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Views and Experiences from a Colonial Past to Their Unfamiliar New Surroundings

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Views and Experiences from a Colonial Past to Their Unfamiliar New Surroundings MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School Certificate for Approving the Dissertation We hereby approve the Dissertation of Matthew David Smith Candidate for the Degree: Doctor of Philosophy ____________________________________________ Director Dr. Carla Gardina Pestana _____________________________________________ Reader Dr. Andrew R.L. Cayton _____________________________________________ Reader Dr. Mary Kupiec Cayton ____________________________________________ Reader Dr. Katharine Gillespie ____________________________________________ Dr. Peter Williams Graduate School Representative ABSTRACT "IN THE LAND OF CANAAN:" RELIGIOUS REVIVAL AND REPUBLICAN POLITICS IN EARLY KENTUCKY by Matthew Smith Against the tumult of the American Revolution, the first white settlers in the Ohio Valley imported their religious worldviews and experiences from a colonial past to their unfamiliar new surroundings. Within a generation, they witnessed the Great Revival (circa 1797-1805), a dramatic mass revelation of religion, converting thousands of worshipers to spiritual rebirth while transforming the region's cultural identity. This study focuses on the lives and careers of three prominent Kentucky settlers: Christian revivalists James McGready and Barton Warren Stone, and pioneering newspaper editor John Bradford. All three men occupy points on a religious spectrum, ranging from the secular public faith of civil religion, to the apocalyptic sectarianism of the Great Revival, yet they also overlap in unexpected ways. This study explores how the evangelicalism characteristic of McGready and Stone fatally eroded the public sphere envisaged by the deistic Bradford. It also examines the Presbyterian Church's reaction against the alleged enthusiasm within its own clergy, embracing a more socially conformist mode of religion. It looks at how Stone's faith led him to denounce the direction of Presbyterian Church. Even as McGready submitted himself to the discipline imposed by his denominational colleagues, Stone withdrew instead into a primitive Christianity marked by political quietism and civil disengagement. This study follows the consequences of such diverging paths, as McGready rehabilitated himself into the Presbyterian fold and Stone struggled to maintain his prophetic voice while charting an independent course. An epilogue charts the political persecution of the Shakers, whose emergence in the Ohio Valley marked the apex of evangelical enthusiasm. The impact of the Great Revival is finally considered against the cultural parameters of religious expression that emerged in its wake, both regionally and throughout the United States. "IN THE LAND OF CANAAN:" RELIGIOUS REVIVAL AND REPUBLICAN POLITICS IN EARLY KENTUCKY A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy Department of History by Matthew David Smith Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2011 Dissertation Director: Dr. Carla Gardina Pestana © Matthew David Smith 2010 Table of Contents Introduction ....................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Early Kentucky: Religious and Political Landscape…………21 Chapter Two: John Bradford, Republican Printer .........................................56 Chapter Three: James McGready, Son of Thunder .......................................87 Chapter Four: Barton Stone, Disciple of Christ .............................................128 Epilogue: Opening the Gospel .......................................................................170 Conclusion .....................................................................................................183 Bibliography ..................................................................................................192 iii ACKNOWLDEGEMENTS I owe a great debt to the many friends and colleagues who have guided and advised my study from the germ of an idea and who continue to encourage my scholarship. I’d like to thank everyone who assisted me both personally and academically. Without their help, this dissertation would have been impossible. Thanks first of all to my dissertation committee for guiding me to the finish with insight and patient good humor. To my advisor, Carla Pestana, whose erudition led me to the right path, and whose editing sharpened and polished my prose time and again. To Mary Cayton, who likewise provided invaluable editing and scholarly guidance. Our conversations during this study were sometimes mentally acrobatic, but always entertaining and rewarding. To Drew Cayton, who encouraged me to be bold in my thinking and conclusions. And to