Part 19 (1/2)
During the heat of that Lincoln campaign, Galusha A. Grow, then Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, came to St. Cloud to speak, and found me ill with quinsy; but I went to the meeting. It was held in Wilson's Hall, which was on the second floor of a frame building, and was so packed that before he began fears were felt lest the floors should give way. But the speaker told the audience that the floor would ”hold still” if they did; and any one who felt uneasy had better leave now. No one left, and for two hours and a half he held that packed a.s.sembly in close and silent attention. He was very popular on the frontier on account of his homestead bill, yet the hall was surrounded all the time he spoke by a howling Democratic mob, who hurled stones against the house, fired guns, shouted and yelled, trying to drown his voice. To make it more interesting and try to draw out the audience, they made a huge bonfire and burned me in effigy as--
”The mother of the Republican party.”
The result of that campaign is known, for in it Minnesota was made so thoroughly Republican that the party must needs split, in order to got rid of its supremacy.
CHAPTER XLII.
RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES.
The _St. Cloud Democrat_ found in orthodoxy a foe almost as powerful and persistent as slavery itself. In a local controversy about dancing, I recommended that amus.e.m.e.nt as the only subst.i.tute for lascivious plays, and this was eagerly seized upon by those who saw nothing wrong in wholesale concubinage of the South. A fierce attack was made on _The Democrat_ by a zealous Baptist minister; to which I replied, when it was announced and proclaimed that on a certain Sabbath, at 10 A.M., this minister would answer _The Democrat_. At the appointed hour the house overflowed, and people crowded around the doors and windows, while Gen.
Lowrie occupied a prominent seat in the audience.
It surely was an odd sight to see that preacher mount the stand, carrying an open copy of _The Democrat_, lay it down beside the Bible, and read verse about from the two doc.u.ments. The sermon was as odd as the text. It disposed of me by the summary mode of denunciation, but also disposed of David, Solomon and Miriam at the same time. When I gave the discourse a careful Scriptural criticism, I carried the community, and was strengthened by the controversy. But another, more serious and general dispute was at hand.
When Theodore Parker died, the orthodox press from Maine to Georgia, handed him over to Satan to be tormented; and then my reputation for heresy reached its flood-tide.
Rev. John Renwick, one of our Covenanter martyrs, was my ideal of a Christian, and when he lay in the Edinburg prison under sentence of death, his weeping friends begged him to conform and save his life. They said to him:
”Dinna ye think that we, who ha' conformit may be saved?”
”Aye, aye. G.o.d forbid that I should limit his grace.”
”An' dinna ye think, ye too could be saved and conform?”
”Oh, aye aye. The blood of Christ cleanseth fra all sin.”
”Weel, what mair do ye want, than the salvation o' yer saul?”
”Mair, mickle mair! I want to honor my Master, and bear witness to the truth.”
To satisfy this want, he died a felon's death. The central idea of that old hero-making Westminster theology was, that man's chief end is to glorify G.o.d first, and enjoy him forever when that is done. In all the religious training of my youth, I had never heard the term ”seek salvation.” We were to seek the privilege of serving G.o.d; yet I was willing to be dead-headed into heaven, with the rest of the Presbyterians.
A Protestant Episcopal convention had pointedly refused to advise members of that church to respect the marriage relation among their slaves, and so had dimmed the Elizabethian glory of a church which once stood for freedom so n.o.bly that the winds and waves became her allies, and crowned her with victory. The General a.s.sembly had laid the honor of its martyrs in the dust by endorsing human slavery; and I must be false to every conviction if I did not protest against calling that Christianity which held out crowns of glory to man-thieves and their abettors, and everlasting torments to those who had spent their lives glorifying G.o.d and bearing witness to the truth. My defense of Parker and unwillingness to have all Unitarians sent to the other side of the Great Gulf, won for me a prominent place among those whom the churches p.r.o.nounced ”Infidels.”
But there came a time when ”Providence” seemed to be on the side of the slave.
Rev. J. Calhoun was a highly-cultured gentleman, a Presbyterian clergyman, and one of those urbane men who add force and dignity to any opinion. His wife was Gen. Lowrie's only sister. He preached gratuitously in St. Cloud, and Border Ruffianism and Slavery gained respectability through their connection, when he and his wife made that fatal plunge off the bridge in St. Cloud--a plunge which sent a thrill of horror through the land. I accompanied my sympathetic, respectful obituary notice, with the statement that the costly cutter wrecked, and the valuable horse instantly killed, were both purchased with money obtained by the sale of a woman and her child, who had been held as slaves in Minnesota, in defiance of her law, and been taken by this popular divine to a Tennessee auction block.
The accident was entirely owing to the unprecedented and unaccountable behavior of that horse, and people shuddered with a new horror on being reminded of the price which had been paid for him--bodies and souls of two citizens and the honor of that free State.
CHAPTER XLIII.
FRONTIER LIFE.
The culture which the pale faces introduced into that land of the Dakotas was sometimes curious. The first sermon I heard there was preached in Rockville--a town-site on the Sauk, twelve miles from its confluence with the Mississippi--in a store-room of which the roof was not yet s.h.i.+ngled. The only table in the town served as a pulpit; the red blankets from one wagon were converted into cus.h.i.+ons for the front pews, which consisted of rough boards laid on trussles. There was only one hymn book, and after reading the hymn, the preacher tendered the book to any one who would lead the singing, but no one volunteered. My scruples about psalms seemed to vanish, so I went forward, took the book, lined out the hymn, and started a tune, which was readily taken up and sung by all present. We were well satisfied with what the day brought us, as we rode home past those wonderful granite rocks which spring up out of the prairie, looking like old hay-ricks in a meadow.