by John Jakes
I continued to refrain from argumentation because, as I noted, I am not sure of my own heart—and also because I cannot d—n out of hand those whom I serve in Virginia. To do so, I would have to d—n the very woman with whom God has favored me, blessing our union with Gideon—
Gideon. A splendid little boy! I must not overlook his coming birthday. I must take a trinket home.
Before we parted, Hodding insisted the Conference would address the slavery question. I pray not. Such disputation can only lead to divisiveness of the sort which has already led the Reverend Orange Scott of Lowell to withdraw from the Methodist connection.
I fear a confrontation, and wonder why. Is it because there is epic risk of fostering ill will within the Church? Or is it because I know that, if forced to search my own conscience, I will find a lack of personal conviction?
Later. Prayed an hour for guidance, but remain as worried and uncertain as before.
•
May the 1st. One hundred and seventy-eight pastors have gathered. As the proceedings commenced, I was restored and refreshed by the preaching and the singing. How good to hear those stout voices inquiring of each other’s welfare as the opening hymn, “And Are We Yet Alive?”, soared forth.
Bishop Soule, occupying the chair for the opening session, sounded a warning to those who would disturb our work among the people of color. Their souls are for saving but all else is beyond us, the bishop declared in his address. “To raise them up to equal civil rights and privileges is not within our power. Let us not labor in vain and spend our strength for naught.”
His remarks produced a few dark looks up and down the benches, but no open dissent. I trust the Bishop’s admonition will be heeded for the sake of the Church’s tranquility and, I shamefully admit, mine.
•
May the 2nd. A quiet day. Another walking tour late in the afternoon. Even though I twice visited Boston while a student at the Biblical Institute in Vermont, the splendor and squalor of New York City far surpass anything I have beheld elsewhere.
There are a great many Irish present, and more arriving by ship each month. Simply by listening to street conversation, one is made aware of the animosity directed toward them. A Mr. Harper, a book publisher like my great-grandfather, is to run for mayor here. Harper is what is called a reform candidate, for the city’s affairs are in disorder and badly need setting straight. Whether Mr. Harper is dedicated to that task remains questionable, since I was informed that his partisans are preparing banners bearing a campaign appeal that seems to have little to do with reform, and everything to do with stirring hatred of the slum Irish. The slogan is, “No Popery!” Let us hope the campaign will not produce the sort of anti-Catholic rioting which recently struck Philadelphia.
Obtained an edition of Mr. Greeley’s Tribune, which contains this remarkable information—the railroad trackage within the country now totals close to four thousand miles, with more being laid all the time as new lines open. The United States has several times the trackage of the entire continent of Europe, the paper says. “Thou art the God that doest wonders!”
•
May the 3rd. Today, Friday, the cataclysm is upon us. The sectional quarrel which has inflamed tempers in Congress and the press has reached even here. The Conference to which the Reverend Orange Scott formerly belonged put forward a petition opposing slavery, whereupon the meeting erupted into shouting of a most unseemly sort.
The chair has appointed a Committee on Slavery to accept other memorials on the same subject. Hodding told me such petitions are sure to come, then went on to confirm a suspicion I have not uttered or written before, though many of my southern brethren have expressed it to me:
The antislavery delegates are operating according to a plan drawn long before we assembled. The ultimate target of the strategy is the worthy and well-regarded Bishop James Andrew of Georgia, whose sin is this: he is the unhappy possessor of a mulatto girl and a Negro boy, neither of which he purchased. Both were bequeathed to him in the estate of his first wife. His second wife is also the inheritor of slaves. Under Georgia law, neither the bishop nor his spouse can manumit the slaves.
When Hodding mentioned Andrew in a most challenging way, then asked my opinion on what should be done, I once again took refuge in excuses that hide my own equivocation. I said I did not feel qualified to take part in any general debate, being among the most recently ordained of all those gathered; I became a pastor not quite two years ago. I said I felt doubly unqualified by reason of age, having just observed my twenty-fourth birthday.
Did Hodding suspect my evasion? His smirk made me believe so.
Later. I thought much of my beloved wife Fan, and of our son. I asked myself what the antislavery delegates would offer Fan’s father, Captain Tunworth of Lexington, as well as her numerous relatives in South Carolina, in return for the black labor on which they depend. That, it seems to me, is one of the sticking-places:
Even many in the south accept the fact that the peculiar institution is, in a great number of respects, inhumane. But abolitionist agitators such as Mr. Garrison of Boston, whose Liberator newspaper insists upon full freedom for Negroes, never propose any plan by means of which the southern agriculturist can replace his Negro labor. And without the labor, there is no prosperity for those who cultivate the land. The snare is a cruel one, since human beings north or south are not prone to abandon that which fosters their survival.
At supper, we fell into a heated discussion of one alternative to slavery which has been proposed for nearly thirty years by the Colonization Society—namely, the freeing and resettlement of the Negro in Liberia. Hodding bitterly chastised several of the more moderate brethren who favor this idea. He said the scheme is based on an unspoken belief that the Negro is inferior to the white—and will somehow contaminate the nation with his continued presence. Hodding then proceeded to put a theological cast on the subject.
