Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Consequently, Nina was beset to allow her people to have a tent, in which they were to take turns in staying all night, as candidates for the blessing. In compliance with that law of good-humored indulgence which had been the traditionary usage of her family, Nina acceded; and the Gordon tent spread its snowy sails, to the rejoicing of their hearts. Aunt Rose predominated about the door, alternately slapping the children and joining the chorus of hymns which she heard from every part of the campground. On the outskirts were various rude booths, in which whiskey and water, and sundry articles of provision, and fodder for horses, were dispensed for a consideration. Abijah Skinflint here figured among the money-changers, while his wife and daughter were gossiping through the tents of the women. In front of the seats, under a dense cluster of pines, was the preacher’s stand: a rude stage of rough boards, with a railing around it, and a desk of small slabs, supporting a Bible and a hymn-book.

  The preachers were already assembling; and no small curiosity was expressed with regard to them by the people, who were walking up and down among the tents. Nina, leaning on the arm of Clayton, walked about the area with the rest. Anne Clayton leaned on the arm of Uncle John. Aunt Nesbit and Aunt Maria came behind. To Nina the scene was quite new, for a long residence in the northern states had placed her out of the way of such things; and her shrewd insight into character, and her love of drollery, found an abundant satisfaction in the various little points and oddities of the scene. They walked to the Gordon tent, in which a preliminary meeting was already in full course. A circle of men and women, interspersed with children, were sitting, with their eyes shut, and their heads thrown back, singing at the top of their voices. Occasionally, one or other would vary the exercises by clapping of hands, jumping up straight into the air, falling flat on the ground, screaming, dancing, and laughing.

  “Oh, set me up on a rock!” screamed one.

  “I’s sot up!” screamed another.

  “Glory!” cried the third, and a tempest of “amens” poured in between.

  “I’s got a sperience!” cried one, and forthwith began piping it out in a high key, while others kept on singing.

  “I’s got a sperience!” shouted Tomtit, whom Aunt Rose, with maternal care, had taken with her.

  “No, you ain’t neither! Sit down!” said Aunt Rose, kneading him down as if he had been a batch of biscuits, and going on at the same time with her hymn.

  “I’s on the Rock of Ages!” screamed a neighbor.

  “I want to get on a rock edgeways!” screamed Tomtit, struggling desperately with Aunt Rose’s great fat hands.

  “Mind yourself! — I’ll crack you over!” said Aunt Rose. And Tomtit, still continuing rebellious, was cracked over accordingly, with such force as to send him head-foremost on the straw at the bottom of the tent; an indignity which he resented with loud howls of impotent wrath, which, however, made no impression in the general whirlwind of screaming, shouting, and praying.

  Nina and Uncle John stood at the tent-door laughing heartily. Clayton looked on with his usual thoughtful gravity of aspect. Anne turned her head away with an air of disgust.

  “Why don’t you laugh?” said Nina, looking round at her.

  “It doesn’t make me feel like it,” said Anne. “It makes me feel melancholy.”

  “Why so?”

  “Because religion is a sacred thing with me, and I don’t like to see it travestied,” said she.

  “Oh,” said Nina, “I don’t respect religion any the less for a good laugh at its oddities. I believe I was born without any organ of reverence, and so don’t feel the incongruity of the thing as you do. The distance between laughing and praying isn’t so very wide in my mind as it is in some people’s.”

  “We must have charity,” said Clayton, “for every religious manifestation. Barbarous and half-civilized people always find the necessity for outward and bodily demonstration in worship; I suppose because the nervous excitement wakes up and animates their spiritual natures, and gets them into a receptive state, just as you have to shake up sleeping persons and shout in their ears to put them in a condition to understand you. I have known real conversions to take place under just these excitements.”

  “But,” said Anne, “I think we might teach them to be decent. These things ought not to be allowed!”

