The Stammering Century

by Gilbert Seldes

  An evangelist writes, “It would be exceedingly difficult to draw an intelligible representation of the effects of this work upon the human body. Some are more easily and gently wrought than others, some appear wholly wrapped in solitude while others cannot refrain from pouring out their whole souls in exhortation to those standing round;—different stages from mild swoons to convulsive spasms, may be seen;—The nerves are not unfrequently severely cramped;—The subjects generally exhibit appearances, as though their very hearts would burst out of their mouths.—The lungs are violently agitated and all accompanied with an helation;—They universally declare, that they feel no bodily pain at the moment of exercise, although some complain of a sore breast and the effects of cramping, after the work is over;—The pulse of all whom I observed beat quick and regular, the extremities of the body are sometimes perceptibly cold.—In short no art or desire could imitate the exercise.—No mimic would be able to do justice to the exhibition.”

  Two general descriptions both taken from letters and apparently describing the same meeting, follow.

  “A more tremendous sight never struck the eyes of mortal man. The very clouds seemed to separate and give way to the praises of the people of God ascending to the heavens; while thousands of tongues with the sound of hallelujah seemed to roll through infinite space; while hundreds of people lay prostrate on the ground crying for mercy. Oh! My dear brother, had you been there to have seen the convulsed limbs, the apparently lifeless bodies, to all of which the distorted features exactly comporting you would have been constrained to cry out as I was obliged to do, the Gods are among the people; nor was this confined to the commonality alone; but people of every description lay prostrate on the ground. There you might see the learned Pastor, the steady patriot and the obedient son crying holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty: behold the honorable matron and virtuous maiden crying with all the appearance of heart-felt distress, Jesus thou son of the most high God, have mercy upon us. Cast your eyes a few paces farther, and there you might see the prodigal in the arms of the professed libertine, crying hosannah to God in the highest, there is no other name under heaven whereby the man can be saved; but by the name of Jesus. See the poor oppressed African with his soul liberated longing to be with his God.”

  [1] “The camp was exlenonined by candles furneshed by the congration which was in a thick grove of beach timber the apperance of itselfe gave a solem apperance but ad to that preaching exorting singing praying sinors rejoicing publickly testifoying that the ware delivered from the bodage of sin and death others under deep conviction lementing that the wore dredful sinors the whole to gether struck eavery person with a solem aw a few excepted.

  “In gaveing my opinion I will describe it as not yet being a subject of that extrodenery work I have seen of eavery age sects and description from eight years upwards those that has been subject has been operated on differently some has had symtoms before the fell the have felt it in the grait arteraye of the thyes and arms but like a shock closed in emedently to the hart the hart sweels liking to burst the bodaye occasions shortness and quickness of breath the become motienless the feet and hands become cold but the pulse generaly regular the ceace breathing hard and become easaye before the can speake the heart returns to the extremety one of two subjects the talke on either that the are dredful siner some times in a state of despere aledging that there is now salvation for them or the have got a hope of salvation through Christ and recoment Christ to sinors in the most presint manow caling on their friends to fly to christ that if the are damned it will be their own blame that christ dyed for sinours that he is able to save the vilest sinour . . .”

  Other observers note symptoms which are more important to the pathologist: the swaggering pride of those who fall, the envy of their friends, and the recurrent imitation of the symptoms, mingled with a fury of rivalry to outdo the experience of everyone else. The extraordinary itinerant, Lorenzo Dow, who covered two hundred thousand miles in the course of his preaching, supplies another interesting feature. On several occasions he notes that conversions begin as a dance in definite rhythm, apparently under full control. Gradually the rhythm breaks and tears itself loose from measure and discipline until it becomes a series of disconnected leaps and jumps which end in a fit.