John Wesley, the beloved Asbury, Coke—the pillars of our faith—were unequivocal about the absolutes of good and evil. Good and evil are the fixed stars in our struggle as itinerants. Our aim is, first, conversion—admission of sin—and then redemption: the eradication of human wickedness through the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ. No one could disagree with those extremities, and the lack of a middle ground. Then Hodding closed the trap.
If there is no middle ground in our theology, so there can be none regarding the slave question. If slavery is acknowledged an evil, it must be destroyed, just as confessed sin is overcome by redemptive love for Christ. Several shouted at Hodding—one subject, they cried, is spiritual, the other temporal! Hodding sees no difference; he sees, in fact, an irrefutable connection.
I sat silent throughout. Hodding’s logic troubled me sorely, but not as much as the intemperate speech of my brethren on both sides of the argument. It seems to me the affair of Bishop Andrew is exacerbating tempers to a dangerous degree.
•
May the 10th. A resolution has been put forward “affectionately” requesting Bishop Andrew to resign his office. And a curious thing has occurred—the use of the word “slavery” has become infrequent in our sessions. Andrew’s alleged transgression has somehow been transmuted into a question of Church authority: whose will is paramount? That of the General Conference? Or that of the bishops?
It is a screen, nothing more. The fundamental issue is Andrew’s ownership of black men and women.
Screen or no, Bishop Soule today sounded another, even more dire warning. He said that permitting the Conference to remove Andrew without a proper ecclesiastical trial would rend the organization of the Church “beyond repair.”
•
May the 14th. The debate continues, heated and unsettling. I absented myself for a time this afternoon, having realized that I will be forced to take a stand unless the committees laboring in private can effect a compromise, which I think unlikely. By leaving the gathering, I hoped to free my mind of the dismaying subject—only to discover it turning to another al
most as troublesome.
My thoughts returned to my conversion six years ago by the Reverend Lee of the Willamette Mission in Oregon. Jason Lee was the great man who first revealed to me that my name, Jepthah as it is spelled in the Old Testament, means “God opens.” The conversion did not please my father, to whom I have not written in far too long.
Many years ago, my father Jared Kent put the eastern part of the continent behind him forever, accepting both the freedom which the western lands afford, and the struggle they require for even meager success. My father came to love the free spaces, their natural beauties and abundance. He wanted me to remain a westerner as he is. I could never convince him that my given name must have had a preordained significance unknown to him when he bestowed it, for, through the Reverend Lee, God truly did open my soul to His message, and I felt a compelling call to train myself for the ministry. My answering of the call wounded my father not a little.
As I walked along the Broad Way, I was overcome with pity for my father, who saw me onto the ship for the east with the greatest reluctance. His rheumatism, developed from many years spent in icy streams trapping for plews, has made his existence as a wheat farmer trying in the extreme. His sorrow was increased when my beloved mother, Grass Singing, went to her grave three years ago. Thinking of him alone now in Oregon, my guilt was, for a time, nigh unbearable.
Desperate to relieve it, I sought refuge in an act I freely acknowledge as a pandering to human vanity. In answer to my wife’s earnest request, I inquired about, and was directed to, a studio where the remarkable Daguerreotype is available.
The sitting required less time than I expected—a minute, no more. But all of the kitchen funds which my dear Fan gave me for this express purpose were required to purchase the little copper plate which now reposes in a silk-lined box on my bureau.
Although the visit to the studio was worldly indulgence, the experience refreshed my spirit in an unexpected way. On the plate I first saw not myself but the Almighty’s handiwork—for surely the Frenchman, Daguerre, was blessed by heavenly inspiration when he perfected his method of capturing the human face on a bit of metal.
On returning to my hotel, I continued to marvel at the plate, which is somehow treated with silver salts and then exposed to the light to create an image. I discovered again why my brethren chide me good-naturedly with the name “Indian Preacher.” I have the light eyes of the Kents but the dark and unruly hair of the Shoshoni. All in all, mine is a curious and severe countenance. For a few moments, I fancied that, in the eyes of the image, I saw my guilt over the unhappiness I had brought to my father, and I fancied that I also saw my doubt about where I would stand on the question now being debated at the Conference in increasingly heated language.
•
May the 25th. All the city agog with news from Baltimore, where, only yesterday, there was received an actual, audible message transmitted in code from the Supreme Court room in the capital by means of the electric telegraph of Mr. Morse. He is the inventor of the device as well as the code. Four words were sent: “What hath God wrought?”
As the debate grinds on, I ask the same racking question about the presence of the black man in America. Why was this tribulation visited upon him—and upon us? Why were we so unlucky, or so foolish, as to find this form of labor most suitable to the requirements of an economy founded on tobacco, rice, cane and cotton crops?
Is Garrison correct in his jeremiads? Is our precious Constitution “a covenant with death and an agreement with hell” because it recognizes the right of an owner to apprehend Negroes who have committed the felonious act of fleeing from their servitude? As Garrison claims, does the Constitution at the same time guarantee Negroes every right of citizenship that whites enjoy? Even many in the northern states find that concept too radical—yet the extreme abolitionists have been propounding it for more than a decade.
