By the Rivers of Water

by Erskine Clarke

  Among the causes that both Palmer and Grimké supported was the colonization of African Americans in what was being called Liberia in West Africa—a cause closely linked to the evangelical enthusiasm stirred by the Great Awakening. Those who felt themselves transformed by God’s grace and benevolence—by God’s goodwill toward humanity—felt themselves called to follow the admonition of the Epistle of James to be not only “hearers of the Word,” but also “doers of the Word.” They were to act with benevolence toward all. And so they had begun to organize a new kind of religious institution—voluntary societies of private individuals for reform and for missionary or charitable purposes. During the early decades of the nineteenth century, the converted had been organizing societies for prison reform, for education, for temperance, for orphans, for aid to seamen, and for missions at home and abroad. Sometimes these voluntary societies not only came into competition with one another but also clashed directly with one another. Antislavery societies challenged vehemently the assumptions of colonization societies, and missionary societies were to challenge and be challenged by both colonization and antislavery societies. The zeal to do good had already led by the 1830s to divisiveness and bitter accusations among the converted.35

  In Charleston, colonization was a cause that was bitterly opposed by many—both whites and blacks. For many whites, colonization seemed like a threat to slavery, and for many blacks it appeared to be a kind of deportation of free persons of color. But colonization had great appeal to both Charles Henry and Charles Snetter, and they were apparently encouraged by Palmer and Grimké. Since an attempted slave revolt in 1822, said to be led by the free black Denmark Vesey, white authorities had made life increasingly difficult for free blacks in the city. The limited privileges they enjoyed had been further restricted—free black males who had recently entered the state were heavily taxed; any free blacks who left the state were prohibited from returning; free black sailors arriving in Charleston were to be imprisoned until the time for their ship’s departure; and all free blacks had to secure white guardians or face expulsion from the state. In addition, the state legislature made the emancipation of a slave by a white owner even more difficult than it had been before 1822.36

  Given these new restrictions, Henry and Snetter had paid attention when a colony of freed African Americans had been established at Cape Mesurado, West Africa, in the 1820s. Already the colonists had established a little town they called Monrovia after President James Monroe, one of the supporters of the movement. The American Colonization Society, which was promoting the effort, was urging free blacks throughout the country to return to their “motherland,” join the settlers in Monrovia, and become a powerful force for bringing Christian faith and civilization to “benighted Africa.”37

  A few months after Snetter joined Henry’s class at Circular, the two men gathered with other free blacks at the home of Titus Gregorie, an old friend of Henry’s, in order to discussion emigration. Henry was elected secretary of the meeting and took careful minutes, which were later polished in the rhetoric of colonization and published. After much discussion, Henry rose to speak. “Africa,” he said, “the land of our fathers, although surrounded with clouds of darkness, seems to me to be extending her arms towards us as her only hope of relief, and calling on us loudly for help—saying, ‘I struggle for light and for liberty, and call upon you by the names of your ancestors to come to My help and Your rightful possession.’” He then moved that they answer the call and “that we take the Bible for our chart, with a full Supply of love, hope, and faith, and leave the land that gave us birth, and emigrate to Liberia, in Africa, the land of our ancestors, there to spend the remnant of our days, in peace and harmony.” They were, said Henry, to “go to Africa as harbingers of peace, in the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ, and determined by every virtuous deed, to set such examples as shall be worthy of the Christian name.” Snetter then rose and declared that he approved the motion and that “he and his family would leave the shores of Carolina for those of Africa, as soon as an opportunity was afforded them.”38

  In the spring of 1832, both Henry and Snetter, along with their families and a number of other free blacks from Charleston, left the land of slavery to sail to the land of their ancestors. Henry and most of his family lived only a few months before succumbing to African fever. But Snetter and his family survived the fever, and in a few years they found their lives entangled on those distant shores with the lives of Leighton, Jane Bayard, and those who had lived in the slave settlement on Hutchinson Island.39

