Methodist Camp Meetings

“When ideas fail, words come in handy.” — Anonymous HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1738

May 24, Wednesday (Old Style): John Wesley’s “New Birth” experience of the “grace” of spiritual consolation.

From the very beginning of his Methodist movement the Reverend Wesley would be advocating plainness of dress and avoidance of jewelry. In his ADVICE TO THE PEOPLE CALLED METHODISTS, WITH REGARD TO DRESS, he wrote: “Wear no gold, no pearls, or precious stones.... I do not advise women to wear rings, earrings, necklaces.” Wesley went to great length to give Scriptural support for his position, quoting among other scriptures the injunction in 1 Peter 3:3, “Let not yours be the outward adorning with braiding of hair, decoration of gold, and the wearing of fine clothing, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable jewel of a gentle and quiet spirit.”

ONE OF THE PRIMARY FUNCTIONS OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO HELP US CONSTRAIN STORYTELLING. IF, FOR INSTANCE, A POLITICIAN PRESENTS HIMSELF AS THE MESSIAH, WE HISTORIANS CAN PULL UP ONE OR ANOTHER OF THE MANY THOUSANDS OF HISTORIES OF JESUS CHRIST AND GO “NO, HERE’S A MESSIAH, AND YOU WILL NOTE THAT ON THIS LIST OF THE VARIOUS MESSIAHS THAT WE HAVE PLACED ON RECORD, THE NAME OF JESUS IS PRECEDED BY THE NAMES OF 5 OTHER IDENTIFIED MESSIAH CLAIMANTS AND HAS BEEN SUCCEEDED TO DATE BY THE NAMES OF MULTIPLE OTHER IDENTIFIED AND RECORDED MESSIAH CLAIMANTS.” HISTORY IS NOT PRIMARILY ABOUT RECORDING WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED, BECAUSE PRIMARILY IS ABOUT SETTING NEEDED LIMITS ON OUR CREDULOUS STORYTELLING. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1740

The Great Awakening — the Reverend George Whitefield’s 1st tour of New England. It would be during this decade that this traveling evangelist would compose the macabre hymn which would eventually be sung at his funeral: Ah! Lovely appearance of death, No sight upon earth is so fair; Not all the gay pageants that breathe, Can with a dead body compare. (Hey! Hey! –Don’t knock decomposing ’till you’ve tried it.) METHODISTS

YOU WILL UNDERSTAND MY GREEN-LETTER COMMENTARIES SUCH AS THIS ONE, AS SOON AS YOU GRASP THAT YOU ARE DEALING HERE WITH A COMMITTED BERGSONIAN. IN 1922 IN PARIS, WHEN ALBERT EINSTEIN AND HENRI-LOUIS BERGSON FACED OFF OVER THE NATURE OF TIME, EINSTEIN CONSIDERED BERGSON’S CONCEPTION OF TIME TO BE UNSCIENTIFIC, AMOUNTING TO A MERE PIECE OF SUBJECTIVITY, WHEREAS BERGSON CONSIDERED EINSTEIN’S CONCEPTION OF TIME TO BE UNSCIENTIFIC, AMOUNTING TO A MERE PIECE OF HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM PRESUMPTUOUS ILL-CONSIDERED METAPHYSICS. ILYA PRIGOGINE WOULD POINT OUT THAT “IT IS TRUE THAT BERGSON HAD NOT UNDERSTOOD EINSTEIN. BUT IT IS ALSO TRUE THAT EINSTEIN HAD NOT UNDERSTOOD BERGSON. BERGSON WAS FASCINATED BY THE ROLE OF CREATIVITY, OF NOVELTY IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE. BUT EINSTEIN DID NOT WANT ANY DIRECTED TIME. HE REPEATED OFTEN THAT TIME, MORE PRECISELY THE ARROW OF TIME, IS AN ‘ILLUSION.’ SO, THESE IDEOLOGIES SEEM TO BE IRRECONCILABLE.” AS LONG AS YOU ARE TRAPPED IN THE ILL-CONSIDERED EINSTEINIAN MINDSET, TRAPPED BY THE PRESUMPTUOUS ILL-CONSIDERED METAPHYSICS OF SPURIOUS METAPHORS THAT HAD TRAPPED HIS GREAT MIND — YOU WILL HAVE NO CLUE WHATEVER WHAT I AM RANTING AT YOU ABOUT. RATHER THAN BEING OF THE OPINION OF BOETHIUS, WHO WROTE IN 523AD THAT GOD, BEING ETERNAL, MUST BE “OUTSIDE” TIME AND ABLE TO VIEW THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE AS INDIFFERENTLY AND UNCHANGINGLY PRESENT IN HIS ONE WHOLE CREATION, I AM OF THE OPINION OF MAIMONIDES, WHO WROTE IN THE 12TH CENTURY THAT ACCORDING TO THE TALMUD FREE WILL IS GRANTED TO EVERY PERSON BY GOD SO THAT WE MAY BE JUDGED ACCORDING TO OUR ACTIONS. AS GERSONIDES POINTED OUT IN THE 14TH CENTURY, THERE ARE DECIDED LIMITS TO FOREKNOWLEDGE, AS GOD CANNOT KNOW IN ADVANCE WHICH CHOICE A FREE INDIVIDUAL, IN HIS OR HER FREEDOM, WILL MAKE: “I HAVE SET BEFORE YOU LIFE AND DEATH, BLESSING AND CURSE: THEREFORE CHOOSE LIFE.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1743

In England, the 2d gin Act, which had been enacted in 1736, was at this point superseded by a licensing system.

In the general rules of the Methodist church, the Reverend John Wesley included a prohibition against drunkenness and the buying, selling, or drinking of spirits.

I AM A NEGATIVE PHILOSOPHER, NOT A POSITIVE ONE: PHILOSOPHY NOT BEING ANY SORT OF SCIENCE, I WOULD HOLD THAT ANY PHILOSOPHICAL ASSERTION THAT TRAVELS UNDER THE PRETENSE THAT IT IS FACTUAL AND ACTUAL MUST BE, TO THE CONTRARY, NECESSARILY SPURIOUS AND UNSUBSTANTIATED. A GOOD EXAMPLE IS THE OFT-HEARD SUPPOSITION “GOD KNOWS THE FUTURE.” AS A NEGATIVIST I NEGATE ANY AND ALL SUCH ASSERTIONS. THAT DOES NOT REQUIRE ME TO REPLACE THESE PSEUDOFACTUAL PHILOSOPHICAL ASSERTIONS WITH MY OWN COUNTERCLAIMS, SUCH AS A POSITIVE ASSERTION THAT IN ORDER TO ALLOW FOR FREE WILL AND FREEDOM OF DECISION “GOD CANNOT KNOW THE FUTURE.” I DO NOT INTEND TO TAKE YOUR GRITTY, GRIMY TEDDY BEAR AWAY FROM YOU AND PRESENT YOU WITH A CUTE CUDDLY PANDA. I WILL TAKE AWAY YOUR TEDDY LEAVING YOU EMPTY-ARMED. I HAVE SAID THAT RATHER THAN BEING OF THE OPINION OF BOETHIUS, WHO WROTE IN 523AD THAT GOD, BEING ETERNAL, MUST BE “OUTSIDE” TIME AND ABLE TO VIEW THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE AS INDIFFERENTLY AND UNCHANGINGLY PRESENT IN HIS ONE WHOLE CREATION, I AM INCLINED TO THE OPINION OF MAIMONIDES, WHO WROTE IN THE 12TH CENTURY THAT ACCORDING TO THE TALMUD FREE WILL IS GRANTED TO EVERY PERSON BY GOD SO THAT WE MAY BE JUDGED ACCORDING TO OUR ACTIONS. AS GERSONIDES POINTED OUT IN THE 14TH CENTURY, THERE ARE DECIDED LIMITS TO FOREKNOWLEDGE, AS GOD CANNOT KNOW IN ADVANCE WHICH CHOICE A FREE INDIVIDUAL, IN HIS OR HER FREEDOM, WILL MAKE: “I HAVE SET BEFORE YOU LIFE AND DEATH, BLESSING AND CURSE: THEREFORE CHOOSE LIFE.” HOWEVER, I WAS LYING WHEN I SAID THAT. ACTUALLY I HAVE NO HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM PREFERENCE FOR THE PSEUDOPHILOSOPHICAL RANTINGS OF MAIMONIDES AND GERSONIDES OVER THE PSEUDOPHILOSOPHICAL RANTINGS OF BOETHIUS. I AM ENTIRELY NEGATIVE. THERE IS NOT A POSITIVE BONE IN MY BODY. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1748

In approximately this year the Reverend John Wesley said:

I am not careful for what may be a hundred years hence. He who governed the world before I was born shall take care of it likewise when I am dead. My part is to improve the present moment.

Wesley taught that any one might enter, and maintain, a bliss state he termed “Christian perfection,” and that this bliss state was well worth the trouble required to enter it. The technology for entering this state was a concentration on the perfect love of God for each of us, and the imitation of this perfect, indifferent-to- condition and indifferent-to-degree love in our own lives. If, irregardless of how one is treated, one always does good to others, the payoff is this affective state — the Methodist state of mind. Consider the following musing by Henry Thoreau:

February 1, Sunday, 1852: Every man’s laws are hard enough to obey. The christian falls as far short of obeying the heathen’s moral law as the heathen does. One of little faith looks for his rewards & punishments to the next world—& despairing of this world behaves accordingly in it— —another thinks the present a worthy occasion & arena—sacrifices to it and expects to hear sympathizing voices. The man who believes in another world and not in this is wont to put me off with christianity— The present moment in which we talk is of a little less value to him than the next world— So we are said to hope in proportion as we do not realize. It is all hope deferred. But one grain of realization—of instant life—on which we stand is equivalent to acres of the leaf of hope hammered out—to gild our prospect— — The former so qualifies the vision that it gilds all that we look upon with the splendor of truth. We must meet the hero on heroic grounds.— Some tribes inhabit the Mts. Some dwell on the plain. We discourage one another. We obey different laws.

IT IS A PROBLEM, FOR A “PHILOSOPHER OF HISTORY” SUCH AS MYSELF (AUSTIN MEREDITH), THAT PEOPLE WHO HAVE HEARD THAT THERE IS SUCH A THING AS “HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY” –PEOPLE WHO MAY EVEN HAVE GONE TO THE LENGTHS OF CONSULTING ONE OR ANOTHER “HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY” SUCH AS THAT CREATED BY UEBERWEG IN THE 19TH CENTURY– HAVE NEVER SO MUCH AS CONTEMPLATED THAT HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM THERE MIGHT BE SUCH A THING AS ALTERNATIVE PHILOSOPHIES OF HISTORY BASED ON DIFFERENT UNDERSTANDINGS OF THE NATURE OF TIME. THE GIST OF MY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY, BASED ON MY OWN UNDERSTANDING OF THE NATURE OF TIME, IS AS FOLLOWS: OUR SO- CALLED HISTORIANS ARE DOING IT EXACTLY WRONG. IN THEIR FABRICATIONS ABOUT HISTORY, THEY ARE CHRONIC ANTICIPATORS. THEY PERPETUALLY OFFER TO THEIR UNSUSPECTING AUDIENCES THAT ACCOUNTS THEY HAVE PATCHED TOGETHER IN THE LIGHT OF SUBSEQUENT EVENTS ILLUMINATE OUR PRESENT CONDITION. THEIR CONSTRUCTED PASTS BECOME OUR PREAMBLE FOR OUR PRESENT AGENDAS. THESE ACADEMIC PSEUDO-HISTORIANS WHO ENGAGE IN THIS ANTICIPATION AGENDA ARE WELL PAID BUT THEY OFFEND AGAINST REALITY. ANY HISTORY CONSTRUCTED IN THE LIGHT OF SUBSEQUENT EVENTS CAN AMOUNT TO NOTHING MORE THAN SPURIOUS MAKE-MAKE-BELIEVE, SPECIAL PLEADING. THE WARNING OF THE HIPPIE WAS “NEVER TRUST ANYONE OVER 30!” THE WARNING I PROFFER IS: “DON’T CREDIT ANY HISTORY THAT IS CREDIBLE. WHEN ANY OF THIS BEGINS TO MAKE ANY SENSE, DOUBLE-BEWARE!” TO BE SPECIFIC, THIS KOUROO DATABASE IS JUST CHOCK-FULL OF HISTORICAL CHRONOLOGIES. IF ANY OF THESE PROFFERED HISTORICAL CHRONOLOGIES ARE MORE THAN MERELY ACCURATE, IF ANY OF THEM OVER AND ABOVE THEIR ACCURACY BEGIN TO APPEAR TO YOU TO PROVIDE ANY PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATIONS OF OUR PRESENT CONDITION, THAT SHOULD BE ENOUGH TO MAKE YOUR SUSPICION- ANTENNAE BEGIN TO VIBRATE AND HUM. BIGTIME! I AM NOT CREATING THESE ACCURATE CHRONOLOGIES TO HELP YOU GROK YOUR PRESENT CONDITION. I AM CREATING THESE ACCURATE CHRONOLOGIES TO HELP YOU NON-GROK YOUR PRESENT CONDITION.

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1770

In New York, the Treaty of Fort Stanwyx, with native Americans, was ratified.

New York attorney John Wells was born.

In New-York, King’s College (Columbia) awarded the 1st 2 doctorates of medicine in the North American colonies.

In New York, additions were made to Newburgh’s Jonathan Hasbrouck House.

Delaware Indians brought Onondaga salt to the father of Judge Bowker of Cayuga at Papeconck (now Colchester.)

John Murray, Lord Dunmore, became Royal governor of the colony of New York.

Licensed inns came to be required to provide 2 beds and food for 4 people, as well as places for horses and cattle.

A colony of Irish Methodists settled near Ash Grove in the future Washington County of New York and organized the 2d Methodist Episcopalian church in America.

THE FALLACY OF MOMENTISM: THIS STARRY UNIVERSE DOES NOT CONSIST OF A SEQUENCE OF MOMENTS. THAT IS A FIGMENT, ONE WE HAVE RECOURSE TO IN ORDER TO PRIVILEGE TIME OVER CHANGE, APRIVILEGING THAT MAKES CHANGE SEEM UNREAL, DERIVATIVE, A MERE APPEARANCE. IN FACT IT IS CHANGE AND ONLY CHANGE WHICH WE EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, TIME BEING BY WAY OF RADICAL CONTRAST UNEXPERIENCED — A MERE INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCT. THERE EXISTS NO SUCH THING AS A MOMENT. NO “INSTANT” HAS EVER FOR AN INSTANT EXISTED.

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1775

Fewer than one out of every 800 Americans was a Methodist, or only about 2% of the general population, but this was about to change. By 1812 one out of every 36 Americans would be a Methodist, or about 18%, very much constituting a moral majority able to throw its weight around. And by 1850, more than 34% of Americans would be Methodists, to the holy terror of other religious groupings such as the Congregationalists, who at that midcentuy point would be one full order of magnitude less influential.

American Methodist membership would be expanding as follows: 1773: 1160 members 1780: 8300 members 1790: 57,600 members 1800: 63,700 members 1810: 171,800 members By 1830 membership would stand at nearly half a million

BETWEEN ANY TWO MOMENTS ARE AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MOMENTS, AND BETWEEN THESE OTHER MOMENTS LIKEWISE AN INFINITE NUMBER, THERE BEING NO ATOMIC MOMENT JUST AS THERE IS NO ATOMIC POINT ALONG A LINE. MOMENTS ARE THEREFORE FIGMENTS. THE PRESENT MOMENT IS A MOMENT AND AS SUCH IS A FIGMENT, A FLIGHT OF THE IMAGINATION TO WHICH NOTHING REAL CORRESPONDS. SINCE PAST MOMENTS HAVE PASSED OUT OF EXISTENCE AND FUTURE MOMENTS HAVE YET TO ARRIVE, WE NOTE THAT THE PRESENT MOMENT IS ALL THAT EVER EXISTS — AND YET THE PRESENT MOMENT BEING A MOMENT IS A FIGMENT TO WHICH NOTHING IN REALITY CORRESPONDS.

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1759

William Wilberforce was born in Hull as the son of a wealthy merchant who would die while he was still young. He had a physical deformity that caused his head to decline toward one side. For a time the boy would be brought up by an uncle and aunt, but this aunt was so strongly under the influence of the Methodist movement of the Reverend John Wesley that Mrs. Wilberforce would need to retrieve her son for his own wellbeing.

(Her son would grow to five feet tall. Measuring this from pavement level, above, her son would do well.)

FIGURING OUT WHAT AMOUNTS TO A “HISTORICAL CONTEXT” IS WHAT THE CRAFT OF HISTORICIZING AMOUNTS TO, AND THIS NECESSITATES DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN THE SET OF EVENTS THAT MUST HAVE TAKEN PLACE BEFORE EVENT E COULD BECOME POSSIBLE, AND MOST CAREFULLY DISTINGUISHING THEM FROM ANOTHER SET OF EVENTS THAT COULD NOT POSSIBLY OCCUR UNTIL SUBSEQUENT TO EVENT E.

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1783

At about this point John Wilkinson constructed a meeting-house for the Methodists at Bilston in Staffordshire, England (many of his workmen were of that persuasion). The doors and windowframes, pillars, roof, doorstep, etc. were fabricated from his foundry’s cast iron. Attending one of the meetings, he listened as one of the workmen preached from a cast-iron pulpit. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1784

The Methodist Church took a staunch position against the sale or imbibing of ardent spirits “unless in cases of extreme necessity.” THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

Among Methodists, tickets were given for the admission to the communion service, and those who had failed to comply with the very high standard of the church for conduct and attire were not admitted to this service. At the organizing conference of the Methodist Episcopals the question was raised “should we insist on the Rules concerning Dress?” The decision was, “This is no time to give encouragement to superfluity of apparel. Therefore give no ticket to any, till they have left off superfluous ornaments.... Allow no exempt case, not even of a married woman.... Give no admission to those who wear rings.” The rule regarding dress and ornaments became part of the DOCTRINES AND DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODIST CHURCH and would persist in this form until 1852.

HISTORY’S NOT MADE OF WOULD. WHEN SOMEONE REVEALS, FOR INSTANCE, THAT A PARTICULAR INFANT WOULD INVENT THE SEWING MACHINE, S/HE DISCLOSES THAT WHAT IS BEING CRAFTED IS NOT REALITY BUT PREDESTINARIANISM. THE HISTORIAN IS SETTING CHRONOLOGY TO “SHUFFLE,” WHICH IS NOT A PERMISSIBLE OPTION BECAUSE IN THE REAL WORLD SUCH SHUFFLE IS IMPOSSIBLE. THE RULE OF REALITY IS THAT THE FUTURE HASN’T EVER HAPPENED, YET. THERE IS NO SUCH “BIRD’S EYE VIEW” AS THIS IN THE REAL WORLD, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD NO REAL BIRD HAS EVER GLIMPSED AN ACTUAL HISTORICAL SEQUENCE.

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1786

Richard Allen moved back to Philadelphia and joined St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church. He conducted prayer meetings for blacks, and occasionally was allowed to preach to the congregation.

AN ESSAY ON THE SLAVERY AND COMMERCE OF THE HUMAN SPECIES, PARTICULARLY THE AFRICAN, TRANSLATED FROM A LATIN DISSERTATION, WHICH WAS HONOURED WITH THE FIRST PRIZE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, FOR THE YEAR 1785, WITH ADDITIONS; [One line from Livy] London: reprinted by Joseph Crukshank, in Market-Street, between Second and Third-Streets, Philadelphia, MDCCLXXXVI.

YOUR GARDEN-VARIETY ACADEMIC HISTORIAN INVITES YOU TO CLIMB ABOARD A HOVERING TIME MACHINE TO SKIM IN METATIME BACK ACROSS THE GEOLOGY OF OUR PAST TIMESLICES, WHILE OFFERING UP A GARDEN VARIETY OF COGENT ASSESSMENTS OF OUR PROGRESSION. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP! YOU SHOULD REFUSE THIS HELICOPTERISH OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORICAL PAST, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD THINGS HAPPEN ONLY AS THEY HAPPEN. WHAT THIS SORT WRITES AMOUNTS, LIKE MERE “SCIENCE FICTION,” MERELY TO “HISTORY FICTION”: IT’SNOT WORTH YOUR ATTENTION.

