"I stepped into a grocery where were assembled a number of wild fellows, swearing and blaspheming at a most horrid rate. I have seen enough of Shawneetown to justify what is reported of it as a most abandoned place. There are some decent, clever families; but I have conversed with none who seem decidedly religious. To-morrow will show how the Sabbath is regarded. I never saw a place more destitute of religious instruction; and yet unless very prudent measures are pursued, little good can be expected to result.'' 23 A little later, Peck, who had gone on to St. Louis, declared that half of the Anglo-Americans were infidels." Concerning these he said: "This class despised and villified religion in every form, were vulgarly profane even to the worst forms of blasphemy, and poured out scoffings and contempt on the few Christians in the village. Their nightly orgies were scenes of drunkenness and profane revelry. Among the frantic rites observed were the mock celebration of the Lord's Supper, and burning the Bible. The last ceremony consisted in raking a place in the hot coals of a wood fire, and burying therein the book of God with shoutings, prayers and songs. 25 Drinking soon became common throughout the West. Timothy Flint gave this incident from his preaching in Kentucky: Babcock, Rufus. Memoir of John Mason Peck, 76. This statement may have been due in part, at least, to the high cost of living, for it follows a complaint about the twelve dollar a month rent, the fifty cent butter, the forty cent sugar, the seventy-five cent coffee, the twelve dollar flour, the dollar and a quarter corn, the eight dollar hogs, the thirty-seven cent chickens and the fifty cent eggs, Babcock, Rufus. Memoir of John Mason Peck, 85-87. "On an evening, when I performed divine service a young man had misbehaved, through intoxication. His minister, a Baptist, reproved him in the morning. He did not palliate or deny the charge; admitted that it was shameful; but said, that being a prodigal in a good and respectable family, he was subject in consequence to bitter reflection, and that, particularly the evening before, he had felt a painful sinking before he went to hear the word, and had found it necessary to take a little of the cheering juice of the grape; and that his optics, as he had often felt before, had been so disordered, that he saw things double. He ended by saying, that the minister, whom he had often seen in the same predicament, must know how to make his In order to get a general and an authentic idea of conditions in the West, the Massachusetts and Connecticut Missionary societies employed S. J. Mills and J. F. Schermerhorn "to make a tour through the Western and Southern States and Territories, preach the gospel to the destitute, explore the country, examine the moral and religious state of the people and promote the establishment of Bible societies wherever they went. The two missionaries worked in Pennsylvania, new Virginia, Western Reserve, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri. They went down the Mississippi by flat boat to New Orleans, which they reached in March, 1813. The two men found great tracts of country 26 Flint, Timothy. Recollections of the Last Ten Years Passed in Occasional Residences and Journeyings in the Valley of the Mississippi, 62, 63. 27 McMaster, J. B. A History of the People of the United States, IV., 551. inhabited by 20,000 to 50,000 people without a preacher of any denomination. Where ministers were found, the Methodists usually led, and the Baptists were their only competitors. The Presbyterians sent a few missionaries, but they worked for six or eight weeks only, and other sects generally received the benefit. The Presbyterian strongholds were the large villages and towns, where a small congregation was preached to by some eastern graduate, who made his living by farming, teaching, or practicing medicine. His religious duties were secondary. The missionaries considered Ohio the most respectable part of the West although it contained a greater variety of sects than any other equal area in the country. Everywhere, but especially in the Ohio River towns, they found that the Lord's Day was polluted by such things as visiting, feasting, hunting, fishing, drunkenness, and swearing. Across the river in Kentucky, the people added gambling, duelling, and horse racing. Both men described these towns as "sinks of iniquity" and the people as ignorant, vicious, and destitute of Bibles and religious books. New Orleans they regarded as the most sinful city they had ever seen. Mills declared that more actual sin was committed there on Sunday than in all the other days of the week, and that three-fourths of the people had never even seen the back of a Bible. The next summer, Mills, accompanied by Daniel Smith, made a second trip. The two missionaries carried with them seven hundred English Bibles, five thousand copies of the New Testament in French, fifteen thousand tracts and great bundles of sermons, all of which were contributed by the Bible and tract societies of New England and the Middle States. After covering the field a second time, Mills declared that there were in 1815, between the Allegheny Mountains and the Mississippi, 76,000 families without the Bible and that the number was increasing yearly. Since the supply sent by the Eastern societies was less than the increase of population, he stated that a mighty effort would have to be made if the West did not become as ignorant of God's word as the heart of Africa. To prevent this, on May 8, 1816, delegates from twentyeight societies met in New York City and founded the American Bible Society. Strong opposition to this organization at once arose. Some people declared that there was no need for such a society, that it would become a party instrument to promote the interests of a particular sect, and that it would draw money away from other worthy institutions as the British and Foreign Bible Societies which Americans ought to join in place of setting up one of their own. The Episcopalians were especially bitter. Bishop White would not support it, and Bishop Hobart attacked it with zeal. In spite of opposition, however, the new organization thrived. Branch societies sprang up everywhere, reaching 239 by 1821. At that time, over 140,000 Bibles, Testaments, and parts of Testaments had been given away. The report of Mills on the condition of the blacks was even more shocking. The 1810 Census gave the number as a million and a half, the vast majority, of course, being slave. Whether slave or free, however, they were as destitute of teachers and preachers as the whites were of Bibles. The colonization movement followed." As time passed, nevertheless, the country became more settled, and improvements followed in religious affairs as well as in other things. Mrs. Trollope, describing the period some ten or fifteen years after the missionary trips recorded above, gave, notwithstanding, a rather unfavorable account of religious conditions in the West, and especially of the power of the clergy over women." Harriet Martineau likewise pointed out this dangerous influence over women and superstitious men, and declared that the exclusively clerical were the worst enemies of Christianity except the vicious." The words of the former with regard to revivals, camp meetings, and cottage prayer meetings deserve considerable attention and rather copious quotations. The concluding parts of a very vivid description of a Cincinnati revival follow: "Meanwhile the two priests continued to walk among them; they repeatedly mounted on the benches, and trumpet mouthed proclaimed to the whole congregation, 'the tidings IV., McMaster, J. B. A History of the People of the United States, 551-555. Trollope, Mrs. Domestic Manners of the Americans, II., 97. 30 Martineau, Harriet. |