Katharine Gillespie and Peter Williams, both of whom offered expertise and encouragement from start to finish. Research for this dissertation was greatly assisted by generous scholarships from both the Filson Historical Society and the Kentucky Historical Society. My visits to both institutions reaped terrific archival discoveries, and led me to enjoy some fine Kentucky hospitality. Special thanks, then, to Glenn Crothers and all the staff at Louisville, and to Nelson Dawson and his colleagues in Frankfort. Thanks also to Matt Harris and the staff at the University of Kentucky Special Collections, by which means I came face-to-face with the elusive John Bradford. And to James Trader, curator at Cane Ridge, who guided me through the site that inspired this study to begin with. Last but not least, thanks to the many friends and colleagues who have taken interest along the way, including (and by no means not limited to): Ellen Eslinger; Bob Schmidt; Mary Ellen Scott; Martin Johnson; Shelly Jarrett Bromberg; Will Taylor; Edwin Yamauchi; David Childs and Jim Bielo. Special thanks goes to my parents. Finally, this dissertation is dedicated to Whitney and Charlotte, with my love. iv INTRODUCTION If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? John 3:12 In one generation from the American Revolution, the Ohio Valley lured tens of thousands of migrants to Kentucky's Bluegrass region, a region that soon became as synonymous with evangelical religious fervor as it was coveted for the fecundity of its rich, dark soil. Most of the newcomers to this land came from the backcountry upper south; many had witnessed the religious upheavals of the colonial Great Awakening, while America's War of Independence had painfully affected almost every settler family. These two phenomena – religious revival and bloody conflict – continued beyond initial settlement, framing the worldview of early Kentuckians. Distinctions between politics and religion became more stark during the early years of the republic than at any time before or since in United States history, manifesting in secular and religious worldviews that were often contested. The experimental nature of Kentucky led many settlers to envision its utopian development. Some, including pioneer newspaper editor John Bradford, imagined the Commonwealth as a beacon of republican virtue, anticipating its vanguard role in the secular reformation of American society. Despite fierce Indian warfare until the mid-1790s, this deistic civil millennialism flourished for a time alongside very different, often explicitly Christian visions of Kentucky's future. At the turn of the nineteenth-century, a series of dramatic religious revivals quickened Kentucky's agricultural heartland. Evangelical leaders such as Presbyterian minister Barton Warren Stone proclaimed an outpouring of the Holy Ghost, linking the onset of awakening to earlier stirrings throughout the American backcountry. Impressed by the sights and sounds of awestruck, trembling worshipers falling by dozens, as though "slain in battle," Stone noted, "The scene ... was new, and passing strange."1 The shock of the Ohio Valley's Great Revival transformed its religious and political landscape for generations. This study examines the consequences of the Great Revival, but diverges from many recent studies of the topic in two key respects. Firstly, it juxtaposes the political and religious 1 Barton Stone, "A Short History of the Life of Barton Warren Stone, Written by Himself (1847)," Voices from Cane Ridge, ed., Rhodes Thompson, (St. Louis: Bethany Press, 1954), 64. 1 landscapes of Kentucky and the broader Ohio Valley, while at the same time linking them to broader patterns of development in the early American republic. Secondly, it does not assume, prima facie, that a secular frame of reference ultimately explains the experiences of evangelical converts. As historian Ann Taves has noted, statements of religious experience were constituted in a "contested space," its parameters stretched between the claims of those experiencing the apparently otherworldly agency of the Holy Ghost, and the counter-claims of revival critics.2 These critics sought naturalistic explanations for the most dramatic manifestations of the revival, such as fits, trances and supernatural visions. Though they were not necessarily anti-religious or anti-clerical, they shared the common assumption that explanations of religious experience were to be found within the sphere of natural phenomena, and they rejected explanatory appeals to the supernatural. The secular study of religion had its earliest origins in the enlightenment psychology of the eighteenth-century, when critics of alleged evangelical enthusiasm folded the genealogy of religious belief under the broader umbrella of "natural history." The
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