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1787

The founder of Methodism, the Reverend John Wesley, preached on the island of Jersey.

YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT EITHER THE REALITY OF TIME OVER THAT OF CHANGE, OR CHANGE OVER TIME — IT’S PARMENIDES, OR HERACLITUS. I HAVE GONE WITH HERACLITUS.

Organization was begun following a paper given by Dr. Benjamin Rush at the home of Benjamin Franklin, entitled, “An Inquiry into the Effects of public punishment upon criminals and upon society.” Although the Quakers have always had a deep influence in Philadelphia, the organization would by no means be limited to Quakers. Dr. Rush for instance was a Unitarian, and Franklin didn’t have much of any preference for any particular religious worship. The President of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons for its first 40 years would be an Episcopal Bishop, William White.1

Since Franklin might be termed the grandfather of electroshock therapy on the basis of his early suggestion that persons suffering from insanity be shocked into sanity by the application of electricity, I will insert the following item here: in this year Dr. John Birch made the experiment of administering electroshock to a popular singer who was suffering from melancholia — after daily treatments for a month, he recorded, the singer was able to fulfill his engagements that summer “with his usual applause.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush was a member of the “Convention of Pennsylvania for the Adoption of the Federal Constitution.”

In this year Virginia was repealing its incorporation of the Protestant Episcopal Church (fear of powerful and wealthy churches would induce the Virginia legislature to routinely refuse to incorporate any churches,

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

1. For those who wish to read more, there are two books by Dr. Negley Teeters of Temple University: THEY WERE IN PRISON, a history of the PA Prison Society, and THE CRADLE OF THE PENITENTIARY. Prior to this point, prison as punishment was not known. The motivation of the experiment was to create a substitute for corporal and capital punishment. This group promotes correctional reform and social justice to this day, although now it deems itself the Pennsylvania Prison Society. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM seminaries, or religious charities whatever). Such provisions for separation of church and state would make their way into the US federal constitution and would continue through a succession of Virginia constitutional revisions, into the 21st Century.

Franklin was again reelected President of Pennsylvania and went as delegate to the Philadelphia convention for the framing of a Federal Constitution. Here is an indication of the lifestyles of the people who attended this convention. Note that George Mason of Virginia, J. Rutledge of South Carolina, and George Washington of Virginia were three of the largest slaveholders in North America, and that in all, 17 delegates to this convention owned the lives of some 1,400 human beings:

Franklin, who owned slaves and acted as a slave-trader in Philadelphia out of his print-shop, went to the constitutional convention in part as the official representative of the anti-slavery cause — and never once raised this vital issue. Fifty years later, when the sealed proceedings would be disclosed to the American public and it would be revealed that he had betrayed us in this fundamental respect, there would be the greatest outrage at his conduct, and a debate would begin which would be germane to the origin of our civil warfare, a debate as to whether the federal Constitution was a pact with Satan which ought to be dissolved. That is to say, the activities (or lack of activities, for he was possibly already on opium at the time) of Franklin at the constitutional convention would lead directly to the foundation of the Northern Disunionist faction. But he spent his valuable time at this important convention arguing for banal nonce items such as having several executives rather than one and one legislature rather than several. The more important stuff, that he was supposed to be talking about, was precisely what the guy wasn’t talking about. As a practical Pennsylvania politician he had found it was sometimes useful to ally with the local Quakers, if this helped him neutralize the Brit influence, and we may observe in the following quotation from his AUTOBIOGRAPHY not only this government’s general attitude toward people who have been pacified but also this “antislavery delegate” HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM Franklin’s attitude toward people who have been negrofied: Ben Franklin’s “Autobiography”

One afternoon, in the height of this public quarrel, we met in the street. “Franklin,” says he, “you must go home with me and spend the evening; I am to have some company that you will like;” and, taking me by the arm, he led me to his house. In gay conversation over our wine, after supper, he told us, jokingly, that he much admir’d the idea of Sancho Panza, who, when it was proposed to give him a government, requested it might be a government of blacks, as then, if he could not agree with his people, he might sell them. One of his friends, who sat next to me, says, “Franklin, why do you continue to side with these damn’d Quakers? Had not you better sell them? The proprietor would give you a good price.” “The governor,” says I, “has not yet blacked them enough.” He, indeed, had labored hard to blacken the Assembly in all his messages, but they wip’d off his coloring as fast as he laid it on, and plac’d it, in return, thick upon his own face; so that, finding he was likely to be negrofied himself, he, as well as Mr. Hamilton, grew tir’d of the contest, and quitted the government.

We can get a glimpse, in the above, of how it would come to be that Dr. Franklin could go off to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 as the designated representative of the civil rights people of his day — and then, precisely 50 years later, when the articles of secrecy the delegates had sworn to had expired, it would be discovered that this politician had betrayed the people he was supposed to be representing by uttering not one single word at any time during that convention in opposition to the “peculiar institution” of chattel slavery.2 James Madison, Jr. took very detailed minutes throughout the Convention, but they were subject to a secrecy READ MADISON’S NOTES

conspiracy to keep the electorate in the dark, with a sworn duration period of precisely 50 years, which was adhered to by all participants. Madison had turned over his notes on the Convention to George Washington, who kept them at Mt. Vernon, and Madison’s notes would not see the light of day until 1845. No member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 would publish any account of the Convention’s important deliberations until two years after the death the last member of the Constitutional Convention, Madison, when the notes of Luther Martin of Maryland and of Robert Yates of New York would be published in 1838 as SECRET PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, 1787. NOTES OF ROBERT YATES

2. Yes, children, it was our trusted and revered Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, as much as any single American, who caused the bloodletting of our Civil War. Was the guy on drugs during this convention? —No, we don’t know for certain sure that he began his heavy use of opium before the year after this one. The only drug we can be quite certain he was on at this point, besides fatheadedness, was racism.

Son of so-and-so and so-and-so, this so-and-so helped us to gain our independence, instructed us in economy, and drew down lightning from the clouds.

Incidentally, in using the trope “peculiar institution” today we tend to make an implicit criticism of enslavement. Not so originally! In its initial usages, to refer to slavery as “peculiar” was not in any way to attack it but rather proclaim it to be defensible. “Peculiar,” in this archaic usage, indicated merely that the legitimacy of the system was based not upon any endorsement by a higher or more remote legal authority, but based instead upon the “peculiar conditions and history” of a particular district of the country and a particular society and a particular historically engendered set of customs and procedures and conventions. This trope went hand in hand with the Doctrine of States Rights, and went hand in hand with the persistence of the English common law. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM When Madison’s records were opened on schedule, there was the greatest outrage. We felt totally betrayed. A Northern disunion party of sorts originated, and would constitute one of the causes of the frictions leading eventually to civil war. We found out, belatedly, suddenly, that our Franklin had gone to the convention in part as the representative of the anti-slavery position, and –old, terminally ill, possibly already under the influence of opium, desiring some peace in his time– he had simply sold us out. Our guy hadn’t even so much as raised the central issue of American slavery for discussion. We were so surprised, here we’ve got this slavemaster guy who used to keep the unwanted surplus slaves of his friends and business associates in a pen behind his print shop in Philadelphia, offering their bodies for sale to the highest bidder, and we trust him and we go and send him off to our constitutional convention to be our spokesperson against slavery — and we’re so surprised and we feel so betrayed fifty years after the fact! There’s now a book out that alleges that Ben more than any other human being was responsible for the Revolutionary War. Per the book this was allegedly based upon his resentment at having been being fired as the colonial postmaster general, and publicly humiliated and scorned in Whitehall, on irrefutable charges having to do with the stealing of other people’s correspondence. Well, I don’t know about that issue — but, if I had to select out one American citizen who, more than any other, was responsible for the bloodshed of the US Civil War, I think I’d nominate Founding Father Benjamin Franklin for the honor. Well, maybe not. Anybody want to attempt to make a case for Nat Turner? Roger Taney?

Slavery is never directly mentioned in the US Constitution, although the document explicitly regard people coming into the nation from Africa to constitute cargo rather than to constitute prospective citizens. Also, Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons. (Art. I, Sec. 2) This is usually telegraphed by some comment such as “Our founding fathers believed that black people were 3 subhuman, and evaluated them as /5ths of a human being.” That would have been bad enough, but this section is open to another, more accurate, and more pejorist, interpretation. Consider the key words here, “Representatives ... shall be apportioned” in the light of the end of this paragraph, which assigns the number of representatives each state would have until the first census could be taken, and ask yourself the question “So, how many representatives does each state initially get in the US Congress? The formula that was used is that representation was proportional to population, except that only 60% of the slaves were counted. Representatives represent those who elect and re-elect them. Blacks, free white children, and free white women were not allowed to cast ballots. The proper critical question to ask of this passage would not be, Why 3 were slaves counted at only /5ths, when free white children and free white women were counted as whole units? The question would be, Why were they counted at all? Their inclusion in the census only served to inflate the representation of the free citizens of the slave-holding states. It certainly did nothing to promote the representation of the slaves in Congress. It could easily be demonstrated that the political interests of the free white men who were casting ballots had a significant amount of overlap in that period with the political interests of free white children and free white women, but it would be significantly harder to demonstrate a significant amount of overlap between the interests of slaveholders and the interests of their slaves. Of the actual voters in slave-holding states, how many held the same political opinions as the slaves? It might be a good guess that the answer is, close to zero. So why were these voters allowed extra representation, as if they could speak for 60% of the slaves? If we want to make a slogan of it, we shouldn’t 3 be saying that the founding fathers considered a slave to be /5ths of a person. We should be saying that they considered a slave a nonperson who increased someone else’s, the possessor’s, political worth by 60%. Bear in mind that what we are considering here is an era in which voting rights and property rights were still conceptually entangled — simply because in any event only men of property were entitled to cast a ballot.

3 3 Why /5ths? –Because on an average you can only get about /5ths as much work out of a slave, through a motivational system primarily consisting of punishments and the threat of punishment, that you can get out of a free person, through a motivational system primarily consisting of rewards and the prospect of rewards! HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM 3 (Also, very practically, because both the North and the South were willing to compromise at /5ths whereas 5 the northern colonies would never have entered the Union had Southern slaves been weighed at /5ths and the 0 southern colonies would never have entered the Union had their slave property been weighed at /5ths.)

On the popular but quite incorrect interpretation of Art. 1 Sec. 2 of the US Constitution, whatever benefit 3 a population received from being counted, the slave population was to receive but /5ths of that benefit. On a more accurate interpretation, the slave population was to receive no positive benefit at all, or was to receive a negative benefit, from being thus counted, for you will notice that the benefit that accrues from 3 counting /5ths of the slave population is a benefit which is assigned to the free voting population of the same state, which is thus even more powerful — and even more capable of abusing those being held in captivity.

In a November 9, 2000 op-ed piece in the New York Times, “The Electoral College, Unfair from Day One,” Yale Law School’s Akhil Reed Amar would argue that intent of the Founding Fathers in creating the electoral college which was so perplexing us during the Bush/Gore presidential election, like their intent in creating the 3 /5ths rule, had been to protect America’s southern white men from the vicissitudes of majority rule: In 1787, as the Constitution was being drafted in Philadelphia, James Wilson of Pennsylvania proposed direct election of the president. But James Madison of Virginia worried that such a system would hurt the South, which would have been outnumbered by the North in a direct election system. The creation of the Electoral College got around that: it was part of the deal that Southern states, in computing their share of electoral votes, could count slaves (albeit with a two-fifths discount), who of course were given none of the privileges of citizenship. Virginia emerged as the big winner, with more than a quarter of the electors needed to elect a president. A free state like Pennsylvania got fewer electoral votes even though it had approximately the same free population. The Constitution’s pro-Southern bias quickly became obvious. For 32 of the Constitution’s first 36 years, a white slaveholding Virginian occupied the presidency. Thomas Jefferson, for example, won the election of 1800 against John Adams from Massachusetts in a race where the slavery skew of the Electoral College was the decisive margin of victory. The system’s gender bias was also obvious. In a direct presidential election, any state that chose to enfranchise its women would have automatically doubled its clout. Under the Electoral College, however, a state had no special incentive to expand suffrage — each got a fixed number of electoral votes, regardless of how many citizens were allowed to vote. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM With the assistance of abolitionist Quakers, in this year the newly freed slaves of the city of Philadelphia formed a Free African Society. The society was intended to enable mutual aid and nourish the development of a cadre of black leaders. The immediate cause of organization of this Free African Society was that in this year the St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia had segregated its colored members from its white communicants. Blacks to the back: African worshipers were sent to the church’s gallery. One Sunday as the African members knelt to pray outside of their segregated area they were actually tugged from their knees, so they understood that they needed to form this new society — and out of this came an Episcopalian group and a Methodist one. Restrictions placed on the number of “Allenites” permitted to attend Methodist meetings organized by Richard Allen obliged him to help organize in an old blacksmith shop an independent Methodist Church.

Pennsylvania enacted a gradual emancipation act providing that no child born in Pennsylvania after March 1, 1780 should be a slave. (It would still be possible to purchase and sell slaves in Pennsylvania after the passage of this act, and in fact we can find frequent sale ads in Pennsylvania newspapers as late as 1820. Pennsylvania slaves could not, however, any longer be legally sold out of the state. Anyone who was a slave prior to the passage of this Gradual Emancipation Act was still a slave for life, even if he or she had been a mere newborn infant as of February 1780. Slaveholders could still sell the time of young people born to slave mothers after 1780, subject to the ban on out-of-state sales, until they reached the manumission age of 28. Therefore, as late as the 1830 census, Pennsylvania still sported some 400 slaves. There were many conflicts over enforcing the law, including with slaveholders who attempted to transport pregnant slaves to Maryland so that a child would be born a slave rather than born merely a servant until the age of 28. Slaveholders initiated arguments about whether the grandchildren as well as the children of slaves would be bound to serve until age 28. “Sojourning” slaveholders from other states would raise issues of the status of slaves brought into Pennsylvania. “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141 HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

ONE COULD BE ELSEWHERE, AS ELSEWHERE DOES EXIST. ONE CANNOT BE ELSEWHEN SINCE ELSEWHEN DOES NOT. (TO THE WILLING MANY THINGS CAN BE EXPLAINED, THAT FOR THE UNWILLING WILL REMAIN FOREVER MYSTERIOUS.)

November: Black Americans attempting to pray on their knees at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia were pulled up off their knees and physically ejected over their refusal to be seated in the church’s new Negro Section (which is to say, the racially segregated gallery). The freedman Richard Allen, 27 years of age, the Reverend Absalom Jones, the Reverend William White, and some of the other participants in this interrupted public prayer would go on to form the Free African Society. Allen, with Absalom Jones (who had like Allen been a pupil at the school of Anthony Benezet), and others, would establish an African Methodist Episcopal Church.

IT IS NO COINCIDENCE THAT IT IS MORTALS WHO CONSUME OUR HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS, FOR WHAT WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO DO IS EVADE THE RESTRICTIONS OF THE HUMAN LIFESPAN. (IMMORTALS,

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM WITH NOTHING TO LIVE FOR, TAKE NO HEED OF OUR STORIES.)

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1789

The Reverend Jesse Lee, with a couple of other Methodist ministers, entered George Whitefield’s tomb to view the evangelist’s quiet repose. THE MARKET FOR HUMAN BODY PARTS

In 1784 the Methodist Church had taken a staunch position against the sale or imbibing of ardent spirits with a qualification, “unless in cases of extreme necessity.” In this year this qualification was deleted. A similar platform was adopted by the Presbyterian Synod of Pennsylvania and by the New England Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

CONTINGENCY ALTHOUGH VERY MANY OUTCOMES ARE OVERDETERMINED, WE TRUST THAT SOMETIMES WE ACTUALLY MAKE REAL CHOICES. “THIS IS THE ONLY WAY, WE SAY, BUT THERE ARE AS MANY WAYS AS THERE CAN BE DRAWN RADII FROM ONE CENTRE.”

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1798

Arriving in the British Isles with her female traveling companion, the minister Friend Hannah Barnard would spend 10 months visiting and preaching, traveling more than 2,000 miles. Many Methodists would attend her public meetings, particularly in Cornwall. A controversy would develop, and Friend Chuck Fager has analyzed the controversy in the following manner: [A]t the 1799 session of London Yearly Meeting, Friend Hannah Barnard and a delegation of women Friends urged the yearly meeting hierarchy to permit the occasional use of meetinghouses by ministers of other denominations in exchange for similar use of churches by Friends. When the (male) elders nixed the idea, Barnard defended it with what the clerk considered “uncommon tenacity,” to the point where she and her delegation were told to leave the session. Some historians believe it was from this confrontation, over a seemingly minor item of practice, that her later troubles over doctrine sprang. The London Quaker establishment was then taking on an evangelical version of orthodoxy that would hold sway there for over half a century. This establishment did not welcome challenges to its dicta, on matters small or large, from anyone, and particularly from women. But having already taken the elders on in a matter of practice, Friend Hannah Barnard was soon embroiled in controversy on matters of doctrine. The new conflict emerged after Friend Hannah Barnard moved on to visit Ireland. There she found Friends debating matters of war, peace and the Bible. Specifically, the question put to her was: Did God indeed command the ancient Israelites to make war (of a genocidal sort in several cases) on their enemies, as recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures? This way of posing the issue was probably not accidental. Just a year before there had been a peasant uprising against English overlords, which British troops had put down very brutally. Many Irish Friends, as people of substance, were likely on the side of this imperial form of “law and order,” and pointing to the scriptural massacres as justification for official violence was not a new form of rationalization. But there were Irish Friends who saw matters differently. They were a group of incipient liberals who rejected such literalist readings of the Bible, especially where the texts contradicted such central Quaker convictions as the peace testimony. These internal dissenters –sometimes referred to as “New Lights”– also became increasingly persuaded that it was un-Quakerly to make such doctrinal correctness a central part of Quaker faith in the first place. They thereby challenged a key assumption of the new establishment, namely the importance of correct evangelical doctrine, especially regarding the Bible. Friend Hannah Barnard joined with the “New Lights,” and traveled among Irish Friends advocating their views in a spirited, articulate fashion, again meeting also with many non-Friends. When she finished her tour, Dublin Yearly Meeting gave her a certificate that said she had ministered “to general satisfaction,” and expressed the hope that she might be “favoured to continue” her religious labors. In pursuit of this objective, Friend Hannah Barnard returned to London and applied to the Meeting of Ministers and Elders for a certificate to continue her travels in Germany. But other HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM reports, of her work and message, from alarmed evangelicals, had also made their way to London, and in May, 1800, the elders rejected her request. She was soon directed “desist from preaching” and to return home as soon as possible. They even offered to pay for her passage, which she indignantly refused. The chief charge against Friend Hannah Barnard was that she denied the full truth and authority of scripture. Informally she was accused of all manner of heresies. Barnard fought the charges, insisting that her conclusions were in harmony with the original Quaker conviction that the leadings of the spirit within and not outward scripture, however interpreted, was the final measure of truth for Friends. “Nothing is revealed truth to me, as doctrine,” she declared, “until it is sealed as such in my mind, through the illumination of ... the word of God, the divine light, and intelligence, to which the Scriptures ... bear plentiful testimony.” Friend Hannah Barnard spoke her convictions with great vigor. For instance, when asked about a verse in the First Epistle of John (“For there are three that bear record in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” 1John 5: 7), she recalled that, “I felt not the slightest hesitation in saying I believed it to be a corrupt interpolation, for the very purpose of establishing the absurd and pernicious doctrine of the Trinity in Unity, some ages after the first promulgation of the gospel.” (Incidentally, almost all modern biblical scholars agree that the verse is a late interpolation, and most recent translations omit it.) Even one of her critics grudgingly admitted she was “remarkably voluble and eloquent in delivery.” But her appeals were rejected, and finally she boarded a ship for New York. The London elders were not finished, however. They sent copies of their indictment ahead of her, and by the time Friend Hannah Barnard arrived home in Hudson, in late 1801, she found that disciplinary proceedings against her were underway there too. Again Friend Hannah Barnard defended herself stoutly, and again her very assertiveness was added to the charges against her. When a weighty male Friend noted regretfully her willingness to challenge opponents of whatever stature, she replied that she was indeed ready “to meet any person, or even the whole world, while I felt conscious innocence.” Again, though, Friend Hannah Barnard lost, and by mid-1802 had been disowned for showing a “a Caviling, contentious disposition of mind.” She remained unrepentant, writing to a British supporter that “under the present state of the Society I can with humble reverent thankfulness rejoice in the consideration that I was made the Instrument of bringing their Darkness to light.” Such banishment, however, did not bring an end to her ministry.