  Dow, incidentally, is easily the outstanding figure of the early revival. He was not the most violent; but his gaunt figure, “his long hair, his flowing beard, his harsh voice, and his wild gesticulation,” make him the most picturesque. He was generally called a clown. His rude manners, his filthy clothes, were as offensive to his enemies as the illogical “insults upon the Gospel” which eventually shut the doors of the Methodist Conferences against him. He was, as a child, subject to musings about God, attacks of remorse and fear, and dreams as vivid as hallucinations. When he was twenty-two, he sailed, like Asenath Nicholson after him, to investigate the conditions of the Irish, but an attack of smallpox frustrated his intention to save these people from Catholicism and the three thousand handbills warning Dublin of the wrath to come were wasted. He returned home and, for two years, walked or rode through the greater part of the South preaching the gospel, and is credited with being the first to establish camp-meetings in central Virginia. On a trip North, he heard that the sister-in-law of a Methodist tavern keeper had determined never to marry anyone but a preacher who would continue his wanderings. The story of his proposal is told in his own words: “When going away I observed to her that I was going to the warm countries, where I had never spent a warm season, and it was probable I should die, as the warm climate destroys most of those who go there from a cold country; but, said I, if I am preserved, about a year and a half from now I am in hopes of seeing this northern country again, and if during this time you live and remain single, and would be willing to give me up twelve months out of thirteen, or three years out of four, to travel and that in foreign lands, and never say, Do not go to your appointment, etc.—for if you should stand in my way I should pray God to remove you, which I believe he would answer—and if I find no one that I like better than I do you, perhaps something further may be said upon the subject; and finding her character to stand fair, I took my departure.”

  Two years later he returned. They were speedily married and Peggy Dow endured every hardship with her husband until her death in 1820. Dow’s second marriage was also unconventional. His biographer says, “There came a day when in an open-air sermon under the great elm on Bean Hill Green at Norwich, Dow extolled the virtues of his former companion and at the end of his sermon asked, ‘Is there anyone in this congregation willing to take the place of my departed Peggy?’ Up rose Lucy Dolbeare from Montville, six feet high, and said, ‘I will.’ ” Whether Lorenzo and Lucy had previously arranged this dramatic proceeding we do not know. We do know, however, that she too made a loyal companion. She survived her husband for several years.

  Dow’s methods were dramatic, but he seems never to have struck down more than a few people at a time. He would preach violently and, when he had “gathered their wandering minds into a train of good thinking,” he would draw the penitents and the hesitants closer to him and pray for them with such intensity that soon they sprawled as if lifeless before him. “Here some supposed they were dying, whilst others suggested, ‘It is the work of the Devil.’ I observed, ‘If it be the Devil’s work they will use the dialect of hell when they come to.’ Some watched my words in great solemnity, and the first and second were soon brought through happy, and so were all of them in the course of the night, except a young woman who had come, under good impressions, much against her father’s will, thirty miles. She continued shrieking for mercy eight hours, sometimes on the borders of despair, until near sunrise, when I exhorted her, if she had a view of her Savior to receive Him as appearing for her. Here hope revived, faith sprang up, joy arose: her countenance was an index of her heart to all beholders: she uttered a word, and soon she testified the reality of . . . the peace she had found.”

  In addition to
this work of salvation, Dow was a tireless missionary to convert Roman Catholics and was one of the great evangelists who fought for abolition. Catholicism and slavery he joined together in a sort of mystical combination for which later observers have found a rational excuse. From Dow we get also some sense of the hostility which the camp-meetings roused. He was continually fighting collegians or Conferences, leaping from the pulpit to chase noisy critics from the church or stripping for a fight when the occasion demanded. In a movement which is by no means anonymous, but in which the participants are obscure and without significant personality, he is a singular and arresting figure.

  What remains to be noted is the opinion of a hostile critic and for this, since we are not looking for justice, no one could be more available than Mrs. Trollope herself. That estimable and angry lady, who managed to write two volumes on her year in the United States, without quite confessing that she was doing anything so vulgar as engaging in trade, was offended by many things and disliked everything. It remained for the camp-meeting to shock her.

  “Out of about thirty persons thus placed, perhaps half a dozen were men. One of these, a handsome youth of eighteen or twenty, kneeled just below the opening through which I looked. His arm was encircling the neck of a young girl who knelt beside him, with her hair hanging disheveled upon her shoulders, and her features working with the most violent agitation; soon after they both fell forward on the straw, as if unable to endure in any other attitude the burning eloquence of a tall grim figure in black, who, standing erect in the center, was uttering with incredible vehemence an oration that seemed to hover between praying and preaching; his arms hung stiff and immovable by his side, and he looked like an ill-constructed machine, set in action by a movement so violent, as to threaten its own destruction, so jerkingly, painfully, yet rapidly, did his words tumble out; the kneeling circle ceasing not to call in every variety of tone, on the name of Jesus; accompanied with sobs, groans, and a sort of low howling inexpressibly painful to listen to. . . .