  WHILE HENRY AND Snetter were making plans to take their families to Liberia, Leighton was making arrangements to enter the newly established theological seminary in Columbia, South Carolina. Charleston Union Presbytery had examined him to see if he was prepared to study for the ministry. The presbytery asked him about “his experimental acquaintance with religion and his views in desiring to enter the gospel ministry,” and then, a few days later, it had rigorously examined him on his knowledge of Latin and Greek; on geography and astronomy; on moral philosophy, mathematics, and botany; and finally, on rhetoric and logic. The presbytery sustained his exam and approved him as a candidate for the ministry. The ministers and lay elders of the presbytery wanted to be sure not only about his piety and moral rectitude but also about his education. Did he possess a broadly based classical education? Was he able to be a bearer of civility and tradition, a representative of an established order? Was he ready to plunge deeply into the history and theology of the Christian faith and to utilize classical languages in his work as a minister of the gospel?40

  The presbytery was clearly guarding the entrance into its clergy membership—an elite and disciplined clergy, together with supportive lay elders, was asserting its legitimacy and authority. The exam, along with the even more rigorous exam that followed Leighton’s theological education in Columbia, was intended, among other things, to distance him from the farmer preachers of the backwoods who plowed their fields during the week and sowed the Word on Sunday as the Spirit moved them and from the Methodist circuit riders, who, with little formal education, were sweeping west with amazing success. These popular preachers were speaking the language of the people, challenging old authorities, and ushering in a leveling and democratic spirit that was beginning to reshape much of the nation’s religious life. In the years ahead, Leighton learned to admire—and even have deep affection for—many of these “brothers” and to think of them as colleagues. But he never gave up the idea of a learned ministry, and he was hard pressed not to be dismissive of preachers who shouted in what he regarded as an unseemly fashion and who did not engage as he thought they should in a learned and careful study of a biblical text.41

  Leighton was in the first class of students at Columbia Theological Seminary. The seminary, located in a handsome mansion, had been organized by affluent whites—primarily from the Lowcountry—who wanted a Southern seminary to throw the light of the gospel into such howling wildernesses as Alabama and Mississippi and the frontier regions of Georgia, to “shine,” as its founding document declared, “upon the pathway of the benighted, and those who have long groped in the dim twilight of unenlightened reason.” Palmer was on the seminary’s board of directors, as was Leighton’s uncle Robert James; James Adger was soon also on the board, adding his business acumen to the management of the seminary’s growing endowment. George Howe, a New Englander, left Dartmouth College to accept a position at the seminary and quickly established himself as the leading member of the faculty. Leighton felt an immediate admiration for Howe and looked to him as a mentor whose judgment he could trust.42

  The little band of students—only seven that first year—soon became close friends. Moultrie Reid was a Charlestonian and a member of Circular church. Francis Goulding was a son of one of the professors and came from a family with deep roots in the Georgia Lowcountry. James Merrick, a graduate of Amherst, was from Massachusetts and was soon encouraging in Leighton a vision of an expan
ding mission movement. There was more than enough room in the mansion for everyone in this first class, but there was no easy way for them to get their meals—the idea of their doing their own cooking seemed beyond them. They struggled through their early months eating here and there, but when more students joined them they decided to band together and form an eating club. Leighton wrote his father and asked if they could hire old Jacob for their cook, and he added, in a note to his sister Martha, “and we need some other servants immediately.” William Wilson was apparently unwilling to hire out his old cook, so Jacob stayed at Boggy Gully, and the seminarians found help in Columbia to do their cooking and washing and cleaning.43

  In his senior year at the seminary, Leighton decided to offer himself as a missionary under the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Boston. The board—one of the most influential of the voluntary societies—had had its origin among college students. In 1806, some students from Williams College had been caught in a summer rain and had taken shelter in a haystack. There they had talked and prayed and had committed themselves to missionary work abroad. In 1810 at Andover Theological Seminary, they had organized, in the spirit of the time, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The board, along with other mission societies that were beginning to be organized, marked a shift in Protestant life in the United States, in Britain, and in the continental churches. Since the Reformation, Protestants had been largely uninterested in foreign missions—leaving the “heathen” to the providence of God. But with their new evangelical enthusiasm aroused by the revivals of the awakening, they were on their way to making foreign missions one of their great efforts in the nineteenth century. The American Board quickly made itself a leading agency for missions. While it drew support from several denominations, it was largely run by New England Congregationalists with significant help from Presbyterians in the Middle Atlantic and Southern states.44