THE AGE OF REASON WAS A PIPE DREAM, OR AT BEST A PROJECT. ACTUALLY, HUMANS HAVE ALMOST NO CLUE WHAT THEY ARE DOING, WHILE CREDITING THEIR OWN LIES ABOUT WHY THEY ARE DOING IT.

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1801

The African Methodist Episcopal Zion communion which had been organized in 1796 by members of the Methodist Episcopal Church was recognized by that parent organization. AME

TRALFAMADORIANS EXPERIENCE REALITY IN 4 DIMENSIONS RATHER THAN 3 AND HAVE SIMULTANEOUS ACCESS TO PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. THEY ARE ABLE TO SEE ALONG THE TIMELINE OF THE UNIVERSE TO THE EXACT TIME AND PLACE AT WHICH AS THE RESULT OF A TRALFAMADORIAN EXPERIMENT, THE UNIVERSE IS ANNIHILATED. BILLY PILGRIM, WHILE CAGED IN A TRALFAMADORIAN ZOO, ACQUIRES THEIR ATTITUDE TOWARD TIME, AND SO WHEN HE RETURNS TO EARTH, HE BECOMES A HISTORIAN VERY LIKE ALL OUR OTHER HISTORIANS: ALTHOUGH HE CANNOT HIMSELF SEE INTO THE FUTURE THE WAY THE TRALFAMADORIANS DO, LIKE ALL OUR OTHER HUMAN HISTORIANS DO HE PRETENDS TO BE ABLE TO SEE ALL PERIODS OF OUR PAST TRAJECTORY NOT WITH THE EYES OF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE LIVING DURING THOSE PERIODS, BUT WITH THE OVERARCHING EYE OF GOD. THIS ENABLES HIM TO PRETEND TO BE VERY VERY WISE AND TO SOUND VERY VERY IMPRESSIVE!

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1809

William Apess’s indenture was sold by Mr. Furman to a Judge William Hillhouse of New London, Connecticut. After putting up with 6 months of the lad’s attempts to run away, the indenture was again sold, this time to a William Williams of the same town. He began to attend Methodist meetings in a most serious manner.

THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE HISTORIAN TYPICALLY SUPPOSES NOW TO BE THE WHY OF THEN. THE REALITY IS VERY MUCH TO THE CONTRARY, FOR NOW IS NOT THE WHY OF THEN: INSTEAD, THEN WAS THE HOW OF NOW. ANOTHER WAY TO SAY THIS IS THAT HISTORIANS WHO ANTICIPATE OFFEND AGAINST REALITY. A HISTORY WRITTEN IN THE LIGHT OF SUBSEQUENT EVENTS AMOUNTS TO SPURIOUS MAKE- BELIEVE. TO DO A GOOD JOB OF RECORDING HISTORY, ONE MUST BECOME IGNORANT (OR FEIGN IGNORANCE) OF EVERYTHING THAT WE NOW KNOW TO HAVE FOLLOWED.

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1812

May 18, Monday: Amidst celebrations by night and military preparations by day, the Emperor and Empress of Austria arrived in Dresden.

John Bellingham was hanged in front of Newgate Prison, for the murder of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval a week earlier. Mingling in the cheering multitude was George Gordon, Lord Byron, who was not cheering.

Demetrio e Polibio, a dramma serio by Gioachino Rossini to words of Viganò-Mombelli, was performed for the initial time, in Teatro Valle, Rome.

Friend Paul Cuffe was in New-York while on his way back from Washington DC to Westport, Massachusetts. He wrote in his diary that On my Return Called to see Dr. Ross, a man that Resided 7 years in Jamaica in which time he Saw most horrible abomination inflicted on the Slaves being jibetted, Launced on a Plank Down a Steep Place Whiped Hanged Burnt and racked. Lord have Mercy I Pray Thee.

During this stop-over in the big city, Friend Paul went with Friend Thomas Eddy for a visit to the African School. There was a street encounter: P.S. I was traveling in the Street With my Guide he kindly introduced me to two Methodist preachers Who accosted me thus, “Do you understand English?” I answered them “There Was a Part I did not understand (Viz) that of one Brother professor making merchandize of and holding in Bondage their Brother professor, this part I Should be glad they Would Clear up to me.”

These white preachers, in the big city for a convention of their fellows, of course made no response to a person of color’s street insolence. Friend Paul was sufficiently disturbed by the encounter, however, that on this evening he wrote the incident up as a letter. On the following day he would go to the convention of Methodists and make his protest heard, and later he would pay a call on the Methodist Bishop, the Reverend Asbury, in a further effort to discuss the pros and cons of human enslavement. RHODE ISLAND RELIGION

In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 18 of 5 Mo// Tho’ its seems as if there is nothing to insert, yet I feel most easy to say that times are gloomy both within & without both as respecting myself & things at large in town, State & the world. yet it does not just at this present time seem as if the devastation of War was quite so much to be feared as some little time ago —- O Williams set the eveng with us, on our part very acceptably.- HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

IS HISTORY A SCIENCE? ASTRONOMY IS A SCIENCE, FOR IT IS A STUDY OF REAL OBJECTS CALLED “STARS” (AND SUCHLIKE) SITUATED AT VARIOUS REAL LOCATIONS IN THE DIMENSIONS OF SPACE. WERE HISTORY A SCIENCE LIKE ASTRONOMY, IT WOULD NEED TO BE A SCIENCE OF EVENTS (AND SUCHLIKE) AT VARIOUS REAL SITUATIONS IN THE DIMENSION OF TIME. HOWEVER, IT WOULD NEED TO PROVIDE AN OVERVIEW OF ALL SUCH EVENTS, NOT ONLY THOSE AT VARIOUS REAL SITUATIONS IN THE PAST PORTION OF TIME, BUT ALSO THOSE AT VARIOUS REAL SITUATIONS IN THE FUTURE PORTION OF TIME. AND NOTHING IN THE FUTURE NOW EXISTS, WHICH IS WHY WE REFER TO IT AS “FUTURE.” IT IS FUTURE NOT MERELY BECAUSE WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT IT YET, BUT BECAUSE IT IS INDEFINITE AND UNDEFINED. GOD HAS NOT YET CREATED IT, PROVIDING IT WITH ITS “DEFINITUDE.” THEREFORE THIS WOULD BE A SPURIOUS METAPHOR: IN THE SENSE IN WHICH ASTRONOMY IS SCIENCE, HISTORY IS NOT. WHEN HISTORIANS PRETEND TO BE DOING SCIENCE, THEY ARE ATTEMPTING TO REMOVE REALITY FROM THE LAP OF GOD.

May 19, Friday: In New-York, Friend Paul Cuffe was sufficiently disturbed by his street encounter with a couple of Methodist ministers who proved to be unwilling to discuss the pros and cons of human slavery with him, that he visited the convention they were attending and registered a protest. Later he would pay a call on the Methodist Bishop, the Reverend Asbury.3

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 19 5 Mo// I watched last night with James Robinson he lays very helpless & I hardly think it any more than within possibility that he may get about again —

3. Perhaps Friend Paul would discuss with this Bishop the contribution to religious thought of the Reverend John Wesley. In his description of the Methodist character, the Reverend Wesley had insisted repeatedly that the heart of Christian ethics was love. He offered the following definition: “A Methodist is one who has ‘the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given unto him;’ one who ‘loves the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his strength. God is the joy of his heart, and the desire of his soul.’” –Or, perhaps, Friend Paul wouldn’t. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ESSENCE IS BLUR. SPECIFICITY, THE OPPOSITE OF ESSENCE, IS OF THE NATURE OF TRUTH.

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1815

In Philadelphia at this point, there were more black Methodists than white.4 AME RICHARD ALLEN

ESSENCES ARE FUZZY, GENERIC, CONCEPTUAL; ARISTOTLE WAS RIGHT WHEN HE INSISTED THAT ALL TRUTH IS SPECIFIC AND PARTICULAR (AND WRONG WHEN HE CHARACTERIZED TRUTH AS A GENERALIZATION).

At about this point Cato Pearce, back from his voyage to the Caribbean, had abandoned religion and taken up drinking and carousing. After spending his seaman’s wages in Rhode Island, he began to attend the revival meetings held for people of color by a white man known to them as Elder Osborne (the Reverend V.R. Osborne was apparently being permitted by the white congregation of his Methodist church in Providence to preach to people of color, but only in all-colored assemblies and only at night). Elder Osborne was asking converts to rise and come forward, and some attenders did, but Cato always held back. He hired himself out to Captain James Rhodes of Providence. During a terrible storm while on another voyage to the Caribbean, he would feel an urge to pray out loud. The first mate would attempt to forbid such prayer, but later, below decks, he would again pray out loud. The first mate, hearing this, would call him on deck and shout “Didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t have no more hollerin’ and prayin’ on board?” Then he hauled me forward and laid me over the windlass, and made one of the hands hold me over while he laid on three or four hard blows with a rope, and made me promise not to pray again. Then I didn’t know what to do.... I wept a good deal —

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

4. Just as today, on a worldwide basis, there are far more black Quakers than white ones. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM pretty much all night long.

RHODE ISLAND RELIGION HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM In about this year a portrait was made on canvas, by an unknown artist, of Elisha Reynolds Potter, Senior (1764-1835), one of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations’s wealthiest plantation masters, owning some seven or eight farms. He was an enormous man, six feet four inches tall and weighing about 300 pounds. Table of Altitudes

Yoda 2 ' 0 '' Lavinia Warren 2 ' 8 '' Tom Thumb, Jr. 3 ' 4 '' Lucy (Australopithecus Afarensis) 3 ' 8 '' Hervé Villechaize (“Fantasy Island”) 3 ' 11'' Charles Proteus Steinmetz 4 ' 0 '' Mary Moody Emerson per FBS (1) 4 ' 3 '' Alexander Pope 4 ' 6 '' Benjamin Lay 4 ' 7 '' Dr. Ruth Westheimer 4 ' 7 '' Gary Coleman (“Arnold Jackson”) 4 ' 8 '' Edith Piaf 4 ' 8 '' Queen Victoria with osteoporosis 4 ' 8 '' Linda Hunt 4 ' 9 '' Queen Victoria as adult 4 ' 10 '' Mother Teresa 4 ' 10 '' Margaret Mitchell 4 ' 10 '' length of newer military musket 4 ' 10'' Charlotte Brontë 4 ' 10-11'' Tammy Faye Bakker 4 ' 11'' Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut 4 ' 11'' jockey Willie Shoemaker 4 ' 11'' Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 4 ' 11'' Joan of Arc 4 ' 11'' Bonnie Parker of “Bonnie & Clyde” 4 ' 11'' Harriet Beecher Stowe 4 ' 11'' Laura Ingalls Wilder 4 ' 11'' a rather tall adult Pygmy male 4 ' 11'' Gloria Swanson 4 ' 11''1/2 Clara Barton 5 ' 0 '' Isambard Kingdom Brunel 5 ' 0 '' Andrew Carnegie 5 ' 0 '' Thomas de Quincey 5 ' 0 '' Dorothy Wordsworth 5 ' 0 '' Stephen A. Douglas 5 ' 0 '' Danny DeVito 5 ' 0 '' Immanuel Kant 5 ' 0 '' William Wilberforce 5 ' 0 '' HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Dollie Parton 5 ' 0 '' Mae West 5 ' 0 '' Pia Zadora 5 ' 0 '' Deng Xiaoping 5 ' 0 '' Dred Scott 5 ' 0 '' (±) Captain William Bligh of HMS Bounty 5 ' 0 '' (±) Harriet Tubman 5 ' 0 '' (±) Mary Moody Emerson per FBS (2) 5 ' 0 '' (±) John Brown of Providence, Rhode Island 5 ' 0 '' (+) John Keats 5 ' 3/4 '' Debbie Reynolds (Carrie Fisher’s mother) 5 ' 1 '' Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) 5 ' 1 '' Her Royal Highness The Princess Margaret 5 ' 1 '' Bette Midler 5 ' 1 '' Dudley Moore 5 ' 2 '' Paul Simon (of Simon & Garfunkel) 5 ' 2 '' Honoré de Balzac 5 ' 2 '' Sally Field 5 ' 2 '' Jemmy Button 5 ' 2 '' Margaret Mead 5 ' 2 '' R. Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller 5 ' 2 '' Yuri Gagarin the astronaut 5 ' 2 '' William Walker 5 ' 2 '' Horatio Alger, Jr. 5 ' 2 '' length of older military musket 5 ' 2 '' 1 the artist formerly known as Prince 5 ' 2 /2'' 1 typical female of Thoreau’s period 5 ' 2 /2'' Francis of Assisi 5 ' 3 '' Volt ai re 5 ' 3 '' Mohandas Gandhi 5 ' 3 '' Kahlil Gibran 5 ' 3 '' Friend Daniel Ricketson 5 ' 3 '' The Reverend Gilbert White 5 ' 3 '' Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev 5 ' 3 '' Sammy Davis, Jr. 5 ' 3 '' William Laws Calley, Jr. 5 ' 3 '' Truman Capote 5 ' 3 '' Kim Jong Il (North Korea) 5 ' 3 '' Stephen A. “Little Giant” Douglas 5 ' 4 '' Francisco Franco 5 ' 4 '' President James Madison 5 ' 4 '' Iosef Vissarionovich Dzugashvili “Stalin” 5 ' 4 '' HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

Alan Ladd 5 ' 4 '' Pablo Picasso 5 ' 4 '' Truman Capote 5 ' 4 '' Queen Elizabeth 5 ' 4 '' Ludwig van Beethoven 5 ' 4 '' Typical Homo Erectus 5 ' 4 '' 1 typical Neanderthal adult male 5 ' 4 /2'' 1 Alan Ladd 5 ' 4 /2'' comte de Buffon 5 ' 5 '' (-) Captain Nathaniel Gordon 5 ' 5 '' Charles Manson 5 ' 5 '' Audie Murphy 5 ' 5 '' Harry Houdini 5 ' 5 '' Hung Hsiu-ch'üan 5 ' 5 '' 1 Marilyn Monroe 5 ' 5 /2'' 1 T.E. Lawrence “of Arabia” 5 ' 5 /2'' average runaway male American slave 5 ' 5-6 '' Charles Dickens 5 ' 6? '' President Benjamin Harrison 5 ' 6 '' President Martin Van Buren 5 ' 6 '' James Smithson 5 ' 6 '' Louisa May Alcott 5 ' 6 '' 1 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 5 ' 6 /2'' 1 Napoleon Bonaparte 5 ' 6 /2'' Emily Brontë 5 ' 6-7 '' Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 5 ' ? '' average height, seaman of 1812 5 ' 6.85 '' Oliver Reed Smoot, Jr. 5 ' 7 '' minimum height, British soldier 5 ' 7 '' President John Adams 5 ' 7 '' President John Quincy Adams 5 ' 7 '' President William McKinley 5 ' 7 '' “Charley” Parkhurst (a female) 5 ' 7 '' President, General Ulysses S. Grant 5 ' 7 '' Dr. Sigmund Freud 5 ' 7 '' Henry Thoreau 5 ' 7 '' 1 the average male of Thoreau’s period 5 ' 7 /2 '' Edgar Allan Poe 5 ' 8 '' President Ulysses S. Grant 5 ' 8 '' President William H. Harrison 5 ' 8 '' President James Polk 5 ' 8 '' President Zachary Taylor 5 ' 8 '' HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

average height, soldier of 1812 5 ' 8.35 '' 1 President Rutherford B. Hayes 5 ' 8 /2'' President Millard Fillmore 5 ' 9 '' President Harry S Truman 5 ' 9 '' 1 President Jimmy Carter 5 ' 9 /2'' 3 Herman Melville 5 ' 9 /4'' Calvin Coolidge 5 ' 10'' Andrew Johnson 5 ' 10'' Theodore Roosevelt 5 ' 10'' Thomas Paine 5 ' 10'' Franklin Pierce 5 ' 10'' Abby May Alcott 5 ' 10'' Reverend Henry C. Wright 5 ' 10'' 1 Nathaniel Hawthorne 5 ' 10 /2'' 1 Louis “Deerfoot” Bennett 5 ' 10 /2'' 1 Friend John Greenleaf Whittier 5 ' 10 /2'' 1 President Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower 5 ' 10 /2'' Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots 5 ' 11'' Sojourner Truth 5 ' 11'' President Stephen Grover Cleveland 5 ' 11'' President Herbert Hoover 5 ' 11'' President Woodrow Wilson 5 ' 11'' President Jefferson Davis 5 ' 11'' 1 President Richard Milhous Nixon 5 ' 11 /2'' Robert Voorhis the hermit of Rhode Island < 6 ' Frederick Douglass 6 ' (-) Anthony Burns 6 ' 0 '' Waldo Emerson 6 ' 0 '' Joseph Smith, Jr. 6 ' 0 '' David Walker 6 ' 0 '' Sarah F. Wakefield 6 ' 0 '' Thomas Wentworth Higginson 6 ' 0 '' President James Buchanan 6 ' 0 '' President Gerald R. Ford 6 ' 0 '' President James Garfield 6 ' 0 '' President Warren Harding 6 ' 0 '' President John F. Kennedy 6 ' 0 '' President James Monroe 6 ' 0 '' President William H. Taft 6 ' 0 '' President John Tyler 6 ' 0 '' Captain John Brown 6 ' 0 (+)'' President Andrew Jackson 6 ' 1'' HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

Alfred Russel Wallace 6 ' 1'' President Ronald Reagan 6 ' 1'' 1 Venture Smith 6 ' 1 /2'' John Camel Heenan 6 ' 2 '' Crispus Attucks 6 ' 2 '' Franz Liszt 6 ' 2 '' President Chester A. Arthur 6 ' 2 '' President George Bush, Senior 6 ' 2 '' President Franklin D. Roosevelt 6 ' 2 '' President George Washington 6 ' 2 '' Gabriel Prosser 6 ' 2 '' Dangerfield Newby 6 ' 2 '' Charles Augustus Lindbergh 6 ' 2 '' 1 President Bill Clinton 6 ' 2 /2'' 1 President Thomas Jefferson 6 ' 2 /2'' President Lyndon B. Johnson 6 ' 3 '' Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 6 ' 3 '' 1 Richard “King Dick” Seaver 6 ' 3 /4'' President Abraham Lincoln 6 ' 4 '' Marion Morrison (AKA John Wayne) 6 ' 4 '' Elisha Reynolds Potter, Senior 6 ' 4 '' Thomas Cholmondeley 6 ' 4 '' (?) William Buckley 6 ' 4-7” Franklin Benjamin Sanborn 6 ' 5 '' Peter the Great of Russia 6 ' 7 '' William “Dwarf Billy” Burley 6 ' 7 '' Giovanni Battista Belzoni 6 ' 7 '' Thomas Jefferson (the statue) 7 ' 6'' Jefferson Davis (the statue) 7 ' 7'' 1 Martin Van Buren Bates 7 ' 11 /2'' M. Bihin, a Belgian exhibited in Boston in 1840 8 ' Anna Haining Swan 8 ' 1''

“HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE.

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1816

April 9, Tuesday: Johann Nepomuk Hummel gave a solo performance in Prague (this was his first time in the city in a couple of decades).

