passage, — until for continuous years, at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans, immigrants were arriving at a rate from 500 to 1,000 every day. They were mostly Cathohcs from Ireland, and the burden thus suddenly thrown upon the American GathoUc Church was heavier than it 262 Home Missions and the Immigrant Problem 263 could well rarry. The sudden lifting of old-world restraints was so relaxing in its effects that thousands of good Cathohcs were at this tinie lost to the Church, which was not as ready then as it became at a later period to receive and care for them. This was specially true outside of large cities, and it has been estimated by a Cathohc authority that at least 20,000,000 people have been lost to the Church through its unprepared- ness to shepherd them during those rushing days of im- migration. Next in volume to the Irish was the German invasion, very Httle of it Catholic, but chiefly Lutheran, so far as it was reUgious at all. This element gravitating quite generally to the West so strengthened the Lutheran church that from being one of the least it has become one of the foremost Protestant communions, outnumbering in Chicago the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episco- pal combined. The virtues of the German are conceded and have been aheady enumerated; yet it must be con- fessed that Germany has contributed not a small share of unbeheving, irreligious, and non-churchgoing people to American society. Up to this time, aside from the Irish and the German, there was httle to attract attention and nothing to excite real alarm, although great fears were felt and some fool- ish things were said and done. It is only in recent years that new, more ignorant, and therefore more dangerous elements have entered into the problem of immigration. Its volume has greatly increased. Between 1865 and 1885 more than 7,000,000 were added to our foreign pop- ulation, which is to say that in these twenty years for- eign immigration exceeded that of the entire previous record of the country. Its quality too, had not im- 264 Leavening the Nation proved. The Irish and German tides were ebbing, while those of Southern and Eastern Europe were both in- creasing and threatening. Coming down to present-day conditions, the latest and best authority upon this important problem is the census of 1900.* The present total population of the United States, exclusive of Porto Rico and the Philippines, is 76,303,387, of which 10,460,085, or 13.7 per cent, are for- eign born, while 15,738,854 were born in America of foreign parents. These latter, while classed in the census as "native born," are foreign by descent, and dis- tinctly foreign by environment, at least in their homes. The two together constitute more than one third of the population of the country. These foreign elements are found mainly in the Northern States. In the Northeast- ern section, including New England, New York, Pennsyl- vania, and Delaware, more than one half the population may claim to be of foreign birth or parentage. North Dakota has proportionally the largest foreign popu- lation of any single State, the per cent, being 77.5. Minnesota and Wisconsin come next, then Rhode Island and Massachusetts. It has long been a common belief that the foreign ele- ment gravitates heavily towards the cities, a beUef that is abundantly verified by the latest facts. There are 160 cities in the United States having each a population of at least 25,000 and an aggregate of 19,718,312. They contain more than one fourth of the entire population, and of this number 53.7 per cent, more than one half are foreign born or of foreign parentage. In this sense it is * For many of the following facts the writer is indebted to the summaries published by F. H. Wines, Assistant Director of the United States Census. Ai.vi Tabor Twing, D.D. Secretary for Domestic Missions of the Protestant Episcopal Church from 1866 to 1882. Home Missions and the Immigrant Problem 265 true, as believed and often declared, that "American cities are more foreign than American." In several of the larger cities the proportion is even more significant. Chicago has but 383,285 native-born American inhabitants as against 1,315,307 of foreign birth or parentage, that is, three fourths, or 76.9 per cent, of foreign stock. Milwaukee and Detroit are even more foreign than Chicago, the former having 82.7 per cent, and the latter 77.5 per cent, while New York, Cleveland, and San Francisco are not far behind. Fol- lowing them come Buffalo, St. Paul, Boston, Jersey City, Minneapohs, Newark, Rochester, Providence, Pitts- burg, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Toledo, and Philadelphia; all of them with a population exceeding 100,000, more than one half of which is of ahen blood. Thus in all these chief cities of the land the foreign elements hold not only the balance of power but an absolute majority of the citizens. An instructive feature of the problem is the source of our foreign populations. Great Britain, including Can- ada, furnishes 34-5 per cent, or more than one third of the whole. England, Germany, and Ireland together supply about one half. During the last decade, not only has the volume of immigration declined but its character has perceptibly changed. Between 1880 and 1890, immi- grants from abroad numbered 5,246,613; between 1890 and 1900, 3,687,564, of which Eastern and Southern Europe furnished the chief proportion,^ Emigrants from Russia, Poland, Austria, Hungary, and Italy have doubled within ten years. There is also an observable Since 1900 the tide of foreign immigration has turned from ebb to flood, stimulated by the unparalleled prosperity of the United States. 266 Leavening the Nation tendency among foreign elements to distribute them- selves by nationalities. Two thirds of the Irish remain in the East; two thirds of the Germans go West; more than three fourths of our Scandinavians are found in the West and Northwest, while Russians, Poles, Hungari- ans, and Italians are chiefly found in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania, and Bohemians and Hollanders in the Central West. The effect of this vast infusion of foreign blood into the moral, social, and political life of America, is at once a fascinating and a baffling study. None but an opti- mist of the purest water can view it without concern. Happily, we are able to count upon our British, German, and Scandinavian people for substantial sympathy with American theories of government. These have all stood side by side with our own brothers and sons for the defence of the Union. They generally believe also, in popular education and in Christian civilization. Among them are certain imported ideals and customs which are un-American, and certainly anti-Puritan, and their esti- mate of the Sabbath as a holy day we would be glad to see amended ; still it would be easy to imagine worse and more perilous evils than these. Of the Irish contingent, and much of that from South- ern Europe, under control of the Catholic Church, our hopes are fed and our fears quieted by the unquestioned Americanizing of that Church, amounting almost to revolution, until it presents a constantly growing contrast to the Roman Catholicism of the Old World. And this tendency, we are led to believe, must increase rather than grow less under our system of free education. But that ignorance and crime have increased with foreign emi- gration, and as a result of it; that dangerous classes of Home Missions and the Immigrant Problem 267 alien descent threaten all that is good; that intemper- ance, moral contagion, and corruption of youth, with socialism and anarchy have come to us from over the sea, and enter dangerously into the social, moral, and pohtical hfe of the nation — none but the blind will deny, and only the utterly fatuous will lightly esteem. How to correct, enhghten, and assimilate, is the com- plex problem. The only remedy for darkness is light. The supreme corrective of low ideals and evil practices is the gospel of the Son of God, which when accepted "breaks the shackles of hierarchy, develops individ- uality, inculcates reverence for law and order, secures the sanctity of the Sabbath," ^ and transforms formalists and infidels into patriotic and Christian citizens. It is needless to say that the immigrant problem, when it was sanely comprehended, revolutionized the appeal of home missions. Hitherto that appeal came from our own people, and often from our own kin. To follow close after them on the western trail, and to stand with them in planting the church and the school in their in- fant settlements, was the whole of home missions. While that feature has never lost its claim, and never will, another claim has divided the attention and con- cern of the churches. To the peril of domestic heathen- ism has been joined the larger fear of imported barbar- ism, and thus for many years foreign missions at home has been a distinct interest of organized American home missions. No one denomination, so far as the record shows, can claim distinct precedence in originating this work. The alarm was sudden and the response simultaneous. In * H. L. Morehouse, " Baptist Home Missions, Jubilee Volume," p. 409. 268 Leavening the Nation 1883 the American Home Missionary Society organized its three foreign departments, appointing expert super- intendents over each, not, however, to inaugurate work among foreign-speaking people, but to organize, under special direction, a work which for some years had been in progress. The three immigrant classes to be bene- fited by this arrangement were the German, the Scandi- navian, and the Slavic. Rev. Geo. E. Albrecht, first appointed Superintendent of the German department, was soon called away to for- eign missionary work in Japan and was succeeded by Dr. M. E. Eversz, who continues in charge to the present time. Under his skillful direction 140 German churches have been gathered, with twenty-one missions not yet organized into churches, all of them cared for by less than eighty missionaries. Over 700 were added to these churches the last year, and their total membership ex- ceeds 6,000, while their Sunday-school attendance ap- proaches 7,000. Something of the genuineness of their church life may be inferred from the fact that these 6,000 Christian Germans gave in benevolence during the last twelve months more than $6,000, not including in any case money raised for church buildings or ministerial support. There is enough in such figures to dispel the doubt, if it exists, as to the possibility of converting the German into an American Christian, in no way distin- guishable in character from the Puritan immigrant of New England. Wilton College, Iowa, and the German department of Chicago Theological Seminary are the educational outcome of this work, and are supplying trained preachers to carry it on. '^Der Kirchebote" (a church paper) and "Die Segensquelle " (the children's paper) are contributing to the education of the churches. Home Missions and the Immigrant Problem 269 and a German Hymnal has served to enrich their wor- ship. The policy of the Society, in all its foreign- American work, is to make it ultimately American and not foreign. This cannot be done at once; so long as foreign immigra- tion continues to bring new thousands every month, they must hear the gospel in their mother tongue or never at aU. There is a tendency among the children of the first generation to graduate from the foreign-speak- ing to the American church, and such a trend is dis- tinctly encouraged; but while their places are being filled by fresh arrivals from the Old World, the necessity of foreign preaching continues, and "the method of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost," as Dr. Morehouse happily remarks, "is the safe and wise one still to fol- low — to give the gospel to every man in his own tongue wherein he was born." The Slavic department has been from the beginning under the charge of Dr. H. A. Schauffler of Cleveland, whose early training as a missionary of the American Board in Austria fitted him for eminent success. Under his wise and devoted care work has been opened at twenty-eight points in nine different States. Twenty missionaries are under commission, having organized sixteen churches with a membership of 773, and sixty- two Sunday-schools with a membership of 2,000; aver- age attendance upon preaching services is 1,204, and on other meetings and Simday-schools, 2,735. Missionary contributions for the past year were $860; visits and calls made by missionaries 18,718; Bibles and New Testaments circulated to the number of 498, and pages of tracts distributed, 130,000. In the Oberhn Slavic Department, and in the Cleveland Bible Training School are sixteen pupils being trained for the work, and nearly 270 Leavening the Nation all the workers in the field, several of them devoted young native women, have been fitted in one or the other of these schools for efficient service. Simultaneously with the organization of Bethlehem Church at Cleve- land, a Bohemian Church of the same name was organ- ized by Dr. E, A. Adams in Chicago, with a present mem- bership of 120. "Prior to 1822, there were in the whole United States three Bohemian Protestant ministers, — one in the East, one in the West, and one in the South." * For many years nothing was done to meet the spiritual needs of this interesting people, until the lamented Rev. Chas. Terry CoUins of Cleveland called pubhc attention to their condition. Under that impulse the Bohemian Mission Board of Cleveland was organized, and a mis- sionary work begun with results as shown above. Not Bohemians alone, but Poles, Slovaks, and Maygars have been approached, and the feehng of despair that once prevailed as to the rehgious susceptibihty of these people has given way to one of extreme hopefulness. Indeed, why should not the children of John Huss make good Christians? The Scandinavian Department fell to the early care of Rev. Marcus W. Montgomery, whose journeyings as Missionary Superintendent of Minnesota brought him into closest touch with this interesting people. He learned to love them with a warm heart, and they learned to trust him with a personal affection ; thus it happened by a manifestly divine ordination he was called to be their leader and chief missionary. It was in this rela- tion to the Scandinavians of the Northwest that Mr. ' Rev. John Prucha. Home Missions and the Immigrant Problem 271 Montgomery became a discoverer, and added a chapter to ecclesiastical history which it would be a violence to the purpose of this narrative to pass with a mere allusion. When, in 1883, worn with work, it became clearly his duty to recruit his strength by foreign travel, and when this was made possible by the material help of a Minne- apolis layman, Mr. Montgomery's sympathies drew him naturally to Sweden and Norway. His own estimate of the Scandinavian element, which at that time made up one fourth of the population of Minnesota, may here be given: "The Scandinavians are, all things considered, among the best foreigners who come to American shores. They are almost universally Protestants; comparatively few of them are sceptics. They have been reared to beheve in God, the Bible, the Sabbath, and in salvation through Christ. They evi- dently love the principles upon which our republic rests and hence are intensely loyal. In politics they are generally RepubHcan. They have large, strong bodies; are industrious, frugal, apt, modest, intelligent. They are not exclusive nor clannish as to occupation or loca- tion. They are in every profession: are ministers, lawyers, physicians, teachers; are also in every busi- ness: farmers, manufacturers, merchants, bankers, artisans, miners, and day-laborers. They come here to stay, buy real estate, build good houses, found acade- mies and colleges, and tens of thousands more 'from the Land of the Midnight Sun' are following them hither." Such was Mr. Montgomery's judgment before visiting Scandinavia, and it was reiterated in more positive terms after his return: "After a careful observation of these people in this land and in their native countries I am 272 Leavening the Nation clearly of the opinion that they are more nearly like Amer- icans than are any other foreign people. In manners and customs, poUtical and religious instincts, fertihty of adaptation, personal appearance, and cosmopolitan character, they are strikingly like native Americans. No pecuhar physiognomy is stamped upon them to point them out the world over. They find the English lan- guage easy, and quickly acquire it and lose a foreign brogue. The first generation of American-born Scandi- navians, when they reach the age of twenty years, can- not generally be distinguished from Americans by either appearance, language, or customs." At the time of Mr. Montgomery's visit, strangely little was known in America of that religious movement in Sweden which for nearly a century had been drawing a line of separation in the national (Lutheran) church be- tween the more and the less spiritual membership of that communion. Rumor of it had reached this side of the sea, but almost nothing of its strength or its history was known to American Christians. The same igno- rance prevailed in London. On his way to the North, Mr. Montgomery called upon Dr. Joseph Parker, and inquired of him whether it were true that there was a great free-church movement in Sweden which was essen- tially Congregational. Dr. Parker knew nothing of it, and referred his visitor to Memorial Hall ; but the Secre- tary of the Congregational Union could only confess to the rumor similar to that which had reached the United States. It is not strange after this abundant lack of knowledge in England, so near the North, that Mr. Mont- gomery continued his journey quite prepared for great disappointment. Disappointment certainly awaited him, but of the happiest kind. Home Missions and the Immigrant Problem 273 It is not permitted in the limits of this narrative to trace his journeyings, or the patient inquiries he insti- tuted and the marvelous discoveries which rewarded his search. The whole story makes one of the brightest chapters in the collateral results of American Home Missions. It can be only briefly summarized. The history of the "Free-Mission" revolt from the Lutheran church in Sweden and Norway is singularly parallel with that of the English Puritans and Separa- tists. It began in the church and continued for years to hope and labor for the purification of that body. Failing in tliis it separated fro7n the church and set up its own standards of faith and practice. The main issues of divergence are those that have characterized every such revolt in the history of Christianity. Briefly stated they were: 1. That a State Church, including in its membership all citizens, cannot be a true church of Christ. 2. That the Christian Church should be composed of those only who are supposed to be converted. 3. That only converted men should be pastors of churches. 