  “I believe,” said Clayton, “intolerance is a rooted vice in our nature. The world is as full of different minds and bodies as the woods are of leaves, and each one has its own habit of growth. And yet our first impulse is to forbid everything that would not be proper for us. No, let the African scream, dance, and shout, and fall in trances. It suits his tropical lineage and blood as much as our thoughtful inward ways do us.”

  “I wonder who that is!” said Nina, as a general movement on the ground proclaimed the arrival of some one who appeared to be exciting general interest. The stranger was an unusually tall, portly man, apparently somewhat past the middle of life, whose erect carriage, full figure, and red cheeks, and a certain dashing frankness of manner, might have indicated him as belonging rather to the military than the clerical profession. He carried a rifle on his shoulder, which he set down carefully against the corner of the preacher’s stand, and went around shaking hands among the company with a free and jovial air that might almost be described by the term rollicking.

  “Why,” said Uncle John, “that’s Father Bonnie! How are you, my fine fellow?”

  “What! you, Mr. Gordon? — How do you do?” said Father Bonnie, grasping his hand in his, and shaking it heartily. “Why, they tell me,” he said, looking at him with a jovial smile, “that you have fallen from grace!”

  “Even so!” said Uncle John. “I am a sad dog, I dare say.”

  “Oh, I tell you what,” said Father Bonnie, “but it takes a strong hook and a long line to pull in you rich sinners! Your money-bags and your niggers hang round you like millstones! You are too tough for the gospel! Ah!” said he, shaking his fist at him playfully, “but I’m going to come down upon you, to-day, with the law, I can tell you! You want the thunders of Sinai! You must have a dose of the law!”

  “Well,” said Uncle John, “thunder away! I suppose we need it, all of us. But now, Father Bonnie, you ministers are always preaching to us poor dogs on the evils of riches; but, somehow, I don’t see any of you that are much afraid of owning horses, or niggers, or any other good thing that you can get your hands on. Now, I hear that you’ve got a pretty snug little place, and a likely drove to work it. You’ll have to look out for your own soul, Father Bonnie!”

  A general laugh echoed this retort; for Father Bonnie had the reputation of being a shrewder hand at a bargain, and of having more expertness in swapping a horse or trading a negro, than any other man for six counties round.

  “He’s into you, now, old man!” said several of the bystanders laughingly.

  “Oh, as to that,” said Father Bonnie, laughing, also, “I go in with Paul, — they that preach the gospel must live of the gospel. Now, Paul was a man that stood up for his rights to live as other folks do. ‘Isn’t it right,’ says he, ‘that those that plant a vineyard should first eat of the fruit? Haven’t we power to lead about a sister, a wife?’ says he. And if Paul had lived in our time he would have said a drove of niggers, too! No danger about us ministers being hurt by riches, while you laymen are so slow about supporting the gospel!”

  At the elbow of Father Bonnie stood a brother minister, who was in many respects his contrast. He was tall, thin, and stooping, with earnest black eyes, and a serene sweetness of expression. A threadbare suit of rusty black, evidently carefully worn, showed the poverty of his worldly estate. He carried in his hand a small portmanteau, probably containing a change of linen, his Bible, and a few sermons. Father Dickson was a man extensively known through all that region. He was one of those men among the ministers of America who keep alive our faith in Christianity, and renew on earth the portrait of the old apostle: “In journeyings often, in weariness and painfulness, in watching
s often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Besides those things that are without, that which cometh upon them daily, the care of all the churches. Who is weak, and they are not weak? who is offended, and they burn not?”

  Every one in the state knew and respected Father Dickson; and like the generality of the world, people were very well pleased, and thought it extremely proper and meritorious for him to bear weariness and painfulness, hunger and cold, in their spiritual service, leaving to them the right of attending or not attending to him, according to their own convenience. Father Dickson was one of those who had never yielded to the common customs and habits of the country in regard to the holding of slaves. A few, who had been left him by a relation, he had at great trouble and expense transported to a free state, and settled there comfortably. The world need not trouble itself with seeking to know or reward such men; for the world cannot know and has no power to reward them. Their citizenship is in heaven, and all that can be given them in this life is like a morsel which a peasant gives in his cottage to him who to-morrow will reign over a kingdom.