Over the following few days, formation of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination under the leadership of Bishop Richard Allen. AME METHODISTS

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1818

When some black Methodists attempted to withdraw from the churches of Charleston and form their own African Methodist Episcopal congregation, their ministers were fined and threatened with flogging. AME

THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD. THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO’S CENTER OF THE AMERICAN WEST HAS AS ITS OFFICIAL MOTTO “TURNING HINDSIGHT INTO FORESIGHT” — WHICH INDICATES THAT ONLY PANDERERS ARE WELCOME THERE. IN A BOOK THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT HISTORY, ISSUED BY RANDOM HOUSE IN 2016, I FIND THE PHRASE “LOOKED UPON FROM THE BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF HISTORY, ....” ONLY A MERE STORYTELLER, NEVER A HISTORIAN, COULD HAVE PENNED SUCH A PHRASE — BECAUSE NO BIRD HAS EVER FLOWN OVER HISTORY.

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1819

In this year or the next, William Apess would decide that he needed to search out his father and mother, who it turned out had reunited and were back living in Colrain, Massachusetts. During this period he began to exhort in Methodist class meetings and then to preach without a license.

Vestal Coffin began the organization known as the Underground Railroad, near Guilford College in North Carolina. UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

John F. Watson, in METHODIST ERROR, OR FRIENDLY CHRISTIAN ADVICE TO THOSE METHODISTS WHO INDULGE IN EXTRAVAGANT RELIGIOUS EMOTIONS AND BODILY EXERCISES, characterized worship among American Methodists of the black persuasion as “perversions of true religion” in order to restrain excess emotionalism and physicalism among American Methodists of the white persuasion — people who would of course be expected above all else to desire to enhance all possible distinctions between themselves and these inferior others: In the blacks’ quarter, the colored people get together, and sing for hours together, short scraps of disjointed affirmations, pledges, or prayers, lengthened out with long repetitive choruses. These are all sung in the merry chorus-manner of the southern harvest field, or husking-frolic method of the slave blacks; and also very like the Indian dances. With every word so sung they have a sinking of one or other leg of the body alternately, producing an audible sound of the feet at every step, and as manifest as the steps of actual negro dancing in Virginia, etc. In this year, also, a Swedish baron named Klinkowstrom who was traveling through Brooklyn5 was attracted by the tumult coming from an African Methodist church and reported that: I can not now describe for you the effect it had on me to see twenty or thirty Negresses, who thought they were full of the Holy Ghost, behave like regular furies. Their bellowing, dancing, and jumping on benches was hideous and extremely barbaric.

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION,

5. Scott, Franklin D., ed. AMERICA, 1818-1820. Evanston IL: 1952 HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1820

Dangerfield Newby was born in Fauquier County, Virginia in about this year, a light mulatto product of a union between the slavemaster Henry Newby, a Scotsman, and his slave woman Elsey. He would grow up in the district around Culpeper, which was rolling, grazing terrain, mostly devoted to the raising of sheep.

The African Methodist Episcopal Zion communion of the Methodist Episcopal Church adopted its first “Discipline,” part of which was a declaration against slavery.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM At some point during this decade the Methodist Reverend Abel Stevens entered George Whitefield’s tomb and held the evangelist’s skull in his hands. THE MARKET FOR HUMAN BODY PARTS

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1821

A horse pulling a sleigh ran over Friend Daniel Ricketson at the age of 9. His right hip would bring him pain for the entirety of his life.

The African Methodist Episcopal Zion communion of the Methodist Episcopal Church officially became a separate denomination, under the leadership of James Varick. (It would be this African Methodist Episcopal Zion church that Frederick Douglass eventually would join in New Bedford, and for which he would become a lay exhorter.) AME

NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM Summer: The Reverend Edward Thompson Taylor was a popular preacher at Methodist camp meetings.

A lady, properly prepared for the tour of a museum, during this summer of 1821:

The Irish countryside was consumed in a lower-class Catholic millennialism that was anticipating that all Protestantism would be destroyed by 1825 (this was founded on a 1771 prophesy based upon the interpretation of the Apocalypse of St. John, by Bishop Charles Walmsley Pastorino). On the estates, in fear of these “Rockites,” as they were called because of their tendency to express their outraged righteousness through the throwing of stones, a Protestant family would fortify itself in its main house every evening among its Protestant attendants — dispatching its Catholic servants to spend the night isolated in an outbuilding.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1822

Summer: Samuel Joseph May and his sister Louisa were riding the stage from Baltimore to Washington DC when they witnessed along the side of the road a coffle of slaves. They discovered that it was one thing to know that such things existed — and quite another thing to be a witness to such a sight.

The Reverend Edward Thompson Taylor was a popular preacher at Methodist camp meetings.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1823

Summer: The Globe out of Martha’s Vineyard had voyaged halfway around the planet Earth –deep into the Southern Hemisphere and then all the way back north– and had finally reached the productive whaling grounds off Japan. Here they would spend the next almost five months chasing whales — but this time, despite their best efforts, not entirely successfully. Acting up as was his wont, Samuel B. Comstock got into a wrestling match with the whaler’s 3d Mate, Nathaniel Fisher, and found himself pinned. Other ruckuses that he initiated caused one member of the crew to be clapped into irons, and caused the Captain to strike the cook. Under these circumstances, with everyone frustrated, in November the vessel would return to Hawaii.

The Reverend Edward Thompson Taylor was a popular preacher at Methodist camp meetings.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1824

Summer: The Reverend Edward Thompson Taylor was a popular preacher at Methodist camp meetings.

The Ottoman fleet and troops assembled along the coast of Anatolia, preparing for an attempt to overwhelm the autonomous government established in 1821 on the island of Samos offshore by Lykourgos Logothetis (while Admiral Georgios Sachtouris assembled a Greek fleet to forestall this assault). During a period of very low water at Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau helped boil a kettle of chowder on the sandbar at Bay Henry. Later he would record this is WALDEN Draft D of 1852 going into Draft F of 1853- 1854:6

There is a narrow sand-bar running into it [Walden Pond], with very deep water helped boil some on one side [the south side], on which I ^ boiled a kettle of chowder, ^ more than six about the year 1824 ^ as much as 25 years ago rods from the main shore, ^ more than 25 years ago, which it has not been possible for twenty-five years ^ for twenty years at least to do ^ since.

(There is an explanation for why the water level was so low, exposing the sandbar. This had been the final summer of an extended drought period across the United States beginning in 1818, that was possibly due to what has come to be known among weather scientists as the “PNA” Pacific/North American teleconnection pattern in which a positive phase tends to be associated with southern Pacific Ocean “ENSO” warm El Niño episodes and a negative phase, such as the period between 1818 and 1824, with La Niña episodes.)

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

6.You shouldn’t suppose that little David was helping his grandmother open any tin cans for their “pic nic” on that sandbar! In this year a tin of roast beef would have borne the following instructions: “Cut round on the top with chisel and hammer.” 1 The wall of the can would have been fully /5th-inch thick and the container –empty– would have weighed a full pound. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

WALDEN: The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual, many pretend to know. It is commonly higher in the winter and lower in the summer, though not corresponding to the general wet and dryness. I can remember when it was a foot or two lower, and also when it was at least five feet higher, than when I lived by it. There is a narrow sand-bar running into it, with very deep water on one side, on which I helped boil a kettle of chowder, some six rods from the main shore, about the year 1824, which it has not been possible to do for twenty-five years; and on the other hand, my friends used to listen with incredulity when I told them, that a few years later I was accustomed to fish from a secluded cove in the woods, fifteen rods from the only shore they knew, which place was long since converted into a meadow. But the pond has risen steadily for two years, and now, in the summer of ’52, is just five feet higher than when I lived there, or as high as it was thirty years ago, and fishing goes on again in the meadow. This makes a difference of level, at the outside, of six or seven feet; and yet the water shed by the surrounding hills is insignificant in amount, and this overflow must be referred to causes which affect the deep springs. This same summer the pond has begun to fall again. It is remarkable that this fluctuation, whether periodical or not, appears thus to require many years for its accomplishment. I have observed one rise and a part of two falls, and I expect that a dozen or fifteen years hence the water will again be as low as I have ever known it. Flint’s Pond, a mile eastward, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlets, and the smaller intermediate ponds also, sympathize with Walden, and recently attained their greatest height at the same time with the latter. The same is true, as far as my observation goes, of White Pond. The rise and fall of Walden at long intervals serves this use at least; the water standing at this great height for a year or more, though it makes it difficult to walk round it, kills the shrubs and trees which have sprung up about its edge since the last rise, pitch-pines, birches, alders, aspens, and others, and, falling again, leaves an unobstructed shore; for, unlike many ponds and all waters which are subject to a daily tide, its shore is cleanest when the water is lowest. On the side of the pond next my house, a row of pitch pines fifteen feet high has been killed and tipped over as if by a lever, and thus a stop put to their encroachments; and their size indicates how many years have elapsed since the last rise to this height. By this fluctuation the pond asserts its title to a shore, and thus the shore is shorn, and the trees cannot hold it by right of possession. These are the lips of the lake on which no beard grows. It licks its chaps from time to time. When the water is at its height, the alders, willows, and maples send forth a mass of fibrous red roots several feet long from all sides of their stems in the water, and to the height of three or four feet from the ground, in the effort to maintain themselves; and I have known the high-blueberry bushes about the shore, which commonly produce no fruit, bear an abundant crop under these circumstances. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1825

The Reverend George Grimston Cookman became a Methodist minister in Philadelphia.

William Apess found work in Providence, Rhode Island and relocated there with his wife and children. He would become a class leader among the local Methodists. After he again began to exhort, he was granted a license by the Methodist Church to do so. At some point in the period 1825-1827 he would feel that he had been called by God to become a minister of the gospel.

RHODE ISLAND RELIGION HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM Summer: The Reverend Edward Thompson Taylor was a popular preacher at Methodist camp meetings. (I don’t need to mention, do I, that everyone very well understood that such summer camp meetings were for white folks only — that if anybody else showed up, they were “only looking for trouble”?)

When a white vigilante group using not only noisemakers but also pitchforks invaded the brothels and gambling dens of Boston’s North End, they did so in blackface. Why were these middleclass businessmen wearing blackface when they invaded black establishments, were they merely intent upon concealing their identities? –No, masks would have been more effective in the mere concealment of identity. There was more

to it than that. Remember, the participants in the Boston Tea Party had dressed up as native Americans, although they had made no other attempt to conceal their identities. Blackness was for the members of this white mob a symbol of the baser instincts of the less civilized and the sexually irresponsible, a metaphor for lack of self-control. For more on this, refer to David Roediger’s THE WAGES OF WHITENESS: RACE AND THE HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM MAKING OF THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS (NY: Verso, 1991).

An honored tradition: when white people are up to mischief, they pretend to be colored people.

Mayor Josiah Quincy, Sr. was out on horseback on one of his regular inspections of the cleanliness and order of the city of Boston, when he came upon one such mob of indignant and determined citizens intent upon their usual self-appointed task of “destroying some houses of ill-fame.” Although he had eighteen watchmen under his command, he was unable to quench this spirit. After the incidents had continued for nearly a week, he would call upon the truckmen and stevedores to bully these righteous protesters “out of the street by the mere HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM force of muscle, and send them about their business.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1826

Summer: Regular public omnibus service was begun along the Neck between Boston and Roxbury.

The Reverend Edward Thompson Taylor was a popular preacher at Methodist camp meetings. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1827

Harrison Gray Dyar erected an experimental telegraph wire at a Paumanok Long Island racetrack. He proposed to string a wire between New-York and Philadelphia, across New Jersey, and ran into skepticism from members of the New Jersey legislature who feared Dyar as some sort of “wizard” of deception like the figure that would later appear in the “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” story by L. Frank Baum. They feared that behind this project there might be some sort of dangerous agenda to send secret communications in advance of the mail. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

When one of Dyar’s financial backers threatened to accuse him of “conspiracy to send secret communications in advance of the mail” as part of an attempt to get his money back, Dyar fled the country. For many years he would live in Paris where, apparently, he was able to make good money as a chemist.

A marine semaphore telegraph system was constructed that linked “West Hill” or “Washington Hill” in Dorchester Heights, which would begin at this point to be known as Boston’s “Telegraph Hill,” by way of a harbor island, with Hull’s own “Telegraph Hill.” The central headquarters of the Semaphore Telegraph Company occupied the octagonal cupola of Central Wharf, that can be seen in this later photograph through the masts of the sailing vessels. The purpose of the telescope in this cupola was to observe the signals atop Telegraph Hill in Dorchester Heights, and thus report in Boston the arrival of ocean vessels in the Nantasket Roads channel leading into the harbor.

For the next 2 or 3 years William Apess would be an itinerant Methodist exhorter on Paumanok Long Island, in the valley of the Hudson River, on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Island, and in the cities of Boston and New Bedford. Much of the work he would be doing, of course, since he was not a white man, would need to be with mixed groups of African-Americans and native Americans. PEQUOT

In this timeframe, on Nantucket Island, Friend Maria Mitchell would have been attending Cyrus Peirce’s School for Young Ladies. (Other than that, and her own self-education, she was mainly being educated by her father, whom she assisted in the checking of chronometers for the local whaling fleet.)

ESSENCES ARE FUZZY, GENERIC, CONCEPTUAL; ARISTOTLE WAS RIGHT WHEN HE INSISTED THAT ALL TRUTH IS SPECIFIC AND PARTICULAR (AND WRONG WHEN HE CHARACTERIZED HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM TRUTH AS A GENERALIZATION).

Summer: The Reverend Edward Thompson Taylor was a popular preacher at Methodist camp meetings.

Louis Agassiz grew up in the Vaudois region of Switzerland where many followers of Pierre Waldo (the “Waldenses”), had holed up during the Middle Ages. The Agassiz family could trace its Protestant past back into the 13th Century in the canton of Vaud adjacent to Fribourg. His father was the 6th in an unbroken succession of pastors, and in all likelihood little Louis had remote ancestors who had attempted to lead a life like that of Jesus — but you know how it is, religions deteriorate badly with time and need to be perpetually renewed, the transformation rule for creating from a religion of peace and humility one of aggressive self- legitimation being simple: “wait a couple generations.” Clearly, little Louis’s well-reared parents had little to offer their son by the way of true religious council, for during the summer of 1827 he was left to extrapolate his life’s religion from the pages of Lorenz Oken’s LEHRBUCH DER NATURPHILOSOPHIE and –in the mode of his time and place– portray this religion as science much as Professor E.O. Wilson does today. “Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline. We may therefore be sorely tempted to misuse that power in furthering a personal prejudice or social goal — why not provide that extra oomph by extending the umbrella of science over a personal preference in ethics or politics?” — Stephen Jay Gould BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS NY: Norton, 1991, page 429

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM The core of this scientistic religion of the self-worship of the white man as the highest form of existence was the attitude that inferior forms of life were but “persistent fœtal states.” A worm would be seen as merely a man who had been incapable of growing a backbone —a woman as merely a man who had failed to mature a penis —an ape as merely a Negro that had not had the moxie to shed its body hair and stand tall —etc. This is because God has ordained that all creatures strive to fulfill one final and perfect type, the white human male who can “get ’em down and hump ’em,” and master the sciences, and dissect frogs, and hack other humans to pieces with his saber. All very satisfying, and guaranteed to make your life work for you (if you happen to be a white man, and happen to be willful enough to enable yourself to go for such shit).7 THE SCIENCE OF 1827

The Congregationalist Reverend Josiah Brewer (1796-1872) of Massachusetts was spending a pleasant summer in the midst of a vineyard on a very fruitful hill in Constantinople, renting at the residence of a Greek family that had formerly had the responsibility of educating the female children of the Seraglio. There, without the presence of a single male Turk, the little girls had been taught chiefly singing and dancing — until the father and two eldest sons of this Greek family had, for some offense given to the Sultan by a friend of the family, had their heads chopped off. After the headchoppings their habitations had been stripped as usual of anything of value. The only members of this Greek family who were left on the premises were the female members, who needed to support themselves with the produce of their vineyard, and with the rent of their houses to this visiting missionary family. CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1827

7. OK, do it if you must, but don’t come around here angling for respect. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1828

In England at this point, the “levelers” and “nonconformists” and “dissenters” and “disestablishmentarians” and “latitudinarians,” non-Catholic groupings such as the Quakers and the Unitarians and the Baptists and the Methodists who were refusing to conform to the strictures of the Church of England, were beginning to be allowed to perform minor governmental functions — at least at the borough level. (They would not be able, however, to obtain an Oxford or Cambridge degree until the 1850s, and even into the 1860s they would be being forced to pay local church “rates” in support of the local Church of England’s parish parson.)

The Reverend Richard Whately and his friend Nassau William Senior and other of the “Oriel Noetics” were interested in a new quarterly, the London Review. Joseph Blanco White was appointed editor, and the Reverend John Henry Newman was one of his contributors. The quarterly would prove to be too ponderous, and after two numbers would be discontinued. Meanwhile White’s background in Roman Catholicism made him interesting to the rising party. He was officiating as a clergyman, and preached to the university. He explained the use of the breviary to Pusey and Froude. His knowledge of the scholastic philosophy, then hardly known at Oxford, interested his friends.

A sonnet by Joseph Blanco White published in this year without his prior approval in an annual entitled The Bijou published by Pickering, dedicated to Samuel Taylor Coleridge who had provided it for this publication, is sometimes given the title “To Night” and sometimes the title “Night and Death.” The author would later modify the poem several times. The line which Henry Thoreau would extract from the posthumously published autobiography of White for use in WALDEN is shown in red boldface below: Mysterious night, when the first man but knew Thee by report, unseen, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue? Yet ’neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus, with the host of heaven, came, And lo! creation widen’d on his view. Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O Sun? Or who could find, Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood reveal’d, That to such endless orbs thou mad’st us blind! Weak man! Why to shun death this anxious strife? If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life? HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

WALDEN: However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not PEOPLE OF shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find WALDEN faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town’s poor seem to me often to live the most independent of lives of any. May be they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate property like garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me. The philosopher said: “From an army of three divisions one can take away its general, and put it in disorder; from the man the most abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought.” Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, “and lo! creation widens to our view.” We are often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of Crœsus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

Frances Trollope observed:

CINCINNATI, OHIO. ABSENCE OF AMUSEMENTS; REVIVALS; UNHAPPY INFLUENCE OF RELIGION ON WOMEN IN AMERICA.