  Early in 1832 Leighton wrote his sister in the language and piety of the new mission movement: “I suppose you were all surprised at the subject of my last letter to Pa, but I hope you would all cheerfully consent and be even proud to see me so much honoured as to be a Foreign Missionary. If a man of the world were appointed to negotiate for our government with other nations of the earth, he would feel honoured and everybody else would look upon him as an honoured and a distinguished man.” Ought then, he asked, “that man to feel honoured who is commissioned by Jesus Christ, King of Kings, to carry and proclaim the glad news of salvation to those who ‘sit in the dark places of the earth’?” He soon found that not everyone—even among church people—shared his views.45

  Leighton turned his eyes toward Africa. There were American pastors among the settlers in Liberia, but their attention was focused on the African American settlers, not the Africans. The British had missionaries in a few scattered parts of West Africa, as did some of the continental mission societies, but there were no focused missionary efforts by Americans in West Africa. As Leighton continued to think carefully about the black men and women whom he knew in the Black River settlements, and about the bitter history of slavery in the South, he began to feel, as a white Southerner, a particular responsibility for Africa. Like “benighted” white settlers on the Southern frontier who “groped in the dim twilight of unenlightened reason,” Africans were regarded by most whites as “benighted,” as people who walked in deep darkness and not in the light. Leighton talked to Howe, who said that he would prefer that Leighton stay in the South, where there was such a great need for civilized Christianity, but he would not try to influence him one way or another.46

  Leighton wrote to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Boston and immediately received an enthusiastic reply. They had been waiting, they said, for a Southern man to offer himself for the West African field. A Southerner, it was supposed, could better survive the climate and the deadly African fevers than a Northerner, and there was a great need to start a mission in this large and populous region of the earth. So Leighton made his decision and began to make ready his application to the board. Several others in his small class were also thinking about foreign missions—they had organized their own Society for Inquiry on Missions, and one classmate, James Merrick, was soon to leave for Persia. But most in Leighton’s class and in the classes that immediately followed found strong opposition from their families, or had health problems preventing them from embarking on such a vocation, or simply felt called to a nearby church. Still, there were young graduates from other seminaries who were going abroad. Among them was Leighton’s friend John Adger, who was already on his way to Turkey to work as a translator of the Bible and religious tracts. Leighton was committed to mission work; he faced, however, his own pressing difficulty. He did not want to go alone, but with a wife.47

  He had in fact been looking for a wife for some months, ever since he had started thinking about being a missionary. But where was he to find one? He wrote his sister that he would like to find a companion near home, “but where is she?” And if he found one, “a mountain of parental objection is to be climbed and a thousand painful circumstances met before there is any prospect of success. My heart faints at such an undertaking. I believe I can contemplate the stake with more composure than I can the act of taking away a girl from the bosom of unwilling parents.” Leighton did make a try at romance with Margaret Adger, John’s sister. She wanted to go to the mission field, and her parents would not stand in the way, having already agreed to support John in his mission work. But Leighton’s overtures seemed more pragmatic than romantic, and Margaret saw the difference and responded in kind. John wrote her that when she knew him better she may “find him an object to love.” But she was adamant. “Affection,” she wrote John, “is not to be forced, and it is a fearful risk to run, the usefulness, as well as the happiness of his future life and my own, may depend, indeed I may say does depend upon it. . . . Ought I to consent to marry a man, whom I do not love?—would it not be doing him injustice—would you not consider it a poor compliment from any woman?” So Leighton consoled himself with the idea that he was called to go alone to Africa.48

  Then his classmate Francis Goulding told him about the Bayard sisters in Savannah.

