The setting of the camp-meeting is a clearing in the Kentucky forest, around the bend of the river and away from the village. The underbrush has been fired and fresh grass has come up. Around the blackened stumps of the trees there is no plan, no arrangement of streets but, as the men come from the backwoods, they draw up their wagons as close to one of the platforms as they can get, forming a rough square. New arrivals are pushed deeper into the forest. The day before the camp-meeting, the roads baked by the June sun begin to be crowded. After the sun is set, tallow dips are lit inside the wagons and wood fires upon the ground. New arrivals find their way by the light of pine torches. At the end of 200 miles of travel by day and by night, they are broken, but as they press forward toward the center their spirits revive. The loosening of tongues begins. Voices cross and blend and increase in volume. A straggler coming in hears in the woods first an unwonted sound, then something like a heavy rain, and finally joins himself in a roar of sound. As it dies away, the people crawl into or under their wagons to rest for the ordeal of the preaching on the morrow. But occasionally, through the night, there are hidden sounds of some early revelers or groans and shrieking of those who are prematurely exercised. Within the circumference of the meeting there are perhaps ten or fifteen thousand souls, but each one imagines himself part of a vast crowd of twenty-five or fifty thousand. In the morning, this whole multitude presses into the open space before the preacher’s trestle but, even in the dead silence which he demands, his voice cannot carry to the periphery of the crowd. Another preacher sets out for a strategic tree-stump and gathers part of the crowd about him. A third, of another denomination, makes the seat of a wagon his pulpit. The exhorting begins. A fourth and then a fifth evangelist stand above the crowd and add their shouting. The preachers pitch their voices higher and wave their arms in wider gestures, calling for repentance and threatening vengeance. The pictures of hell grow more vivid. The cries of “O, Lord” and “Jesus, save us” and the roared “amens” rise up automatically from the crowd. As one speaker gives up, exhausted, another takes his place. A fresh voice beats down on the people before the speaker in the hot sun. The odors of humanity rise up and overcome the sweet air of the forest. The people crowd and jostle each other, sway forward, and are pushed back, and gasp for breath. A spectator deliberately holding aloof from the excitement stands on the shaft of a wagon and counts seven preachers all speaking at once. He hears the “amens” and “yes Lords” coming more and more quickly with panting breath and great sighs.
Suddenly a little child is lifted to a tree stump and begins to make strange noises, to utter a babble of meaningless sounds. A girl of seven falls senseless and the crowd makes a little room for her to lie on the ground. At the end of two hours she is revived from her stupor and, raised to her father’s shoulder, delivers, it is supposed, “the greatest body of divinity ever pronounced by human lips,” until she is exhausted and her head drops but, at a word of sympathy, she quickly turns and cries out, “Don’t call me poor for Christ is my brother, God my father, and I am rich in the blood of the Lamb.” At these ecstatic words, men and women fall to the earth, their faces in the mud and bodies in the path of the restless horses, their hands in dung, and cry out the glories of God. The contagion spreads, the groans grow deeper and more agonized. As a man or woman begins to shout, or sing, or scream, the others turn from the preacher to encourage the sufferer. Slowly the extremities begin to twitch, the fingers clutch in the air, the arms strike out wildly and a convulsive dance begins. The rhythm affects the on-lookers until many are in movement and the leader with a growing wildness and ecstasy in her expression shrieks loudly and falls in a faint to the ground. “She has taken it,” the others cry, and the news is reported to the preacher who glorifies the Lord for this visible sign of his grace. The stricken convert is carried to one side and one of the preachers sits by until consciousness returns and then, after a few on-lookers join in an appropriate hymn, the token of conversion is accepted.
Through the noon-day heat the preaching continues and, as the sun goes down, the torches are lit and fires burn in front of every camp and on the tables spread for administering the Lord’s Supper, around which the communicants eagerly press. Under the moon the scene becomes unearthly and terrifying. The groans of the spiritually wounded intermingle with the shouts of heaven-born souls. Those who have gotten religion work their way through the crowd seeking relatives and friends, kneeling beside them and praying to them to give in to God. Others try to beat their way out of the encampment, but are paralyzed and some are torn with indecision, fearing the descent of the spirit and powerless to escape it.
“They were struck down and exercised in many different ways, although they generally trembled exceedingly, and were remarkably cold in their bodily extremities. After they recovered, some said they felt a great load about their heart, a little before the severity of the stroke; others said they were rather in a slumbering and inattentive way, not at all affected at that moment, with what they were hearing or had heard when they were struck down in an instant as with a thunderbolt.
“Some were totally insensible of everything that passed for some considerable time, others said they were perfectly sensible of every word spoken in their hearing, and everything done to them although to the spectator they appeared in a state of equal insensibility. Many cried out exceedingly when they were first struck down; their cries were like those of the greatest bodily distress imaginable. But this was generally succeeded, in a little time by a state of apparent insensibility which generally lasted much longer; and which, in some, was succeeded by the strongest appearance of extreme agitation and distress exhibited by incessant cries for mercy, and acknowledgments of unworthiness and ingratitude to a blessed Savior.”
