Like all boys, I imagined forms in the clouds, sheep and puffs of cannon smoke, smoke signals from Indians, ghostly faces. I thought I saw prophets and apostles from the Bible and my ancestors beyond the blue staring at me.
Once after service our pastor, Reverend Wilson, a friend of Reverend Wesley, looked up at the steep and shining clouds and said, “Such a sight shows the presence and glory of God. How could anyone doubt it?”
I never forgot what he said, for his words gave me a shiver so strong it hurt. And after that I couldn’t look up at the clouds without thinking of the face of God up there, a ghostly beard staring at me. Pastor Wilson said when Jesus returned and split the east in all his glory the clouds would part and he would appear to be standing on the clouds. When I looked up I expected to see Jesus soaring up there.
When I was at school at the College of William and Mary I would leave my studies from time to time to rest my eyes. I studied Latin and Greek and Hebrew until the letters swam before my eyes. To refresh myself I walked in the fields and lay down in the grass and watched the clouds over apple trees and hickory trees. I found that the farther away I looked the more refreshed I felt.
Later when I was walking on my circuit there in North Carolina, from church to church and congregation to congregation, I sometimes rested by the road or by a spring to ease my weary feet, and I watched the flocks and armies of clouds appear from the north and float to the south, in even formation. I watched the clouds drift as though grazing on the blue, and felt the wholeness and peacefulness of God’s handiwork. It was a privilege to be alive with such beauty, as it was a privilege to serve the people of those hinterlands and settlements. Lift up your eyes unto the hills, I said, from whence cometh your help. And then I took out my flute and played to the trees and meadows, to the sunlight and breeze, or I opened my songbook and sang a carol for the foxes and deer in the thickets.
To see the new churches there on the frontier growing and strengthening would bring tears to my eyes. For I was blessed to have that chance, to begin at each place with a few, maybe four or five, sitting on a log or beneath a shade tree, on Briar Fork and Crowfoot, at Zion Hill and Beulah, and in a year or so each place had built a little church, a meeting place, and held regular services.
It was the least I could do to honor all the preachers who had gone before me for almost eighteen centuries, to carry song and word into the wilderness, to make each place more real by placing a chapel there, even a log chapel, to show where eternity connected with time in this world, and the presence of God was everywhere and anywhere we opened our hearts.
I had been blessed beyond my wildest plans to find so many there beyond the canebrakes and thickets willing to listen, thirsty for the word, happy to sing and testify and be baptized. I had come to the wilderness to witness and to pray, and my message was one of song and praise. I thought a service and a sermon were to give hope and strength in a troubled time. I almost never talked of hell, for people in those desperate days lived in their own hells. No need to warn them of suffering, for they were already suffering. I was called, if I was called at all, to bring joy and confidence to frightened and uncertain people. I could not countenance hate and killing. I would preach only love and praise. Our lives were too short for hatred and revenge.
When I was weary from all the burning and looting and hanging of the rebellion, the tarring and feathering and raping I saw almost every day, I would sometimes look up at the clouds to see beyond our time. Looking into the clouds was like looking off into eternity. And the clouds were going about their business of beauty and silence beyond the human depredations. To look into the clouds was to see into the larger scope and scale of things, the long time passing, to everlasting things. And I shuddered to think how little connected that world was to this. And I thought how little relation that vastness and steadiness had to this. It was a mystery beyond my understanding. I looked at the meadows and sun on the hills, and the lushness of ferns in a glade, and I thought how ugliness came from men, and how it was men that chose evil.
Sometimes a song would help wash away the ugliness, and sometimes it wouldn’t. Sometimes only work and time would clear away the hideousness of what people did. Again and again I had noticed that just when we were ready to give up on our fellow men because they seemed hopeless and wicked, someone would surprise us with goodness and kindness, humility or sacrifice, and then we would want to start anew, building a community and fellowship. For we gave each other strength, and most of what we learned we learned from other people.