4. That only those should partake of the Lord's Sup- per who believe in Christ. At first these earnest Christians began to meet in private circles to partake of the communion together. Then the Lutheran priests refused to serve them except at the public table in the State Church. This led to the formation of " Lord's-Supper Societies," and the choice of one of their own members to serve at the table. These circles were finally called "Mission Societies" for Christian work, and these in time became regularly organ- ized churches on a "free" and severely independent plan. 274 Leavening the Nation At the time of Mr. Montgomery's visit there were at least 150,000 Christians thus associated in Norway and Sweden, and a large number of sympathizers who had not severed their connection with the State Church. Their creed was simple and intensely evangelical, and their church polity rigidly Congregational in all re- spects save that of organized fellowship. Yet, strange as it may appear, up to this time to their Independent brethren of Great Britain and to their Congregational brethren of America they were absolutely unknown save by the breath of rumor. Great was the joy of the mu- tual discovery, especially to the people of the North, when they learned that the faith and pohty which they had prayerfully evolved from their study of the New Testament were identical with the practice of hundreds of thousands in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. Hands were stretched across the sea and loving greetings were exchanged. Since Mr. Montgomery's visit, and as one result of it, Dr. Waldenstrom and Dr. Ekman, the recognized leaders of the "Free-Mission" movement in Sweden, have more than once visited the United States, and been cordially welcomed by the Triennial Congregational Council and the Home Missionary Society at its annual meeting. A yet more important result has been to draw many of the Free-Mission churches of the West into organic fel- lowship with the Congregational body. New churches have also been gathered directly into that fold, notwith- standing their extreme leanings to independence and their natural, but almost morbid, reaction from every- thing resembling ecclesiastical authority. Since the lamented death of Mr. Montgomery, in 1894. the Scandinavian Department has been under the Home Missions and the Immigrant Problem 275 direction of Rev. S. V. S. Fisher, whose long service as a Minnesota pastor, his close sympathy with Mr. Mont- gomery, and his personal interest in the Scandinavian people manifestly designate him for that work. Under his vigorous lead eleven States are now entered and the gospel is preached in more than seventy churches and schoolhouses. Scandinavians are liberal givers, and the proportion of their contributions to the size of their in- comes would put some of the wealthiest churches of the land to shame. Chicago Theological Seminary has its Dano-Norwegian and Swedish Department, where more than 300 young men have been fitted for home and foreign-missionary work. Carleton College, Minnesota, has also its Scandinavian Department, where youth of this race take their first steps towards the ministry. In general it may be said of the Congregational Home Missionary Society that where twenty-five years ago it had scarcely a foreign-speaking missionary in its employ, at the present time 226 such men and women are preaching the gospel every Sabbath in thirteen different tongues to people of as many nationalities, including German, Scandinavian, Bohemian, Polish, French, Mexican, Itahan, Spanish, Finnish, Danish, Armenian, Greek, and Welsh. The last-named nationality merits honorable men- tion — foreigners in name, but blood of our blood, and thoroughly sympathetic with the highest American ideals, both civil and religious. The Welsh came to America with William Penn in 1682. By him they were offered 40,000 acres in Pennsylvania on which "to maintain their own language, government, and institu- tions." A "New Wales" was the dream of Penn, and might have been reaUzed but for the restless enterprise 276 Leavening the Nation of the settlers themselves, who, hemmed in by an un- known country tempting to exploration, refused to be cooped up in a 40,000-acre lot. Breaking through the bounds of their grant, they scattered across the colony. At Ebensburg, on the very top of the mountains, they raised their Ebenezer in the shape of a chapel, which grew into a commanding church that survives to this day, with a membership of 260. This was in 1797, just when New England was moving for home missions. About the same time a Congrega- tional church of fifty members was gathered in Phila- delphia, which afterwards became Presbyterian, and is historically memorable for the long and sometime troubled pastorate of Albert Barnes. Of the Welsh people scattered through the country more than one half are found in Pennsylvania — 10,000 it is estimated in the City of Brotherly Love. For years to come the in- creasing trend of Welsh immigration must be towards Pennsylvania. The mining interests of South Wales and those of the Keystone State are almost identical, and these must ever constitute a strong attraction. The newcomers are chiefly Congregational, Baptist, and Presbyterian, and bring with them rehgious tastes and habits ingrained by generations of education. Home Missions has found a welcome and very fruitful field among them, and no single foreign nationality has better rewarded missionary investments. Dr. T. W. Jones, himself of Welsh descent, has for many years been the efficient superintendent of the Congregational Home Missionary Society. One marked and most happy result is the growing dechne of prejudice against the use of English in pubhc worship. The Welsh have strong national characteris- Home Missions and the Immigrant Problem 277 tics, to which they chng with uncommon tenacity; but as their children, educated in American schools, grow to manhood and womanhood, the barrier of language, which at one time seemed insurmountable, is now crumbhng away, and purely Enghsh services are not only tolerated but welcomed by many Welsh churches. Thus the policy of the Society in all its dealings with foreign elements is vindicated, namely, to make all its churches ultimately American. The United States is not a reserve for httle Germanys, or little Italys, or Uttle colonies of any nation. The least that Americans can ask of those who come to the United States for its benefits is that they shall become Americans; and to this end, however distant, home-missionary effort is steadily aiming. Baptist efforts for foreigners began as early as 1836 among the Welsh population. Ten years later the first German missionary was appointed, three years later the first Scandinavian, and in 1849 the first French. To these three nationaUties the Baptist efforts have been largely, but not wholly, confined. Their experience has confirmed the view given above of the perfect accessi- bihty of our foreign elements to the power of the gospel. One German church in New York City, the first to be supported by the Baptist Board, has sent out more than twenty German missionaries. The first Swedish Bap- tist church in America was organized at Rock Island, 111., in 1852; the second in Iowa, in 1853. From this double planting such churches have multiplied until they number 318, and are found in 28 different States, from Maine to California. The Baptist Theological Seminary in Chicago has its Scandinavian Department for the training of home- 278 Leavening the Nation missionary pastors. Work among the Dano-Norwe- gians began in 1856 at Raymond, Wisconsin. The whole number of Scandinavian Baptists in the United States is about 26,000, and among all foreign national- ities 279 missionaries are conducting the work for that church. The Presbyterian Board of Home Missions is also fully awake to this new and insistent appeal. It has German work in Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, and Oregon; Hol- land churches in Wisconsin, South Dakota, Montana, and Iowa; Bohemian churches in Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas; French work in Wisconsin, Swedish and Dano-Norwegian in Minnesota; Armenian and Jewish and Chinese work in California, and a body of mission teachers in Chicago. The work of the Reformed Board may be character- ized as almost exclusively foreign. A glance at its lists of missionary pastors is significant and inspiring. Hardly an American name is to be found among them, and when it is remembered that each of these names represents a church or congregation of foreign birth or parentage, something of the importance of their work in caring for one foreign nationality that has found a home among us begins to be appreciated. We would, for the peace of our country, there were more Hollands and more Hollander Americans to mingle their blood with ours. But while facts and figures may be thus marshalled, showing that there is life in the home-missionary army, and a distinct movement towards the solution of this problem, one is appalled at the vastness of the task and the comparative feebleness of the effort. Especially is Home Missions and the Immigrant Problem 279 it sadly evident that the center of the immigration issue has not as yet been adequately touched. The American City is that center. If the "Twentieth-Century City," as we are told, is a menace to the moral and pohtical well- being of the nation, it is the congested foreign elements within the city that make it so. Have organized home missions nothing to do with that problem? The "Social Settlement" has come among us with heahng in its wings. It has passed the stage of experi- ment. Following the example of Edward Denison and Arnold Toynbee, " httle groups have multiplied in England and America until they now number over one hundred college, university, or social settlements." * They seek to apply Christianity to the social conditions as they exist in our common life, and to do this in the congested centers of great cities. They are welcome and blessed John the Baptists, but they are not the Great Dehverer, and while they prepare the way of the Lord with loving, patient hands, they have never claimed to be a substitute for the church. We have our "Rescue Missions" as well, which with true Christian strategy launch their hfe-boats into the seething tides of city vice and crime: great and blessed is their saving work, but the "Rescue Mission" makes no claim to the peculiar functions of the church. We have also our City Missionaries going from house to house, ministering sympathy to bodies and spirits that are sick and sore with the struggle of life; but the city mission does not usurp the place of the church nor do its work. All these ministries come from the church, and are themselves an earnest of what the church can * Graham Taylor, before the Congregational Coimcil at Port- land, Oregon, in 1898. 28o Leavening the Nation offer to souls that seek its help; indeed, they often de- velop into churches. The distinct office of organized home missions is to plant churches; and where are churches more in de- mand than in the reeking city slum? Is it asked "Where are members to be found?" They can be im- ported. Our social settlements are made up of conse- crated men and women who import the home, in their own persons, into the very centers of slumdom. Are there none to carry the church? "But how are such churches to be equipped and supported? " As hospitals are built, as asylums are supported, as libraries are equipped, as colleges are endowed. Shall milUons be poured out for the suffering bodies and darkened minds of the poor and unprivileged, and must the church, with its diviner gifts of heahng, be denied for the want of a few thousand dollars? The author makes no claim to prophetic gifts, but he believes that organized home missions will not always turn a deaf ear to the bitter cry of the city and pass by on the other side. The boast has been that for a hun- dred years it has followed the people ; then it must seek them within the city gate. To do so will be the truest economy as well as the highest strategy. The wise general masses his army where the enemy is densest. The hostile forces that threaten the future of America are not just where they were in 1798, in the new settle- ments of the West. They camp to-day in sohd city wards; they are intrenched behind miles of tenement blocks. The enemy has shifted his ground. What is the home-missionary army for but to follow on and train and mass its guns against this new attack. Not by one word should the city demand be magnified Home Missions and the Immigrant Problem 281 to the injury of the country work. To do so would be poor strategy indeed, — for there is no conflict, scarcely any division, between the two. The growing density of the city is fed by contributions from the country. Sweeten the spring and you purify the stream; cleanse the streams and you make clear the lake into which they flow. Even Tammany, not always conspicuous for wisdom, recognizes the principle. When it would purge the city reservoirs, it begins forty miles back with the Croton watershed. The towns and villages of New England are the watershed of Boston; New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco draw from a thousand country communities, and the country work of home missions is salt in the springs of the city's hfe. Any expansion of the city work at the expense of the country would be to strengthen the city's captivity and postpone her redemption. But we may plead for, and safely predict, a new pro- portion between the two. Not less for the country, which must be kept sweet and pure, but more, vastly more, for the city, which threatens to dominate with its godless materiahsm, if it be not dominated itself by something better. Said a foolish man to a wise man as they walked together through the slums of a great city : "You must grant that here at least Christianity has been a failure." "A failure!" was his reply; "my friend, it has never been tried." Christianity is yet to be tried in the great cities of the land. Leaven must be hidden in the lump before its work can even begin. " Salt is good," but salt in the attic of society never yet healed corrup- tion in the cellar. They must be brought together. The twentieth century of home missions will not forget the hamlet or the town, but it is to see Christianity 282 Leavening the Nation "tried" in the city, as it has never yet been tried, and home-missionary societies may reasonably doubt their right to existence if they are not found in the forefront of that endeavor. XVIII NEW ENGLAND TO-DAY We began our study of the Home Missionary move- ment with New England in 1798 (Chapter II). That particular date was chosen because it marked the first organized effort. New England was named because that effort began in Connecticut, was repeated by Massa- chusetts one year later, and by New Hampshire in 1801. In less than ten years five New England States had Home Missionary societies organized; not, primarily, for the benefit of the State, but for the new settlements of the West. Thus New England became the fountain- head of the broad river of National Home Missions. The course of this stream we have traced through the Northwest Territory, across the Louisiana Purchase, over the Rockies to Oregon and Washington, down the Pacific coast to the Calif ornias, and backward to the Gulf of Mexico and the Southern Belt. For more than a hundred years it has been fed, chiefly, from the foun- tain that gave it birth. Men, money, and moral sup- port have been poured into it without stint ; and to this day no cause has a stronger hold on the churches of New England, and for no appeal have they a warmer wel- come than that of American Home Missions. Meantime very great changes have been passing over New England herself. Her people, vastly increased since 1798, are no longer the same homogeneous family 283 284 Leavening the Nation as then. Then there was but one Roman-CathoUc church in Massachusetts. To-day more than half the people of the Bay State are foreign born, or children of foreign parents. The same foreign preponderance is found in Rhode Island. In Connecticut the two classes are more equally divided, Cathohcs gaining; while in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont the native Protes- tant forces are still in a considerable majority. These foreign, and mainly Catholic, masses are not confined to large cities, where their influence is checked in some measure by strong Protestant forces. While in the State of Massachusetts as a whole every twelfth person is a French Canadian, in seven of its rural manu- facturing towns, with population ranging from 2,000 to 8,500, one in two is of that race; and in twelve other such towns one in four of the people is from over the Canada border. These strangers from the North are by no means the worst of citizens; but they are not of New England stock, are strangers to the traditions that have given New England her prestige in the history of America, and they are slow to learn them. Together with this tide of alien origin and sympathies another change has been working to the enfeeblement of many portions of New England. It began late in the eighteenth century, and has been continuous in its oper- ation. Naturally the first colonies to be settled were called upon to furnish recruits for the nascent States of the West. New York and Ohio began to draw upon New England before the War of the Revoluticn, and, naturally, claimed her youngest and most vigorous blood. The opening of the Northwest Territory was an appeal to the youth of every New England State. By thousands they and their young families joined the pro- New England To-day 285 cession of emigrant wagons bound for Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The attraction of the further West was felt immediately after the purchase of Louisiana, and still another exodus followed the open- ing of Oregon and the discovery of gold on the Pacific coast. New England in all these years was regarded as a choice reservoir, to be drained and drained again, until the wonder is that anything but dregs remain. It is not denied that New England found in these conditions a needed outlet for her growing population, and that great gains in wealth flowed back to her from these large migrations; but the process was carried in some sections almost to the verge of depletion. Many New England farms were deserted for the richer prairies of the West; none were left behind to cultivate them. Many old homesteads, which once held the flower and strength of New England society, became tenantless ; for the same flux of population was going on within New England itself. The strength of the hills ran down into the valleys, finding its way into the growing towns and crowded cities of the State. Between 1880 and 1890, of 1,502 townships in New England 932 show a loss in population. "A few years since, the Commissioner of Agriculture and Immigration in New Hampshire reported 1 ,442 vacant and abandoned farms with tenantable buildings in that State." ^ "In 1889 the Commissioner of Agriculture and Manufacturing Interests in Vermont issued a circular stating that in the town of R there were 4,000 acres of land offered for sale at one or two dollars per acre. One half of these, he says, are lands which formerly comprised great » Josiah Strong, "The New Era," p. 167. 286 Leavening the Nation farms, but with buildings now gone, and fast growing up to timber; some of this land is used for pasturage, and in other portions the fences are not kept up, leaving cellar holes and miles of stone walls to testify to former civilization." ^ /•^By an inevitable sequence many of the stronger coun- try churches have languished under this continuous blood-letting, until New England, from being the mother of Home Missions, has been for many years one of the largest beneficiaries of missionary aid. The Eastern auxiharies of the Congregational Home Mission- ary Society have upon their rolls 475 churches and mis- sionary stations; in Maine, 89; in New Hampshire, 62; in Vermont, 71; in Massachusetts, 154; in Rhode Island, 15; in Connecticut, 84 — all together requiring an ex- penditure last year of $113,000. A good proportion of these are foreign-speaking mis- sions, testifying to New England's vaUant effort to redeem her adopted citizens. Another hopeful propor- tion are churches — weak to-day only because they are young; to-morrow they will be strong and independent. But a large remainder comprise many of the ancient churches which once sat triumphant upon the New England hilltops, and gave grandly of their means to home and foreign missions. Now, in their age and feebleness, they turn for support to the societies created by their own foresight for the new settlements of the West. These are but sample facts which might be greatly multiplied. Of themselves they are beyond dispute. On the other hand, what they signify and what they » Josiah Strong, "The New Era." New England To-day 287 portend are questions much in dispute, and not to be hastily passed upon. "Decadence" is the convenient word of a pessimistic judgment, and there are things which seem to justify that mournful conclusion. De- cadence in spots there certainly is; its signs are sadly present. But decadence in spots does not mean, neces- sarily, decadence on the whole; and while that fatal non sequitur is possible, and always so easy, it becomes us to examine the problem on all sides. Even facts that are undeniable truths may mislead to conclusions which are undeniably false. We have already noted that the vast New England migrations to the West have not been a dead loss to New England. To a large extent they are an undeniable benefit; not only opening to her young men doors of opportunity nowhere to be found east of the Hudson, but also supplying safe and profitable investments for Eastern wealth, which have been enormously improved. New England capital invested in Western railroads, made necessary by Eastern enterprise, amounts to a large pro- portion of their entire stock. When, within a few years, a great Southwestern sys- tem, through peculation and mismanagement, suddenly collapsed, the greatest sufferers by that disaster were found in Eastern New England. And they were not all capitahsts ; many of them were widows or country min- isters who had staked all their savings upon their faith in the West. Visitors to some Western city, as they measure its costly business blocks and public buildings, wonder at the inability of the people to build their own churches and support their ministers, until discovering that these costly piles are heaps of New England capital. The same is true of some of the richest Western mines 288 Leavening the Nation putting out millions of treasure yearly, every dollar of which, except miners' wages, returns to the far East, These, again, are but samples of the benefits coming back to New England, in exchange for the richer gifts of her sons and daughters, and constituting no small measure of her commercial prosperity. They must count as an offset against any too hasty verdict of decadence. So, too, those movements of population within the States themselves, by which the strength of the hills is absorbed in the mill-towns and cities, are not, by any means, total losses, but losses only in the regions thus