  He had stood listening to the conversation thus far with the grave yet indulgent air with which he generally listened to the sallies of his ministerial brothers. Father Bonnie, though not as much respected or confided in as Father Dickson, had, from the frankness of his manners, and a certain rude but effective style of eloquence, a more general and apparent popularity. He produced more sensation on the camp-ground; could sing louder and longer, and would often rise into flights of eloquence both original and impressive. Many were offended by the freedom of his manner out of the pulpit; and the stricter sort were known to have said of him, “that when out he never ought to be in, and when in never out.” As the laugh that rose at his last sally died away, he turned to Father Dickson, and said: —

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t think,” said Father Dickson mildly, “that you would ever have found Paul leading a drove of negroes.”

  “Why not, as well as Abraham, the father of the faithful? Didn’t he have three hundred trained servants?”

  “Servants, perhaps; but not slaves!” said Father Dickson, “for they all bore arms. For my part, I think that the buying, selling, and trading of human beings, for purposes of gain, is a sin in the sight of God.”

  “Well, now, Father Dickson, I wouldn’t have thought you had read your Bible to so little purpose as that! I wouldn’t believe it! What do you say to Moses?”

  “He led out a whole army of fugitive slaves through the Red Sea,” said Father Dickson.

  “Well, I tell you, now,” said Father Bonnie, “if the buying, selling, or holding of a slave for the sake of gain is, as you say, a sin, then three fourths of all the Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, in the slave states of the Union, are of the devil!”

  “I think it is a sin, notwithstanding,” said Father Dickson quietly.

  “Well, but doesn’t Moses say expressly, ‘Ye shall buy of the heathen round about you?’”

  “There’s into him!” said a Georgia trader, who, haying camped with a coffle of negroes in the neighborhood, had come up to camp-meeting.

  “All those things,” said Father Dickson, “belong to the old covenant, which Paul says was annulled for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof, and have nothing to do with us, who have risen with Christ. We have got past Mount Sinai and the wilderness, and have come unto Mount Zion; and ought to seek the things that are above, where Christ sitteth.”

  “I say, brother,” said another of the ministers, tapping him on the shoulder, “it’s time for the preaching to begin. You can finish your discussion some other time. Come, Father Bonnie, come forward, here, and strike up the hymn.”

  Father Bonnie accordingly stepped to the front of the stand, and with him another minister, of equal height and breadth of frame, and standing with their hats on, they uplifted, in stentorian voices, the following hymn: —

  “Brethren don’t you hear the sound?

  The martial trumpet now is blowing;

  Men in order listing round,

  And soldiers to the standard flowing.”

  As the sound of the hymn rolled through the aisles and arches of the wood, the heads of different groups, who had been engaged in conversation, were observed turning toward the stand, and voices from every part of the campground took up the air, as, suiting the action to the words, they began flowing to the place of preaching. The hymn went on, keeping up the same martial images: —

  “Bounty offered, life and peace;

  To every soldier this is given,

  When the toils of life shall cease,

  A mansion bright, prepared in heaven.”

  As the throng pressed up, and came crowding from the distant aisles of the wood, the singers seemed to exert themselves to throw a wilder vehemence into the song, stretching out their arms and beckoning eagerly. They went on singing: —

  “You need not fear; the cause is good,

  Let who will to the crown aspire:

  In this cause the martyrs bled,

  And shouted victory in the fire.

  “In this cause let’s follow on,

  And soon we’ll tell the pleasing story,

  How by faith we won the crown,

  And fought our way to life and glory.

  “Oh, ye rebels, come and ‘list!

  The officers are now recruiting:

  Why will you in sin persist,

  Or waste your time in vain disputing?