• • •
FROM THE FIRST TIME I saw Joseph I thought there was something different about him. In the lantern light at Zion Hill he looked so troubled and lonely, so pale on the back bench, cold and frightened. I had never seen a more sensitive face, a more alert face, or sadder countenance. Something terrible burdened his mind, something too awful for him to utter. I was struck by the hurt in his eyes even as I spoke and sang. I never saw anyone more in need of comfort and fellowship. I never saw anyone more in need of friendship. When he fainted in the church I saw he must not have eaten for days, and that some terrible secret weighed on his mind.
I saw it was my duty to invite him home with me. For what is our testimony worth if we cannot extend a hand to the homeless and hungry? What is a sermon worth if it cannot be applied? I never saw anyone more weary, or more grateful for a kindly word.
WHEN I KNEW I had the call, my goal was to become a priest in the Church of England. I hoped I might study at Oxford and be ordained an Anglican. I was in Richmond teaching music and letters to the sons of planters when I met the missionary sent by Reverend John Wesley. Never had I seen such power in preaching, such eloquence and sincerity, combined with learning and joy. The missionary, Reynolds Williams, told the story of Reverend Wesley’s journey to the New World in his youth, of his work in Georgia and his meeting the Moravians. He told the story of Reverend Wesley’s conversion by simple faith, his true acceptance of justification, even after he was ordained.
“We do not need ministers of vast learning,” Reverend Williams said. “We need men of faith and joy to bring the Good News to this vast continent. We need men with confidence in themselves and courage in their hearts to bring a message of love and peace to these troubled colonies.”
The war had just broken out the year before. The Congress had met in Philadelphia to declare independence. Whatever hopes I had of going to Oxford were no longer practicable anyway. But the missionary had shown me another way to serve. It seemed his words were directed especially to me.
“We need young men to go into the backcountry of Carolina,” he said. “We need men not afraid of the howling wilderness, where Indians and bears and panthers lurk. We need ministers to carry hope and comfort to those caught up in bloody conflict, to those isolated, to victims of hate and anger. We need ministers who can soothe the fury of these times with hymnody and prayer and the spirit of forgiveness.”
Reverend Williams accepted me as his student and he tutored me throughout the summer and autumn of 1776. Before winter came he ordained me in the church at Richmond. He ordained me because I promised to carry song and Scripture into the farthest settlements of North Carolina.
“We can give you only a small salary,” Reynolds Williams said. “We cannot even provide you with a horse for your travels. The war has interrupted our supply from England. I’m afraid you must find much of your own subsistence. We will send you a pound every month, when we can. And you must write a letter each month informing me of your whereabouts and your progress. As long as letters can get through in these times of rebellion I need to receive your reports. And when these troubles are over perhaps we can provide a larger stipend. For now you are the evangelist, establishing services and churches on ground where no Christian worship was ever heard.”
The missionary Williams gave me a prayer book and a hymnbook to carry with my Bible. He gave me his blessings and his commission. “You are another John going into the wilderness with
song and prayer,” he said. “Go with Christ’s blessing to witness and inspire.”
With my few belongings in a sack slung over my shoulder I made my way west from Richmond to the Great Wagon Road down the Valley of Virginia. The road was the main route of immigration from Philadelphia to the Carolinas. Families traveled south and west along its track. They traveled in wagons and carts and on foot, and on horseback and mule back. They drove cattle and sheep and hogs and slept in tents or thickets, or in their wagons. Oxen labored along the red-clay ruts.
It took a month for me to walk to the Piedmont of Carolina. On rainy days I slipped and stumbled through mud like red grease. In dry spells I walked through dust that rose like smoke from hooves and feet and wheels. Along the way I sang and prayed by campfires. I read from the prayer book and I read from the Scriptures. Often those around the campfires joined in the singing and prayer. I baptized several babies born on the way. I performed a marriage ceremony in western Virginia. I said the burial service for some who died.
