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Francis Wayland: Christian America-Liberal FRANCIS WAYLAND: CHRISTIAN AMERICA-LIBERAL AMERICA __________________________________________________ A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri – Columbia _____________________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy _______________________________________________________________ By HOMER PAGE Dr. John Wigger, Dissertation Supervisor AUGUST 2008 © Copyright by Homer Page 2008 All Rights Reserved APPROVAL PAGE The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the dissertation entitled FRANCIS WAYLAND: CHRISTIAN AMERICA-LIBERAL AMERICA presented by Homer Page, a candidate for the degree of doctor of philosophy, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Professor John Wigger Professor Jeffery Pasley Professor Catherine Rymph Professor Theodore Koditschek Professor Brian Kierland DEDICATION For the two Angies, who are the lights of my life. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I take special pleasure in acknowledging the assistance that I have received in completing this project. After a career in higher education and local government, I retired and began working on a degree in history at the University of Missouri. My age – I was 63 when I started – was unusual, but I am also blind. Both the faculty with whom I worked and the UM support staff gave me the assistance and encouragement that made possible the research and analysis necessary to complete a dissertation. The people with whom I have worked at the University of Missouri are genuinely competent; but beyond that, they are thoroughly generous and kind. I am very happy to have this occasion to sincerely thank each of them. I had the good fortune to have the direction in my research of John Wigger, a fine scholar and a caring man. He taught me to look for the meaning of religious experience in the lives of the men and women who were living it. Prof. Wigger insists that it is the integrity of the religious experience that makes it so important for understanding American culture, and I believe that he is right. I also want to acknowledge and express my appreciation to Professors Jeffery Pasley, Catherine Rymph, Theodore Koditschek, and Brian Kierland for the time and thought that they have given me, both as I sat in their classes and worked through the examination and writing phases of my program. I can never state adequately how much I have learned from them, and how much I appreciate their interest in my dissertation. In the almost fifty years since I began my college experience, the technology available to blind persons has developed enormously. The University of Missouri is on the cutting edge of the use of adaptive technology, and I want to state clearly how ii important the Adaptive Technology staff has been in my work at the University. Abbie O’Sullivan, Mike Peplow, Jennifer Thornhill, and Carmen Schafer have taught me to use the technology, prepared print material in electronic format for me to read, and helped me through a hard-drive crash. They responded to emergency calls for materials that I needed “yesterday” with competence and better cheer than I had any right to expect. They are, simply, the greatest. Two persons from the Disability Services Office have been uncommonly helpful. Barb Hammer, the Director, and Mary Borman, who works with blind students, have done more than I can state in this limited space to assist me. They have provided books, found alternative formats for print materials, provided readers and, in the beginning, helped me to work my way through the University bureaucracy. They are true professionals, and I sincerely thank them for all that they have done. I also want to thank Cindy Cotner, the reference librarian at Ellis Library at the University of Missouri who works with students with disabilities. She spent many hours tracking down hard-to-find materials from the antebellum period. Cindy combines a high level of skill as a librarian with enthusiasm for books and learning. She also was quick to respond to my requests and thoughtful in her advice. I am truly grateful for her assistance. Finally, I want to express my appreciation to Kay Callison. Kay came in at the end of the project to turn my manuscript into one that was properly edited and electronically formatted. She spent many hours working to make my manuscript, created with adaptive software, compatible with standard formats. For this frustrating and thankless job, I sincerely thank her. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……………………………………………………………. ii ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………….. v INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 1. THE FAITH OF FRANCIS WAYLAND ………………………………………14 2. THE LIBERAL VISION OF FRANCIS WAYLAND …………………………41 3. FRANCIS WAYLAND AT BROWN UNIVERSITY …………………………73 4. FRANCIS WAYLAND AND THE CONTROVERSY OVER SLAVERY ….102 5. FRANCIS WAYLAND AND HIS BAPTIST CONNECTION ………………126 6. FRANCIS WAYLAND: THEMES AND ECHOES ……………………….....154 7. CONCLUSIONS ………………………………………………………………177 WORKS CITED ……………………………………………………………………….187 VITA …………………………………………………………………………………...191 iv FRANCIS WAYLAND: CHRISTIAN AMERICA-LIBERAL AMERICA Homer Page Dr. John Wigger, Dissertation Supervisor ABSTRACT In the decades before the Civil War, two powerful cultural forces shaped American life; evangelical Protestantism and republican liberalism. Among those persons most active in the effort to reconcile the two movements was Brown University President, Baptist leader, and prominent moralist, Francis Wayland. This dissertation traces his efforts to negotiate among the diverse elements of his Christian faith and his liberal beliefs, as he attempted to create a Christian and democratic university, to mediate the growing moral and political crisis over slavery, and to balance social reform with the evangelical command to save souls. Early in his career, Wayland saw a genuine harmony between his Christian faith and American republicanism. His Baptist faith supported religious liberty, individual autonomy in moral judgment, and limited government, which cohered with his liberal beliefs in laissez-faire economics, democratic educational reform, and meritocratic social organization. He believed that together, Christian faith and liberal republicanism could create a virtuous and free nation. However, in the years after 1837, his faith in harmony between Christianity and liberalism was severely challenged. He failed to convince his fellow citizens to adopt his vision of Baptist evangelical Christianity and republican liberalism as the basis for a free and virtuous national culture, but in his efforts to combine these two powerful movements there is revealed an all too often forgotten option for what frequently seems incompatible elements of the American identity. v INTRODUCTION On April 15, 1865, the terrible news of the death of the president sped across the nation. The citizens of Providence, Rhode Island, were no less bewildered than were those of the other towns and cities of the victorious north. They all struggled with their grief and uncertainty and looked for whatever comfort they could find. The people of Providence called a town meeting and sought a speaker who could address their pain and give them hope and comfort. They approached Francis Wayland, the retired president of Brown University to lead them. He was in ill health; in six months he would be dead, and he refused their request to address the Providence citizenry. He told them that his health would prohibit him from traveling to the site for the meeting. They asked him if he would address the meeting if they built a speaker’s platform on his lawn. He agreed, and that evening Wayland addressed a gathering of over 1,500 persons.1 At the end of his life, the citizens of his community turned to Wayland for understanding and comfort in a time of national crisis. What was it about him that made his fellow citizens look to him for wisdom in such a time of grief? He was not a powerful political leader or an economic pillar of the community. It had been almost ten years since he served as the president of Brown University; yet the people turned to him. There were many other younger popular ministers in the city who could have provided a religious analysis of the event; still Wayland was the choice. It is worth trying to 1 James O. Murray, Francis Wayland (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1891), 151-154. 1 understand why they chose him to address them in a moment of national sorrow. Accordingly, it is the intent of this study to probe into the character and thought of Francis Wayland and, by so doing, gain insight into why the citizens of Providence had such high regard for him; and perhaps by so doing shed light on the relationship between Christianity and the American liberal democracy that emerged before the Civil War. Christian America-Liberal America In the decades before the Civil War, two powerful forces shaped American culture. On the one hand, a liberal democratic spirit raised up the value of individual striving, equality, self-interest, and individual autonomy, while a Christian evangelical spirit emphasized personal humility, obedience to the law of God, self-denial of worldly goods, and the moral deficiencies of the individual. It is apparent that these two powerful movements posed a problem of cultural integration for the new nation. The liberal vision of individual freedom and self-determination sharply contrasted with the Christian belief in a sinful
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