  “All excuses now are vain;

  For, if you do not sue for favor,

  Down you’ll sink to endless pain,

  And bear the wrath of God forever.”

  There is always something awful in the voice of the multitude. It would seem as if the breath that a crowd breathed out together, in moments of enthusiasm, carried with it a portion of the dread and mystery of their own immortal natures. The whole area before the pulpit, and in the distant aisles of the forest, became one vast, surging sea of sound, as negroes and whites, slaves and free men, saints and sinners, slave-holders, slave-hunters, slave-traders, ministers, elders, and laymen, alike joined in the pulses of that mighty song. A flood of electrical excitement seemed to rise with it, as, with a voice of many waters, the rude chant went on: —

  “Hark! the victors singing loud!

  Emanuel’s chariot wheels are rumbling;

  Mourners weeping through the crowd,

  And Satan’s kingdom down is tumbling!”

  Our friend, Ben Dakin, pressed to the stand, and with tears streaming down his cheeks, exceeded all others in the energy of his vociferations. Ben had just come from almost a fight with another slave-hunter, who had boasted a better-trained pack of dogs than his own; and had broken away to hurry to the camp-ground, with the assurance that he’d “give him fits when the preachin’ was over;” and now he stood there, tears rolling down his cheeks, singing with the heartiest earnestness and devotion. What shall we make of it? Poor heathen Ben! is it any more out of the way for him to think of being a Christian in this manner than for some of his more decent brethren, who take Sunday passage for eternity in the cushioned New York or Boston pews, and solemnly drowse through very sleepy tunes, under a dim, hazy impression that they are going to heaven? Of the two, we think Ben’s chance is the best; for in some blind way he does think himself a sinner, and in need of something he calls salvation; and, doubtless, while the tears stream down his face, the poor fellow makes a new resolve against the whiskey-bottle, while his more respectable sleepy brethren never think of making one against the cotton-bale.

  Then there was his rival, also, Jim Stokes, — a surly, foul-mouthed, swearing fellow, — he joins in the chorus of the hymn, and feels a troublous, vague yearning, deep down within him, which makes him for the moment doubt whether he had better knock down Ben at the end of the meeting.

  As to Harry, who stood also among the crowd, the words and tune recalled but too vividly the inc
idents of his morning’s interview with Dred, and with it the tumultuous boiling of his bitter controversy with the laws of the society in which he found himself. In hours of such high excitement, a man seems to have an intuitive perception of the whole extent and strength of what is within himself; and if there be anything unnatural or false in his position, he realizes it with double intensity.

  Mr. John Gordon, likewise, gave himself up, without resistance, to he swayed by the feeling of the hour. He sang with enthusiasm, and wished he was a soldier of somebody, going somewhere, or a martyr shouting victory in the fire; and if the conflict described had been with any other foe than his own laziness and self-indulgence — had there been any outward, tangible enemy at the moment — he would doubtless have enlisted, without loss of time.

  When the hymn was finished, however, there was a general wiping of eyes, and they all sat down to listen to the sermon. Father Bonnie led off in an animated strain. His discourse was like the tropical swamp, bursting out with a lush abundance of every kind of growth — grave, gay, grotesque, solemn, fanciful, and even coarse caricature, provoking the broadest laughter. The audience were swayed by him like trees before the wind. There were not wanting touches of rude pathos as well as earnest appeals. The meeting was a union one of Presbyterians and Methodists, in which the ministers of both denominations took equal part; and it was an understood agreement among them, of course, that they were not to venture upon polemic ground, or attack each other’s peculiarities of doctrine. But Abijah’s favorite preacher could not get through a sermon without some quite pointed exposition of Scripture bearing on his favorite doctrine of election, which caused the next minister to run a vehement tilt on the correlative doctrines of free grace, with a eulogy on John Wesley. The auditors, meanwhile, according to their respective sentiments, encouraged each preacher with a cry of “Amen!”