All night long the work goes on and, in the early morning, the converts and the unregenerate lie upon the ground in weariness, or are convulsed by movements beyond their control. Again the voice of the preacher, hoarsened but fervent, cries out. In an outlying part of the meeting, a handful of men and women are down on all fours growling and snapping their teeth and barking like dogs, making a sudden rush into another group or roaming around. In other places they mew like cats or snarl like wolves. A preacher leaps down and begins to dance slowly and rhythmically around the stand crying softly, “This is the holy ghost—glory,” for an hour, until he falls. In places a convert goes into a trance without any warning and is not aware of his own condition until he sees others crowding around him and, making an effort to move, finds himself powerless. Those who come out of the trances regain their strength and recount their experiences. A rivalry sets in for the wildest movement. As the day goes on the “jerks” begin.
“Nothing in nature could better represent this strange and unaccountable operation than for one to goad another, alternately on every side, with a piece of red-hot iron. The exercise commonly began in the head which would fly backward and forward, and from side to side with a quick jolt which the person would naturally labor to suppress but in vain, and the more anyone labored to stay himself and be sober the more he staggered and the more rapidly his twitches increased. He must necessarily go as he was stimulated, whether with a violent dash on the ground and bounce from place to place like a football, or hop round with head, limbs and trunk, twitching and jolting in every direction, as if they must inevitably fly asunder. . . . By this strange operation the human frame was commonly so transformed and disfigured, as to lose every trace of its natural appearance. Sometimes the head would be twitched right and left to a half round with such velocity that not a feature could be discovered but the face appear as much behind as before, and in the quick progressive jerk, it would seem as if the person was transmuted into some other species of creature. Head-dresses were of little account among the female jerkers. Even handkerchiefs bound tight round the head would be flirted off almost with the first twitch, and the hair put into the utmost confusion; this was a very great inconvenience, to redress which the generality were shorn
, though directly contrary to their confession of faith. Such as were seized with the jerks wrested at once, not only from under their own government, but that of everyone else so that it was dangerous to attempt confining them, or touching them in any manner, to whatever danger they were exposed.”
Toward morning of the third day, a light rain begins to fall. The preachers cry out that it is a signal of God’s anger, and no one makes a move to depart. The agitation of those on the ground grows more violent. The jerks and trances become so frequent that the bodies of the convulsed, are in danger of being trampled under foot, and friends carry them away and lay them out as though for burial. As they recover, they are drawn magnetically to the scene of their seizure and supernatural eloquence possesses them. Their voices are terribly penetrating and they talk for three or four or five hours without a stop. The preachers beg them to be silent, but it is impossible. They keep on crying out their guilt and danger, their hard heart, their desire to die and be damned, and the infinite justice of God if He sent them to the hell they deserve. A little boy, coming out of a seizure in the middle of the night, cries out, “O, I am lost forever, I am going right down to hell. O, I see hell and the breath of the Lord like a stream of brimstone kindling it.” Some remain in a state of torpor from the moment they are seized. Others, when the talking fit has passed, are serene and confident. Some who have been seized before lash themselves in the hope of another visitation. Stories of miracles pass. Deists and infidels have come to sneer at the meeting. One reproaches the preacher and the preacher utters one word in return. The man falls as if dead and rising confesses the Savior. Supercilious young women in silks, jewelry, and prunella come at the beginning of the fourth day and bring with them Northerners visiting the great plantations. They smile with mockery at the scene but, suddenly, their heads and arms jerk so that bonnets and combs fly off, bangles jingle at their wrist, and their hair works loose and cracks like a wagoner’s whip. On the outskirts of the meeting there is roistering in the dead of night. Women, half demented, think they give themselves to Christ in the body of a drunken fornicator and, struck suddenly with the awfulness of their sin, return and shriek and pound their way into a fresh ecstasy. Still the meeting goes on. The resisters are broken down one by one.
“Finally a large man cursed the jerks and all religion. Shortly afterward he took the jerks and started to run, but he jerked so powerfully he could not get away. He halted among some saplings, and although he was violently agitated, he took out his bottle of whiskey, and swore he would drink the jerks to death; but he jerked at such a rate that he could not get the bottle to his mouth, though he tried hard. At length he fetched a sudden jerk, and the bottle struck a sapling and was broken to pieces, and spilled his whiskey on the ground. He became very much enraged and cursed and swore very profanely, his jerks still increasing. At length he fetched a very violent jerk, snapped his neck, fell, and soon expired, with his mouth full of cursing and bitterness.”
The meeting has come to an appropriate climax.
At Gasper River and Cabin Creek in Kentucky, at Spartanburg, South Carolina, at Turtle Creek in North Carolina, in Tennessee, at Holly Springs, Mississippi, in Tuscaloosa and Knoxville, at Muddy River and Red River, the McGreadys, the Cartwrights, the Burkes, the McNemars, the Cummins, the Campbells, and the Stones labored. What is written above is largely drawn from their own accounts and from the reports of their fellow-workers and friendly eye-witnesses in these places. Not all of these phenomena occurred at a single meeting, but at Gasper River, in 1800, the American camp-meeting came into being, and there and in near-by states all of these things took place, and more.