  Chapter Four

  A Place Seen from Afar

  Leighton made immediate plans to go to Savannah to see for himself if the Bayard sisters were, as reported, “very intelligent and amiable”—and, not least, if he had any chance of persuading one of them to become his wife. Leighton was particularly intrigued by what Francis Goulding had told him about Jane—she seemed, from what his friend said, to be attractive beyond his wildest hopes. So he wrote his father for money to make the trip. He wrote his sister Sarah that Goulding “has made me believe that Miss B is the next to the best Girl in Savannah—Mary Howard his own being not only the best in Savannah but in the world.” Leighton was nervous as a cat about what he called his “projected scheme,” remembering, no doubt, how he had botched his attempt at romance with Margaret Adger. He confessed to Sarah: “If Miss B is the next to the best in the world, she must be a great many times too good for me.” He insisted that Sarah not say a word about the trip, and he worried that his other classmates would learn why he was suddenly going to Savannah—“I am trembling for fear I shall be suspected,” he said. Still, he was determined to go, although he seemed to go back and forth between thinking about both Jane and Margaret Bayard and thinking only about Jane. “The young ladies,” he wrote, “have already made up their minds to the world of missions and they have no parents to say they shan’t go.” But then, gathering his courage, he added: “It is a long way from here, but if she is a worthy girl, she is worth going for.” His plan was to stay in Savannah for two weeks or more and “to have effected something definite one way or the other before I leave.” He sounded like a businessman exploring the possibilities of a good deal, but he was much more the novice at romance. He simply trusted, perhaps wisely, in the providence of the Lord, rather
than his own charm.1

  Leighton arrived in Savannah in mid-November 1832 and went to the home of Joseph Cumming, an elder in the city’s First Presbyterian Church and one of the leading citizens of the city. There he learned that Jane Bayard would be teaching a Sunday school class for African American children at the First African Baptist Church. He made his plans accordingly. When he arrived at the church, he found Jane surrounded by children and deeply engaged in her teaching. He was stunned. Before him was a young woman—tall and slender, with blond hair, blue eyes, and a very pretty face. She was moving among the children with ease, had the confidence of a well-connected Bayard, and projected modesty and earnest piety. He was not only stunned, he was smitten. On her part, Jane looked up in the midst of her teaching and saw a young man enter her class. He was tall—six feet two inches—with a handsome face and broad shoulders, and he possessed what friends would later describe in fine Victorian fashion as a “manly physique” and “splendid chest.” With his transparent character, Jane may very well have sensed his startled, smitten heart.2

  Mary Howard, Goulding’s fiancé, made arrangements for them to meet at the Howard home, one of the city’s fashionable mansions with its formal parlor one level above the street. There, with Mary Howard and Francis Goulding coming and going, Jane and Leighton sat and talked together for hours about their shared commitments to missions and their dreams of being a part of a great movement of the church across the earth. They took long walks through Savannah’s streets and parks in the balmy days of late November as all about them black men and women went about their work of hauling, cleaning, and building. Leighton called at the Bayard home and met Margaret as well as a young man from Princeton seminary, James Eckard, who had arrived in the city hoping to propose to Margaret. Eckard already knew Nicholas Bayard—the families had connections in Pennsylvania. Leighton also met Nicholas, and he liked the young banker and the kind way in which he treated his sisters. And, very quickly, Leighton and Jane fell deeply in love. After one of their evenings together, Leighton returned to his room at Joseph Cumming’s home and wrote, “to her, who tho’ a stranger two weeks ago, now is the nearest and dearest object to my heart on the face of the earth.” He confessed that he had feelings “which I never before dreamed of. Again and again have I asked myself is this not a pleasing dream. No, no, I am awake—I have my pen in hand and my paper is before me. It is no dream. Jane is mine and my heart exults with joy.” He later wrote that they had been together long enough “for you to master the best feelings of my heart.” Their “long and sweet walks” were, he said, “forever engraved on my memory. I delight in the reflection that you love me, trust me, and pray for me.” 3