drained. Indeed, the ultimate result may be a net gain. The country boy, with his sole capital of character, goes to the city, and in a few years is twice the man he would have been among the hills. The hills have lost some- thing, but the State as a whole has gained much more, and the chances are good that the hills will be the gainers in the end. Many a library, church, and memorial building in rural New England testify to the loyal love of the boy who moved away, and is now in position to do more for his people than, living among them, he could ever have accomphshed. Had he remained he would, no doubt, have counted one, and a good one, in the country church; but where he is he counts ten in the religious forces of the State. The decadence of society, where it is going on, will reveal itself, if anywhere, in the decline of education. Dr. A. E. Winship, himself a successful educator, in the New England Magazine of 1900 testifies as follows for Massachusetts; and Massachusetts is microcosmic of four fifths of New England : "The schools are much better than they were forty years ago, are in better buildings, are better heated, and New England To-day 289 have better lavatories, with none of the vile defacements of those days. They have better furniture, with none of the knife- work then so common. The course of study is more varied and more human ; the school year is longer, the discipline is more reasonable and beneficial; the grounds are better kept; money is more honestly ex- pended; teachers are better educated, are more profes- sional, are employed with more regard to their quahfi- cations for teaching; and more children stay in school fer advanced work. Indeed, there is no phase of school work that is not far in advance of that of forty years ago. The laws contribute much to this progress : notably the enforcement of the compulsory school laws; the centraliz- ing of pupils by pubUc transportation ; the insistence that every town shall transport and pay the tuition of chil- dren in some neighboring high-school, if it does not main- tain one of its own ; free text-books, manual training, the almost universal introduction of the pubhc hbrary, and its special use by the schools; and, above all, expert supervision of rural schools, with the requirement that the Superintendent shall not have in charge more than fifty schools nor be paid less than $1,500." The picture thus drawn by a skilled hand will be rec- ognized among those most conversant with New Eng- land, past and present, as true to life; and, even in locahties where the conditions fail to match the high colors of the artist, those conchtions are brighter than they were forty years ago. We find Httle in the educa- tional progress of New England to support the verdict of decadence. Dark pictures are drawn of the decline of church life and pubUc worship in the rural districts. The careful investigations of Professor Henry Fairbanks of Vermont 290 Leavening the Nation into the rehgious destitutions of that State, made several years ago, have been widely quoted and deserve careful study. Prof. Fairbanks discovered that 290 Vermont churches had become extinct; that in a population at that time of 332,000, 184,000, or more than half, were total neglecters of pubhc worship; and that a church attendance of 75,000 on a pleasant Sunday was a fair average. Governor Rollins of New I ampshire, in a recent Fast-day proclamation, called public attention to the rehgious destitution existing in the rural districts of that State. "There are towns," said he, "where no church bell sends forth its solemn call from January to January; there are villages where children grow up to manh > d un christened , there are communities where the dead are laid away without the benison of the name of Christ, and where marriages are solemnized only by the Justice of the Peace." Such statements from lead- ing men occupying high places have attracted atten- tion and provoked discussion. The facts have not been disputed; they cannot be disputed. They are startling and portentous, and make a tremendous appeal to home- missionary interest and endeavor. But their publica- tion and discussion have brought out other facts which are indispensable to a correct estimate of the case. Regarding Vermont, the testimony of Dr. C. H. Mer- rill, Home Missionary Secretary, given in the Home Mis- sionary of May, 1902, while not weakening the force of Dr. Fairbanks' figures, indicates that remedial agencies are at work and successfully contending with the evils described. Says Dr. Merrill: "Facts giving evidence of a growth comparing very favorably with changes in pop- ulation may be cited in abundance. Until the last year or two of depression, the number of our churches and the New England To-day 291 total of membership have shown a steady increase, until we have passed the membership of the two other north- ern States of New England, although the smallest in population. In no one year, down to the present date, have the mission fields, about one fourth of the total number of churches, failed to show a net gain. Indeed, it has been a somewhat surprising fact that our growth has been principally in those regions where the popula- tion has been stationary or diminishing. Since 1894 not a church has been dropped from the roU of the State. But some of the best results cannot be shown in statis- tics. The type of religious Hfe that has been carried into homes by our visitors; the uphft that has come to com- munities through the change of atmosphere, socially, intellectually, and spiritually; the changed attitude of larger churches towards the smaller, as they saw the fruit- fulness of missionary work in the State, — all this must be seen and felt to be appreciated." If the figures of Dr. Fairbanks taken alone mean decadence, as they surely do, the testimony of Dr. Merrill several years later as plainly indicates decadence in the process of arrest. ^ So also in New Hampshire there are two sides to the question of degeneration. Governor RolHns, in his proclamation, has put one of them in strong fight. But Secretary A. T. Hillman, whose official relation to the churches malces him an expert witness, has suppfied the other: "The first quarter of the nineteenth century saw two counties in New Hampshire a barren waste, where to-day we have 6,000 Congregational church members, in place of forty towns with 45,000 people without the means of grace. In 1857 the mission fields reported the percentage of Congregational church members to the 292 Leavening the Nation total population as 1 in 57. The percentage in the same towns to-day is 1 in 18. Some of the first citizens of the State take issue with that now famous proclamation which pictures the rural sections of the State as a 'waste/ to which the SaVjbath gives no music of her bells. To the question, 'How does the rehgious condi- tion of your town compare with ten and twenty years ago? ' our missionaries answer almost without exception, 'Improvement is noted.' " It remains true, however, that a traveller through the rural districts of New Hamp- shire will find plenty of facts to justify the Governor's statement; but if he looks further he will also find that the conditions described, though sadly true, have yielded and are yielding more and more to systematic and con- tinuous home-missionary culture. In Massachusetts the same indictment of decadence and the same dismal prophecies have been current. Hasty generalizations have been made from a small area of fact. Deserted hilltops and "a few flagrant crimes in retired places " have furnished the secular press with texts for many doleful Jeremiads, and the Home Mis- sionary Society of the State has been asked in a pointed way what it is doing. The Secretary, Rev. Josuha Coit of Boston, in his annual reports for several years past has multiplied answers to this question which ought to make pessi- mistic critics very sad, though they are a cause of great joy to every loyal son of the Bay State. "So far as decreasing population is concerned, the facts are more encouraging than is generally supposed. While the tide has not turned yet there is a slackening of the ebb. There has begun something of a return to the country. The multipUcation of electric roads, the in- New England To-day 293 crease of good roads, and other causes not so easily stated are helping it along." ^ The Massachusetts hill towns, so called, are located largely in the counties of Berkshire and Franklin. Yet in ten years, between 1885 and 1895, Berkshire gained in population 12,414. Its two cities had a large share of the gain, but one third less than in the previous decade; while the loss in the rural districts was one third less for the same period. Franklin county made a gain of 2,700 during the same decade, and while twenty towns lost 1,259, six towns gained 3,959. It is not to be denied that such gains are not always real gains except in numbers. The exchange of native stock for Irish, French, Poles, and Swedes may leave the last state of any community worse than the first; and where this costly process is perpetually going on we naturally look to see the decadence of rehgious forces. To our surprise, the contrary is often true. The Secre- tary, in his report of 1896, calls attention to the fact that the home-missionary churches of the State, located, for the most part, where these changes are going on, added to their membership, on confession of faith, 694, "a per- centage to resident membership of ten and one half per cent, while the rest of the churches in the State show a percentage of only four per cent." It is hardly a proof of decadence in rehgious power that churches often crippled and even decimated by removals, and hemmed in by hostile forces, should show themselves to be more than twice as productive in spiritual results as the more favored churches of the State. Nor has the virtue of self-sacrifice dechned among * Massachusetts Annual Report, 1896. 294 Leavening the Nation these Christians of the hills. Their aggregate financial strength has been sadly reduced. They can no longer adequately support their ministry, nor contribute largely to missionary funds, but as one by one the faithful remove or drop out by death, the remnant close up the ranks and share the added burden. Says Secretary Coit: "The country churches are making greater gifts for the support of the preaching of the Word than people are called upon to do in large towns; not greater in amount, of course, but greater in proportion. That is really greater. In one case the last year a country church asked that the grant of $150 be continued. There was a disposition to reduce the grant — a very proper dis- position. But a friend of the church took his pencil and figured a bit, and it appeared that this church gave for the support of preaching and to our benevolent socie- ties, per resident member, twice, three times as much as some larger churches in the conference. Churches where expenses and benevolences went above $10,000 fell far short in comparison." If these are the signs of decadence in "the greatest " of the Christian graces, one might be tempted to pray for a baptism of such de- cadence upon the whole State. Nor is this all that could be said. These declining churches in rural Massachusetts have long been, and still are, the nursery of gospel ministers. Says the Massachusetts Secretary: "A while ago, by examina- tion of Seminary catalogues, and by correspondence, the birthplaces of 1,571 ministers were found, and it appeared that 1,087 of them were born in towns of less than 5,000 inhabitants, 687 in towns of less than 2,000, 348 in towns of less than 1,000. In 70 towns of aggregate popu- lation less than 50,000 there were 348 ministers born. New England To-day 295 In 16 cities, aggregate population 971,000, nearly twenty times as many, there were 261 ministers born. Or, to take individual country towns, Ashfield had in 1810 its largest population, 2,006, and has sent out 27 ministers; Goshen, largest population in 1800, 724, and Goshen has sent out 25 ministers; Hawley, largest population, 1,037, 21 ministers; and Mary Lyon, that great gift to educated women and the world, was born in Buckland, an adjoining town from which 16 ministers have gone. And, besides ministers, of other educated men and women a host has gone from the hills and valleys of our country towns, for the upbuilding of good things and true, all over the land." This form of fruitfulness is not a thing of the far past only. Glance at any college or seminary catalogue of to-day and it will afford surprise to learn how large a proportion of young men and women, in courses of higher education, hail from the country towns of New England. Decadent in numbers, deca- dent in wealth, they are not decadent in mental Ufe and noble ambitions. Indeed, have not the decUning population and wealth of rural New England been rather hastily accepted as necessary tokens of a lowering rehgious and moral stand- ard? On the contrary, in Massachusetts and Vermont, and, presumably, in the other States, the record estab- Hshes precisely the opposite. In some thirty- three of the country towns of Massachusetts, where churches have suffered the largest losses and received missionary help the longest, " the church membership has so gained upon the population that there is to-day one church member in every nine and a half of the population, where forty years ago there was only one in every eighteen and three fifths of the population — an increasing church 296 Leavening the Nation in the face of a decreasing population " ; a doubUng of church power with a halving of numerical strength. Connecticut has suffered in the same way as Massa- chusetts and from the same causes; but her Secretary for home missions, Rev. Joel S. Ives, no later than October last sends out this cheering note: "Changes in business and population have depleted the country and lessened greatly the influence of the country towns ; but many indications show that the low tide of country depletion has been reached; indeed, that the tide has turned to flood." Secretary W. H. Moore, in his report of 1881, gives the record of sixty-four ancient churches that have come to depend upon home-missionary aid in their feebleness. Only one of them proved beyond help and became extinct. These old churches, depleted by emigration, contained in that year 6,413 members, and had raised up 401 ministers. Their contributions and legacies to the missionary societies had aggregated $282,130, nearly $100,000 more than they had received in missionary aid. Maine has its own problems. It is a frontier State as truly as Michigan or Wisconsin, and, like them, its frontier is on the north and west. In common with other New England States it has suffered by depletion and foreign invasion, yet unlike them it has new country to be settled, which complicates the missionary situation. Whether the evil of sectarianism is greater in Maine than in some other States, or not, it has attracted more pubhc attention through the efforts of leading Christians of all denominations to abate it. Dr. W. DeW. Hyde, President of the Interdenominational Commission of Maine, in a public address at Chicago in 1893, thus de- scribes the conditions: "Of 1,350 Protestant houses of New England To-day 297 worship, 360 are reported vacant, and 136 more are simply 'supplied' by pastors who reside elsewhere; 70 per cent, of the churches represented in our Commission have 100 members or less, each. Of 242 Congregational churches in Maine, 118 receive missionary aid. Only a little more than one half are self-supporting. There are 18 towns in Maine in which the average population is only 244, yet these 18 towns have 49 Evangelical churches with 37 church buildings. One town of 470 people has three churches and three houses of worship. Another, with 140 people, has two churches." Ten years ago leading pastors and laymen of the Baptist, Congregational, Free-Baptist, and Methodist churches united in forming the Interdenominational Commission, "to promote cooperation in the organiza- tion and maintenance of churches in Maine; to prevent waste of resources and effort in the smaller towns, and to stimulate missionary work in the destitute regions." The Commission does not aim to substitute the " Union" church for the "Denominational," but to preserve for each church and denomination its legitimate claim to the ground it occupies; to protect it against inter- ference; to revive it if weak, and to adjudicate all ques- tions that may arise as to the right of possession. Thus it has recently decided that in a new mill town of 3,000 the Baptists and Congregationalists are entitled to the field, and all others by mutual agreement are to avoid entering.* Such a court is invaluable. It renders a double service to the missionary societies, relieving them of the always delicate question of granting missionary aid to an over- ' Secretary Harbutt, Seventy-sixth Report of the Congrega- tional Home Missionary Society, p. 23. 298 Leavening the Nation crowded field, and saving them the necessity of self- defense against unjust invasion. The work of the Com- mission thus far has been fruitful in economizing funds, in promoting fellowship and in strengthening the re- ligious forces of the State. Thus it is doing much to arrest decadence and to promote healthy develop- ment. It is also to be gratefully noted that the New England States, especially the southern group, are actively grap- pling with the foreign menace. Next to New York and Pennsylvania, Massachusetts is receiving more immi- grants from abroad than any other State of the Union — more even than Illinois. Its State Home Missionary Society invests about $20,000 annually in foreign- speaking missions, including nine different nationalities — Armenian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, and Poles. The French and Swedish work are phenomenally fruitful. In ten years the growth of these churches, as compared with that of American churches in the same towns, is far in advance. Thus French communicants have increased 180 per cent., Swedish communicants 205 per cent., while Ameri- can communicants have multiplied only 73 per cent. These figures imply vitality and success, and continued, as they promise to be, they indicate a gathering of leav- ening power that will go far to lighten and sweeten the foreign elements of the State. The American-French College at Springfield, a home- missionary plant, is supplying spiritual as well as mental training, not alone for the French, but for Italians, Armenians, Greeks, Irish, English, Japanese, Syrians, and Assyrians — all of which are represented in its more than one hundred students. Its curriculum of study is New England To-day 299 specially adapted to train young men and women to become leaders and teachers of their own people. Connecticut, also, adds to its American work an active mission among foreigners, who now make 38 per cent, of her population. Its State Society reaches Swedes, Danes, Germans, Hungarians, French, and Italians, and by a wise system of distribution it enters not less than one hundred different localities by its foreign mission- aries. Rhode Island is doing its share of the same work. But no brief sketch can do full justice to the mission- ary activities of the New England States. It may be true in a sense that "good old New England has gone, and a new New England, a new Massachusetts is being formed." Yet in one respect, at least, and that a radi- cal one, New England is not only true to its early tradi- tions but has surpassed them year by year. For some reason not entirely clear, it is the habit of those who dis- cuss the question of New England decadence to refer to a time "forty years ago." It is perhaps only a recogni- tion of the fact that forty years cover a complete genera- tion, in which progress or decline may be reasonably established by comparison. Apply this standard to one factor in the question we are considering, — that of Christian benevolence. If the rehgious hfe of New England is, on the whole, dechning, as often asserted and perhaps more widely feared, such decline must show itself first of all, we should reason, in its money gifts to the missonary work of the denomination. For something more than a mere appeal is needed to fill the missionary treasury. The appeal must find conviction, faith, and ability on the part of the people, or it falls to the ground. Any increase of benevolence must mean the growth of these conditions; 300 Leavening the Nation and if the incrcaf hould be found to exceed the growth of the church membership, it may be fairly inferred that "conviction, faith, and abihty," so far from being deca- dent, are in the ascendant. Take the home-missionary contributions of the Congre- gational churches of New England for the last "forty years." It w»uld be helpful could we apply the same test to foreign missions and to other than Congregational churches, yet scarcely necessary, since in such a ques- tion, if ever, it is possible "from one, to learn all." During the first of these four decades (1862-1872), New England churches contributed to their Home Missionary Society $1,589,666. Their average church membership for that decade was 181,989; who gave, therefore, at the rate of 87 cents a year per member. During the second decade (1872-1882), the aggregate home-missionary gifts of New England rose to $2,009,- 013, and the average membership to 198,366; who con- tributed, therefore, at the rate of $1.01 per member. In the third decade (1882-1892), home-missionary contributions from New England advanced to $3,079,- 760. The average church membership for the decade was 218,870, and their gift per member was $1.40. In the fourth, and last, decade of the period (1892- 1902), the contributions of the New England churches to home missions were $3,499,491; with an average mem- bership of 243,199, or an average gift per member of $1.43. Let it be remembered that the ten years from 1892 to 1902 included the worst industrial panic in the history of the country, when all benevolences suffered a reverse from which they have hardly yet recovered. Never- theless, New England added $500,000 to her home- New England To-day 301 missionary contributions and raised the average gift of her churches from $1.40 to $1.43 per member. "Forty years ago," therefore, New England Congre- gationahsts were giving one million and a half dollars to home missions in ten-year periods. To-day they are giving three million and a half dollars in the same period of time. Then their "conviction, faith, and abiKty," prompted them to give eighty-seven cents a year per member. To-day they are cheerfully contributing one dollar and forty-three cents per member for the same cause. They have more than doubled their aggregate contri- butions and nearly doubled their individual gifts, while their nimierical strength has increased only about one third. The following table presents the facts in a concrete form: Contributions from the New England States to the Congregational Home Missionary Society for Forty Years by Decades. Period. Amount Contributed. Average per Year. Average Church Mem- bership. Average per Member. 