The camp-meeting is the violent form of the revival; the movement they represent has had profound influence on the spiritual history of America giving birth to missions and colleges, to cults and manias, to reform movements of the purest idealism, and to prurient and officious interference with private lives. The actual events are therefore worthy a little more attention. I follow the natural division, noting the physical signs in connection with the camp-meeting, where they were given an intense and almost sinister expression; and leaving for the later revival meetings all questions of doctrine and the meaning of the conversions which they gained.
The camp-meetings of the 1800’s were exceptional even to the people who took part in them and that is probably why the evangelists who conducted them left such vivid accounts of their successes and those who took part so frequently wrote letters describing their experiences. These range from the sophisticated correspondence of indifferent spectators to the naïve enthusiasms of the illiterate. The testimony they bear is identical and out of them we get a composite picture of a long series of events and many hints at hidden motives. A physician, who observed the early meetings and the later decline in frequency and fervor, after making every reservation, still maintained that the good results vastly preponderated over the evil. The camp-meetings roused people from indifference to their destiny, but these effects “were of a mixed nature. They were doubtless attended for improper purposes by a few licentious persons and by others with a view of obtaining a handle to ridicule all religion. . . . The free intercourse of all ages and sexes under cover of the night and the woods was not without its temptations. It is also to be feared that they gave rise to false notions of religion by laying too much stress on bodily exercises, and substituting them in place of moral virtues or inward piety. These were too often considered as evidences of a change of heart and affections, though they neither proved nor disproved anything of the kind.”
One of the great objections was the unnatural excitement to which children were subjected and the prominence which any evidence of hysteria gave them. The revivalist, McNemar, clearly exulting in these signs of heavenly approval, tells of a sacramental meeting near Flemingsburg, in April 1801, where there was “much weeping, trembling, and convulsion of the soul. Two little girls, nine or ten years old, cried out in great distress during the meeting and continued praying and crying for mercy till one of them received hope. She turned to the other and cried, ‘O! you little sinner, come to Christ! Take hold of his promises!—trust in him! — he is above to save to the uttermost—O! The Precious Savior! Come just as you are, he will take away the stony heart and give you a heart of flesh! You can’t make yourself any better.—Just give up your heart to Christ now! You are not a greater sinner than me! You need not wait another moment!’ Thus she continued exhorting until the other child received a ray from heaven that produced a sudden and sensible change; then rising with her in her arms, she cried out in the most affecting manner—’O, here is another star of light!’”
A more normal symptom is the amount of eager discussion in which the people engaged, disputing points of doctrine with each other, or questioning the preacher for further light. It is also pleasing to discover how sectarian differences were sunk in enthusiasm for conversions. Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and subdivisions of these, preached simultaneously or in succession to the same gathering, possibly out of jealous intention to seize every opportunity, but also in the specific belief that the particular pathway was unimportant if it eventually led to the high road of salvation.
The jerks themselves, around which raged a religious controversy as impassioned as any doctrinal struggle between the Early Fathers, have been carefully analyzed for us. Here are some accounts, beginning with the first symptoms of those who were “struck down” and going on to the full development of the fit.
“I suppose I saw as many as 800 that were struck down mostly in the following manner: they say they feel very weak in their knees and a want of breath as one in the agony of death and instantly fall and lay insensible from 15 minutes to six, eight, or ten hours. Some are cramped in the extremities. The first words generally spoken by them after their recovery is, Lord, have mercy, increasing from words to sentences, to exhortations to believe in Christ, to cease to do evil and learn to do well, to depend wholly in the Righteousness of Christ. Their exhort
ations are accompanied with instant power to the hearts of their hearers.”
“The persons who are struck are generally first observed to pay close attention to the preaching; then to weep and shed tears plentifully for a while; after this a twitching or jerking seizes them, and they fall to the ground helpless, and convulsed through their whole frame as if in the agonies of death.”
“It is impossible to give an account of all the various shades of difference in the appearance of those who are affected. The following may serve as a general outline of the work: when a person begins to be affected, he generally sinks down in the place where he stood and is for a few minutes overwhelmed in tears; he then makes a weeping noise—some person near lays hold on him—he shrieks aloud—and discovers a desire to be on his back—in this he is indulged—and a friend sits down and supports the head of the person in his lap. Every tear now leaves his eye and he shouts aloud for about twenty minutes. Meanwhile the features of his face are calm and regular. His voice becomes more and more feeble for about twenty minutes more. By this time he is speechless and motionless and lies quiet perhaps an hour. During this time his pulse is rather lower than the usual state,—the extremities are cold, the skin fresh and clear, the features of the face full, the eyes closed, but not so close as in sleep. Speech and motion return in the same gradual manner; the features become more full than before. Pleasure paints the countenance as peace comes to the soul, and when faith is obtained the person rises up, and with most heavenly countenance shouts—‘Glory to God.’ This ecstasy abates in about a quarter of an hour and the person is generally led away by a friend to his tent.”
The Stammering Century Page 9