I never saw any people who appeared to live so much without amusement as the Cincinnatians. Billiards are forbidden by law, so are cards. To sell a pack of cards in Ohio subjects the seller to a penalty of fifty dollars. They have no public balls, excepting, I think, six, during the Christmas holidays. They have no concerts. They have no dinner parties. They have a theatre, which is, in fact, the only public amusement of this triste little town; put they seem to care little about it, and either from economy or distaste, it is very poorly attended. Ladies are rarely seen there, and by far the larger proportion of females deem it an offence against religion to witness the representation of a play. It is in the churches and chapels of the town that the ladies are to be seen in full costume: and I am tempted to believe that a stranger from the continent of Europe would be inclined, on first reconnoitering the city, to suppose that the places of worship were the theatres and cafes of the place. No evening in the week but brings throngs of the young and beautiful to the chapels and meetinghouses, all dressed with care, and sometimes with great pretension; it is there that all display is made, and all fashionable distinction sought. The proportion of gentlemen attending these evening meetings is very small, but often, as might be expected, a sprinkling of smart young clerks make this sedulous display of ribbons and ringlets intelligible and natural. Were it not for the churches, indeed, I think there might be a general bonfire of best bonnets, for I never could discover any other use for them. The ladies are too actively employed in the interior of their houses to permit much parading in full dress for morning visits. There are no public gardens or lounging shops of fashionable resort, and were it not for public worship, and private tea-drinkings, all the ladies in Cincinnati would be in danger of becoming perfect recluses. The influence which the ministers of all the innumerable religious sects throughout America have on the females of their respective congregations, approaches very nearly to what we read of in Spain, or in other strictly Roman Catholic countries. There are many causes for this peculiar influence. Where equality of rank is affectedly acknowledged by the rich, and clamorously claimed by the poor, distinction and pro-eminence are allowed to the clergy only. This gives them high importance in the eyes of the ladies. I think, also, that it is from the clergy only that the women of America receive that sort of attention which is so dearly valued by every female heart throughout the world. With the priests of America the women hold that degree of influential importance which, in the countries of Europe, is allowed them throughout all orders and ranks of society, except, perhaps, the very lowest; and in return for this they seem to give their hearts and souls into their keeping. I never saw, or read, of any country where religion had so strong a hold upon the women, or a slighter hold upon the men. I mean not to assert that I met with no men of sincerely religious feelings, or with no women of no religious feelings at all; but I feel perfectly secure of being correct as to the great majority in the statement I have made. We had not been many months in Cincinnati when our curiosity was excited by hearing the “revival” talked of by every one we met throughout the town. “The revival will be very full”— ” We shall be constantly engaged during the revival”—were the phrases we constantly heard repeated, and for a long time without in the least comprehending what was meant; but at length I learnt that the un-national church of America required to be roused, at regular intervals, to greater energy and exertion. At these seasons the most enthusiastic of the clergy travel the country, and enter the cities and towns by scores, or by hundreds, as the accommodation of the place may admit and for a week or fortnight, or, if the population be large, for a month; they preach and pray all day, and often for a considerable portion of the night, in the various churches and chapels of the place. This is called a Revival. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

I took considerable pains to obtain information on this subject; but in detailing what I learnt I fear that it is probable I shall be accused of exaggeration; all I can do is cautiously to avoid deserving it. The subject is highly interesting, and it would be a fault of no trifling nature to treat it with levity. These itinerant clergymen are of all persuasions, I believe, except the Episcopalian, Catholic, Unitarian, and Quaker. I heard of Presbyterians of all varieties; of Baptists of I know not how many divisions; and of Methodists of more denominations than I can remember; whose innumerable shades of varying belief it would require much time to explain and more to comprehend. They enter all the cities, towns, and villages of the Union in succession; I could not learn with sufficient certainty to repeat, what the interval generally is between their visits. These itinerants are, for the most part, lodged in the houses of their respective followers, and every evening that is not spent in the churches and meeting-houses, is devoted to what would be called parties by others, but which they designate as prayer-meetings. Here they eat, drink, pray, sing, hear confessions, and make converts. To these meetings I never got invited, and therefore I have nothing but hearsay evidence to offer, but my information comes from an eye witness, and one on whom I believe I may depend. If one half of what I heard may be believed, these social prayer-meetings are by no means the least curious, or the least important part of the business. It is impossible not to smile at the close resemblance to be traced between the feelings of a first- rate Presbyterian or Methodist lady, fortunate enough to have secured a favourite Itinerant for her meeting, and those of a first-rate London Blue, equally blest in the presence of a fashionable poet. There is a strong family likeness among us all the world over. The best rooms, the best dresses, the choicest refreshments solemnize the meeting. While the party is assembling, the load-star of the hour is occupied in whispering conversations with the guests as they arrive. They are called brothers and sisters, and the greetings are very affectionate. When the room is full, the company, of whom a vast majority are always women, are invited, intreated, and coaxed to confess before their brothers and sisters, all their thoughts, faults, and follies. These confessions are strange scenes; the more they confess, the more invariably are they encouraged and caressed. When this is over, they all kneel, and the Itinerant prays extempore. They then eat and drink; and then they sing hymns, pray, exhort, sing, and pray again, till the excitement reaches a very high pitch indeed. These scenes are going on at some house or other every evening during the revival, nay, at many at the same time, for the churches and meetinghouses cannot give occupation to half the Itinerants, though they are all open throughout the day, and till a late hour in the night, and the officiating ministers succeed each other in the occupation of them. It was at the principal of the Presbyterian churches that I was twice witness to scenes that made me shudder; in describing one, I describe both, and every one; the same thing is constantly repeated... When the singing ended, another [priest] took the centre place, and began in a sort of coaxing affectionate tone, to ask the congregation if what their dear brother had spoken had reached their hearts? Whether they would avoid the hell he had made them see? “Come, then!” he continued, stretching out his arms towards them, “come to us and tell us so, and we will make you see Jesus, the dear gentle Jesus, who shall save you from it. But you must come to him! You must not be ashamed to come to him! This night you shall tell him that you are not ashamed of him; we will make way for you; we will clear the bench for anxious sinners to sit upon. Come, then! come to the anxious bench, and we will show you Jesus! Come! Come! Come!” Again a hymn was sung, and while it continued, one of the three [priests] was employed in clearing one or two long benches that went across the rail, sending the people back to the lower part of the church. The singing ceased, and again the people were invited, and exhorted not to be ashamed of Jesus, but to put themselves upon “the anxious benches,” and lay their heads on his bosom. “Once more we will sing,” he concluded, “that we may give you time.” And again they sung a hymn. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

And now in every part of the church a movement was perceptible, slight at first, but by degrees becoming more decided. Young girls arose, and sat down, and rose again; and then the pews opened, and several came tottering out, their hands clasped, their heads hanging on their bosoms, and every limb trembling, and still the hymn went on; but as the poor creatures approached the rail their sobs and groans became audible. They seated themselves on the “anxious benches;” the hymn ceased, and two of the three priests walked down from the tribune, and going, one to the right, and the other to the left, began whispering to the poor tremblers seated there. These whispers were inaudible to us, but the sobs and groans increased to a frightful excess. Young creatures, with features pale and distorted, fell on their knees on the pavement, and soon sunk forward on their faces; the most violent cries and shrieks followed, while from time to time a voice was heard in convulsive accents, exclaiming, “Oh Lord!” “Oh Lord Jesus!” “Help me, Jesus!” and the like. 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 of salvation,” and then from every corner of the building arose in reply, short sharp cries of “Amen!” “Glory!” “Amen!” while the prostrate penitents continued to receive whispered comfortings, and from time to time a mystic caress. More than once I saw a young neck encircled by a reverend arm. Violent hysterics and convulsions seized many of them, and when the tumult was at the highest, the priest who remained above again gave out a hymn as if to drown it. It was a frightful sight to behold innocent young creatures, in the gay morning of existence, thus seized upon, horror-struck, and rendared feeble and enervated for ever. One young girl, apparently not more than fourteen, was supported in the arms of another some years older; her face was pale as death; her eyes wide open, and perfectly devoid of meaning; her chin and bosom wet with slaver; she had every appearance of idiotism. I saw a priest approach her, he took her delicate hand, “Jesus is with her! Bless the Lord!” he said, and passed on. Did the men of America value their women as men ought to value their wives and daughters, would such scenes be permitted among them? It is hardly necessary to say, that all who obeyed the call to place themselves on the “anxious benches” were women, and by far the greater number, very young women. The congregation was, in general, extremely well dressed, and the smartest and most fashionable ladies of the town were there; during the whole revival, the churches and meeting-houses were every day crowded with well-dressed people. It is thus the ladies of Cincinnati amuse themselves: to attend the theatre is forbidden; to play cards is unlawful; but they work hard in their families, and must have some relaxation. For myself, I confess that I think the coarsest comedy ever written would be a less detestable exhibition for the eyes of youth and innocence than such a scene. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

Summer: The Reverend Edward Thompson Taylor was a popular preacher at Methodist camp meetings.

Reuben Kelsey suffered an attack of cholera morbus, from which he seemed to recover.

WALDEN: I learned from my two years’ experience that it would cost PEOPLE OF incredibly little trouble to obtain one’s necessary food, even in WALDEN this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength. I have made a satisfactory dinner, satisfactory on several accounts, simply off a dish of purslane (Portulaca oleracea) which I gathered in my cornfield, boiled, and salted. I give the Latin on account of the savoriness of the trivial name. And pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears of green sweet-corn boiled, with the addition of salt? Even the little variety which I used was a yielding to the demands of appetite, and not of health. Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries; and I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking water only.

REUBEN KELSEY?

Methodism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1829

A group of Methodists formed the “Port Society of Boston,” and purchased for $2,000 (mostly on credit), a vacant Methodist Alley Chapel in Boston’s North End. They then hired the Reverend Edward Thompson Taylor to be their “Mariner’s Preacher” at this new mission to sailors, to be named “Seamen’s Bethel.” The Reverend Taylor, with Mrs. Deborah D. Millett Taylor and their 2 young daughters Dora Taylor and Harriet McLellan Taylor, then relocated to Boston’s North End.

James Madison was proposing a modest proposal before the Virginia Constitutional Convention, which consisted of slavemasters and race bigots, that the institution of human chattel bondage be abolished peacefully through reimbursement of all former slavemasters for property interest thus abandoned.8 SLAVERY “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

Speaking of Virginia slavemasters in need of help: Thomas Jefferson’s 1821 autobiography,9 containing his assertion of his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, made its first public appearance during this year as part of his all-white grandson10 Thomas Jefferson Randolph’s THE MEMOIRS, CORRESPONDENCE AND PRIVATE PAPERS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Meanwhile, the Methodist David Walker was speaking with frankness, in his APPEAL, of the last resort to which it might be necessary to descend in order to destroy the peculiar institution of human chattel bondage:

“[O]ne good black man can put to death six white men.” ABOLITIONISM

8. For some strange reason nobody was proposing a modest proposal that the institution of human chattel bondage be abolished peacefully through reimbursement of all former slaves for the personal abuses and loss of wage income which they had endured. Since this would have been a very real-world compensation and fairness issue, one wonders why no-one brought it up! 9. “Autobiography.” Peterson, Merrill D., ed. THOMAS JEFFERSON: WRITINGS. NY, 1984 10. Yes indeed, Jefferson had some children who were 100% white. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM April: Oliver Cowdery took over as Joseph Smith, Jr.’s scribe.

At a Methodist Episcopal conference in Utica, New York, William Apess asked to be granted a license to preach but his application was denied. He would, however, shortly be granted the desired ordination by the more “republican” Methodist denominations. PEQUOT HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1830

Summer: Four Friends from Baltimore, Maryland arrived on the island of Nantucket: Friend Hannah Wilson, the clerk of the Baltimore Women’s Yearly Meeting, her husband, and two traveling companions. Although the visitors were Hicksite Friends, the Nantucket meeting had never gotten around to disowning the some 87% of its membership who were Hicksite, and thus technically at least the visitors were Friends in good standing, and could not be prevented from entering the meetinghouse for worship. Friend Hannah Wilson, a traveling minister, was therefore forbidden by the elders of the local meeting from making any attempt to address the meeting, and informed in addition that she would not be welcome to seat herself in the ministers’ gallery during worship. (Hey, lady, better not attempt to pray in the presence of these holy people! —Nevertheless, Friend Hannah Wilson would speak, in fact for some twenty minutes.) When the visitors were refused permission to use the meetinghouse for a special or “appointed” meeting on an off day, the Methodists of the island offered their place of worship as an alternative venue, which offer was gratefully accepted. Thus, when the Hicksite doctrines were first expounded on Nantucket Island, they were expounded at the Methodist Church! Shortly after this visit of Hicksite Friends from Baltimore, a deputation of Hicksite Friends appeared from the Nine Partners Monthly Meeting of New York state. This was Friend Benjamin Mitchell and Friend William Clark. After a local Orthodox minister, Friend Mary Barker Allen, had held the floor of the meeting for some time, Friend William Clark rose to speak and was ordered to sit down by Elder Friend Samuel Macy. The ritual shaking of hands that ended the meetings for worship was begun, but was interrupted by Friend Benjamin Mitchell, who stated that “the service of the Meeting is not quite over.” Most of those present exited the building, but some 40 Nantucket Friends remained and heard the visiting Hicksite ministers from New York. The names of the 40 who remained would be recorded, and they would be disciplined by their Nantucket monthly meeting for having joined in “a disorder in a Meeting for Worship.” The first wave of disownments, which occurred within a month, got rid of ten of the members of the island meeting, and by the end of this, the meeting would have lost about a hundred members, forbidden to enter either the vacated meetinghouse of the defunct Northern District Monthly Meeting or the meetinghouse still in use inside the town of Nantucket itself, for any reason. About thirty of these dissenters would unite to form a new Hicksite Monthly Meeting on Nantucket Island. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1832

August: Frederick Douglass’s white owner “got religion” but, as might have been anticipated, this didn’t help even one little bit: Frederick Douglass’s NARRATIVE

[M]y master attended a Methodist camp-meeting held in the Bay-side, Talbot county, and there experienced religion. I indulged a faint hope that his conversion would lead him to emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did not do this, it would, at any rate, make him more kind and humane. I was disappointed in both these respects. It neither made him to be humane to his slaves, nor to emancipate them. If it had any effect on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to have been a much worse man after his conversion than before. Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty. He made the greatest pretensions to piety. His house was the house of prayer. He prayed morning, noon, and night. He very soon distinguished himself among his brethren, and was soon made a class- leader and exhorter. His activity in revivals was great, and he proved himself an instrument in the hands of the church in converting many souls. His house was the preachers’ home. They used to take great pleasure in coming there to put up; for while he starved us, he stuffed them. We have had three or four preachers there at a time.

NARRATIVE METHODISTS During this month and the following one, 2t Lieutenant Jefferson Davis would be serving as an escort for Black Hawk during this headman’s transfer from Wisconsin to Missouri (there’s nothing to suggest that Davis had done any actual fighting during the Black Hawk War). HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

Noah Webster’s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES (he had included American History in other of his works but this was the 1st book he had published under such a title). It goes without saying that this author fulsomely traced the hand of God in the founding of this Nation — this author has the honor of being the very earliest of our commentators to declare the Puritans to have founded in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts the 1st genuine republic to exist on this planet. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1833

Fall:Frederick Douglass’s owner Thomas Auld, together with a couple of teachers from the white Methodist Sabbath school, burst in upon the 2d session of the Sabbath school which Douglass had been attempting to start up that summer, armed with cudgels, demanding to be told whether Freddy “wanted to be another Nat Turner” (their question was presumably a rhetorical one for which these Christian gentlemen already knew the proper answer). NAT TURNER HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1834

Early in the year: Henry Bibb was sold by his owner, Albert G. Sibley, an exhorter in the local Methodist Episcopal Church, to Al’s brother, a Sunday School class-leader in that church, for $850, and then by that brother for the same price to William Gatewood, another member of that congregation. In consequence Henry and the girl he was courting, Malinda, Gatewood’s slave, would be able to cohabit more conveniently in the married relationship (the sacred institution of marriage itself being of course very off limits for mere slaves HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM such as them).11

11. For some reason, despite this great boon Henry Bibb was not going to be grateful to these white men. Being allowed to cohabit in the creation of a baby slave was only going to make him want to set himself and his family free! HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1837

Fall: The Town School building of Concord became the venue for the Sunday worship services of the local Methodist and the local Universalist religious organizations, the general penmanship lessons which took place on Monday evenings, the Concord Lyceum meetings which took place on Wednesday nights, plus the local temperance society, the Centre School District Prudential Committee, etc. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1838

Late in the year, Herman Melville was walking the streets daily in the vicinity of the New Bedford waterfront, while Frederick Douglass was doing the same. Wouldn’t it have been nice if these two manual laborers Douglass and Melville, who would become the authors of personal narratives of white racist abuse of non-

whites, had met and had gotten to know each other? –But in that day, if they passed each other in the street in public as strangers of different races, they would have each been inhibited from relating to the other except in the most perfunctory and functional manner. Besides, compared to Douglass, seaman Melville was still wet behind the ears.

At this point Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass were living in a small rented house at 157 Elm Street and had joined the New Bedford Zion Methodist Church after having discovered that all the other Methodist churches in New Bedford had racially segregated pews. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1842

May 29, Sunday: A “little, swarthy, ill-looking rascal ... of the age of twenty-six to thirty, with a shabby hat and of dirty appearance” (we owe this description to Prince Albert) pointed a pistol at Queen Victoria’s carriage in St. James’s Park.

Robert Collyer’s half-brother William Wells died of tuberculosis. (While Robert was in his late teens, he would fall under the influence of an adult whom he considered to be “the best read man in Ilkley,” a woolcomber named John Dobson, who was functioning as a Methodist Local Preacher.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1843

February 28, Tuesday: Waldo Emerson lectured for the Mercantile Library Association in the Broadway Tabernacle of New-York. This was the initial lecture of his series: “Domestic Life.” He would receive $50 for each lecture. THE LIST OF LECTURES

People in New Bedford saw a comet as bright as Venus, with a tail 3° long. In the Ile-de-France this comet was seen during the day. A “large part of the adult population” of Waterbury, Connecticut first observed it at 7:30AM “east of and below the sun,” with G.L. Platt, M.C. Leavenworth, S.W. Hall, Alfred Blackman, and N.J. Buel noting that the comet remained visible until the skies clouded up at 3PM. They described it as a round coma with a pale tail extending 2° to 3° and “melting away into the brilliant sky.” The nucleus was detected with the naked eye and was distinctly round, “its light equal to that of the moon in midnight in a clear sky; and its apparent size about one eighth the area of the full moon.” Giovanni Battista Amici of Florence, Italy described it at noon as “the mass, examined by an opera glass, to be like a flame, badly defined, three times as long as it was wide, very luminous towards the sun, and a little smoky at the east.” At noon an observer in Woodstock, Vermont saw the comet and compared it to a small, white cloud, 3° long, adding that when viewed with a telescope, “it presented a distinct and most beautiful appearance,-exhibiting a very white and bright nucleus, and a tail dividing near the nucleus into two separate branches, with the outer sides of each branch convex, and of nearly equal length, apparently 8° or 10°, and a space between their extremities of 5° or 6°.” Captain J.G. Clarke of Portland, Maine observed the comet in broad daylight and determined that the nearest limb of the nucleus was situated 4° 06' 15" from the sun’s farthest limb and the nucleus and tail appeared as well-defined “as the moon on a clear day,” adding that the comet looked like “a perfectly pure white cloud, without any variation, except a slight change near the head, just sufficient to distinguish the nucleus from the tail at that point.” Bowring, in Chihuahua, Mexico, positioned the comet at a distance of 3° 53' 20" from the sun. SKY EVENT

This quite unexpected and quite bright and quite fast comet passed the face of the sun in but a little over two hours, its phenomenally long tail stretching across a quarter of the night sky and seeming like “a torch agitated by the wind.” This particular comet would be termed a “sun-grazer,” that is, its course took it so close to the sun, within some 80,000 miles, that it would have accelerated to approximately 1,270,000 miles per hour before being whipped out again into cold slow floating in the outer darkness. Harvard Observatory staff in the cupola of the Richard Henry Dana, Sr. house would watch for 6 nights as this comet receded. Even though the equipment was inadequate, William Cranch Bond was the first to detect the nucleus of the comet. New HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM England newspapers printed reports of worldwide panic.

SKY EVENT During our time we have not been favored by great comets; our Hale-Bopp was a disappointment and even our Halley’s Comet was this time quite unspectacular. To understand the 19th Century, we have to imagine a period of rather frequent and indeed very spectacular sky ghosts and apparitions. This Great Comet of February 1843 actually was merely another fragment of a single gigantic comet that had been regularly lighting up the earth’s sky since some point between 18,000BCE and 8,000BCE. Later, the Great September Comet of 1882 would be merely another fragment of this same comet, and would cast a light upon the earth two orders of magnitude brighter than that cast by a full moon — it would be easily visible in broad daylight! HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM As Moncure Daniel Conway has presented the geist of the period,

Once the seventeen-year locusts swarmed in our woods, devouring the green tissue in every leaf. On each wing was the letter “W” betokening “War,” and their united cry of “Pharaoh” prophesied the plagues of Egypt. The locusts came near enough to the Mexican War and to the deadly Spotted Tongue plague that scourged our county, to appear prophetic. But the greatest sensation was caused by the comet of 1843. There was a widespread panic, similar, it was said, to that caused by the meteors of 1832. Apprehending the approach of Judgment Day, crowds besieged the shop of Mr. Petty, our preaching tailor, invoking his prayers. METHODISM Methodism reaped a harvest from the comet. The negroes, however, were not disturbed; – they were, I believe, always hoping to hear Gabriel’s trump.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II

At this point early in the year 1843, over and above “the negroes,” above, who were “always hoping to hear Gabriel’s trump,” there were more than 50,000 white Millerite true believers, each eagerly awaiting the HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM termination of the world as we all then knew it. Well, but Henry knew what to make of this phenomenon:

SEEDS: Who could believe in prophecies of Daniel or of Miller that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds?