1862-1872 1872-1882 1882-1892 1892-1902 $1,589,666 2,009,013 3,079,760 3,449,491 $158,966 200,901 307,976 344,949 181,989 198,366 218,870 243,199 $ .87 1.01 1.40 1.43 These discoveries do not invahdate a single statement of those eminent gentlemen who have wisely sought to acquaint the people with the true condition of New England. But they should reUeve the fears and silence the gloomy forebodings of many who have drawn false conclusions from undoubted but only partial facts. It is altogether true, as asserted, that churches once 302 Leavening the Nation strong are fatally weakened, and that many of them have died; true that country towns in great numbers have exchanged a homogeneous native population for a mixed, native, and foreign, to their own hurt and en- feeblement; true, again, that crime and vice have in- creased in many parts of New England as a result of these changes, and that this process of degeneration is going on, in spots, to the sorrow and alarm of all good people ; all true — but they do not prove that New Eng- land, as a whole, is decadent. Other facts named in this chapter establish quite the opposite. Popular education is a growing power among her people; churches reduced one half in strength have doubled their efficiency ; young men lost to their native hills are a larger gain to the forces that make for right- eousness in the State. The "conviction and faith" of the churches in the power of the gospel to redeem humanity have more than doubled in forty years, and were never so splendidly embodied as they are to-day in home-missionary efforts, native and foreign, which are slowly, though firmly and surely, redeeming New Eng- land. Towards the full consummation of that ideal a hopeful Christianity bids us look ; for it we are to labor, pray, and give ; and at every step of the way we are to take counsel of our faith, and not of our fears. XIX WOMAN'S PART "The Kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took " The Christian women of New England were not slow to discern the special application of the parable to themselves. Early in that fruitful decade between 1798 and 1808, two years before the Massa- chusetts Baptist Society was formed, fourteen women of Boston, part of them Baptists and part Congrega- tionalists, met to organize the " Boston Female Society for Missionary Purposes.'' This was in 1800. At the end of the first year, they had raised $150 for home mis- sions, and Female Mite and Cent societies had spnmg up in various parts of the State. It is not necessary to suppose that the "Female Cent Institution of New Hampshire," organized in 1804, was patterned upon, or even suggested by the Boston experi- ment. It was a missionary decade. The atmosphere of New England was charged with evangelistic ozone. The Connecticut Society, the Massachusetts Society, the New Hampshire Society, the Vermont and Maine societies, the Massachusetts Baptist Society, the Pres- byterian Committee on Home Missions, the first move- ments of the Reformed General Synod all began between 1798 and 1807, and, so far as the record shows, with no preconcert of action. The Female Cent Institution of 303 304 Leavening the Nation New Hampshire was another independent link in the home-missionary chain of the period. "Its origin may be traced to an exigency. In 1804 a few ministerial friends of the New Hampshire Mission- ary Society, which had been founded three years before, were in anxious conference regarding its interests at the house of Rev. Asa McFarland in Concord. They were seriously embarrassed by the want of funds for the prose- cution of its work. This fact came to the knowledge of their hostess (Mrs. McFarland). Her sympathy was excited, and as she reflected upon a solution of the prob- lem, a still, small voice whispered in her sensitive ear that the women of the State might render essential aid to the cause by the formation of cent societies in different localities, each of whose members should contribute one cent a week to the missionary treasury. This she pro- posed to her perplexed guests. The offer was hailed with delight, and just then and thus was born the New Hampshire Cent Institution.'' ^ Only two churches, Hanover and Raymond, had fol- lowed the lead of Concord at the end of the first year, and the receipts were $5.00. At the end of ten years auxil- iaries had so multiplied that the annual income had risen to $1,360; and in ninety-eight years the Society had raised $171,445.81, and gathered an invested fund of about $18,000 in memory of its founder. Of this sum, $136,169.66 have been turned over to the New Hamp- shire Home Missionary Society. Since 1890, when without dropping its historic name it became a State Union, it has divided its funds with the other homeland societies of the Congregational churches. Of New * Eighty-fifth Annual Report. Woman's Part 305 Hampshire's 180 churches to-day, 140 have auxiharies of the Cent Institution. This organization has a remarkable history. "For eighty-six years," says its present treasurer,* "its exist- ence was of a most spiritual nature, no meetings being held, the only visible medium of communication being the report pubhshed annually by its only officer, a treas- urer who also served as secretar}^ and the letters passing between the auxiUary collectors and the treasurer. During this long period of nearly one hundred years, the Society has had but four treasurers." Quite as remark- able is the work it has accomplished by these simple means. The Secretary of the New Hampshire Home Missionary Society, at its recent centennial, acknowl- edges that the Cent Institution has supported the home- missionary work of the State more than one ninth of the century on the present basis of expenditure. The grave of Mrs. McFarland, its foimder, is marked by a plain headstone bearing the signally appropriate inscription, "She hath done what she could.". Presbyterian women, prior to 1861, had been large givers to their Home Board ; but it was not until then that distinct organizations among them began to appear. The Women's Missionary Society of New York organized that year. The Santa Fe Missionary Association and the Long Island Women's Missionary Society, some years later, were the heralds of a new movement organized in 1878, and known as the "Women's Executive Committee of Home Missions," auxiliary to the Presbyterian Board. Its object was to cooperate with the Home Board on behalf of exceptional populations. The Board itself was * Miss A. A. McFarlanA 3o6 Leavening the Nation restricted by its charter to organizing churches and preaching the gospel. But in Alaska, Utah, New Mexico, and in many parts of the South a preparatory educational work was found to be indispensable. To their help in this dilemma came the women, not with an independent organization, but with the agreement to undertake no work without the Board's approval. Their objects were clearly stated to be: "The diffusion of missionary intelligence; the unification of women's work for home missions; the raising of money for teachers' salaries; the preparation and distribution of missionary boxes, and the furnishing of aid and comfort in special cases of affliction and need." Receipts the first year were $3,138.89, gradually increasing, until in 1901 the Women's Executive Committee were disbursing $357,- 201.88 for general missionary purposes, including the salaries of 425 missionary teachers. They have raised from the beginning three and a half million dollars. The zeal of the Baptist women, as already noted, began to declare itself in Massachusetts in 1800. In New York State as early as 1812 we find the Hamilton Female Bap- tist Society presenting "twenty yards of fulled cloth" to the Hamilton Baptist Missionary Society for mis- sionary purposes. The lack of ready money was no barrier to the women of those days. Not only "fulled cloth" but "a useless article of dress, $9.00," "Avails of ornaments, $5.68," and, again, "Avails of ornaments, $6.75," are found among home-missionary receipts.* Before 1850, women's societies to the number of nearly fifty had been organized in as many different towns and cities, and were contributing about $12,000 yearly to 'H. L. Morehouse, "Baptist Jubilee Volume," pp. 516-17. Woman's Part 307 the General Society. No attempt at unification had been made. The year 1877 was marked by two movements which gave a distinct impulse to woman's work among the Baptists. In February of that year the Woman's Baptist Home Missionary Society was organized in Chicago, having auxiharies in the East and claiming as its field the whole country. Several months later, in November of the same year, the Women's American Baptist Home Mission Society was organized in Boston, claiming New England "at least" as its feeding ground. The next important step was to consohdate, or at least to unify, these organizations ; which was done at Sara- toga in May, 1879. The Chicago Society has since that time devoted itself chiefly to the evangelization of the homes of the degraded among the blacks, the Indians, and immigrant populations, with a training-school in Chicago. The Boston Society "has given special atten- tion to the Christian education of young women among the colored people of the South, and some attention to other missionary work." From these and other more local organizations $1,500,000 have been added to Baptist home-missionary funds. Congregational women have not lagged behind their sisters of other churches in home-missionary zeal. As already noted, they were part of the fourteen who in- augurated organized effort among women in 1800. The Cent Institution of New Hampshire also was their child in that State. Yet for many years no further attempts at organized effort were made. Every church of con- siderable strength in New England, and States beyond, had its devoted band of home-missionary women who met at stated intervals to prepare comforts for the 3o8 Leavening the Nation home missionary and his family. While their needles flew they listened to letters from their adopted mission- ary at the front, telling of defeats and victories, of sufferings for Christ's sake, and of triumphs in His name, and very often of gratitude for the comforts prepared by unknown hands, so eloquent with sympathy and love. It would be difficult to say whether the missionary fami- Ues thus comforted were more blessed in receiving or these ministering women in giving. Probably no single cause contributed more powerfully to keep home-mis- sionary interest warm in the heart of the New-England churches than this personal touch between the women and the field. The worker and his work became real and present to the givers. In every home his name and field were familiar, and when the time of the annual home-missionary offering came, fathers, mothers, and children hailed the appeal as that of a personal friend in need. Although the missionary box was never included as a part of the missionary grant, yet for some years the women have been encouraged to put a conservative value on its contents and to report this sum, in each in- stance, to the Society. The record is by no means com- plete, but for the time it has been kept the value of these missionary boxes prepared by the ministering women of Congregational churches exceeds two and a half million dollars. It was inevitable that the interest thus kindled in thousands of churches by their personal contact with the field, should develop at length into some organized form. That organization came in February, 1880, by the forma- tion of the "Woman's Home Missionary Association,'! with official headquarters in Boston. The scope of the Woman's Part 309 new society was to be national, and the object, as stated, in the fourth article of the constitution, was "To enlist all the women of the Congregational churches in prayer and efforts for Home Missions; to acquire and diffuse the information needed; and to collect money and other gifts by contributions, bequests, or otherwise, for the support of women as missionaries and teachers, for the aid of missionary famiUes, and for the promotion of the spiritual and temporal welfare of those among whom they labor, especially the women and children." It was further provided that the Association should do its work on the field through the Home Missionary Society and its auxiliaries, and through the American Missionary Association, in order to avoid unnecessary expense, and in such other ways as from time to time might be deter- mined. For more than twenty years the Association has proved the wisdom of its origin and the beneficence of its mission. It has supported teachers in Utah, New Mexico, and the South; it has contributed generously to the support of missionaries commissioned by the Con- gregational Home Missionary Society and by the Ameri- can Missionary Association; it has helped to build churches and parsonages; it has aided the Sunday-school work of the denomination, and has shown its practical interest in the work of Christian education. It has divided with the Home Missionary Society and the Mis- sionary Association the labor of providing missionary boxes for their needy men. It has published a valuable series of missionary leaflets for young and old, and issued a monthly paper reporting its work, and stimulating interest by attractive appeals. For these purposes it has raised $501,000. While it has maintained its scope 3IO Leavening the Nation as a national organization, its auxiliaries and its finan- cial support have been derived mainly from the East. Its location in Eastern New England accounts for this territorial limitation in part, but other reasons were more operative. Even before the Association was created another move- ment had begun whose strength and trend were not clearly estimated at the time. Of course the New Hampshire Cent Institution had been firmly established nearly eighty years; but in 1872 the Minnesota women had organized a "State Union." Alabama women fol- lowed in 1877 with a similar organization, and during the r first five years of the Woman's Association, while it was young and struggling, the women of ten other States — Maine, Michigan, Kansas, Ohio, New York, Missouri, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington, and South Dakota — followed the lead of Minnesota and Alabama, organized themselves into State Unions, which were seeking auxil- ;.. iary relations with the national homeland Societies. The State Union fever ran so high that in 1883 the Home Missionary Society and the Missionary Association, while warmly interested in the success of the Boston Society, were compelled to organize Woman's Depart- ments of their own to welcome the multiplying State Unions of the East and West. f Mrs. H. M. Shelton was the first secretary of the Woman's Department of the Home Missionary Society; who after several years of most devoted labor was succeeded by Mrs. H. S. Caswell. Of the Woman's De- f partment of the American Missionary Association Miss D. E. Emerson has been for twenty successive years : the untiring secretary. To these three women chief credit is due for the development of woman's part in Woman's Part 311 national home missions. They have travelled widely East and West; have addressed thousands of women, and by personal correspondence have encouraged them in their work. State Unions, under their faithful en- deavors, are now organized in forty-one States and Ter- ritories, with numerous auxiliaries in each. Mrs. Cas- well, who for seventeen years was herself a missionary among the Seneca Indians, has held something closer than an official relation to the field. Her visits have taken her among the cowboys of the plains, the Mexicans of the Southwest, the miners of Pennsylvania and Idaho, and the lumbermen of Michigan, and by her pen and voice the East and West have been made familiar with home-missionary conditions. Both the Cent Society of New Hampshire and the Woman's Missionary Associa- tion of Massachusetts and Rhode Island have so far modified their constitutions as to join the family of State Unions, and the Congregational women of America present to-day a united front for State and national home missions. In their organized capacity they have added $1,500,000 to home-missionary funds. Their influence on the general work has been most happy. The various State associations at their annual meetings throughout the country warmly welcomed to their program the Woman's Hour, always giving it the place of honor. The annual gatherings of the National Societies prize no session more than the Woman's Meet- ing, which is always marked by spiritual power and uplift. No sudden crises in the National Societies make a vain appeal to these organized women. Emergency Funds, Jubilee Funds, Rolls of Honor, and whatever other distress or need befall the home-missionary work receive from them an instant and generous response. r- 312 Leavening the Nation While the State Unions are detached units, they are also one body by the fellowship of a common service, and this bond is strengthened each year by an annual gather- ing of representatives from each Union in connection with the National Anniversaries, when the common in- terests of the great work are made the subjects of dis- cussion, conference, and prayer. Not the least result of this truly national organization is the spirit of research and the study of home-missionary history which has sprung up among its members, and the preparation of programs of study for the help of young and old. In these ways the women of to-day are doing much to perpetuate an intelHgent home-missionary constituency for the future. In 1882, upon the recommendation of the General Synod of the Reformed Church, the women of that church organized a Woman's Executive Committee to cooperate with the Board of Domestic Missions in Ameri- can evangehzation. This committee has never become incorporated as an independent organization, but re- mains auxihary to the Domestic Board, working with it in entire harmony. It should here be noted that in all the organized move- ments for Home Missions among women the principle of cooperation has been preferred to that of independ- ency. Again and again the issue of independency has been raised, and as often it has been decided adversely. The home-missionary women have studied both economy and efficiency in making their work auxiliary to the estabhshed Boards, and as a consequence, in these days of discussion over administrative methods and of pro- posed consolidation of societies, they happily find them- selves untouched by criticism and in exact line with the growing sentiment of the churches. Woman's Part 313 The first specific work undertaken by the Executive Committee of the Reformed Church was the erection of parsonages for mission churches. To this they added the purchase of church furniture, the preparation of missionary boxes, and the organization of a "Paper Mission " for supplying good Uterature to the missionary and his people. They also assumed the support of sev- eral missions among the Indians of Oklahoma and the mountain whites of Kentucky, and frequently in times of financial distress have come to the help of their Home Missionary Board. An interesting feature of their work^ has been the support of missionary students during the j summer vacation. The Committee has had an existence of only twenty years ; yet in that time they have added $275,360 to the home-missionary funds of the church. The Woman's Home Missionary Society of the Metho- dist Church dates from 1880, and was organized with the approval of the General Conference of that year. It has erected cottage homes in connection with the colleges of the Freedmen's Aid Society; provided for the work in Utah a building at a cost of $6,000, and nine other build- ings ; besides maintaining mission schools in twelve places and establishing the Lucy Webb Hayes Training-school for deaconesses in Washington, in honor of Mrs. Ruther- — ford B. Hayes, its president during the first nine years of its history. It has also established missions of impor- tance and deaconess homes, devoting much of its atten- tion and means to the Indians, and reenforcing the efforts of pastors to maintain missions in regions of the country where the resources of the people have been temporarily cut off.