Decent people disagree on both questions just noted. Mr. Justice Story of Connecticut, for example, expressed a majority opinion of the Supreme Court when the Pennsylvania Act of ’26 was struck down two years ago. The opinion was founded on the Court’s contention that neither Pennsylvania nor any other individual state has the authority to prevent the owner of an escaped Negro from reclaiming him—even if the Negro has reached nonslave soil. Mr. Story clearly believed that the owning of slaves confers an unquestionable Constitutional right to recapture that slave—that piece of property.
In further opposition to Garrison and his followers, the opinion also implied that our American liberties are solely for the benefit of members of the white race. Story and the Court ignored the Constitutional promise of due process. Conclusion—it simply does not apply to any man or woman with dark skin.
Who is wrong and who is right? I do not know; I do not know!
•
Missouri excepted—but made permissible south of that line, while Maine was admitted as a free state to balance Missouri’s presence.
They say former president Jefferson, a very old man in those days and but five years from his death, spoke of the Compromise as “a fire bell in the night,” warning of a sectional dispute that could rend the nation. I fear he was correct. The abolitionists want the institution of slavery destroyed wherever it exists, and forbidden forevermore.
My wife’s people, of course, believe Texas should and will come in slave. So no matter how the issue of admission is decided, the outcome will only provoke more bad feelings—nationally, and in whatever is left of the Methodist Episcopal Church after the Andrew question is resolved. My southern brethren and I now recognize that if the Andrew matter is put to a vote, we will be outnumbered and defeated—
A sorrowful conceit, the inscription of “we”—I am still tormented, uncertain—but tending toward the other side.
•
May the 30th. Perused the book stalls this afternoon. The Conference is recessed while the committees labor, in hopes that some compromise may yet be worked out. Discovered the bins are a-bulge with guidebooks purporting to inform those afflicted with “the Oregon fever” as to the best way to equip themselves for the journey across the mountains.
In the past few years the “fever” has become epidemic. The trains of wagons leaving Missouri in the good weather number in the dozens, so the newspapers say. I would as soon never meet one of those eager pilgrims, for I would be forced to report the truth: that homesteading in the Oregon valleys is fraught with risk.
For one thing, the border dispute with Great Britain remains an irritant and a potential source of conflict. Everyone cries, “Fifty-four forty or fight!” But informed opinion maintains that England will never accept the fifty-fourth degree of latitude as Oregon’s northern boundary. For another, homesteading is best left to
May the 27th. There is no way in which I can evade the issue before the Conference, so I have given up trying. I am, instead, struggling to reach my own decision.
After digesting the various arguments and praying on the whole matter, I am for the moment tending to side with the faction which would unseat Bishop Andrew, even though the bishop is clearly a man without onus; a Christian man; a Methodist man; a good man. If my present mood prevails, I will in effect turn my back on my own dear wife and her family.
Am I capable? And is it right?
Later. Mr. Polk and Mr. Dallas have been nominated as presidential candidates by the Democrats in Baltimore—the news “telegraphed” for the first time in the nation’s history. Either Polk or Mr. Clay, the candidate of the Whigs, will be forced to resolve the stormy issue of annexation of Texas. Mr. Clay is in opposition because the Texan Republic has not been recognized by Mexico, and there is talk afloat that annexation will mean war.
Of more pertinence, if Texas should be admitted to the Union, it will come in as a slave state, further promoting sectional strife. It is already known that a treaty of annexation prepared by Secretary of State Calhoun and currently before the Senate will be rebuffed. But opposition to annexation does not end there. The
politicians who espouse Garrison’s radical philosophy are adamantly against the extension of slavery into any new territory whatsoever—a thorny problem since the country’s mood is generally expansionist, among some sectors of the population—the restless and the poor, whose universal answer to unhappiness or failure is westward migration—wildly so.
The northern radicals will never be content merely with blocking the admission of new slave territories, however. They would prefer to completely upset the fragile balance of the “spheres of interest” established by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, by means of which slavery was prohibited in all Louisiana Purchase lands north of approximately the thirty-sixth parallel—those thoroughly skilled in agriculture. This I have seen for myself.
My father traveled to Oregon with my mother and me after the summer fur rendezvous of ’37. At that time, the price of a plew was already down to the disastrous low of one dollar, due to beaver hats at last passing from fashion. My father and his fellow trappers saw the demise of their trade in that depressed price—but my father, unlike some too old or too disheartened to begin again, was determined to find an alternate livelihood.
Although he has worked diligently at wheat farming in Oregon, my father has not fared well, lacking the proper experience—and the temperament; he was always more suited to the boisterous, unfettered life of the brigades with which he marched and rode for some twenty years.
Yet I can understand why the Oregon territory holds such allure today. The vale of the Willamette is truly beautiful, and this I know my father appreciates, despite the rigors of the labor and his scant success. If he sorrows at what many would call a life of small accomplishment, it is a gentle sorrow, rendered less stinging by what God has shown him of the lovely, though demanding land beyond the Mississippi. “I have looked on wonders,” he remarked once, “and while I live I hope I never lose the hunger to behold more.”