University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2016 God's Brush Arbor: Camp Meeting Culture during the Second Great Awakening, 1800-1860 Keith Dwayne Lyon University of Tennessee, Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Lyon, Keith Dwayne, "God's Brush Arbor: Camp Meeting Culture during the Second Great Awakening, 1800-1860. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2016. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/3941 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Keith Dwayne Lyon entitled "God's Brush Arbor: Camp Meeting Culture during the Second Great Awakening, 1800-1860." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in History. Ernest F. Freeberg, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Stephen Ash, Daniel Feller, Mark Hulsether Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) God's Brush Arbor: Camp Meeting Culture during the Second Great Awakening, 1800-1860 A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Keith Dwayne Lyon August 2016 Dedication To Laura and Kelsey, my beautiful and funny redheads. ii Acknowledgements The author would like to express his profound gratitude to Professor Ernest F. Freeberg, the best mentor, dissertation advisor and friend a fellow could ever have. Ernie’s enormous knowledge, boundless wisdom, keen insight, unerring instincts and warm encouragement have inspired and nurtured this project immensely. I would also like to thank the other members of my generous and brilliant committee, Professors Stephen Ash, Daniel Feller and Mark Hulsether, a historical ‘dream team’ if ever one existed. They have been intellectually stellar and personally so very kind. Dr. Ash contributed valuably to the dissertation’s conceptualization, while Dr. Feller introduced me to several of the foundational primary and secondary sources used. Dr. Hulsether helped me a great deal with writing technique and framing the project within American religious history’s entire sweep. They are each exceptional scholars and gifted teachers. Librarian and archivist Saundra Pinkham has offered outstanding assistance with sources and technical matters, besides being a magnificent friend. This dissertation’s faults are mine alone, but much that is worthy herein may be traced to these folks, especially Dr. Ernie Freeberg. Professor Denise Phillips, friends Kyle and Jeni Stephens, Bob Hutton and Jason Yeatts, parents in law Bob and Marna Ward, Deans Lisa Hill and Dixon Boyles, executive assistants Bernie Wickman Koprince, Kim Vannoy Harrison and Mary Copeland Beckley, along with colleague Judith Meyer have all helped in various ways, often more than they know. iii I would particularly like to thank my very special parents, Donnis and Mary Lyon, plus my brothers Kenneth and Kevin Lyon, all consummate teachers of various subjects, plus one virtuoso musician. I grew up in a home defined by familial love and a limitless enthusiasm for learning, as well as full of books, music and ideas. Above all, I thank my beautiful, patient, adorable wife Laura Ward Lyon and my smart, beloved daughter Kelsey Elizabeth Lyon for offering enormous support while I did this, for always being interested and simply for being wonderful. I love y’all!! iv Abstract In reference to the early national and antebellum eras, the term "camp meeting" signifies a rural Protestant revival held over several days and nights, wherein participants utilized temporary living accommodations--typically wagons or tents--and prepared food on the grounds in order to attend multiple outdoor services. Eventually dominated by Methodists and Cumberland Presbyterians, camp meetings routinely attracted several thousand people, thus creating temporary communities larger than most permanent ones in many regions. Considering the scarcity of such sizeable, collective events in the country’s rural areas during this period, the assemblies inevitably generated an exciting array of social opportunities and served as momentous occasions in many nineteenth century Americans’ lives. This dissertation examines the popular outdoor revivals in terms of their physical, temporal and liturgical structure, their worship practices, conversion experiences and spiritual meanings, along with their famously ecstatic devotions. Fundamental to all of this stood the meetings’ establishment of a sacralized sphere on what many perceived as a threshold of the divine world, a sphere of fecund possibilities for religious transformation and putatively supernatural occurrences. Defining and expressing themselves not only in the gatherings’ holy rituals, but likewise through their social activities, participants embraced identities that conferred meaning and purpose on individual, collective and cosmological levels. Moreover, camp meetings included pilgrimage, an often celebratory atmosphere, dramatic rites of passage, and avenues for v earning prestige otherwise unattainable for many people. All this produced a unique, powerful forum for personal change while furnishing converts with psychic and communal support for their new evangelical lives. The project also extensively analyzes the topics of democratic sound, transitory community, plus the roles of African Americans, women and children in this religious context. Further, this dissertation explores the gatherings’ diverse pursuits, including pilgrimage, enactment of familial roles, foodways, pursuit of status, conduct of business, politics, courtship and sex, drinking and liquor dealing, gambling, derision by skeptics, as well as crime and violence. More broadly, I evaluate camp meetings' implications for understanding evangelical religion and American culture not only during the period addressed, but into the twentieth century as well. vi Table of Contents Chapter One: “Fishing with a Large Net”: Definition & Historiography ........ 1 Chapter Two: A Peculiar Mingle and Parade ....................................................... 44 Chapter Three: “All Things Work Together for Good”: Worship Structure . 84 Chapter Four: ’Holy Ground’: The Sacralized Realm of Early American Camp Meetings ..................................................................................................................... 131 Chapter Five: “Like the Sound of Many Waters”: Camp Meetings’ Democratic Noise ....................................................................................................................................... 167 Chapter Six: ”A Great Tumult”: African Americans’ Camp Meeting Experience ....................................................................................................................................... 203 Chapter Seven: “The Divine Flame”: Women and Children as Camp Meeting Leaders ........................................................................................................................ 248 Chapter Eight: “Grand and Absorbing Occasions”: Socializing and Sin ...... 284 Chapter Nine: Meeting’s End: Conclusion ......................................................... 328 References................................................................................................................... 339 Vita ............................................................................................................................... 399 vii Chapter One: “Fishing with a Large Net”: Definition & Historiography In September of 1850, North Alabama enjoyed a stretch of cooler, dry, blue-skies weather of the sort heralding autumn’s approach and generating keen appreciation among those who had endured the oppressively hot, humid summer. William Basil Wood—a successful Florence attorney who would distinguish himself as an intrepid commander in several Civil War battles and as chief officer of General Longstreet’s military court—happily joined his beloved brother in law Levi Cassity to pack for a Methodist camp meeting. Wed to sisters, the two men spent much time together, but perhaps none happier than their many joyous hours at Cypress Creek’s annual camp meeting, where they and their wives shared a tent each year. At the festive yet holy, exciting but restorative outdoor gatherings, these devout evangelicals worshiped, sang, prayed, testified and delighted in impassioned preaching, all the while encouraging others to accept the gift of salvation they themselves embraced. The two friends enjoyed time in the “sacred grove,” a world apart yet one bearing powerful implications for life during each year’s remaining fifty-one weeks. Here the men and their spouses—like thousands upon thousands of others in early national and antebellum America-- witnessed remarkable manifestations of what Methodists conceived of as God’s dominion, understood