* »J. M. Buckley, "Methodists," p 655. 3T4 Leavening the Nation The Woman's Auxiliary of the Episcopal Church began its remarkable career in 1871. Again it was an ''auxil- iary" and not a " self- constituted and independent Society." It annually adds $350^000 in money and missionary supplies to the funds of the church, and since its formation it has gathered nearly five million dollars for missionary purposes.^ Apart from the work it has done, the missionary spirit and interest it has aroused have been of incalculable service to the church. But money is not the only offering of Christian women to home missions. In every part of the field they are personally represented by a growing army of mission- aries and missionary teachers, not a few of them or- dained preachers of the gospel; and no record of woman's part would be complete that failed to include the silent but powerful influence of missionary wives who share the burdens of the missionary, counsel him in his plans of work, and often, with woman's cleverness, insure their success.^ Perhaps the most valuable service rendered by women to the cause of home missions is yet to be named. From the beginning of their active cooperation they have seized and magnified its spiritual motives and meanings to a marked degree. Being themselves relieved of im- mediate concern in its administration as a business, their meetings have been given to conference and prayer rather than to the discussion of methods and policies. Just this spiritual tonic was needed to bring the churches back to the cardinal points of a movement which began a hundred years ago with deep concern for the spiritual needs of the new settlements. The higher motives of » C. C. Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," p. 523- ' " Woman's Work at the Front," Miss M. D. Moffatt. Woman's Part 315 giving also have been reemphasized at a time when the C churches were falhng into a benevolent routine. The home-missionary women have exalted the privilege of sacrifice above the mere duty of contributing money, and the result has been seen not only in the larger measure, ( but in the more intelligent spirit of benevolence. Home- missionary Hterature of to-day, much of it prepared by woman's hand, will bear witness to any careful reader of a new spirit of rather recent birth — a spirit that lifts the home-missionary enterprise into clearer air and takes it back nearer to the fountains of spiritual power. This _ renaissance of the spiritual in Home Missions was a greater need than many of its leaders appreciated. It has brought a blessing, and its presence will abide so long as women continue in their own way to cooperate with their brethren in evangehzing America. XX COOPERATIVE AGENCIES When the fathers of New England and New York began their great fight against barbarism in the new settlements, a large choice of weapons was offered them. In nothing was their wisdom more manifest than in the selection they made. They chose The Church — not because they vmdervalued the printing of Bibles and tracts, or the building of meeting-houses, or the planting of colleges and seminaries of learning ; but because they held the church to be the spring of all other remedial agencies, without which all others would languish and die. To plant the organized Church of Christ in every new settlement as it gathered ; to build this up in the New- Testament way, by the ordained pastor and teacher and with the aid of divinely appointed ordinances, — this was the wise choice of wise men ; not to sprinkle water broad- cast over a thirsty land, but at wisely chosen points to open hving fountains ; to set up Christianity, not in some fleeting form, but in its most permanent, reproductive and divinest institution, and to leave it thus intrenched to become the regenerating force of society, — for more than a century this has been the working pohcy of Home Missions from which its friends have never deviated. In another chapter the fruits of this pohcy are to be 316 Cooperative Agencies 317 summed up ; but here it is the grateful privilege of every fair-minded historian to take note of agencies which have helpfully cooperated with home missions in the vast enterprise of leavening the nation. One of the most significant facts in the early history of America is that memorial which came before the Con- gress of 1777 asking the help of the Government in sup- plying the people with Bibles. The Declaration had been signed and passed; the War of the Revolution was in progress ; national existence was at stake ; and the peo- ple were hungering for the Bible. Congress referred the petition to a committee, who recommended "that the Government take immediate measures to secure 20,000 copies from Holland, Scotland or elsewhere at the ex- pense of Congress." Four years later, when the struggle for existence was in its most desperate stage, the Congress of 1781, by reso- lution, highly approved the Bible printed by Robert Aitkin of Philadelphia, and recommended it to the people of the United States, Chancellor Ferris, in his review of fifty years in the history of the American Bible Society, quotes an unnamed writer who thus comments upon that significant act: "What moral sublimity in the fact as it stands imperishably recorded and filed in the national archives — the first Congress of the United States assuming the rights and performing the duties of a Bible Society long before such an institution had any existence in the world ! ' ' Thirty years passed before the people themselves began to organize societies for Bible distribution. Their first efforts fall into that fruitful decade between 1798 and 1808, when the very air of New England and New York seemed charged with missionary ozone. Penn- 3i8 Leavening the Nation sylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York, all had their local Bible societies before 1810; and before 1815 these had multiplied into 132 organiza- tions, independent of each other and extending from New Hampshire to Louisiana. Then by natural evolu- tion came the American Bible Society, in 1816, gathering into one focus of interest and effort these scattered en- deavors to supply the people with the Word. The appearance of the Bible Society at the time its great work began was a special providence to Home Missions. It closely cooperated with the home-mis- sionary societies in the new settlements, and Bible distri- bution became one of the chief labors of the missionary. In eighty-six years the Society has made at least four special explorations of the States and Territories with a view to supply all the destitute with the word of life. Bibles by milhons have thus been placed where they were most needed and as one result the proportion of families in the United States destitute of the Scriptures has been constantly decreasing, notwithstanding the rapid growth of population. It is the joy of the friends of home missions that its multiplying churches do not forget the debt they owe to the Bible Society, and that its revenues for Bible distribution have increased from $37,000 in 1816 to $450,000 in 1902. Closely connected in the nature of its work with the agency just named, came the American Tract Society jp. 1825. If the Bible Society, as one has styled it, is "the plowshare of missions," the Tract Society is the seeder; and great has been its sowing. In seventy-five years t has issued nearly 8,500 separate pubhcations, of which over 2,000 have been bound volumes. Of the latter more than 32,000,000 copies have been circulated, and of I e --^ > i :::^ if$: f -^: .,/ ^A ,sa»i:';:' ^"'^ ^^m. John P. Durbin, D.D. Corresponding Secretary of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church from 1850 to 1872. Cooperative Agencies 319 former nearly 500,000,000, while its six periodicals have had an aggregate circulation of more than 260,000,000. Before this gigantic total of nearly a billion issues of Christian Hterature, the work of the best writers of the Church, cheap, yet attractive, every page a bit of the leaven of the Kingdom, the mind is bewildered in its effort to trace these countless messengers of healing and light as they compass the land and the world. How many eyes have been opened to the truth; how many hearts comforted by its promises; how many young minds sweetened with wholesome reading, and safeguarded against the poison of a satanic press; how many cabins and camps, how many mines and ranches, how many sunless attics that had no other light have been cheered by the Bible and the tract, that came hand in hand from these two great Christian presses in New York — what tongue can tell? only heaven ^dll reveal. The leaves of these twin societies have been literally for the healing of the nation. The home missionary would be shorn of half his power without them and home-missionary churches would be poor indeed without their powerful aid. The American Sunday School Union, which took its present form in 1824, is another agency of immense power in the leavening of America. Careful inquiry at that time failed to discover more than 100 Sunday-schools in the United States, and most of these were in connection with churches. Between these scattered churches tens of thousands of children were growing up without the least rehgious instruction or knowledge of the Bible. It was the office of the Simday School Union to go be- fore the home-missionary movement and prepare this neglected soil for the planting of the church. In its 320 Leavening the Nation nearly eighty years of endeavor it has opened more than a hundred thousand schools, with six hundred thousand teachers and between four and five million scholars. It has distributed Sunday-school literature to the value of $9,000,000, which has found its way not only to needy churches and schools, but "to the army and navy, to prisons, reformatories, penitentiaries, and lapsed classes." Uncounted conversions have resulted, only a partial record of which is preserved. During the first eight years of its history (1824-1832), the number of its con- verts was estimated to be 50,000, and during the last ten years more than 70,000 have been actually reported. In the same period more than eleven hundred churches have grown out of the schools it has planted. In any estimate of leavening forces the Sunday School Union must be awarded a place of great influence and of high honor. These three societies, — the Bible, the Tract, and the Sunday-school, — were all organized on an undenomina- tional basis, and on that basis they still firmly stand, testifying that underneath all distinctions of theology and church pohty which divide our American Christen- dom the Bible is one for all; its first truths for the minds of the young are the same for all, and a true Christian literature is independent of sects and isms. One of the first needs developed by early home mis- sions was that of church buildings and parsonages. The infant church could not be left by the roadside without a roof to cover it, and the missionary must have a home to insure the permanency of his work as well as to pro- mote its efficiency. So obvious do these needs appear that it is hard to understand why they waited so long for organized recognition. Cooperative Agencies 321 The Albany Convention of 1852, the first general gathering of the Congregational churches since the Cam- bridge Convention of 1646, had for a leading topic on its program: "The project of aiding feeble churches at the West in building church edifices." The Convention recommended raising $50,000 at once for this purpose, and the churches responded promptly by contributing $61,891; with this for a fund the American Congrega- tional Union was organized to carry on the work. Its nondescript name was changed in 1892, to one more descriptive of its nature, and it is now known as the Congregational Church Building Society. The relation between the missionary societies and the Building Society is of the very closest kind. The one organizes the church and supports the missionary ; the other helps the people to erect their house of worship. In recent years, under the lead of Dr. Wilham M. Taylor, the department of parsonage building has been greatly developed, and all over the West and in many parts of the South and East are to be seen Congregational meet- ing-houses, of a neat but not costly pattern, and beside them comfortable manses, testifying to the hberality of the stronger churches as well as to the wisdom and energy of the Church Building Society. Its method is threefold. It makes grants to strug- gling churches for the payment of last bills on the house of worship, requiring only an annual collection in return; it loans money without interest, to be paid back in five or ten years as the church gains in strength ; and it loans money on the same terms for the building of parsonages. Thus part of its fimds continually returns to its treasury for repeated investment. Its work is not confined to coimtry churches, but promising city enterprises come 322. Leavening the Nation in for a share of its help. During these fifty years since 1853, it has received and disbursed $3,628,191 in loans and grants for 3,282 houses of worship and 781 par- sonages. During this period its affairs have been di- rected by Dr. Ray Palmer, secretary from 1866 to 1878; Dr. Wm. B. Brown, from 1878 to 1882; and by Dr. L. H. Cobb, who took office in 1882 and resigned in 1902. To no other agency is Congregational Home Missions more deeply indebted than to the Church Building Society. American Baptists were long without any organized plan of church erection on home-missionary ground. Weak churches appealed to the stronger for help, which was cheerfully rendered, but in no systematic way and in no sufficient amount. It was not until 1852 that the Home Mission Society opened its treasury for special contributions to this cause, but with explicit warning against the depletion of its missionary receipts. The demand so far exceeded the supply that in 1864, $10,000 were appropriated from the missionary funds for church erection, and other sums at a later date. An effort was made in 1866 to raise a permanent fund of $500,000, and Dr. E. E. L. Taylor was appointed to present the matter to the churches. The effort was only partially successful, about one half the proposed amount being raised. For several years this fund was used for loans exclusively at a low rate of interest, which was never to be abated. Experience, however, proved that outright gifts were in many instances indispensable, and it became necessary in 1881 to open a benevolent depart- ment of the Church Edifice Fund for the help of congre- gations which could not afford to borrow money on any terms. Under this double method the work has since been carried on. Churches in perishing need receive Cooperative Agencies 323 gifts of money to build their sanctuaries : churches that promise growth receive loans, and are found to grow- stronger by the necessity thus laid upon them to help themselves. Baptists have no separate chiu*ch-building society, and for tliis reason the cause lacks distinctness in their plan of church benevolences. The Church Building Fund, which has increased in recent years, is held and ad- ministered by the Home Mission Society, and by this method unity is thought to be secured and economy to be served. The Methodists discovered in 1864 the necessity of organized effort in church building. The General Con- ference at its meeting that year in Pliiladelphia took ad- vanced ground by establishing a Church Extension Society " to secure suitable houses of public worship and such other church property as may promote the general design." In the nearly forty years that have elapsed since that action was taken, $4,000,000 have been expended in Methodist church erection. Direct gifts and loans are its method of help. Since the estab- Ushment of the Loan Fund more than a million dollars have been returned and over 10,000 churches have been aided. Next to its church-planting activities, nothing has so helpfully contributed to the success of Method- ism as its well-organized system of church extension. The Presbyterians of America, however, were the first to establish a permanent agency for church erection. For forty years after organized home-missionary effort began the need of such an agency had been felt, and in 1844 it was supplied by the appointment of a Board under the General Assembly. In fifty-six years this Board has disbursed $3,948,390 for church, chapel, and 324 Leavening the Nation manse erection, in grants and loans to the number of 6,574. Its own estimate of the value of the work to the cause of national evangehzation would probably be echoed by every other branch of the church: "It has reached every State and Territory over which our church extends. It is not too much to say that of the thousands of congregations that within fifty years God has per- mitted us to organize, one half would have failed for the want of the comfort and the grace of spiritual homes in which to gather had not the church in its wisdom in- augurated and sustained the work of the Board of Church Erection." The close alliance of the Sunday School Union with home missions in general has been already noted. Even more intimate is that of the denominational Sunday- school societies which have sprung up in later years. The Congregational Sunday School and Pubhshing Society is an evolution from 1825. Beginning then as a Union work, in seven years the Baptist, Methodist, and Episcopal partners had withdrawn; the union feature was abandoned for the denominational, and the name adopted was the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society. Later, in 1868, this was consolidated with the Congrega- tional Board of Publication, and has ever since borne its present designation. Under two departments, mission- ary and business, it serves the denomination by pro- moting Sunday-school organization and education, and by publishing Uterature in explanation and support of the Congregational faith and pohty. Its superintendents and missionaries, numbering about forty, and spread over the whole country from New England to the Pacific and Alaska, are carefully in- structed to improve existing schools; to plant new Cooperative Agencies 325 schools where Congregational churches may be hope- fully organized; to establish mission schools where they may be mothered by Congregational churches; and to reorganize schools that may have been abandoned. The immense value of such cooperation to Congrega- tional Home Missions needs no argument. Since 1883 the Society has organized nearly 8,000 schools and gath- ered into them 350,000 persons, young and old, for the study of the Bible, and out of them have grown in that period 830 Congregational churches. Other denomi- nations have reaped a frequent advantage from this work, and many communities destined to wait for years the coming of a church, have been supplied with its best possible substitute in the Sunday-schools of this society. Almost identical in its method with that of the Con- gregationalists is the Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath School Work, with its two departments — missionary and business. Something of its helpful minis- try may be seen in the fact that during the present year it has organized 773 schools, more than two a day, and has reorganized 388 — a total of 1,161 schools, with an aggregate membership of 3,916 teachers and 35,944 scholars. It has at present under its care 2,134 schools; of which 1,703 have no connection with any church, and 1 ,762 have no building of their own in which to gather. Sixty-six churches grew out of these schools last year; of which fifty-four were Presbyterian. During the past five years, the total number of churches from such schools has been 1,094; of which 651 are Presbyterian and 443 of other denominations. It is not possible to speak at length of Baptist, Metho- dist, Episcopal, and Reformed methods and agencies of the same kind. Sufficient to say that all of these 326 Leavening the Nation churches recognize the interdependence of church plant- ing and Sunday-school gathering; that the school is often the germ out of which new churches