I was pleased to be going away from the war, into the lush valleys of the South. I was a shy preacher at first, but the very roughness of the people and the road inspired me. Compared to the labor of travel and the rude folk and danger and vexation of the elements, I was the soul of wit and eloquence. The Reverend Williams had seen something in me, and he had been right. I had found my place and my people. And sometimes I was paid to teach music and letters to the children, and often I was given provisions as well as coins after services.
In the news I got from other travelers and from newspapers that circulated through the camps, I saw the rebellion was spreading, not dying out. There had been more fighting in New York and New England. A patriot army had been defeated at Montreal. Every colony was raising militias and sending soldiers to the Continental army. Those loyal to the Crown were beaten and tarred and hanged in some districts. Those joining the rebellion had their houses burned; their lives threatened, in other communities.
The Reverend Williams had warned me to stay above the fray. “You are not to take sides in this rebellion,” he said. “You are a minister of peace and love. You cannot witness while supporting killing and hatred for your fellow men. The message of the Gospels is clear: love one another even as I have loved you. If you compromise yourself by taking sides in this civil war your ministry will be destroyed.”
On the road south I passed militias drilling in fields and meadows, houses that had been burned by loyalists or patriots, bodies hanged from trees with signs around the necks saying DEATH TO TYRANNY OR DEATH TO TRAITORS. I grew accustomed to cutting bodies down and digging graves and praying over burials. The section of the prayer book I used most often was “The Burial of the Dead.”
By the time I reached the foothills of Carolina, near the Catawba River, the rebellion had spread into South Carolina and Georgia. The whole continent was in turmoil. Charlotte just down the river had declared its independence and was known as a patriot town. I chose to stop at the Catawba River and begin my work. I could have gone on into South Carolina or maybe even Georgia. How did I know when to pause and begin my witness?
It was winter, after Christmas, and one night I stood beside a camp-fire on the banks of the Catawba River and sang hymns with the travelers who had stopped there. Some were drovers, rougher men than most I met. A jug of spirits was passed from man to man in the firelight, even as I prayed and sang with them.
“Reverend,” a man with a long beard and ragged coat called out to me. “Reverend, you can’t do no good here,” he said.
“I will do what good I can,” I said.
The man took another drink from the jug and laughed. “There ain’t no god here,” he said. “This is Indian country. God don’t come this far into the woods.” He and his companions laughed again.
“God is everywhere,” I said. “We only need to call on him and he will hear us.”
The man looked up into the night sky and said, “I don’t see no god up there.”
“The spirit of the Lord is all around you,” I said. “And the spirit of the Lord is within you.”
The man with the long beard belched a long belch and grunted with relief. “Now I feel better,” he said.
I saw that I had been given a sign. I had been sent a message by the most unlikely messenger. A voice told me that I had come to the place where I must begin my work. There on the banks of the river north of Charlotte a drunken man had said God did not come to this forbidding forest. I had found the place I was needed. I saw I had been guided by an unexpected hand. Where there was no song or prayer, no thought of the presence of the Comforter, I must begin.
I soon found there were churches scattered among the settlements east of the river. The villages and larger settlements had a few ministers. But west of the river, in the hills that repeated themselves forever across the distant valleys to the mountains, there were no congregations, no word or song. It was a world of briars and thickets, swampy valleys and rough trails, scattered cabins and tiny fields along branches. There was the town of Quaker Meadows to the north, later called Morganton, and Gilbert Town to the southwest. But most of the country between was wild. Families had settled in a few valleys and along ridge tops where the woods were thinner. Cherokees claimed much of the land and sometimes made hunting forays into the river valley.
I began by walking from cabin to cabin and praying with each family. I sang and read from Scripture. I agreed to hold services in the cabins on Sundays. I sent word to all the neighbors there would be a service on Sunday afternoon. And I began to build a cabin for myself with the help of one Curtis Satterfield on Pine Knot Branch, a few miles west of the river.