Europe was in a decade dim: Upon the future’s trembling rim The comet hovered. — Herman Melville, CLAREL HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1845

Summer: The Michigan abolitionists sent a couple of white men down South, a Methodist minister and a cabinet maker, to locate and negotiate for Henry Bibb’s wife and child.

They seem never to have reported back — perhaps with adequate reason. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1848

August: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. attended the National Free Soil Party Convention in Buffalo, New York.

THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION

The Reverend Daniel Foster left Salem, Massachusetts, where disagreements with influential members of his Congregationalist congregation over anti-slavery politics had rendered him problematic, for Danvers, and was there ordained as a Methodist minister over a fledgling anti-slavery congregation.

May to August was Emily Dickinson’s last period at the Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

Frederick Douglass began a lecture tour of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio with William Lloyd Garrison HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM and Stephen Symonds Foster. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1849

February 1, Thursday: Harriet Watson Collyer died while giving birth to a 2d child. Her child Jane would die five days later, and the two bodies would be put into the grave that already held Robert Collyer’s half-brother William Wells, in Ilkley Parish Churchyard. Robert and his young son Samuel would lodge with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stephenson alongside the Leeds Road smithy. He would be beginning to attend the prayer meetings of the

Wesleyan Methodists, in addition to their Sunday worship. Soon he would be asked to lead some of their services. The first Methodist worship he attempted to lead was held in the kitchen of an farmhouse on the moor. Soon he would be asked to preach in various churches of the local Methodist circuit. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1850

May 14, Tuesday:In Philadelphia, Robert Collyer found employment as a blacksmith fashioning claw hammers. Because he had accepted piecework wages and because he was energetic and able, he soon began to make what for him was real money. He would join a local Methodist church and soon begin preaching. He and his wife Ann Longbottom Collyer would be residing near Philadelphia for nine years, during which time she would produce five children two of whom would survive.

Margaret Fuller’s leavetaking letter from Europe was posted to her mother, and indicates a clear recognition of the perils of sea travel: Florence, May 14, 1850. Dear Mother, — I will believe I shall be welcome with my treasures, — my husband and child. For me, I long so much to see you! Should anything hinder our meeting upon earth, think of your daughter, as one who always wished, at least, to do her duty, and who always cherished you, according as her mind opened to discover excellence. Give dear love, too, to my brothers; and first to my eldest, faithful friend, Eugene; a sister’s love to Ellen; love to my kind good aunts, and to my dear cousin E. God bless them! I hope we shall be able to pass some time together yet, in this world. But if God decrees otherwise, — here and HEREAFTER, my dearest mother, Your loving child, MARGARET. ARTHUR FULLER’S BOOK

November: In Providence, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Charles Calistus Burleigh, and Charles Lenox Remond addressed the annual meeting of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society. This would be the first of Sojourner’s antislavery speeches that has been documented.

I think it likely that it would have been at this point that William J. Brown met Frederick Douglass: PAGES 93-94: When Frederick Douglass paid us a visit, I met him in company with several brethren, and he was introduced as a Methodist preacher. He said he had heard we were brought up on election day on crackers and cheese. He received his information from an Abolitionist in the Democratic party. It came about in this way: When the colored people were first called upon to vote to see whether the people wanted a constitution or not, the Suffrage party threatened to mob any colored person daring to vote that day. We proposed to meet at the old artillery gun house the day before. We had a meeting that evening and thought it best to get the people together and keep them over night, so they would be ready for the polls in the morning. In order to keep them we must have something to eat, for if the Democrats got hold of them we could not get them to vote, for they would get them filled up with rum so that we could not do a thing with them; so in order to secure them we had to hunt them up, bring them to the armory, and keep men there to entertain them. I met with them in the afternoon and found men of all sorts, from all parts of the city, and all associating together. They had HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM coffee, crackers, cheese and shaved beef. During the time a lot of muskets were brought in, and put in a rack. It is said they were brought in to use in case of disturbance, some said good enough, let them come. They scraped the hollow and every place, getting all the men they could find; then coffee, crackers and cheese were plenty, and no one disturbed them. When the polls were opened, those in the first ward went to vote in a body, headed by two powerful men. They voted in the Benefit Street school house; the officers went ahead to open the way. They all voted and then went home, that ended the crackers and cheese. Mr. Bibb tried hard to get the colored voters to vote the Liberty ticket. We made him understand it was not all gold that glitters. He left our quarters and went about his business, and the Law and Order party elected their candidates. I received six dollars for my work. Mr. Bowen employed me after election to go around and see if there were strangers that had been here long enough to vote, and see that their names were registered, and at the next election he would pay me. I collected quite a number who had never taken the trouble to register their names. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1852

Among white Methodists, at least since the organization of the Methodist Episcopal denomination in 1784, tickets were given for the admission to the communion service, with those who had failed to comply with the very high standard of the church for conduct and attire being refused communion. No tickets were handed out to anyone who sported superfluous ornaments, even if this were nothing more egregious than a married woman wearing a wedding band. The rule regarding dress and ornaments had been part of the DOCTRINES AND DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODIST CHURCH. At this point, however, such rules were eased. In the second half of the 19th Century, even some Mennonite wives from eastern Pennsylvania to Iowa and Missouri would have wedding bands, although this was not the usual Mennonite practice. Between 1864 and 1949, there would be at least 39 Mennonite resolutions against the wearing of jewelry — and fully half of these resolutions would come after 1918.” The list of forbidden articles of jewelry was not limited to bracelets, broaches, pins, necklaces, pearls, and gold rings in general, but also specifically proscribed both betrothal rings and wedding bands.

According to A. Neave Brayshaw’s THE QUAKERS, THEIR STORY & MESSAGE (Sessions, York, 1921, last revision 1937), the Quaker practice of allowing no wedding band goes back to the revolt of the Puritans. In a footnote to page 184, this is linked to anti-Catholicism: “As to the use of the ring in marriage, this was, in the sixteenth century, one of the chief battlegrounds between the Puritans and their opponents, as the former objected to it as a Popish practice.” By 1847, however, the wedding band had come into use even among the Friends. Per pages 291-2: “A letter in the British Friend draws attention to ‘the increasing practice of wearing wedding rings,’ calling it ‘the badge of an hireling ministry.’” According to this book, other letter-writers of the time were complaining about the habit of Quaker children of addressing their parents by the use of non- scriptural “Papa” and “Mama,” as well as of having one’s portrait painted, of possessing such images or using them in biographies, of crocheting or fancy work, of the singing of hymns, etc. It would be safe to say that by mid-century some naughty Quaker women were sporting wedding bands — but we do not know whether 1.) they would have had these rings placed on their finger in the course of their wedding in the manner of Friends, or, the other possibility, whether 2.) that wedding band was a concession to the general culture that they would have added to their finger only after the Quaker ceremony.

May 8, Saturday: The Olive Branch was a weekly Methodist newspaper in Boston, edited by the Reverend Thomas HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM F. Norris. As Thoreau would report in “Reading”:

WALDEN: We boast that we belong to the nineteenth century and are making the PEOPLE OF most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own culture. I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered WALDEN by them, for that will not advance either of us. We need to be provoked, – goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants only; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the state, no school for ourselves. We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure – if they are indeed so well off-to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever? Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal education under the skies of Concord? Can we not hire some Abélard to lecture to us? Alas! what with foddering the cattle and tending the store, we are kept from school too long, and our education is sadly neglected. In this country, the village should in some respects take the place of the nobleman of Europe. It should be the patron of the fine arts. It is rich enough. It wants only the magnanimity and refinement. It can spend money enough on such things as farmers and traders value, but it is thought Utopian to propose spending money for things which more intelligent men know to be of far more worth. This town has spent seventeen thousand dollars on a town-house, thank fortune or politics, but probably it will not spend so much on living wit, the true meat to put into that shell, in a hundred years. The one hundred and twenty-five dollars annually subscribed for a Lyceum in the winter is better spent than any other equal sum raised in the town. If we live in the nineteenth century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the nineteenth century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial? If we will read newspapers, why not skip the gossip of Boston and take the best newspaper in the world at once? –not be sucking the pap of “neutral family” papers, or browsing “Olive-Branches” here in New England. Let the reports of all the learned societies come to us, and we will see if they know any thing. Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading? As the nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself with whatever conduces to his culture, –genius –learning –wit –books –paintings –statuary –music – philosophical instruments, and the like; so let the village do, –not stop short at a pedagogue, a parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because our pilgrim forefathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock with these. To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions; and I am confident that, as our circumstances are more flourishing, our means are greater than the nobleman’s. New England can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and not be provincial at all. That is the uncommon school we want. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.

PETER ABÉLARD Louisa May Alcott’s 1st publication, “The Rival Painters,” appeared in the Olive Branch for this date, Volume XVII, #19. In Louisa’s journal she remarked “My first story was printed and $5 paid for it. It was written in Concord when I was sixteen. Great rubbish! Read it aloud to sisters, and when they praised it, not knowing the author, I proudly announced her name.” Below is how this real-life episode was represented as part of Jo March’s publication triumph in Chapter 14 of Volume I of LITTLE WOMEN in 1869, complete with a most pertinent and HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM appropriate reference to Miss Fanny Burney’s anonymous novel of manners EVELINA, THE HISTORY OF A 12 YOUNG LADY’S ENTRANCE INTO THE WORLD:

“What’s the name?” asked Beth, wondering why Jo kept her face behind the sheet. “The Rival Painters.” “That sounds well. Read it,” said Meg. With a loud “hem!” and a long breath, Jo began to read very fast. The girls listened with interest, for the tale was romantic, and somewhat pathetic, as most of the characters died in the end. “I like that about the splendid picture,” was Amy’s approving remark, as Jo paused. “I prefer the lovering part. Viola and Angelo are two of our favorite names, isn’t that queer?” said Meg, wiping her eyes, for the ‘lovering part’ was tragical. “Who wrote it?” asked Beth, who had caught a glimpse of Jo’s face. The reader suddenly sat up, cast away the paper, displaying a flushed countenance, and with a funny mixture of solemnity and excitement replied in a loud voice, “Your sister.” “You?” cried Meg, dropping her work. “It’s very good,” said Amy critically. “I knew it! I knew it! oh, my Jo, I am so proud!” And Beth ran to hug her sister and exult over this splendid success. Dear me, how delighted they all were, to be sure! how Meg wouldn’t believe it till she saw the words. “Miss Josephine March,” actually printed in the paper; how graciously Amy criticized the artistic parts of the story, and offered hints for a sequel, which unfortunately couldn’t be carried out, as the hero and heroine were dead; how Beth got excited, and skipped and sang with joy; how Hannah came in to exclaim, “Sakes alive, well I never!” in great astonishment at ‘that Jo’s doin’s’; how proud Mrs. March was when she knew it; how Jo laughed, with tears in her eyes, as she declared she might as well be a peacock and done with it. and how the ‘Spread Eagle’ might be said to flap his wings triumphantly over the House of March, as the paper passed from hand to hand. “Tell us about it.” “When did it come?” “How much did you get for it?” “What will Father say?” “Won’t Laurie laugh?” cried the family, all in one breath as they clustered about Jo, for these foolish, affectionate people made a jubilee of every little household joy. “Stop jabbering, girls, and I’ll tell you everything,” said Jo, wondering if Miss Burney felt any grander over her EVELINA than she did over her ‘Rival Painters.’ Having told how she disposed of her tales, Jo added, — “And when I went to get my answer, the man said he liked them both, but didn’t pay beginners, only let them print in his paper, and noticed the stories. It was good practice, he said, and when the beginners improved, anyone would pay. So I let him have the two stories, and to-day this was sent to me, and Laurie caught me with it and insisted on seeing it, so I let him. And he said it was good, and I shall write more, and he’s going to get the next paid for, and oh — I am so happy, for in time I may be able to support myself and help the girls.” Jo’s breath gave out here, and wrapping her head in the paper, she bedewed her little story with a few natural tears, for to be independent and earn the praise of those she loved were the dearest wishes of her heart, and this seemed to be the first step toward that happy end.

May 8, Saturday: 4.30. –The robin [American Robin Turdus migratorius] and the bluebird [Eastern Bluebird Sialia sialis] have sung for some time. The haziness is now like a sea-turn, through which the sun, shorn of beams, looks claret, and at length, when half an hour high, scarlet. You thought it might become rain. Many swallows flying in flocks high over the river, –the chimney swallow for one. What is the other? They sustain themselves sometimes on quivering wings, making little progress, as if to catch insects.... A singular noise from a jay [Blue Jay Cyanocitta cristata] this morning. Hear the yellow-bird [Yellow Warbler Dendroica petechia], the creeper [Pine Warbler Dendroica pinus or Brown Creeper Certhia americana or Black-and-white Warbler Mniotilta varia], and the myrtle-bird [Yellow-rumped HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM Warbler Dendroica coronata] this morning, all together; they are much alike. The creeper, a faint oven- bird [Seiurus aurocapillus] note; the myrtle-bird, a little more of the s or t in it than the yellowbird and more various. I hear the wit-er-che, Maryland yellow-throat [Common Yellowthroat Geothlypis trichas]. Two gold robins [Northern Oriole Icterus galbula]; they chatter like black-birds: the fire bursts forth on their backs when they lift their wings. A fresh scent blows off from the meadow, the river rapidly going down.... The blackbirds [Red-winged Blackbird Agelaius phoeniceus] have a rich sprayey warble now, sitting on the top [of] a willow or an elm. They possess the river now, flying back and forth across it.... The blackbirds fly in flocks and sing in concert on the willows, –what a lively, chattering concert! a great deal of chattering with many liquid and rich warbling notes and clear whistles, –till now a hawk sails low, beating the bush; and they are silent or off, but soon begin again. Do any other birds sing in such deafening concert?

12. Little known fact of history: Fanny Burney’s novel was published in January 1778 and yet she dared not inform her father that she was the author of this work until June 1778 — after it was known to be a commercial success and, also, after her father had praised it. (Have you come a long way, baby?) HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM July: In Virginia, the Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway advised his parents that he had lost his faith and could not remain a Methodist minister. Daddy would cut him off without a cent.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II

Slavemaster Slavemistress HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM The grand Conway brick home in Falmouth yet stands (although its present condition is merely a reminder):

August 1, Sunday: The Black Methodists of San Francisco established their 1st church, Zion Methodist Episcopal. CALIFORNIA

November 15, Sunday: The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway attempted something which should have been quite noncontroversial, and failed miserably. A young black woman named Becky, who had been a servant in a house in which he had resided, had died, and he attempted to preach a quiet and low-key funeral sermon over her casket in the parlor. Incidentally, however, during his sermon, he commented upon what he had seen as her natural innocence and goodness. All hell broke loose among the Methodists. Did the right reverend not understand that Death is God’s Punishment for Sin? Becky could have been neither innocent or good, or God could not thus have put her to death. Shortly afterward a woman commented that in a sermon Conway appeared to be “speaking to us from the moon,” that is, that he was a lunatic in need of asylum. AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II

December 4, Saturday: The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway preached his last sermon as a Methodist. AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II

[THOREAU MADE NO ENTRY IN HIS JOURNAL FOR DECEMBER 4th] HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM December 8, Wednesday: The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway was back at the Friends monthly meeting in Sandy Spring, getting his coeur enheartened again by the Quakers. AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II

(Nice of them to do that for a Methodist on his way to becoming a Unitarian, don’t you think?) Meanwhile Henry Thoreau was at the pond also getting his coeur enheartened:

WALDEN: But, as I was looking over the surface, I saw here and there at a distance a faint glimmer, as if some skater insects which had escaped the frosts might be collected there, or, perchance, the surface, being so smooth, betrayed where a spring welled up from the bottom. Paddling gently to one of these places, I was surprised to find myself surrounded by myriads of small perch, about five inches long, of a rich bronze color in the green water, sporting there and constantly rising to the surface and dimpling it, sometimes leaving bubbles on it. In such transparent and seemingly bottomless water, reflecting the clouds, I seemed to be floating through the air as in a balloon, and their swimming impressed me as a kind of flight or hovering, as if they were a compact flock of birds passing just beneath my level on the right or left, their fins, like sails, set all around them. There were many such schools in the pond, apparently improving the short season before winter would draw an icy shutter over their broad sky-light, sometimes giving to the surface an appearance as if a slight breeze struck it, or a few rain-drops fell there. When I approached carelessly and alarmed them, they made a sudden plash and rippling with their tails, as if one had struck the water with a brushy bough, and instantly took refuge in the depths. At length the wind rose, the mist increased, and the waves began to run, and the perch leaped much higher than before, half out of water, a hundred black points, three inches long, at once above the surface. Even as late as the fifth of December, one year, I saw some dimples on the surface, and thinking it was going to rain hard immediately, the air being full of mist, I made haste to take my place at the oars and row homeward; already the rain seemed rapidly increasing, though I felt none on my cheek, and I anticipated a thorough soaking. But suddenly the dimples ceased, for they were produced by the perch, which the noise of my oars had scared into the depths, and I saw their schools dimly disappearing; so I spent a dry afternoon after all.

December 8. Another Indian-summer day. Saw some puffballs in the woods, wonderfully full of sulphur-like dust, which yellowed my shoes, greenish-yellow. The recent water-line at Walden is quite distinct, though like the limit of a shadow, on the alders about eighteen inches above the present. level. One cannot burn or bury even his old shoes without a feeling of sadness and compassion; much more [sic] his old body, without a slight sense of guilt. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1853

April: In the National Magazine, a Methodist reverend described crossing a swamp in Mississippi which he characterized as “the most dreary and desolate place in the world.” He fell into a deep depression, became feverish, got lost, decided he was going to die, and committed himself to the glory of God — and of course, that saved him, what did you expect?

During this month some white Americans were unashamedly digging up native American graves, hoping to find, in with the bones, something of value. Of course they had a picture drawn of what they were doing and had it published — what did you expect, shame?

Stephen Pearl Andrews’s 103-page LOVE, MARRIAGE, AND DIVORCE, AND THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL. A DISCUSSION BY HENRY JAMES, HORACE GREELEY, AND STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS: INCLUDING THE FINAL REPLIES OF MR. ANDREWS, REJECTED BY THE TRIBUNE” was reprinted from the pages of the New-York Tribune by Stringer & Townsend, Publishers. Andrews exhorts Henry James, Sr. and Horace Greeley to “Give up, I beseech you, the search after the remedy for the evils of government in more government. The road lies just the other way, toward Individuality and Freedom from all government.” (Does this more remind you of Ayn Rand, or does it more remind you of Ronald Reagan?) HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM October 14, Friday: Henry Thoreau had a mystery visitor, a Quaker schoolmaster. Since there does not seem to be any written record of the reasons for this, from either side, or of what was discussed, we are left to speculate. (Since the two men did have a friend in common, Moncure Daniel Conway, and since Moncure was nearby at the time, attending the Harvard Divinity School to acquire new credentials as a Unitarian, residing in Concord, reshaping himself, obtaining spiritual counsel from Thoreau and from Emerson, and since this mystery visitor, the Hicksite Friend William Henry Farquhar, had also previously attempted to offer in his school in Maryland spiritual advice to Moncure — in the absence of all evidence we may be forgiven if we hypothecate that the subject of the conversations between Henry and Friend William, since obviously they were something too sensitive to have been alluded to in any way in the journal, may well have been the guidance that was being offered collectively to this failed Methodist circuit preacher in his spiritual crisis.)

Oct. 14. Friday. 1853. A Mr. Farquhar of Maryland came to see me; spent the day and the night. Fine, Clear Indian-summer weather.

Why would such guidance have been of such importance? In order to comprehend this, you will need carefully to consider the times, and in particular the needs of the ongoing nonviolent national antislavery crusade. There wasn’t anything more important going down, than this conversion of this genuine Southern aristocrat scion of plantation slavemasters to the cause.