spring; and that the health and the very life of the church are found to depend upon the school quite as much as the school upon the church. In every branch of the evangehcal body this mutual reliance is now clearly seen and ac- knowledged, and there is as little danger of rivalry be- tween the claims of church planting and Sunday-school extension as between the river and the spring. Christian education, while its claim as a cooperative agency in Home Missions is beyond dispute, yet it is also quite distinctly one of the most legitimate fruits of church planting. As such we prefer to reserve its treat- ment for the closing chapter on the '' Fruits of Home Missions." No review of cooperative agencies would be complete without grateful recognition of the Young Men's Chris- tian Association, and the immense and blessed results of its work. The idea of the Association came from London, where it took practical form in 1844. Boston was the cradle of the first American experiment, in 1851, and two years ago in Boston the American semicentennial of that event was celebrated with great enthusiasm. What have these fifty years of consecrated history accomplished towards the leavening of a nation? The first answer to such a question should be the heartiest recognition of a fact; namely, that the Young Men's Christian Association, when it might have been easily tempted to a contrary course, has loyally aligned itself with the church; has conducted all its work in the name of the church; and has sought to make all its multiplied agencies contributory to the life of the church. In this Cooperative Agencies 327 it has found its power, and by this attitude it has won for itself the unfeigned confidence and love of the nainistry and the membership of the American churches. The blessing of this association to the young men of America has been immeasurable. It began at a time when the word "apprentice" and the domestic protec- tion which that word often secured to the homeless clerk were becoming obsolete. "The employee was only a 'hand,* and there was danger that the employer would, forget that he had also a heart and a soul." ^ This was the exigency which the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion came to supply; and nobly it has fulfilled its trust. In these fifty years its separate organizations have come to number nearly 1,600, with an aggregate member- ship of 323,224, of which nearly 40,000 are juniors. These organizations hold property and buildings and funds to the amount of over $24,000,000, enabling them to do for young men a work in physical, intellectual, social, moral, and rehgious Hues almost incalculable. Gymnasiums, athletics, and outings; reading-rooms, debating clubs, libraries, Uterary circles, lectures, and edu- cational classes; Bible classes, rehgious training-schools, prayer-meetings, missionary studies, industrial classes, and bureaus of employment — these are only part of the agencies employed by the Association to stimulate, guide, and safeguard young men parted from their homes and exposed to the temptations of business life. But the Association does not stop here. It carries its work into colleges, universities, and preparatory schools. Here also yoimg men and boys are set free from the re- straints of home, and cut off from its helpful sympathy; ' L. W. Bacon, " History of American Christianity," p. 364. 328 Leavening the Nation and to them thus exposed comes the Association, with the approval of principals and teachers, bringing its Bible classes, its prayer and social meetings, and its mis- sionary studies. The Association is represented in col- leges and schools by a membership of 170,000. Nor does it stop even here. One class of men pecul- iarly subject both to danger and to neglect it seeks out on the railroads of the country. Here it has gathered over 170 organizations, including a total membership of about 50,000 men, for whom it supphes reading, en- tertainment, gymnastic exercise, literary culture, rest- rooms, baths, hospital treatment, and Bible study. The Army and Navy have not been overlooked in its ministry. More than 80,000 at post or station are enrolled in its organizations. For the past year 632 army points, from Cuba to Alaska and from the Maritime Provinces westward across the Continent to Hawaii and the Philip- pines, report some phases of Association work in opera- tion. It is no respecter of color, race, or age. In its Negro department is a membership of 3,514; its Indian membership is nearly 2,000, and about 40,000 boys are brought under its helpful ministry. But this review of cooperating agencies must have an end, not for want of material but for lack of space. The Young Women's Christian Association, fashioned on the same working principle as the Young Men's, but with special adaptations to its own work; the Young People's Christian Endeavor Society, girdling the earth with an army of organized Christian youth, the hope of the future church; the Salvation Army, " which takes hold of drunkards and harlots, of thieves and robbers, and by the power of Christian love and hfe transforms them into respectable, honest, pure, and trustworthy men and Cooperative Agencies 329 women"; Leagues for Social Service; Guilds and Brotherhoods; Workingmen's Clubs and Settlements; Boys' Brigades and Kings' Daughters; Temperance Circles and Homes for everybody; Homes for working- girls, for newsboys and bootblacks, for every sort and condition of humanity that is homeless, friendless, and unprivileged — these all, and many besides, are both fruits of the church life and partners and cooperators with the church in leavening the nation. Home Missions, whUe it goes on its chosen way, open- ing fresh fountains of church life in every gathering com- munity, must ever bless these many and multiplying agencies which spring up in its path, confirming its work, protecting and nurturing its churches and sounding the calls to Christian service by which churches grow into the spirit and likeness of their Master, Christian civili- zation of the twentieth century is one body, having many members, in which the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. XXI THE FRUITS The test of leaven is its quickening power when hidden in the meal. A distinguished evangelical leader, for many years a prominent teacher of the unevan- gelical school, confesses that his eyes were partially opened to the truth by discovering the powerlessness of his earlier faith to propagate itself. "Missions are languid or unknown," is his final verdict upon a creed which he had long sought to vitalize, but out of which the God-man had been cast. The vitality of every seed is its power of reproducing itself. If, then, we shall estimate the vitality of the home-missionary idea by the measure of its quickening and propagating power, we might challenge the nineteenth century to produce any parallel, of its kind, to the productiveness of that httle handful of corn which Connecticut and Massachusetts, in 1798-99, began to scatter on the western side of the Hudson. In many previous pages we have followed the organized home-missionary movements of Baptists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians, with glances, such as space permitted, at the work of Methodists, Episcopahans, and the Reformed Church. But the real volume of home-missionary enterprise for the last hundred years has scarcely been touched. Not these 330 The Fruits 331 six alone, but more than thirty organized home-mission- ary societies, all of them evangelical and all national, have sprung from that humble planting of 1798. These more than thirty societies have gathered and invested $140,000,000 in the enterprise of leavening America. Their chief agent has been the church, with its ordained preacher and its divinely appointed ordi- nances; and for the church these milUons have been given. This total, however, takes no account of co- operating agencies, called into being by the church and its missionary work. Add these: Sunday-school planting; Bible and tract printing; denominational literature, church building, and Christian education, which by careful inquiry are found to have expended $150,000,000 more, and the grand total for Home Missions, root and branch, in organized form, has been $290,000,000. Not a dollar of this immense fund has been paid, in any commercial sense, for value received; all of it was given, a free-will offering of Christian people to mark their intense conviction of the peril of a nation without the gospel, and their faith in its leavening power. If to this sum were to be added the more personal and private contributions of Christian people, who in addition to the long arm of a missionary society have chosen often to be their own almoners, the total named would be vastly increased; and all this from the one-hundred-and-fifty-doUar seed of sixteen women of Boston in 1800; from the five-dollar seed of the New Hampshire Cent Institution of 1804, and from the six hundred dollars in the treasury of the Connecticut Society when it began its organized warfare against barbarism in the new settlements. Is it possible to contemplate this vast fruitage of organized effort and 33^ Leavening the Nation doubt that those few kernels of early seed were gifted with divine vitality? Thus much for the growth of organization. But what have these organizations and their millions accomplished, and what of visible fruits remain to justify their cost? It is a fact not generally known, and when known not sufficiently appreciated, that the evangelical bodies of the United States trace most of their church organiza- tions directly to home missions. Congregationahsts admit that four fifths of their churches are of home- missionary origin. The proportion would be greater were it not that hundreds of Congregational churches were born before home missions began. Presbyterians confess that nine tenths of their churches are of home- missionary planting.^ Baptist, Methodist, and Episco- pal estimates range from five sixths to nine tenths. Consider for a moment what such ratios mean: that these far-spreading ecclesiastical bodies have grown strong in church power not by their own help but by home-missionary aid, the few strong bearing the in- firmities of the many weak. When we have taken in the fact that four fifths, five sixths, seven eighths, and even nine tenths of the evan- gehcal churches in the United States which now com- pass the land came to their birth or were saved from early death by home-missionary succor, it comes to be a most pertinent question. Where and what would these great ecclesiastical bodies be but for that helpful agency? To more than one of them, instead of the thriving churches and kindred agencies which now dot the land, their only memorials would be a few sequestered ceme- ' Secretary C. L. Thompson, Presbyterian Board Home Mis- sions. The Fruits 333 teries full of early graves, over which might be justly written the inscription, "Sacred to the memory of the Denomination, which died of poverty and neglect.". These unquestioned facts should be less novel than they are to many well-informed Christians. A great scholar in church history confessed to the writer, when first made acquainted with them, "I never dreamed of it." To the credit of home missions, therefore, should stand the un- doubted truth that an overwhelming majority of evan- gelical churches owe their being to its nurture and care. And what does such a fact mean in the rehgious de- velopment of the country? Figures here are eloquent; they palpitate with life. In the year 1800, the United States had one evangehcal communicant in 14.50 of the population. In 1850, that ratio had grown to one in 6.57; in 1870, to one in 5.78; in 1880, to one in 5; in 1890, to one in 4.53; and in 1900, to one in 4.25. In other words, evangelical church membership increased three and one half times faster than the population in less than a hundred years. Between 1800 and 1890, population increased 11.8 fold. In the same period, evangehcal communicants increased thirty-eight fold. From 1850 to 1890, population increased 170 per cent, while evangelical communicants increased 291 per cent.* To these figures of Dr. Dorchester, their indefatigable compiler adds the comment: "This exhibit of rehgious progress cannot be paralleled in the history of God's kingdom in any land or any age." Was it only a hun- dred and thirty years ago that Voltaire in Geneva had said: "Before the beginning of the nineteenth century, Christianity will have disappeared from the earth"? 'Daniel Dorchester, "Problem of Religious Progress," p. 694, 334 Leavening the Nation Was it less than a hundred years ago that American infidels were prophesying that the church would not survive two generations in this country? But "the Church is an anvil that has worn out many a hammer." In defiance of these dismal auguries, between 1800 and 1850 the average yearly increase of evangeUcal com- municants was 63,302; between 1850 and 1870, twenty years, 157,170; between 1870 and 1880, ten years, 339,258; between 1880 and 1890, ten years, 375,765; and for four years, between 1890 and 1894, 348,582, the prophecy of a larger average than ever for the last ten years of the century. It is no vmseemly boast but an obvious truth that by far the larger part of this re- markable growth is due to the direct agency of Ameri- can Home Missions, since in its own carefully planted gardens most of that growth has taken place. ' It has often been asked, sometimes with the accent of doubt, whether the vast volume of missionary aid sent from the East into the West has not discouraged self- help and tended to pauperize the aided churches. It w^ould be a dark spot on our feast of charities if this were true; but it is not true. This danger was early foreseen and wisely averted. For a few years at the beginning, home-missionary policy was exposed to that very peril. The early societies of New England neither required nor allowed their missionaries to draw any part of their support from the congregations to which they minis- tered. A better plan for entailing pauperism could not have been devised. The people were to be treated as helpless, which treatment would have made them so. But this error, so deadly to self-sacrifice and even to self-respect, was soon discerned, and for the greater part of the missionary century, the iavariable condition of The Fruits 33S receiving any missionary help whatever has been the largest possible measure of self-help on the part of the aided church. The old system was to bear the whole burden for the people; the new system proposed to share the burden with the people. And nothing for many years past has been more fundamental in home- missionary policy than its effort to steadily reduce the measure of missionary aid to a vanishing point by build-, ing up the grace of self-help to the stature of comple^ independence. -"""^ Under this wiser and only true policy, church after church has received the aid of its missionary society and graduated from its rolls. State after State has passed over from the condition of a beneficiary to that of an auxiliary. Pauperism has been avoided, self- respect has been maintained, and thousands of churches that were once the grateful recipients of a society's bounty are now cheerful contributors to its missionary funds. Yet, gratifying as this result has been among the fruits, even more than this is true. The churches of the East have not been accustomed to look upon home missions as a paying investment, in any business sense, dollar for dollar. Its spiritual, moral, and patriotic returns have been generally acknowledged and highly valued; but, financially, gifts to home missions have been treated as so much money out for so much good of a higher kind received. But a recent careful investi- gation by one skilled in inquiries of this kind presents the matter in a new light. His conclusions relate to only one of our large home-missionary boards; but pre- sumably they are true, in varying degrees, of them all. In a grand total of about $1,000,000 contributed last 33^ Leavening the Nation year by the churches of this one denomination for home missions, he makes it clear that one half of the entire amount came from churches which now are, or at some time have been, home-missionary churches; and, what is more significant, his inquiry reveals that in the last twenty-five years the churches which now are, or at some time were, home-missionary churches have con- tributed more money for their own denominational missionary work of all kinds than the entire century of home-missionary endeavor has cost to that denomi- nation. Here is a surprising result and a wonderful testimony to the paying power of home-missionary investment. Were the only returns of the effort such as might be found in the record of churches and Sunday-schools formed, in the growth of evangehcal forces, and in the general uplifting of society, such results would be an ample reward to those who have so freely sustained the effort; for these were all that were ever expected. But to discover, in addition, that the total expenditure for a hundred years of home missions has been made good in twenty-five years by its own children; and that these same churches called to life by home missions are now supplying one half the money needed to carry on its beneficent work — such discoveries so far transcend any hope or dream of the home-missionary fathers as to make them seem almost incredible. Any business house with branches in forty States and Territories that should be able to show a similar return for capital invested would be rated high in the agencies of the commercial world. Home missions was never begun with any eye to financial returns, yet in less than a hundred years it has created and reared a constituency The Fruits 337 of grateful children which pay back in twenty-five years, dollar for dollar, all that home missions has cost in a hundred. Not only has pauperism been escaped and self-respect maintained, but fountains of bounty have been opened which are feeding with their ten thousand rills the great rivers of Christian benevolence. Thus much for direct results. But incidental fruits are even more suggestive. From the top of Mt. Wash- ington on a clear day in summer a visitor may trace the course of streams that do not betray their existence by one sparkle in the sun. Their presence is self-revealed by the deeper green that fringes their banks; by the taller trees that meet over their depths ; by the laughing harvests that run down on either side to greet them. So with this broad river of home missions; it has gone on its way, never deviating from its direct and special errand; but in its course it has watered and enriched the land, until, far and wide, have sprung up fruits and blessings that had no place in the thought, nor even in the dreams, of the home- missionary fathers. Christian Education was no part of the plan of Con- necticut and Massachusetts in 1798, nor of the General Assembly in 1802; and but a small fraction of home- missionary money has ever been diverted from church planting to the founding of colleges and academies. Yet in the entire range of agencies that have cooper- ated with home missions, and among its most legitimate fruits. Christian Education stands in the front rank. Eighteen years after the first prehistoric home mis- sionaries landed at Plymouth and set up their church, Harvard College became a necessity. Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton, Brown, Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin, Mid- dlebury, Holyoke, are all children of the Church and 338 Leavening the Nation had their birth in a religious movement. At the West particularly, and all through the home-missionary belt, the same law has perpetually declared itself. Begin to plant churches anywhere and the next demand is a Christian college. The quickening of religious life stimulates intellectual desire, and with an apprehension of the true meaning of life and its relations to the future, the ambition to make the most of that life and its oppor- tunities becomes a passion that will not be denied. The fathers of New England recognized the law when, sixteen years after home missions began, they organ- ized the Congregational Education Society. It has quali- fied its name more than once, but has never lost sight of its twofold purpose — to follow up the church with the Christian college, and to recruit its ministry by aiding worthy young men to prepare for it. The hst of its beneficiaries would be a long one, and would contain the names of men famihar in every Congregational household of the land for the service they have ren- dered to the church and to the world. A very large proportion of home-missionary pastors could never have reached the ministry without its helping hand. Other church bodies besides the Congregationalists have felt the compelhng power of the same law. All of them have been driven to follow the enterprise of church planting with organized forms of college building and ministerial education, until in every part of the home-missionary belt no considerable group of churches can be found from which a straight path does not lead to some Chris- tian academy, college, or seminary of learning, centrally located for the benefit of these churches, and cherished by them as a sacred ally of their own work. Call the roll of Western colleges known as "Congre- , The Fruits 339 gational " because their management is chiefly in the hands of Congregationahsts, and known as "Christian" because they undertake the education of the whole man, body, mind, and spirit : scarcely one can be named that is not indebted for its birth and early nurture to the home missionary; — Marietta, the child of Luther E. Bingham, our earUest missionary in Southern Ohio; Illinois, planted by John M. Ellis, one of the first two missionaries in that State ; Beloit, nurtured in its infancy by Aratus Kent and Stephen Peet, both home mission- aries; Washburn, started by three missionaries and three delegates from their churches; Oberlin, the thought of John J. Shipherd, the young missionary at Elyria; Rollins, warmed to life by Edward P. Hooker and SuUivan F. Gale, the home-missionary leaders of Florida; Ripon, saved and borne on to success by Walcott, Lamb, Chapin, and Miter, all home mission- aries; Whitman, named for a missionary hero, the dream of another missionary hero, Gushing Eells, who lived to reahze his own vision, and presided over by a later missionary leader, Penrose; Doane, beginning at Fontenelle in the heroic sacrifices of Reuben Gaylord, Nebraska's home-missionary pioneer; Iowa, whose foundations were laid by Asa Turner and the Iowa Band ; Carleton, over whose infancy Shedd, Seccombe, Hall, Brown, Burt, Willey, and Barnes, all veteran home missionaries, "prayed, toiled, and sacrificed," and whose President for thirty years, James W. Strong, has been for all these years also President of Minnesota Home Missions; Wabash, "with John M. Ellis again in the lead"; Knox, at once the child of home missions and the mother of distinguished home-missionary leaders like James H. Warren, Benjamin F. Haskins, 340 Leavening the Nation Alfred L. Riggs, Joseph E. Roy, and James Tompkins; Western Reserve, whose seed was imported from old Connecticut with the first home missionary to New Connecticut in 1801; Olivet and Tabor, both daughters of Oberlin, and inheriting to the full its missionary spirit; Yankton, the monument of Joseph Ward, Dakota's great missionary; and a similar record might be given of Pacific and Wheaton, of Drury and Colorado, of Fairmount and Kingfisher, of Gates, Fargo, Redfield, and Pomona, and of academies almost with- out number. These instances are drawn from Congregational history only because of the writer's greater familiarity with the facts. But he is assured that equally strong statements would be true of fifty Methodist institutions, of thirty Presbyterian, and of all similar colleges and seminaries of Baptists and Episcopalians on home- missionary ground. By home missionaries they were conceived. Home missionaries consecrated them with prayers. Home missionaries divided with them their scanty salaries. Home missionaries have been their presidents, professors, and trustees, and home-mis- sionary churches have supphed them with money and with students. " Home missionaries were their nursing fathers and home-missonary churches their nursing mothers." ^ We cannot contemplate this remarkable growth of educational enterprise, so closely identified with evan- gelistic progress, and not be impressed with a new sense of the vitahzing power of home missions. And the benefits are strictly reciprocal. If Christian colleges David B. Coe. The Fruits 34i owe their being to the churches planted by home mis- sions, not less do the churches owe their continued Ufe and growth to Christian Education. Twenty years ago, on a map published by the then president of Colorado College, 2,000 towns are indicated where graduates of ten Western colleges and three Western theological seminaries were serving as home-missionary pastors under the American Home Missionary Society. ^ In 1 000 other towns the graduates of these institutions were serving under other societies, and not less than 30,000 students from the same colleges had been em- ployed as teachers in 15,000 towns of the West. Hand in hand. Home Missions and Christian Education are sowing and reaping, and when the final harvest shall be shouted home great is to be their common joy. But the incidental fruits of home missions do not end with education; they only begin there. That peerless interpreter of history, Richard Salter Storrs, once de- clared in his own pulpit: "Home Missions saved this country once and will save it again if necessary." He was not referring to that fmal redemption of all men and of all lands which is the ultimate hope of Christian missions, but to the civil and poUtical rescue of the na- tion in a season of deadly peril. Yet the fathers of New England, when they began their merciful ministry to the new settlements, had no thought of any civil or poUtical issues which might arise. They were simply intent on giving to others what had proved to be a supreme solace to themselves — the blessing of the gospel of Christ. But if, absorbed in their spiritual purpose, they thought Uttle of its collateral value, the law of cause and effect was not for a moment suspended. Every mo- 342 Leavening the Nation ment it was true that in a government by the people and for the people nothing counts for so much as high ideals of duty. With these enthroned in the thought and life of its citizens, a nation may meet almost any shock from within or from without; and nothing has yet been discovered on earth or revealed from heaven that has power to create higher ideals of duty than Christianity and the obligations it inculcates. It is thus that missionary societies, whose sole function is the planting of churches, enter into the hidden life of a nation in ways that political parties cannot enter, and which even Christian men are sometimes slow to appre- ciate. Not only law, order, temperance, respect for the Sabbath, security of life and property, and the claims of humanity are thus conserved and fostered, but the instinct of patriotism itself, in which the very life of the nation consists, finds its nursing mother in the Church of Christ. This collateral value of Home Missions has had many illustrations in American history. It was a home mis- sionary who proposed and advocated, and by the weight of his personal influence engrossed, the principle of prohibition in the State constitutions of the Dakotas; and it was the votes of a church-educated people that made it law. And a little later, when the Louisiana lottery, being driven out of the South, sought to impose inself on the new State of North Dakota, it was the Christian sentiment of the people, developed by years of home-missionary culture, that sent that deadly vam- pire flying out of North Dakota and never looking back nor staying its flight until it reached Central America. Many such victories of a Christianly educated pubhc sentiment, distinctly due to home-missionary nurture, The Fruits 343 might be named; but they all merge in that one great crisis which shook the very pillars of the Nation and would have crumbled them to pieces, says Dr. Storrs, but for the saving power of home missions. No un- skilled hand may attempt to revise or comment upon such testimony from such a man: "Home Missions saved this country once and will save it again if necessary." In its grand simplicity let it stand as the profound con- viction of a master in Christian history. Howell Cobb paid an unconscious tribute to its truth when he proposed to reconstruct the Union, "with New England, Plymouth Rock, and original sin left out " ; and a less chivalrous orator declared to the same effect: "There would never have been a war if, when the Pil- grims entered Massachusetts Bay, instead of landing on Plymouth Rock the rock had landed on them." Very likely; for, when the inevitable struggle came, the meaning and value of sixty-five years of church planting in the West and Northwest began to appear. Every home-missionary pulpit flamed with patriotic fire and sounded its call to arms. Congregations and Sunday- schools were decimated by enlistments. From a careful inquiry instituted near the close of the war, it was ascer- tained that the home-missionary churches of the entire West, on both sides of the Mississippi, "had sent into the army one in four of their entire male membership, including in the count old men, invahds, and boys." Home-missionary colleges were not behind the churches in patriotic zeal. To the first call of President Lincoln for volunteers, 130 Oberlin undergraduates responded in a single day. Their first experience in battle was at Cross Lanes, West Virginia, where their captain and twenty-nine of their number were captured and borne 344 Leavening the Nation away to untold suffering in Southern prisons. But their places were promptly filled by other students, and the Oberlin Company was destined to take part in ten great battles of the war; among them, Winchester, Cedar Mountain, Chancellorsville, Antietam, Gettysburg, Lookout Mountain, and Mission Ridge. "Taking grad- uates and undergraduates together," says the late Presi- dent Fair child, "it was estimated that not less than 850 were in the army at some time during the four years." Beloit, though younger than Oberlin, and having but ten graduated classes at the opening of the war, has the same glorious record. Of the 800 young men that were in college or had been connected with it, more than one half were volunteers in the Union armies. Iowa sent out many of its choicest graduates and students, who distinguished themselves for bravery, and several rose to places of honor. More than half the undergraduates of Knox enlisted, and many went from the Academy of whom no record was kept. Of graduates and under- graduates. Marietta contributed 181 soldiers; among whom four rose to the rank of Brigadier-General, nine- teen to regimental positions, and sixty received com- missions to serve as company officers. "Western Re- serve College," says President C. F. Thwing, "practically closed its doors for the time, and nearly all its students entered the service," under command of two of the professors. Greater love of country hath no man than this, that he lay down his Ufe in its service. One col- lege man in every ten of those enlisting never came back. And could we number the heroes that went forth from the churches and schools created directly by home mis- sions, and who fought and died to such good purpose, something of the contribution of home missions to the The Fruits 345 cause of Christian patriotism would begin to be under- stood. Yet it is not alone on the perilous edge of battle that patriotism is tested. Peace has its battles and victories no less than war. Eliminate from Western society the silent moral forces, all of them practically the creation of home-missionary churches ; the respect for law which they inculcate; the temperance they practice and help to enforce; the safe-guarding of the young; the se- curity of property and life; the cultivation of high moral ideals; the claims of humanity which they teach and practice; — blot out all those forces which make up the morale of a Commonwealth, socially, religiously, and politically, and something of the immeasurable value of the home-missionary movement, as related to order, morality, civic virtue, and national prosperity, would be appreciated. Very little of this story has yet been published to the world. The literature of home missions is astonishingly small. Its chief actors have been too busy leavening the nation to write its history or biography. The story of "The Iowa Band," by Dr. Ephraim Adams; the biographies of Gaylord, Atkinson, Eells, Turner, Pickett; "A Wind from the Holy Spirit," by Mont- gomery, which has been called a "Christian classic"; "Presbyterian Home Missions," by Dr. Doyle; "Bap- tist Home Missions," by Dr. Morehouse; and "The Minute Man on the Frontier," by Puddefoot, are the first fruits of a rich literature yet to be pubhshed : while one book, facile princeps of its kind, and a library in itself, has done more, perhaps, to stimulate an intelli- gent patriotism than any other book ever pubUshed. "Our Country," by Josiah Strong, was written by a 346 Leavening the Nation home missionary and is evolved from home-missionary experiences. It was prepared at the cost of the Ameri- can Home Missionary Society and first pubhshed by that Society. Parts of it have been printed in many forms and widely scattered by the daily press. It has been translated into foreign tongues, and not less than half a million copies, as a whole or in parts, in one tongue or another, have been circulated. Its masterly array of facts and its vivid portrayal of the possibilities and perils of America have had an untold influence in pro- moting a sane and enlightened regard for their country among the people of the United States. One further incident in the story of American home missions may furnish a fitting and grateful climax to this long review. It was the pleasure of Providence to estabhsh a close and even vital bond between home and foreign missions in America. Samuel J. Mills, who has been called "the father of foreign-mission work in Christian America," was himself the son of a home missionary sent out by the General Association of Connecticut in 1793 into the new settle- ments of the West. The foreign-missionary torch of the son was kindled at a home-missionary fireside in Torringford, Connecticut. That flame fired the zeal of Judson, Newell, Nott, Hall, Rice, and Richards; and upon their petition to be sent out to India, the "Ameri- can Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions " was instituted by the General Association of Massachusetts in 1810. The conviction, courage, and faith displayed in that step can never be too highly estimated. Whether it would have been taken then, or ever, but for the movement which for twenty previous years had been quickening the missionary zeal of the New England The Fruits 347 churches, who can say? Many of the same men and women were prominent in starting both movements; and certainly a new atmosphere had been created which was reacting healthfully upon the evangehstic impulse of the churches, and which, we must beheve, was power- fully felt at Bradford, when one of the grandest forward movements of the missionary century was taken. Thus, at least, the order of history became hterally the order of the Great Commission itself; and from "beginning at Jerusalem," in 1798, the American churches advanced "into all the world " in 1810. The influence of that for- ward step was immediately felt upon home missions. From that hour it became a world movement. Its early motto had been, "Save America"; but when the missionary horizon widened to include India its motto lengthened, and ever since it has been, "Save America to save the World." Just this larger motive was needed to lift the enterprise of home evangelization to its loftiest plane, and nothing probably has ever reacted more favorably upon the spirit of the home-missionary worker and his work than this providential broadening of its aim. On the other hand, the immediate and continuous need of foreign missions was a base of supply, both of money and of men. That base has not yet been found on its own missionary ground, although self-support in foreign missions is beginning to be tentatively dis- cussed. But for some time to come, as in ninety years past, that all-important base must be found in America, and among the churches planted and yet to be planted by home missions. Dry up this source of supply for a single year, and missions in Africa, China, India, Tur- key, and the Islands would droop hke willows cut off 348 Leavening the Nation from their water- courses. And what is true of money is equally true of men. Native pastors have been raised up in considerable numbers, but the need of American-trained missionaries continues and increases. Already twenty-five per cent, of our foreign missionaries have been drawn from home-missionary soil. The churches and colleges of the West planted and fostered by home missions have rejoiced unspeakably in sending their choicest men and women into the foreign mission- ary service, and among the incidental fruits of home mis- sions there is none which its friends regard with more satisfaction or deeper gratitude than this. Thus the kinship and oneness of home and foreign missions are demonstrated to the joy of both. Certain forms of speech which are found convenient and even necessary to distinguish their operations apart have sometimes obscured this truth. It is well to remind ourselves that in the last command of Christ there was no "home," there was no "foreign "; "all the world " was the field: and the Christian who believes in home missions but not in foreign is as far from the mind of Christ as he who believes in foreign missions and not in home. The two are one, and as seamless as. the Master's robe. Broad-minded men have emphasized this truth in many striking utterances. It was this interdependence of home and foreign missions that moved Austin Phelps to exclaim in that intense style so peculiarly his own: "If I were a missionary in Canton, China, my first prayer every morning would be for the success of Ameri- can home missions, for the sake of Canton, China." It was this that led Dr. R. S. Storrs, more than twenty years ago, to write from Florence, Italy: "The future of the world is pivoted on the question whether the Prot- The Fruits 349 estant churches of America can hold, enlighten, purify, the peoples born or gathered into its great compass." Marcus Whitman Montgomery, an intense home-mis- sionary worker, gave expression to the same sentiment at Saratoga ten years ago : "The United States of to-day is the mountain-top of the hopes of many nations." Josiah Strong affirms: "He does most to Christianize the world and to hasten the coming of the Kingdom, who does most to make thoroughly Christian the United States." William Kincaid, after years of devo- tion to home and foreign missions, declares that "the planting and nurturing of churches in America is our first and best work for the world; our first work because all other Christian activities grow from and depend upon this; our best work because in no other place on earth can we obtain so mighty a purchase for the elevation of mankind." "Should America fail," declares Pro- fessor Park, "the world will fail." And if further testi- mony were needed to mark the far-reaching influence of home missions in America upon the fate of the nations, the stirring words of Professor Phelps addressed to the Home Missionary Convention at Chicago in 1881 might be added, and may well conclude our treatment of the subject: "The evangehzing of America is the work of an emergency. That emergency is not paralleled by the spiritual conditions and prospects of any other country on the globe. The element of time must be the control- ling one in a wise policy for its conversion, and for the use of it as an evangelizing power over the nations. That which is to be done here must be done soon. If this continent is to be saved to Christ, and if the im- measurable power of its resources and its prestige is to 350 Leavening the Nation be insured to the cause of the world's conversion, the critical bulk of the work must be done now. The deci- sive blows of conquest must be struck now. For rea- sons of exigency equally imperative with those which crowded Jerusalem upon the attention of the ApostoUc pioneers, this country stands first on the roll of evan- gehcal enterprise to-day. This, as it seems to me, is just the difference to-day between the Oriental and the Occidental nations, as related to the conversion of both to Christ. The nations whose conversion is the most pressing necessity of the world to-day are the Occidental nations. Those whose speedy conversion is most vital to the conversion of the rest are the nations of the Occident. The pioneer stock of mind must be the Occi- dental stock. The pioneer races must be the West- ern races. And of all the Western races, who that can read skillfully the providence of God, or can read it at all, can hesitate in affirming that the signs of divine decree point to this land of ours as the one which is fast gathering to itself the races which must take the lead in the final conflicts of Christianity for the posses- sion of the world. Ours is the elect nation for the ages to come. We are the chosen people. Ours are the promises, promises great and sure, because the emer- gency is great. We cannot afford to wait. If we cannot, the world cannot afford to wait. The plans of God will not wait. These plans seem to have brought us to one of the closing stages in this world's career, in which we can no longer drift with safety to our destiny. We are shut up to a perilous alternative. Immeasurable oppor- tunities surround and overshadow us. Such, as I read it, is the central fact in the philosophy of American Home Missions.'