My fear was that no one would gather at the Satterfield home on that first Sunday. But eleven people assembled. They came out of the woods on horses and on foot, and they sat on benches by the fireplace, filling the little room. An exhilaration seized me. I knew this was the test. If I could draw people from the forest and ridges just once I had made a first step. I was so relieved to see the congregation in the little house I was inspired in my singing and in my reading from the prayer book, in my brief sermon. The air I breathed was richer as I stood before them. The light was brighter in that dim cabin as I sang a second hymn. This is what you must do and what you will do, I said to myself. I promised that when spring came to the foothills I would build a log church on the ridge and call it Zion Hill. And I knew that I would swing farther west and begin services there too. My back was strong and my hands were ready. I stood at the far edge of Christendom, pushing a way into the dark forest.
BUT EVEN AS I found my congregations and built my little churches on branches and distant hillsides, the war of rebellion raged all around. I read the newspapers that were available and listened to those I met and ministered to. Sometimes it seemed the war was a foreign thing, with battles in New England, a great victory of the patriots at Saratoga in New York won by Col. Daniel Morgan of Virginia, George Washington’s victories at Trenton and Princeton, his defeat at the Brandy-wine, and the terrible winter of 1778 at Valley Forge. Those events were talked about like rumors.
But everything changed when the British landed in Georgia and took Savannah that same year. I heard it was Gen. Archibald Campbell who drove the rebel militias out of the city and into the back country. But the big loss was Charleston. Lord Charles Cornwallis sailed to that city and took it from Gen. Benjamin Lincoln. They said many patriots were killed or routed. That’s when the war got closer. Charleston was the port, the trading center where people of the Carolina hills took their furs and stock to sell.
People said they figured it was Lord Cornwallis’s plan to conquer the Carolinas and march on to Virginia where he would link up with the rest of the British army. And that turned out to be true, because he began to move his huge army up the river to the wilderness of South Carolina in the summer of 1780. We heard great stories about how militias led by Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter harried the royal army. The patriots lived in swamps an
d thickets, ambushed patrols, stole horses and supply wagons.
Pretty soon everybody knew about Cornwallis’s cavalry commander, Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton. He was only twenty-six but already famous as a fierce fighter that never lost a battle. They said Tarleton was bold to the point of recklessness. He led his Green Dragoons across South Carolina, riding down on militias and chopping rebels to pieces with razor-sharp sabers.
The worst story was of the Waxhaws south of Charlotte in May 1780 when he won a battle, then ordered all the prisoners killed. That’s when the phrase “Tarleton’s quarter” became known. Tarleton’s quarter was no quarter at all. He never took prisoners, and he became known as “Bloody Tarleton,” as he won victories all over South Carolina. I read about it in a newspaper I got from Charlotte. Newspapers were passed from hand to hand, but you had to be careful who saw you had a rebel newspaper or a loyalist newspaper. Just reading the enemy’s newspaper could get you whipped or your house burned.
As I traveled on my circuit in the summer of 1780, preaching and praying, baptizing and singing, I heard about the terrible battle of Camden in central South Carolina on August 16. Gen. Horatio Gates who commanded the southern Continental army was defeated by Cornwallis. Word spread fast about how Gates fled on his horse and never stopped until he reached Hillsborough, North Carolina. He was relieved of command by George Washington and replaced by Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island, who everybody seemed to admire.
People said a militia had been organized in the upcountry of South Carolina by Andrew Pickens of the Long Canes. But Pickens had been defeated and forced to swear an oath that he would never fight the Crown again. I heard story after story about how Tarleton and his dragoons and legion swept all over the interior of South Carolina, from Fort Ninety Six to the foothills of the Spartan District, burning the houses of patriots, hanging rebels and those suspected of being rebels in their own front yards, raping womenfolk, stealing whatever livestock and provender they found.
Brave Enemies - A Novel Of The American Revolution Page 6