How, in those years prior to our Civil War, might one have gone about creating an effective nonviolent abolitionist movement? The Bible itself implicitly accepted slavery as a normal human condition. Jesus had not so much as blinked at the human slavery that had been all around him in his life context. The churches of America, virtually all of them not only in the South but also in the North, were vehemently proslavery. Virtually every government entity outside of New England was at the very best neutral on this issue. Some of the prominent white men, such as Abraham Lincoln, were hoping to figure out a way that we could afford to dump our black people back onto the coast of Africa and be rid of them once and for all, at “Liberia” or wherever, and a vanishingly small percentage of Americans had any sympathy to waste on abolitionists. The antislavery sort of person was being considered a sort of freak — somebody who was willing to run the risk of a bloody race war, servile insurrection, black men running through the night with hatchets. John Brown did not have any key to unlock this door, for his key only fit in the door Make-All-This-Unbearably-Worse. Seizing weapons and starting something deadly was obviously the way only a crazed ideolog would want to go (either then at the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, or more recently in the Hollywood home of Sharon Tate where Charles Manson attempted to stage what he described as a “Helter Skelter” that would set us off into a national race war). No. The key to this in 1853 would be to suborn this young Southern white aristocrat, a goldplated hairball of impeccable credentials and background, and make him willing to step forward and state plainly, for all to hear loud and clear north and south “My own family owns slaves down South, hundreds of them, whom I would inherit, but slavery being wrong in the eyes of God, I am renouncing my inheritance and cannot be part of this exploitation.” The three families of Virginia who had real pioneer credentials, the Moncures, the Daniels, and the Conways, were all present in this young gentleman who had eponymously been named “Moncure Daniel Conway.” What authenticity! Not only that, but Moncure was a reverend, a man of the cloth. What credibility! –That’s why this Quaker elder, Friend William of the Sandy Spring monthly meeting in Maryland, had come to Concord, and would spend all of October 14, 1853 and that night at the Thoreau boardinghouse scheming with Henry Thoreau. This man was the behind-the-scenes stage manager of this most important abolitionist event. It was his responsibility to make certain that nothing fell out of bed. This self-important, confused, shallow new convert needed constant handholding and it was his agenda to make certain that he received this in full measure. There was hot propaganda stuff brewing — and our Henry was in the very thick of it in his guise as a mere walking companion and casual confidant. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1859

January: Robert Collyer asked to resign or was asked to resign from the Methodist Church, among the various points of contention being the total unacceptability of his antislavery posture. Hey, what’s the matter with you, don’t you know you’re a white man? He and his wife, facing a shortage of work, left Philadelphia.

July 19, Tuesday: Moderates from northern German states met in Hanover to discuss German unification under Prussian leadership (this group, and the one formed 2 days earlier, would in September merge to form the Nationalverein).

In the morning was Harvard University’s commencement. After lunch was the annual meeting of the alumni of the Harvard Divinity School, to be followed at 4PM by an address by the Reverend Henry Whitney Bellows. At the after-lunch session the controversy between liberal and conservative Unitarian reverends came out into the open on a motion to praise the terminally ill Reverend Theodore Parker made by the Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway and seconded by the Reverend James Freeman Clarke. The meeting degenerated into wild argument and first tried to expel all newspaper reporters and then, failing to get these people to depart, cautioned them that they “knew well enough what to report and what not to.” The Reverend Conway proposed that his motion to praise the Reverend Parker be limited to a simple expression of sympathy in affliction, but even that had become too tainted to be brought to a vote. The participants in this meeting went into the lecture with the issue entirely unresolved, and in the lecture the Reverend Bellows condemned the Reverend Conway as a minister who would “dance in a church” and the Reverend Parker as a minister who would “worship in a theatre.” What was needed was recognition that society depended upon its institutions, and that religion was first and foremost one of those institution. The title of this lecture, which was being offered by the very Reverend who had originally suggested back in 1852 in Virginia that Conway abandon his Methodism and become a Unitarian minister, was, appropriately, “The New Catholic Church.”

The Transcendental philosophy ... delights in making the secular and the sacred, the right and the wrong, the grave and the gay, the male and the female, the world and the church, the human and the divine, the natural and the supernatural, the one and the same.

Since I do love a good fight I can’t help but point out that the Reverend Bellows, who was bellowing this condemnation of the integration of religion into one’s life, neglected to include an important phrase, “the Anglo-Saxon and the inferior races.” Why was this important distinction not also cited? A direct vote was after all escaped. The advertised hour for the annual address, to be delivered that year by Dr. Bellows of New York, had already been passed by a few minutes, and a motion for adjournment was carried. Next day I breakfasted at [James Russell] Lowell’s house with Edmund Quincy, who said, “So you could n’t get the Unitarians to pray for Parker?” He and others regarded it as due to my want of familiarity with the old Parkerite polemics that, while repudiating miracles, I should have attempted such a miracle as to soften the heart of militant Unitarianism. AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM July 19. P. M.–Up Assabet. The architect of the river builds with sand chiefly, not with mud. Mud is deposited very slowly, only in the stagnant places, but sand is the ordinary building-material. It is remarkable how the river, while it may be encroaching on the bank on one side, preserves its ordinary breadth by filling up the other side. Generally speaking, up and down this and the other stream, where there is a swift place and the bank worn away on one side,–which, other things being equal, would leave the river wider there,–a bank or island or bar is being built up on the other, since the eddy where, on one side, sand, etc., are deposited is produced by the rapidity of the current, thus:–

e.g. north side of Egg Rock, at Hemlocks, at Pigeon Rock Bend, at Swift Place Bank, etc., and on main stream at Ash Tree Bend. The eddy occasioned by the swiftness deposits sand, etc., close by on one side and a little offshore, leaving finally a low meadow outside where was once the bed of the river. There are countless places where the one shore is thus advancing and, as it were, dragging the other after it. I dug into that sand-bank, once sand-bar, at the narrow and swift place off Hildreth’s, five and a half feet deep, this afternoon. It is more than a rod wide and covered with willows and alders, etc. It is built up four or five feet above the summer level. It is uniformly fine sand, more or less darkened with decayed vegetation, probably much of it sawdust, and it has been deposited this depth here by the eddy at high water within a very recent period. The same agent is in a great many places steadily advancing such a bar or bank down the stream a rod or more from the old shore. The more recent and lower extremity of this bank or bar is composed of sawdust and shavings, almost entirely so to a depth of two feet. Before it reaches the surface, pads spring up in it; when [IT] begins to appear, pontederia shows itself, and bulrushes, and next black willows, button-bushes, etc. The finest black willows on the river grow on these sand-banks. They are also much resorted to by the turtles for laying their eggs. I dug up three or four nests of the Emys insculpta and Sternothaerus odoratus while examining the contents of the bank this afternoon. This great pile of dry sand in which the turtles now lay was recently fine particles swept down the swollen river. Indeed, I think that the river once ran from opposite Merriam’s to Pinxter Swamp and thence along Hosmer’s hard land toward the bridge, and all the firm land north of Pinxter Swamp is such a sand-bank which the river has built (leaving its old bed a low meadow behind) while following its encroaching northeast side. That extensive hard land which the river annually rises over, and which supports a good growth of maples and swamp white oaks, will probably be found to be all alluvial and free from stones. The land thus made is only of a certain height, say four to six feet above summer level, or oftener four or five feet. At highest water I can still cut off this bend by paddling through the woods in the old bed of the river. Islands are formed which are shaped like the curving ridge of a snow-drift. Stagnant rivers are deep and muddy; swift ones shallow and sandy. Scirpus subterminalis, river off Hoar’s and Cheney’s, not long. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1864

November 29, dawn Tuesday-November 30, Wednesday: On Sand Creek just outside Denver, Colorado, a reservation encampment of Cheyenne under the leadership of the accommodationist Black Kettle was attacked without warning or provocation by the 900-man 3d Colorado Volunteers under the Reverend John Chivington and more than 200 were massacred. Any number of the victims were tortured before death and mutilated after death. Nine of the white soldiers were killed.

The rule that obtained was that, to solve this American race problem forever, it would be necessary to exterminate not only the adult males but also the women and children of color: “nits breed lice.”13 HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

13. This is not the first time that such an exterminationist race/gender attitude has surfaced in white America. See the record for August 6, 1676: As a comparison situation to the unmarked Mt. Misery site of atrocity near Concord MA, consider this site of a reservation massacre on Sand Creek in which again it was mostly women and children who were being exterminated by a white volunteer militia. The Colorado site wouldn’t be marked at all until 1986, and then when the state finally did put up a marker, on a rise of scrub above the dry creek bed, it would characterize the site of this extermination as, quote unquote, a “battleground.” “Denial is an integral part of atrocity, and it’s a natural part after a society has committed genocide. First you kill, and then the memory of killing is killed.” — Iris Chang, author of THE RAPE OF NANKING (1997), when the Japanese translation of her work was canceled by Basic Books due to threats from Japan, on May 20, 1999.

“Historical amnesia has always been with us: we just keep forgetting we have it.” — Russell Shorto HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM It was not that Black Kettle14 and the Reverend Chivington were unknown to each other. On a following screen, for instance, they pose for a convivial group snapshot at their Camp Weld meeting (which, obviously, must have been prior to this present event).

“...the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” — Declaration of Independence

In a few days Colonel John Milton Chivington’s15 cowboy irregulars would ride back into their capital city, known as Denver, with dripping red pudendas pressed over their saddle horns. –White was right again!16 Damn any man who would sympathize with Indians! I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s heaven to kill Indians.

14. On November 27, 1868 this native American leader, living in a reservation tepee with a white flag atop it, would be killed and scalped during an unprovoked assault by the 7th Cavalry of Colonel George Armstrong Custer. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM Of course, James Pierson Beckwourth was a participant in this, even though we do not have evidence that he was one of the cowboys who cut up the women and rode through Denver with their genitalia jammed down over their saddlehorns. So, he now has his own postage stamp, which is only fair:

The Reverend Chivington would be heard to boast that since he had surpassed Kit Carson he would soon be reputed as the greatest Indian killer of them all. When Carson heard of this Sand Creek massacre, he openly denounced the Reverend Chivington. The Reverend Chivington now has a town named for him (A), and Colorado Governor Evans, who had

15. Chivington was a Methodist lay preacher, and upon his return with his victorious 1st Colorado Cavalry he would be honored not only by his government but also by his Methodist church. This violated one of the white man’s rules of atrocity, the rule whereby when anything necessarily brutal gets done no-one is to be suspected to be enjoying it, and so on April 22, 1996 in Denver, the General Conference of the United Methodist church would vote with but little opposition that they should issue a somewhat belated but fulsome apology for this genocide. 16. On July 22, 1998, the federal government, in accordance with the provisions of Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) 43 CFR 10.9, would seize from the Colorado Historical Society one native American scalp. The scalp in question seems to have been one of those taken by Major Jacob Downing as its provenance was that in 1911 it had been donated to the Society by a Mrs. Jacob Downing. (There is no record that any of the severed female pudenda were ever donated to the Colorado Historical Society by the surviving widows of these cowboy irregulars.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM sanctioned this sort of conduct, was able to live out his life in luxury in one of our finest neighborhoods, with a street and a mountain named after him. Here is a newswriter’s retrospective synopsis as of September 2000: SENATOR RELEASES MASSACRE LETTERS By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) Nearly 136 years after Colorado Militia troops ambushed and massacred more than 150 American Indians on the banks of Sand Creek, a senator related to a survivor of the attack is sponsoring a plan to create a memorial at the site. At a hearing on the proposal Thursday, Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell read from two recently discovered letters written by soldiers who objected to the 1864 atrocity. One, Capt. Silas Soule, detailed the gruesome scene where troops slaughtered Cheyenne and Arapaho women, children and elderly men. “It was hard to see little children on their knees have their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized,” wrote Soule, who was murdered in Denver shortly after testifying at a congressional inquiry. Campbell, a Northern Cheyenne whose great- grandfather’s second wife survived the attack, said the descriptions brought tears to his eyes. The Colorado Republican is backing a bill to create a national historic site on more than 12,000 acres of “killing fields” on the plains of southeastern Colorado. “Can you imagine cutting open a pregnant woman and taking out the baby and then scalping the baby? My God!” Campbell said. “It’s the worst atrocity I’ve ever heard of.” The National Park Service supports Campbell’s proposal to create the Sand Creek historic site, which would help protect the area from artifact poachers and allow Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal members to create a burial ground there for the remains of victims. Rancher Bill Dawson, on whose land much of the killing ground lies, and other area landowners are willing to sell their property to create the memorial. Campbell said he guessed the bill had a “50-50” chance of passing Congress before lawmakers adjourn for the year, which is scheduled for early October. Steve Brady, president of the Northern Cheyenne Sand Creek Descendants, said the historic site would commemorate “the unspeakable horrors of ethnic cleansing.” The massacre began at dawn on Nov. 29, 1864, when nearly 1,000 men under the command of Col. John M. Chivington surrounded hundreds of Indians camped on the banks of the creek. Soule and other witnesses said Chivington wanted to kill Indians and did not care that this group was peaceful and had been promised by other U.S. troops that they would be left alone if they flew an American flag. The troops opened fire on the mostly unarmed Indians with guns and howitzers, then chased down many who tried to flee. The soldiers mutilated the bodies, taking away scalps, ears, fingers and genitals as trophies. Although the congressional probe sparked by Soule and Lt. Joe Cramer condemned the massacre, those involved were never punished and the reparations promised in a treaty were never paid. Chivington has a town in the area named after him. Brady and other Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM said they are still trying to get remains of Sand Creek victims returned to tribes. The Colorado Historical Society has at least one scalp from a Sand Creek victim, and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln has the cranium of another, they said. Having a final resting place for those remains is important to the descendants of massacre victims, said Joe Big Medicine, who works to reclaim remains for the Southern Cheyenne tribe. “It’s important for us to have it remembered by the American people,” Big Medicine said. “It’s important to remember what they did to our people. They killed our people.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1871

April 6, Thursday: Friedrich, Baron Lindelhof became prime minister of Hesse.

In Paris, National Guard units rolled out the guillotine apparatus and burned it, as onlookers cheered.

HEADCHOPPING

Death of Edward Thompson Taylor, the famous chaplain of the Methodist Seamen’s Bethel on the Boston HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM waterfront and prototype of Father Mapple in Herman Melville’s MOBY-DICK.

The body would be placed beside the body of “Mother Taylor,” his wife Deborah D. Millett Taylor and the mother of his children, at Mount Hope Cemetery in Mattapan, Massachusetts. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1872

The 1st mention of the wedding band, as an optional accessory in a Methodist marriage ceremony occurs in the DOCTRINES AND DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODIST CHURCH manual of the Methodist Church dating to this year: “If the parties desire it, the man shall here hand a ring to the minister, who shall return it to him and direct him to place it on the third finger of the woman’s left hand. And the man shall say to the woman, repeating after the minister, ‘With this ring I thee wed, and with my worldly goods I thee endow, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’” HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1873

The Presbyterians followed the example of the Methodists by changing their manual to allow for the use of a wedding band in the marriage ceremony: “If they desire to pass a ring, the minister, here taking the ring, may deliver it to the man, to put it upon the fourth finger of the woman’s left hand.”17

17. Obviously, to be a Presbyterian you need to pretend that a woman’s thumb is a finger. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1887

During this year and the following one, John Hunt Painter was erecting in Pasadena, California the Painter Hotel, which would become a local landmark.

(One of the investors in this hotel, the canny New York investor and miser Henrietta “Hetty” Howland Robinson Green, would be described as the richest woman in the world.)

As an example of Quaker disownment, here is one that was announced in this year at the Somerset monthly meeting:

“R.G. having neglected the attendance of our Religious meetings and joined the Methodist Society and being treated with therefor did not manifest a disposition to condemn her deviation, we therefore disown her as a member of our Religious Society.”18 RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS METHODISTS

18. Somerset Monthly Meeting (Ohio Yearly Meeting), Minutes. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1892

August: The building used to house a new museum in Ilkley in Yorkshire had been the Wesleyan church in which the Reverend Robert Collyer had met his 1st wife Harriet Watson Collyer and in which he had begun to preach as a Methodist. Since Collyer had credentials as a local historian, being the co-author, with Horsfall Turner, of ILKLEY ANCIENT AND MODERN, published in 1885, he was asked to officiate. The opening of the Museum provided the Reverend with an opportunity to return one of Ilkley’s Roman “fragments,” a burial urn that had come into his hands some years before while such items were being dug up there in profusion and dispersed far and wide. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1998