! The Fruits 351 Oppressed and well-nigh overwhelmed by the broad horizon of duty and responsibiUty where these solemn words leave us, nevertheless the writer brings his task to an end with an enlarged hope and faith in the fuial triumph of American Home Missions. In this faith and hope he invites his readers to share. The past is secure and it is glorious. No sign of decadence rests upon our cause. The rehgious forces of America were never stronger or strengthening more rapidly than to- day. Consecrated wealth was never larger and never more freely bestowed. Christian workers were never so numerous, never more wilhng. The field was never so quick with promise or so white with harvests. Re- hgious sects still divide the home-missionary army; but never since the Day of Pentecost was there such fellowship between them, never more mutual charity for differences, and never more common, courteous, and Christian cooperation in the leavening of the nation. If the hope or zeal of any have slackened, it is without cause. The twentieth century opens with auguries for our country a thousand times brighter than any which •>^ cheered our home-missionary fathers in 1798. Above all, the leaven of the Kingdom, the power of the Gospel of Christ to redeem men, to uplift society, and to make a nation strong by righteousness, has been proved and never failed, is being proved with new victories every hour. Let us take the courage which these facts are fitted to inspire. "He who goes through a land scatter- ing blown roses may be tracked next day by the with- ered petals that strew the ground; but he who goes through a land scattering rose seed, a hundred years after leaves behind him a land full of fragrance and beauty for his monument." The home missionary goes 352 Leavening the Nation through a land scattering seed, in every grain of which God has hidden not merely the promise of fragrance and beauty, but bread of hfe for the millions of America and ultimately for "all the world.'^ INDEX Abbott, E. H., 86, 164 Abolitionists, two kinds, 179 Adams, E. A., 270 Adams, Ephraim, 98, 99, 100 Adams, Harvey, 98, 101 Aguadella, 260 Alabama, 191 Alaska, 248-252 Albany Convention and church building, 321 Albrecht, G. E., 268 America, an asylum for the persecuted, 16 America dedicated by Colum- bus, 12 American Bible Society (1816), 318 American Board of Commis- sioners for Foreign Missions, 197, 346 American Catholic Church, modification of, 266 American Church History, be- ginning of, 20 American city and foreign immigration, 279 American French College, 298 American Home Missionary Society organized, 62 Americans in New Mexico, 242 American Missionary Associa- tion, 179, 181, 243, 250, 259 American Sunday School Un- ion (1824), 319 American Tract Society (1825), 318 Arizona, 246, 247 Army enlistments from home- missionary churches, 343 Ashburton Treaty, 198 Atchison, Kansas, 108 Atkinson, G. H. and Oregon, 200-206 Atkinson School, Portland, Oregon, 205 Atlanta, churches planted, 189 Austinburg, Ohio, church or- ganized, 62 Awakening, The Great (1740), 21, 23, 24 Bacon, David, 42 Bacon, Leonard, 20, 31, 99 Bacon, L. W., 13, 15, 173, 175, 327 Badger, Joseph, 42, 62 Badger, Milton, 99, 216, 222 Bailey, A. J., 212 Baird, L. O., 311 Baldwin, Theron, 70 Baltimore and his son, 17, 174 Bancroft, George, 16, 19 Bancroft, H. H., 228, 230, 231 Baptist church building, 322 Baptist foreign work in Amer- ica, 277 "Baptist Home Missions," by Dr. H, L. Morehouse, 345 Baptist women, 306 Baptists in various States, 25. 31, 64, 76, 81, 85, 116, 175, 254 Barrows, "W. M., 236 Barrows, William, 193 Bascom, Flavel, 70 Bayley, F. T., 161 Beard, A. F., 257, 258 Beard, R. A., 208 Beecher, Edward, 70 BeU, W. S., 151, 153 - 353 354 Index Beloit, 82, 83 Benner, Edward, 238 Billings, Montana, 151 Billings, Frederick, 151 Bingham, L. E., 839 Birlew, G.E., 243 Blackburn, Gideon, 66 Blanchard, Addison, 160, 161 Bliss, C. N., 142 Bliss, C. R., 237 Bohemian Mission Board, 270 Border ruffians, their methods, 107 Boulder, Colorado, 157 Bouton, Nathaniel, 60 Bradford, Governor, 16, 20 Brainard, David, 23 Bray ton, I. H., on California, 223 Bridger, James, 228 Broad, L. P., 116 Bross, H., 119 Brown, C. T., 236 Brown, John, 108 Brown, W. B., 322 Buck, Richard, 173 Buckley, J. M., 313 Billiard, Artemas, 93 Burlington, Iowa, 95 , Caldwell, M. E., 260 California, 213-227 California, Southern, 220 Cape Prince of Wales, 182, 250 Carlton College, Scandinavian department, 275 Carolinas settled, 175 Carroll, H. K, 7, 137 Carter, H. W., 85 Cartwright, B. G., 95 Case, A. B., 134 Cass, Lewis, 75 Caswell, Mrs. H. S., 310, 311 Catholepistemiad, 77 Catholics lost to the church, 262, 263 Centennial State, 155 Center of the United States, 104 Central City, Colorado, 156 ^ Chamberlain, Hiram, 60 Chicago, 52, 265 Chicago Theological Seminary, 268, 275 Cheever, G. B., on California, 223 Cherokee Strip, 168 Chinese schools, 182 Choate, "Washington, 187, 242 Christian benevolence in New England, 299-301 Christian Education, 180, 234, 236 337 Church building, 218, 320 Church, chief weapon of home missions, 316 Churches not pauperized by home missions, 334 Cienfuegos, Cuba, 254 Cities and the foreign element, 264 City missions, 279 City, perils of, 280 Civil War and home missions, 343 Clapp, A. H., 129, 130, 210 Clapp, C. F., 207 Clapp, T. E., 203 Clark, A. T., 191 Clark, George Rogers, 73 Clark, J. A., 96 Clark, J. S., 23, 41 Cleaveland, Moses, 56 Cleveland Bible Training School, 269 Cobb, Howell, his unconscious testimony, 343 Cobb, L. H., 123, 126, 322 Cobleigh, N S., 208 Coe, D. B., 340 Coeducation in Michigan, 78 Coeur d'Alene, 145 Coit, Joshua, 292, 293, 294 Cole, H. H., 251 Collateral value of home mis- sions, 341, 342 Colleges at the West, 338-340 Collins, C. T., 270 Colorado, 153-165 Colorado College, 237 Index 355 Columbus providentially guid- ed, 12 Concert of prayer for the world, 23 Congregational Education So- ciety, 338 Congregational foreign work, 275 Congregational growth, 20, 21, 65, 81, 85, 101, 102, 110, 111, 115, 225. 275 Congregational Methodists at the South, 190 Congregational Sunday School and Publishing Society, 324 Congregational Women, 307 Congress recommends Bibles, 317 Connecticut General Associa- tion sends missionaries, 27 Connecticut and Massachusetts societies national, 29 Connecticut, Missionary Soci- ety of, 28, 29, 30, 42, 43 Conner, P. E., 234, 235, Continental Divide, a new, 174 Cook, E. W., 140 Cooley, T. M., 75, 77, 78. 79, 80 Cooperative agencies, 316-329 Copper Country, in Michigan, 81 Cordley, Richard, 109 Cram, D. W., 251 Crary, General I. E., 79 Crawford, William, 156 Creegan, C. C, 160 Cripple Creek beginnings, 163 Crocker, J. H., 148 Cross, R. T., 159, 161 Cuba, 252-257 Curtis, E. D., 65 Cutler, Manasseh, 55 "Daily Union FiefoWe " quoted, 234 Dakota Band, 134 Dakotas, 128-136 Dane, Nathan, 57 Dartmouth College, a fruit of the Great Awakening, 23 Davis, J. D., 140 Davis, R. H., 167 Davies, W., 211 Daytona, Florida, church or- ganized, 186 De Barritt, A., 255 Decadence of New England in spots, 287 Delaware, known as New Sweden, 17 Denver, church planting in, 157, 161 "Der Kirchehote" 268 Deseret, 233 Des Moines, 95 Detroit, 74, 265 ' 'Diadem of iht Mountains, "148 "Die Segensquslle," 268 Dorchester Church in South Carolina, 188 Dorchester, Daniel, 333 Douglas, Alaska, 250 Douglas, J. V/., 216 Douglas, Senator, 105 Douglass, T. 0„ 102 Doyle, S. H., 231, 244, 349, 260 Drake, S. A., 56, 59, 117 Dubuque, Iowa, 96 Dunning, A. E., 24, 38, 100 Dutch of New York, 17 Dwight, President, and the West, 53 Eddy, Zachary, 189 Education in New England, 238 Edwards, J., 146 Edwards, Jonathan, 23, 24 Eells, Gushing, 339 Eells, Myron, 199, 201 Ekman, Dr., in America, 374 Ellis, J. M., 67, 339 Emerson, Miss D. E., 310 Emigration Company in New England, 107 Emporia, Kansas, 110 Encyclopedia Britannica, 165 Episcopalians, 25, 85, 116, 255, 314, 333 356 Index Evangelical Conference in Cuba, 256 Eversz, M. E,, 368 Fairbanks, Professor H., 289 Fairchild, President, 183 Fajardo, Porto Rico, 259 Fargo College, 136 Fast day proclamation in New Hampshire, 290 Female Cent Institution, New Hampshire, 303 Ferris, Chancellor, 317 Fisher, G. P., 12 Fisher, G. W., 156 Fisher, S. V. S., 275 Florida, growth in, 186 Founders of America, the real, 15 Foster, Aaron, 60 Ford, J. T., 221 Ford, L. M., 245 Foreign departments of the American Home Missionary Society, 268 Foreign immigration, distribu- tion of, 264 Foreign work in New England, 298 Fort Dearborn, 52 Frazer, C W., 255 Free Methodists, 190 "Free Mission" movement in Sweden, 273, 274, 275 Fremont and early California, 213 French Canadians in Massa- chusetts, 284 French colonies, their growth, 14 Fruits of Home Missions, 330- 352 Gale, S. F., 187, 339 Gaylord, Reuben, 97, 116, 117, 339 General Assembly organized, 35 "Gentlemen" and "slaves," 176 Georgia, a philanthropic enter- prise, 18, 175, 176 German commonwealth in Wisconsin, 84 German immigration, 50, 263 German missions, fruits of, 268 Giddings, Salmon, 66, 92 Gilbert, Simeon, 237 Gold discovered in California, 214 Goodell, C. L., 93 Gordon, H. E., 238 Grassie, T. M., 84 Gray, Captain Robert, 143 Grav, W. B. D., 140 Gray, W. H., 194 Great American Desert, 156 Great Britain, her unjust claims to territory, 74 Great Salt Lake discovered, 228 Green, J. M., 260 Greek church in Alaska, 249 Gregg, J. B., 157 Gregory Diggings, 156 Griffin, Edward, 25 Grimes, Senator, 94 Guanabacoa, Cuba, 254 Guanajay, Cuba, 255 Gustavus Adolphus, 17 Hale, W. E., 237 Hall, Charles, 69 Hall, Richard, 123, 125 Hamilton Female Baptist So- ciety, 306 Hamilton, Lewis, 156 Hammond, C. G., 237 Harbutt, Charles, 297 Harrison, William Henry, in Indiana, 57 Heald, J. H., 242 Hermann, Commissioner, 142 Herrick, E. P., 252, 255 High ideals, value to a nation, 342 Hill towns in New England, 293 Hillman, A. T., testifies of Hampshire, 291 Index 357 History defined, 11 Holbrook, J. C, 96 Hollanders in America, 278 Hood, E. L., 243 Hood, G. A., 126 Hooker, E. P., 339 Hooker, Q. E., 211 Home and foreign missions, their kinship, 348 Home Missions, a business suc- cess, 336 Home Missions and moral forces, 345 Home Missions and the immi- grant problem, 262-282 Home Missions organized, 20 Home Missions and love of country, 341 Home- missionary biographies, 345 Home-missionary colleges, their patriotic zeal, 348 Home Missionary convention in New York, 62 " Home missionary hero se- ries," 207 Home-missionary literature, 345 Home- missionary organiza- tions, 341 Home-missionary policy, change of in 1826, 59 Home-missionary responsibil- ity for the city, 281, 282 Howe, E. G., 67 Hudson Bay Company, their monopoly, 195 Huguenots in the Carolinas,175 Humacoa , Porto Rico, 259 Hunt, Robert, 173 Hunt, T. D., 216 Hutchinson, Horace, 98 Hyde, Nathaniel A., 65 Hyde, W. D., 296, 297 Idaho, 142-148 Illinois, 58, 59, 65, 66, 67 Illinois Band, 68-70 Illinois College, 68, 69 Immigration, 262-383 Incidental results, 337 Indiana, 58, 64, 65 Indiana, slavery in, 57 Indian gifts to education, 78 Indians oppressed by Spain, be- friended by France, 14 Interdenominational Commis- sion of Maine, 296 Iowa, 94-103 Iowa Band, 97-102, 345 Iowa College, its war record, 344 Ives, J. S., 296 Jackson, Sheldon, 206, 236, 250 Jacksonville, Florida, 186 James, J. W., 260 Jay's Treaty with Great Brit- ain, 74 Jefferson and the Louisiana purchase, 87 Jenkins, F. E.. 189, 192 Jeremiahs of 1803, 90 Kansas, 104-116 Kansas Band, 109 Kaskasia captured, 73 Kearney, General, in New Mexico, 241 Kendall, Henry, 206, 236 Keokuk, 96 Kephart, W. G., 344 Keystone of the American Commonwealth, 50 Kincaid, William, 349 Kingsbury, J. D., 145, 252 Knox College, its war record, 344 Lares, Porto Rico, 259 Latter-day Saints in Utah, 229 Lawrence, Kansas, Plymouth Church, 108, 109 Leaven, test of, 330 Leavenworth, Kansas, 108 Lecompton, Kansas, 108 Lincoln, Abraham, 92, 106 Lindsley, A. L., 206 Livingston, and the Louisiana Purchase, 87 3S^ Index Lopez, J. M., 255 Lord Supper societies in Swe- den and Norway, 273 Louisiana Lottery in North Da- kota, 342 Louisiana Purchase, 87, 172 Lovejoy, A. L,, 197 Lutheran Church, growth of, 263 Lum, 8. Y., 109 Lyon, D. C, 126 MacFarland, D. F., 244 Madison, Wisconsin, 82 Magoun, G. F., 95, 96, 97 Maile, J. L., 221 Maine Home Missionary So- ciety, 31 Maine, its peculiar church problems, 296 Maltby, John, 61 Manhattan, Kansas, 108 Marietta, Ohio, 43, 47, 55, 56 Maryland, 17, 174 Mary Lyon, 295 Massachusetts Missionary So- ciety, 28, 29 Massachusetts Domestic Mis- sionary Society (Baptist), 31 Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, 324 Massacre, of Marcus Whitman and wife, 241 Matanzas, Cuba, 254 Mayaguez, Porto Rico, 260 Mayflower compact, its mean- ing, 16 Mayflower, the second, 55 Maygars, 270 McLeod, Norman, opens mis- sion in Utah, 234 McFarlaud, Mrs. A. R., 250 McFarland, Mrs. Asa. 304 McFarland, Miss A. A., 305 McMillan, D. J., in Utah, 236 Memorial to Congress in 1777, 317 Meredith, R. R., 210 Merrill, C. H., respecting Ver- mont, 290 Merrill, G. R., 126 Methodist church building, 323 Methodists at the South and West, 64, 81, 85, 116, 151, 185, 232, 246 Methodist women organize, 313 Mexican Cession, 213-247 Michigan, 73-81 Midway Church, the, 188 Miller, G. L., 119 Mills and Schermerhorn, 65 Mills, Samuel J., 346 Milwaukee, 52, 82, 265 Mining camps and home mis- sions, 145 Minnesota, 120-127 Minnesota State Union, 310 "Minute-man on the frontier," 81, 345 Missionaries withdrawn from the South, 178 Missionary boxes, 308 Missouri, 87-94 Missouri Compromise, 105 Moffatt, Miss M. Dean, 314 Monroe and the Louisiana Pur- chase, 87 Montana, 148-152 Montgomery, M. W., 126, 231, 271, 349 Montieth, John, 76 Moore, W. H., 296 Morehouse, H. L., 185, 267, 269, 306 Morley, J. H., 126 " Mormon delusion," 231 Mormonism, 229, 230, 231, 232 Morse, D. C, 109 Mowry, W. A,, 199 Mullan, Idaho, 145 Napoleon and the Louisiana Purchase, 87. 172 Narrative of Stephen Peet, 83, 84 National Home Missionary So- ciety, its effect, 59, 63 Nebraska, 116-119 Negro slaves at Jamestown, 374 Index 339 Negro missions at the South, 179 Neill, E. D., 123 New Connecticut, 42 New England in 1798, 20-32 New England's shortsighted- ness, 52 New-England fathers, their missionary policy, 30 New England to-day, 283-302 New Hampshire, Home Mis- sionary Society, 31 New Hampshire, religious growth in, 291, 292 New Mexico, 240-246 New Smyrna, Florida, 186 New South, a, 186, 191, 192 New Spain, 26 New West Education Commis- sion, 237 New York, population in 1800, 34 Nez Perces Indians, mission to, 194 Nichols, J. T., 211 Noble, P. A., 237 Nome, Alaska, 251 North and South lines in the church, 178 North and South elements in Montana, 148 North Dakota, 136, 264 Northwest Territory, 47-52 Northwestern boundary ques- tion, 193 Northern Pacific R. R., 208 Nutting, J. D., 231 Oberlin Slavic department, 269 Oberlin's war record, 343 Occidental nations and the world's conversion, 350 " Open doors " in Texas, 187 Openings of Oklahoma, 167, 168, 171 O'Gorman, Bishop, 13 Ohio, 55, 57 Ohio Company, 47 Ohioans in the far West, 64 Oklahoma, 165-173 Old Hay Tent, the, 110 Omaha, its rapid growth, 117 Ordinance of 1787, 47, 48, 49, 57 Oregon, elements in early pop- ulation, 201 Oregon City, 202 Osawatomie, Kansas, 108 Ostracism at the South, 179 Otis, C. C, 208 " Our Country " by Dr. Josiah Strong, 345 Outlook, The, 86, 164 Owens, E., 146 Pacific Northwest, 193-213 Pacific, the, as a travelling missionary, 219 Palmer, Ray, 322 Park, E. A., 349 Parker, Alexander, 221 Parker, E. P., 26, 27, 42, 53 Parker, R. D., 109 Patriotism in home-missionary churches, 343 Peck, John M., his fight against slavery, 66, 93 Peet, Stephen, 82 Penn, William, 17 Pennsylvania, 17 Penrose, S. B. L., 210, 339 Peoria, 58 Perea, J. Y., 244 Peters, Absalom, 69 Phelps, Austin, 348, 349 Philosophy of home missions, 350 Pickett, J. W., 158 Pierce, J. D., 77, 79 Pike, Zebulon Montgomery, 153 Pike's Peak, 155 Plan of Union, 36-41 "Plowshare of Missions," 318 Plymouth Church greets Salem Church, 20 Poles, 270 Popular sovereignty, 105 Population of the United States, 264 360 Index Population, center of, 26 Porter, Jeremiah, first mission- ary in Chicago, 67, 68 Porto Rico, 182, 257-261 Post, Truman M., 71, 93 Powell, G. J., 136 Prentiss, Narcissa, 194 Preparation, the, 11-19 Presbyterian Church Building, 328 "Presbyterian Home Mis- sions," by Dr. S. H, Doyle, 345 Presbyterian women organize, 305 Presbyterians and home mis- sions, 34, 35, 81, 85, 116, 206, 236, 246, 255, 260, 278, 332 Princeton College, fruit of the Great Awakening, 23 Prucha, John, 270 Puddefoot. W. G., 81, 345 Pueblos, 241 Puritans, 15 Putnam, General, 55 Quakers in the Carolinas, 175 Quantrell's Raid, 114 Quindaro, Kansas, 111 Racine, Wisconsin, 83 Ramsey, Governor, 121 Ray, G. W., 163 Reaction in California, 224 Reaction in Cuba against the Catholic Church, 253 Read, W. H., 243 Reed, J. A., 96. 97, 101 Rees, Luther, 187 Reformed Church of America, 35, 85, 278 Reformed Church women or- ganize, 312 Religious forces, 92, 102, 119, 148, 152, 177, 212, 226, 333 Repeal of Missouri Compro- mise, 105 Rescue Mission, 279 Richard, Father, 77 Riggs, A. L., 840 Robbins, Thomas, 42 Robinson, Governor, Charles, 108 Robinson, John, a true prophet, 20 Robinson, King, murdered, 235 Rollins College, 186 Rollins, Governor, 290 Roman Catholics in Massachu- setts, 25 Roosevelt, Theodore, 87 "Rope of Sand," 21 Roy, J. E., 7, 41, 66, 100, 140, 183, 189 Royce, Professor, on Califor- nia, 213, 220 Russia in Alaska, 248 Ryder, C. J., 250 Salter, William, 99, 100, 159 Salem Church organized, 20 Salvation Army, 328 San Antonia De Los Banos, 255 Sanders, C. M., 141, 161 Sanderson, Horace, 161, 162, 164 San Francisco early conditions, 217 Sante Fe Boarding School, 244 Sante Fe, Missionary Associa- tion, 305 Santurce, 259 Savage, G. S. F., 237 Scandinavians in America, 271, 272 Scandinavian department, 270 Schauffler, H. A., 269 Scotch and Irish at the South, 175 Scott, C. B., 259 Sectarianism in Maine, 296 Seccombe, Charles, 123, 125 Sectional nomenclature, 33 Separatists, 15 Seven Years War, its result, 15 Seward, William H , 108, 248 Shaw, J. T., 133 Index 361 Sheldon, C. M., 134 Sheldon, Stewart, 134, 157 Shelton, C. W., 135, 186 Shelton, Mrs. H. M., 310 Shipherd, J. J., 339 Simmons, H. C, 136 Slave power demented, 66, 106, 117, 214 Slavic department, 369 Slovacs, 270 Smith, Captain John, 173 Smith, E. L., 210 Social settlements, 279 Somelllan, H. B., 255 Southern Congregationalism, 190 Spalding, H. H., 194 Spain in America, 13 Spanish-Mexicans, 241 Spring, L. W., 106, 107 Squatter sovereignty, 105 Stage coach incident, 60 State Unions, 310 StoiTS, H. M., 135 Storrs, R. S., 216. 341, 348 Storrs, S. D., 109 Southern Belt, the, 173-193 Strieby, M. E., 183 Strong, J. W., 339 Strong Josiah, 141, 231, 233, 285, 286, 349 "Stump District" in Michi- gan, 81 Sturtevant, President J. M., 70 Sturtevant, J. M., Jr., 71 Sunday-schools in the United States, 319 Tampa, Cuban Mission, 187 Tappan, Lewis. 182 Taylor, E. E. L., 333. Taylor, Graham, 379 Taylor, W. M., 331 Tecumseh. 58 Tenney, E. P., 156 "Ten reasons " for not fellow- shiping Mormons, 333, 333 Tent, " Whosoever Will," 163 Territories in 1798, 26 Texas, phenomenal growth, 187 Theological reformation of 1760, 35 Thompson, C. L., 333 Thompson, J. P., 316 Thompson, O. C, 77 Thrall, W. H., 135 Thwing, President, C. F,, 344 Tichenor, Lydia, 338 Tiffany, C. C, 314 Tobacco a legal currency, 174 Todd, G. L.,355, 356 Tompkins, James, 340 Topeka, 108 Town versus plantation, 176 Travel, inconveniences of, in 1800, 43 Turner, F. J., 50, 85 Turner, Asa, 69, 96 Tyler, President and Whit- man, 198 Underwood, J. L., 360 "Unholy combinations" in New England, 107 Unitarian defection, 34 United Conference of Georgia, 190 United Domestic Missionary Society of New York, 61 Universalists in Massachusetts, 35 University of Michigan. 78 Upper Peninsula added to Michigan, 76 Utah, 338-340 Valdez, Alaska, 351 Ventosa, C. S.. 255 "Vermont Home Missionary So- ciety, 31 Vermont in 1798, 25 Vermont, religious growth in, 291 Visiilance Committees, 143, 215 Virginia, 17, 173, 174 Virginia Military District. 56 Vitality of the home-mission- ary seed. 330 Voltaire, his prophecy, 333 362 Index Wabaunsee, Kansas, 108 Waldenstrom, Dr., in America, 274 Walla Walla, Fort, 196 Walker, Williston, 39, 100 Ward, Joseph, 129-134 Ward, Mrs. Joseph, 133 Ward, W. H., 183, 257 Wardner, Idaho, 145 Warren, J. H., 216, 217, 221 Warren, W. H., 81 Washington Band, 209 Washington, 207-212 Watson, C. L., 96 Webster, Daniel and Whit- man, 198 Welch, Josiah, 236 Welsh in America, 275-277 Wesleys, the, in America, 176 West, the early, 3c-46 Western races, pioneer races, 350 Western Reserve, 42, 46 Western Reserve College, its war record, 344 " Westward " in 1798, 26 Whitefleld, George, 21, 176 Whitman College and Atkin- son, 205 Whitman, Marcus, 194-200 Whitney, J. C, 123 Wiard, H. D., 136 " Wild Rushing River," the, 85 Willey, S. H., 216, 217 Williams, E. F., 287 Wilton College, 268 " Wind from the Holy Spirit," 345 Wines, F. H., 264 Winship, A. E., 288 Wisconsin, 82-85 Wisner, Dr., 61 Woman's American Baptist Home Missionary Society, 307 Woman's Baptist Home Mis- sionary Society, 307 Woman's departments, 310 Woman's Executive Commit- tee of Home Missions, 305 Woman's Home Missionary Association, 308 Woman's part, 303-315 Woodbury, F. P., 180 Wright, R. 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