December: John H. Wigger’s TAKING HEAVEN BY STORM: METHODISM AND THE RISE OF POPULAR CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA (Religion in America Series. New York and Oxford, England: Oxford UP) was reviewed for H- SHEAR by Jonathan D. Sassi of the College of Staten Island/CUNY: Before the Methodists reached the Mainline In his 1994 presidential address before the American Society of Church History, Nathan O. Hatch noted the dearth of scholarship on American Methodism, despite the facts that it was one of the nation’s largest and most important denominations of the nineteenth century and contained a wealth of unexploited source 19 material. In TAKING HEAVEN BY STORM, Hatch’s student, John H. Wigger, picks up the challenge of writing a history of Methodism’s first generation. Specifically, Wigger’s goal is to answer the question of why the Methodists flourished so abundantly in the early republic: how did the denomination go from a membership of less than a thousand to over a quarter million in the fifty years after 1770? This timeframe roughly overlaps with the ministry of Francis Asbury, who was sent to America by the Reverend John Wesley in 1771 and served as the first superintendent or bishop of the American Methodist Episcopal Church from his appointment in 1784 until his death in 1816. In a nutshell, Wigger’s answer is that early Methodism became so popular (i.e., had such a tremendous appeal) because it was thoroughly popular (i.e., of the people). Wigger relies upon his mentor for his basic “conceptual framework” (page vii), but goes beyond the ideological thrust of Hatch’s DEMOCRATIZATION OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY to suggest a variety of cultural, organizational, and interpersonal factors behind the Methodists’ rise.20 Wigger draws primarily upon the memoirs and journals of Methodist circuit riders and also makes selective use of institutional records. Members of H-SHEAR should especially take note of this book, for Wigger roots his argument firmly in the culture of the early republic. The first five chapters of TAKING HEAVEN BY STORM analyze the different factors behind the Methodists’ success. Chapter One, the book’s least original, recapitulates the familiar interpretation that the early republic underwent a far-reaching “democratization,” a thesis typified in Gordon S. Wood’s THE 21 RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. As Wigger summarizes, the Methodists moved into an environment of declining hierarchy and order and rising individualism and mobility, and they adapted to it in a way that the older, established denominations could not. They appealed to “middling people on the make” (p. 5) like artisans, shopkeepers, and yeoman farmers by opening their movement to individual participation and by preaching a theology that emphasized the individual’s struggles. Relying upon the secondary literature, Wigger also briefly touches upon Methodist theology. With its commonsense, anti-Calvinist elements, it 19. Nathan O. Hatch, “The Puzzle of American Methodism,” Church History 63 (June 1994): 175-189. 20. Nathan O. Hatch, THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989). 21. Gordon S. Wood, THE RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (New York: Knopf, 1992). HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM validated both the individual’s quest for sanctification and the personal revelations found in dreams. The heart of Wigger’s argument, located in Chapters Two through Five, is that Methodism’s appeal boiled down to a combination of an “ordinary,” down-to-earth character and an organizational cohesiveness that bound people into the movement. The Methodists built a hierarchy from the bottom up of local class meetings, societies, itinerant preachers’ circuits, districts, annual conferences, and, after 1792, the quadrennial general conference of the entire denomination. In a break with textbook treatments of Methodism and the Second Great Awakening, Wigger downplays the camp meeting’s significance. Rather he writes that other institutions, such as the class meeting, were of greater importance, and that the idea that the camp meeting was a uniquely frontier phenomenon is unfounded. Chapter Three-- probably Wigger’s best because here he is most at home with his sources--focuses upon the itinerants whose constant circulation held the network together. This was no far-off priesthood, but rather circuit riders were like the people they served in social and educational background, which allowed them to preach in the vernacular. The itinerants themselves were knit together in an informal fellowship, and they often delayed marriage in order to pursue their callings. Their network of circuits crisscrossed the country, fanning out with the population of the early republic. Wigger convincingly refutes the idea that this was a top-down hierarchy under the heavy hand of Francis Asbury. Instead, he emphasizes grass-roots, lay involvement at the same time as there was a national organization to direct itinerant resources centrally. In this light, the defeat of James O’Kelly’s “Republican Methodists,” who protested Asbury’s episcopal power, Wigger sees as a triumph of “connectionalism” (p. 40) over congregationalism, rather than as an autocratic coup for Asbury. Methodism was further popular in its emotional worship and its acceptance of prophetic dreams and visions. With these examples Wigger scotches the idea that Methodism was a “bland, bourgeois religion” (p. 204, n. 12). By emphasizing these enthusiastic, folk aspects of early Methodism, Wigger turns on its head William Warren Sweet’s interpretation that Methodism civilized the frontier (see p. 232, n. 17). And yet, Wigger also discusses Methodist discipline, from whence the movement took its name, as something which both created personal order and appealed to the upwardly mobile common men and women in the class meetings. Chapters Six and Seven address the special appeal of Methodism for African-Americans and women, respectively. These are important topics for Wigger to take up, if for no other reason than the facts that by the early nineteenth century free African-Americans represented twenty percent of the church and women were always the numerical majority of Methodists. Wigger follows Hatch in accounting for the Methodists’ appeal among African-Americans as a result of many itinerants’ early denunciations of slavery and racism, plain preaching, and the use of African-American exhorters and preachers. In turn, black Methodists gave to the movement much of its enthusiastic style and openness to magic and visions, which Wigger, citing Albert J. Raboteau,22 relates to elements in the African religious heritage. But as is familiar from the work of Donald G. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM Mathews,23 the Methodists were never able to implement the strong antislavery position they took in 1784 and repealed it by 1808. Their populism, Wigger explains, the very ordinariness that made Methodist leaders so empathetic toward white America, ironically left them unable to confront their audience with a prophetic voice. Aside from this insight, Chapter Six displays less originality and relies more upon the secondary literature, since Wigger’s main source, the itinerants’ memoirs, were seldom written by African-Americans. Likewise the seventh chapter on Methodist women operates under the same primary source constraints. To fill the gap, Wigger makes use of the writings of elite women such as Elizabeth Henry Campbell Russell, the sister of Patrick Henry, and Catherine Livingston Garrettson of the prominent New York family. Women were important to the movement as exhorters, class leaders, and the sinews that held the network together as local organizers or hostesses to the circuit riders. Of historiographical note, Wigger’s analysis of the place of Methodist women differs from Susan Juster’s finding that Baptist women became identified as disorderly and sinful during the same time period.24 “If anything,” Wigger concludes from a limited source record, “the disciplinary cases decided before quarterly meeting conferences of this period indicate that Methodists saw men as the more disorderly element in their midst” (p. 169). The final chapter, number eight, provides the denouement to Wigger’s tale. It considers Methodism’s shift from outsider sect to mainstream denomination after about 1820. The death of Francis Asbury in 1816, who had directed the movement since its early years in America and epitomized its itinerating energy, symbolized the transition. As Methodism’s adherents became more refined, the church abandoned many of the hallmarks of the movement’s first generation. Class meetings lost their intimacy and let discipline decay, and women’s roles became more domestic and confined. Methodist pastors went from being roughhewn itinerants to educated clergymen settled in well-constructed church buildings, where worship likewise shifted from an enthusiastic, participatory experience to a much more dignified affair. In short, the former outsiders had arrived. Methodism’s transformation occasioned many of the memoirs that are the primary source foundation for Wigger’s study as a whole. So-called “croakers” (p. 181) lamented their denomination’s abandonment of its old style and fervor, and sought to chronicle the movement’s origins as a way of criticizing the present. But what the croakers failed to realize was that Methodism in the second quarter of the nineteenth century was just doing what it had done so adroitly during its first fifty years--appealing to the sensibilities of ordinary Americans, although those had now changed. As Wigger summarizes the futility of the croakers’ lament, “The church simply could not be both respectable and countercultural” (p. 188).

22. Albert J. Raboteau, SLAVE RELIGION: THE “INVISIBLE INSTITUTION” IN THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); idem, A FIRE IN THE BONES: REFLECTIONS ON AFRICAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS HISTORY (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995). 23. Donald G. Mathews, SLAVERY AND METHODISM: A CHAPTER IN AMERICAN MORALITY, 1780-1845 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965). 24. Susan Juster, DISORDERLY WOMEN: SEXUAL POLITICS AND EVANGELICALISM IN REVOLUTIONARY NEW ENGLAND (Ithaca, N.Y. and London, England: Cornell University Press, 1994). HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM John H. Wigger has given us a book that is lucidly written, coherently organized, and generally cogent. In TAKING HEAVEN BY STORM he has provided an important analysis of Methodism’s tremendous appeal to people of the early republic and brought into focus some of the main reasons behind its stunning growth. Still, there are a few areas where his methodology and choices leave certain issues underexamined. As I discuss these issues, I hope to suggest some broader themes for discussion by H-SHEAR. Wigger’s book does not quite deliver on the promise announced in the first sentence of the Preface to study “the dynamics of early Methodist growth in America” (p. vii). Yes, Wigger gives us many reasons for the Methodists’ success, but his study is not structured to dissect that success as a dynamic process. The reader does not learn in depth how Methodism grew chronologically or geographically. Instead, Wigger takes a generation as a whole and studies it statically. Contingencies of time and place are subordinated to a synoptic view of the first generation. Obviously, no one author or book can follow Methodist circuit riders everywhere they went over a fifty year period, but a closer look at when and where Methodism grew and stalled might have yielded some different conclusions. Along these same lines, Wigger deliberately sidesteps regionalism for a national perspective. Certainly he is correct that “American Methodism was a truly national phenomenon” (p. 6), but it did not play out the same all over the nation. TAKING HEAVEN BY STORM mentions regional variations here and there, but it never pursues these systematically. Moreover, the book deals mostly with Methodist itinerants, so the movement’s urban dimension is underplayed. Certainly Western and Southern Methodism have been historiographically significant topics in their own rights,25 and it is a shame that Wigger did not bring his considerable talents more to bear upon these issues. At SHEAR’s annual meeting in Harpers Ferry this summer, several panels raised this question of regional particularities amidst nationalizing trends, and perhaps the members of H-SHEAR can continue that line of inquiry. Wigger also needs to provide a fuller discussion of the uses and limitations of the itinerants’ memoirs that are his principal primary source, especially since most were published anywhere from two to five decades after the incidents recounted. He does this to some extent (p. 181) in discussing the motives of the croakers, but more is needed. For example, do these memoirs, coming from movement insiders and long after the fact, mute conflict and provide an overly consensual picture of events, such as in discussing Francis Asbury’s role? Certainly many historians of the early republic have mined memoirs as a valuable source; are there any general rules of thumb for using these texts? Finally, I would have liked to have seen closer attention paid to the recurring use of amorphous terms like “ordinary people” (p. 5) and “middling folk” (p. 6), which remind me of the way in which “middle class” has become such an expansive and imprecise category in contemporary popular discourse. The issue

25. On Methodism in the South, see Donald G. Mathews, RELIGION IN THE OLD SOUTH (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Christine Leigh Heyrman, SOUTHERN CROSS: THE BEGINNINGS OF THE BIBLE BELT (New York: Knopf, 1997). Western or frontier Methodism was largely the subject of the work of William Warren Sweet; see, e.g., RELIGION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN CULTURE, 1765-1840 (New York: Scribner’s, 1952). HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM becomes cloudier when Wigger writes that one of the reasons for the Methodists’ post-1820 transformation is that they were “becoming more middle class” (p. 184). But wasn’t the first generation of Methodists made up of people whose status was “middling” to begin with? Moreover, not all of the early Methodists were so ordinary. Wigger cites many Delmarva Methodists who belonged to the gentry (see pp. 161-63); what was Methodism’s appeal for them? This lack of clarity regarding his subjects’ social origins relates back to the larger question of sources. Can we truly gain insight into the experience of lay people from the itinerants’ memoirs? For a study of a popular religious movement, we hear comparatively little from the laity. This may reflect the limitations of the primary source record, or it may result from the types of sources not chosen. Despite these unaddressed issues, John H. Wigger’s TAKING HEAVEN BY STORM fills an important gap. To say that the book left me wanting more is a criticism, but it is also a tribute to the book’s accomplishments and ambitious scope. Whatever unanswered questions remain provide topics for further research. For historians of early Methodism who follow Wigger, TAKING HEAVEN BY STORM will be their starting point. Copyright (c) 1998 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission, please contact [email protected]. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

1999

John H. Wigger. TAKING HEAVEN BY STORM: METHODISM AND THE RISE OF POPULAR CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA. Religion in America Series. NY and Oxford, England: Oxford UP. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM

2002

January: Dee E. Andrews’s THE METHODISTS AND REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA, 1760-1800: THE SHAPING OF AN EVANGELICAL CULTURE (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP) (reviewed for H-SHEAR by Richard D. Shiels , Department of History, The Ohio State University): More New Light on Early American Methodism For nearly a decade Nathan Hatch has been alerting the profession about “the scholarly neglect of American Methodism.”26 THE METHODISTS AND REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA is the latest addition to a surprising number of fine studies that have appeared over that period. This book is both important and impressive. It is exhaustively researched and elegantly written. It is all the more important because of the wealth of other studies that have appeared in recent years. Hatch initiated a new line of inquiry on the relationship of Methodism to American culture. His DEMOCRATIZATION OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY (New Haven: Yale UP, 1989) won numerous awards including the SHEAR prize for the best book published in 1989 on the Early American Republic. John Wigger, who studied with Hatch at Notre Dame, added TAKING HEAVEN BY STORM: METHODISM AND THE RISE OF POPULAR CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA (New York: Oxford UP, 1997). Cynthia Lynn Lyerly contributed METHODISM AND THE SOUTHERN MIND, 1770- 1810 (New York: Oxford UP, 1998). These are all fine books. Together they present the Methodists as harbingers of a new force in American religion in the generation following the American Revolution. Like four other groups Hatch’s book discusses (Baptists, Black Baptists, Christians, and Mormons) the Methodists were popular and democratic. Their leaders were not college-educated elites as was true in the Anglican, Congregational or Presbyterian churches, but were often farmboys with little formal education. They spoke (and sang) the language of the people. At the same time they challenged the social order by converting large numbers of women, youth, and African- Americans. They even condemned the institution of slavery, albeit briefly. For Hatch early American Methodism was in part a product of the American Revolution; for all three of them it seems revolutionary.27 Christine Leigh Heyrman, Rachel Klein and Stephanie McCurry have written from a different perspective and drawn different conclusions. None of their books are primarily about Methodism; only Heyrman’s is primarily about religion. SOUTHERN CROSS: THE BEGINNINGS OF THE BIBLE BELT (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), Heyrman’s latest book, focuses on the rise of evangelicalism in the South. In it she treats Baptists and evangelical Presbyterians as well as Methodists — but her sources are best for the Methodists. She gives greater attention than Hatch,

26. Nathan Hatch, “The Puzzle of American Methodism,” CHURCH HISTORY 63 (1994), 175-189. 27. Other recent studies which are not discussed in this review include Russell Richey, EARLY AMERICAN METHODISM (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); Russell Richey, Kenneth E. Rowe, and Jean Miller Schmidt, PERSPECTIVES ON AMERICAN METHODISM: INTERPRETIVE ESSAYS (Nashville, Tennessee: Kingswood Books, 1993); A. Gregory Schneider, THE WAY OF THE CROSS LEADS HOME: THE DOMESTICATION OF AMERICAN METHODISM (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993); and Nathan O. Hatch and John Wigger, eds. METHODISM AND THE SHAPING OF AMERICAN CULTURE (Nashville, Tennessee: Kingswood Books, 2001). HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM Wigger or Lyerly to the years after 1800 when Methodism had already begun to change. Klein’s UNIFICATION OF A SLAVE STATE: THE RISE OF THE PLANTER CLASS IN THE SOUTH CAROLINA BACKCOUNTRY 1760-1808 (Chapel Hill: The U of North Carolina P, 1990) and McCurry’s MASTERS OF SMALL WORLDS: YOEMAN HOUSEHOLDS, GENDER RELATIONS, AND THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH CAROLINA LOW COUNTRY (New York: Oxford UP, 1995) each discuss religion in a single chapter. Methodism appears far less liberating or revolutionary in these three studies. As a church they repealed any early anti-slavery policies in the 1790s. In the decades following 1800, circuit riders (all men) shifted their attention to a male audience and embraced repressive expectations for women. In short, Methodism sanctified slavery and patriarchy in the South. Heyrman believes that Methodist leaders decided to do so deliberately in order to win converts and argues that evangelicalism swept the South only after that development. Dee Andrews began work on her book even before any of these other studies appeared. The issues that divide Hatch from Heyrman had not yet arisen. She did not set out to ask whether early American Methodism was democratic or repressive. Instead she asks, “How American was early American Methodism?” She cannot be identified with either side in the ongoing conversation among historians, but of course her work corrects both sides and deepens our understanding of Methodism and American culture. Andrews agrees with Hatch that sometime in the early nineteenth century Methodism “became the American religion” (page 5). Her book, however, is largely about the eighteenth century, when Methodism was a British import. Whereas Hatch begins his book with a chapter on the social and cultural impact of the American Revolution, Andrews opens with a discussion of the missionary interests of John Wesley’s mother. Early chapters trace the rise of Methodism from Wesley’s childhood, education at Oxford and missionary efforts in Georgia in the 1730s. What Andrews wants to explain is how a British missionary movement became America’s dominant denomination. The Revolution, she believes, is only part of the story. This book qualifies THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY. Hatch argued that American Methodism “veered sharply away from the course of British Methodism” in the period he studies, roughly 1780 to 1830.28 It did so in part because American Methodists were able to avoid class conflict. Andrews has uncovered class tensions within the movement however. In Philadelphia, for example, the tensions between the merchant elite and the laboring rank and file led to schism and the formation of two separate Methodist churches by 1800. All across the country Methodist circuit riders were drawn largely from the working class, but Andrews is less inclined than Hatch to credit the Methodists with democratization. Methodist polity was highly centralized and hierarchical. Francis Asbury, the first Bishop, ruled the movement from the top down. Further, there was a “strong ideological effort to elevate the preachers above their striving followers,” she argues (page 222). Finally, they were not all Jeffersonians. The political affiliation of American Methodists varied from state to state, depending upon what was best for the group in each locale. Hence, 28. Hatch, DEMOCRATIZATION, 6-7. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM they were Democratic Republicans fighting for disestablishment in Federalist New England, but voted Federalist in Delaware where no church was legally established and their numbers were higher. The point is that while the movement was inevitably subject to all the tensions of American culture, it had at its core a British concept of the gospel. What made a convert a Methodist was not class standing, political leaning or commitment to egalitarianism but adherence to John Wesley’s understanding of religious experience. Similarly Andrews qualifies Christine Heyrman’s argument that Methodism did not attract a significant portion of the population until its leaders embraced patriarchy and slavery. Her book supplements Heyrman’s work on the South with material drawn from Methodist societies in Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia. What she finds suggests that early Methodism must have seemed liberating to large numbers of women. Women led class meetings more often than men in Wesley’s Foundery Chapel in London in the 1740s. While the same was never true in America, women constituted the majority of Methodist converts here as well. Women of diverse ethnic backgrounds joined Methodist societies while they were yet young and single. They joined in the company of other women. Those who joined as married women did so with their sisters and mothers; husbands were much less likely to join. The preachers did not glorify married life but spoke of marriage as dangerous for the life of the spirit. “Methodist women were entering a unique social world, one in which female association predominated, separate from patriarchal family structures and community ties alike,” Andrews writes. Methodism provided “a Protestant version of a Catholic sisterhood.” (p.115) Here women “found their place apart from the claims of family loyalty” (page 117). Yet it can be said that these women “had exchanged one form of patriarchy for another: [going] from obeying their fathers’ dictates to those of the Methodist Episcopal Church clergy” (page 118). There was almost no place for women preachers in these Methodist societies — far fewer places than in the Methodist societies in England. Furthermore, the male leadership was “masculinized” in nineteenth century camp meetings. Whereas earlier preachers had rejected aggressive, competitive, violent behavior for a more gentle, perhaps feminine persona, preachers in camp meetings did not. Soon Methodist men and women alike began striving for gentility and adopted the norms of middle class society. None of this would surprise Heyrman, but Andrews rejects the argument that Methodist leaders deliberately changed their message to appeal to men or even the argument that their success depended upon the change. Rather “Methodist militancy appears to have increased alongside Methodist popularity rather than before it” (page 229). Finally, what about the relationship of Methodism to slavery and racism? Heyrman believes that retreat from an early critique of slavery was necessary for Methodist growth just as much as a retreat from countercultural ideas on gender. Andrews documents the initial anti-slavery position and its demise as official policy of the Methodist Church. She begins once again with Wesley. Interestingly, Wesley owed his anti-slavery sentiments to the American Quaker Anthony Benezet. The Reverend John Wesley made his views known by publishing THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY in 1774. HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM His American followers embraced anti-slavery first in a conference in Baltimore six years later. The minutes of that conference declare slavery “contrary to the laws of God, man and nature, and hurtful to society, contrary to the dictates of conscience and pure religion and doing that which we would not want others do to us and ours” (page 125). The first discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, published in 1785, echoed these words and the church circulated a petition that year asking for the abolition of slavery by legislative action in the State of Virginia. Public reaction was so great that the petition was dropped and the discipline’s section on slavery was suspended within six months. However the church did not retreat from its anti-slavery teachings overnight. Slavery was condemned by its general conference in 1796 and there were efforts to approve a stronger condemnation in 1800. In 1804, in the aftermath of Gabriel’s Rebellion, the church published two versions of its discipline: one for Virginia and the northern states with a condemnation of slavery and another for the rest of the South without it. Andrews provides these details and then argues that there is more to consider than the official pronouncements of the denomination. Freeborn Garrettson and many other Southerners freed their slaves after joining the church. “The Methodist manumission records in the lower Middle Atlantic states ... is impressive,” (page 130) she concludes. Up north, Jacob Baker and others joined anti-slavery societies as well as Methodist churches. But of course the Methodist church was not an anti-slavery society. Andrews presents it as essentially a missionary society. Methodists were the most successful —and perhaps the most committed— missionaries to slaves and free blacks. Twenty- one percent of America’s Methodists were African-Americans in 1800. These included slaves, servants, artisans and others. The vast majority, based upon the records for the cities Andrews studies, were women. From the beginning most Methodist classes, societies and churches were segregated by race. Consequently some African-Americans were given leadership positions. Harry Hosier became something of a celebrity traveling throughout the country with Garrettson and other white preachers, exhorting crowds of both races after the official preaching was done by his white companion. Richard Allen became a preacher and the founder of one of two African-American Methodist denominations. “The Methodist Church all too quickly jettisoned its anti- slavery militancy,” Andrews concludes, “but black followers applied its message of liberation to their own condition.... A viable African-American alternative (emerged) within the movement” (page 124). Hence the relationship of Methodism to American culture in this period was complex. How could it not be? The culture itself was experiencing fundamental changes which varied from one place to the next. Many American farm boys were becoming circuit riders and speaking for a movement begun by an English Tory who was opposed to slavery. Converts came from all social classes, two races and a broad range of ethnic backgrounds. Most of the converts were women, but the leadership was male. With all of this diversity, what defined Methodism was a common understanding of religious experience and a polity unlike that of any other denomination. Both of these defining HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM characteristics it inherited from John Wesley. Copyright 2002 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses contact the Reviews editorial staff: [email protected].

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2018. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: April 4, 2018 HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in HDT WHAT? INDEX

METHODISM METHODISM the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.