  “One of the preachers began in a low nasal tone, and, like all other Methodist preachers, assured us of the enormous depravity of man as he comes from the hands of his Maker, and of his perfect sanctification after he had wrestled sufficiently with the Lord to get hold of him, et cætera. The admiration of the crowd was evinced by almost constant cries of ‘Amen! Amen!’ ’Jesus! Jesus!’ ‘Glory! Glory!’ and the like. But this comparative tranquillity did not last long: the preacher told them that ‘this night was the time fixed upon for anxious sinners to wrestle with the Lord’; that he and his brethren ‘were at hand to help them,’ and that such as needed their help were to come forward into ‘the pen.’

  “‘The pen’ was the space immediately below the preachers’ stand. . . .

  “The crowd fell back at the mention of the pen, and for some minutes there was a vacant space before us. The preachers came down from their stand and placed themselves in the midst of it, beginning to sing a hymn, calling upon the penitents to come forth. As they sung they kept turning themselves round to every part of the crowd, and, by degrees, the voices of the whole multitude joined in chorus. This was the only moment at which I perceived anything like the solemn and beautiful effect, which I had heard ascribed to this woodland worship. It is certain that the combined voices of such a multitude, heard at dead of night, from the depths of their eternal forests, the many fair young faces turned upward, and looking paler and lovelier as they met the moonbeams, the dark figures of the officials in the middle of the circle, the lurid glare thrown by the altar-fires on the woods beyond, did altogether produce a fine and solemn effect, that I shall not easily forget; but ere I had well enjoyed it, the scene changed, and sublimity gave place to horror and disgust. . . .

  “Above a hundred persons, nearly all females, came forward uttering howlings and groans, so terrible that I shall never cease to shudder when I recall them. They appeared to drag each other forward, and on the word being given, ‘let us pray,’ they all fell on their knees; but this posture was soon changed for others that permitted greater scope for the convulsive movements of their limbs; and they were soon all lying on the ground in an indescribable confusion of heads and legs. They threw about their limbs with such incessant and violent motion, that I was every instant expecting some serious accident to occur.

  “But how am I to describe the sounds that proceeded from this strange mass of human beings? I know no words which can convey an idea of it. Hysterical sobbings, convulsive groans, shrieks and screams the most appalling, burst forth on all sides. I felt sick with horror. As if their hoarse and overstrained voices failed to make noise enough, they soon began to clap their hands violently. . . .

  “Many of these wretched creatures were beautiful young females. The preachers moved about among them, at once exciting and soothing their agonies. I heard the murmured confessions of the poor victims, and I watched their tormentors, breathing into their ears consolations that tinged the pale cheek with red. . . .

  “After the first wild burst that followed their prostration, the moanings, in many instances, became loudly articulate; and I then experienced a strange vibration between tragic and comic feeling.

  “A very pretty girl, who was kneeling in the attitude of Canova’s Magdalene immediately before us, amongst an immense quantity of jargon broke out thus; ‘Woe! woe to the backsliders! hear it, hear it Jesus! when I was fifteen my mother died, and I backslided, Oh, Jesus, I backslided! take me home to my mother, Jesus! take me home to her, for I am weary! Oh, John Mitchel! John Mitchel!’ and after sobbing piteously behind her raised hands, she lifted her sweet face again, which was as pale as death, and said, ‘Shall I sit on the sunny bank of salvation with my mother? my own dear mother? Oh, Jesus, take me home, take me home!’

  “Who could refuse a tear to this earnest wish for death in one so young and lovely? But I saw her, ere I left the ground, with her hand fast locked, and her head supported by a man who looked very much as Don Juan might, when sent back to earth as too bad for the regions below.

  “One woman near us continued to ‘call on the Lord,’ as it is termed, in the loudest possible tone, and without a moment’s interval, for the two hours that we kept our dreadful station. She became frightfully hoarse, and her face so red as to make me expect she would burst a blood-vessel. Among the rest of her rant, she said, ‘I will hold fast to Jesus, I never will let him go; if they take me to hell, I will still hold him fast, fast, fast!’

  “The stunning noise was sometimes varied by the preachers beginning to sing; but the convulsive movements of the poor maniacs only became more violent. At length the atrocious wickedness of this horrible scene increased to a degree of grossness, that drove us from our station; we returned to the carriage at about three o’clock in the morning, and passed the remainder of the night in listening to the ever increasing tumult at the pen. To sleep was impossible. At daybreak the horn again sounded, to send them to private devotion; and in about an hour afterwards I saw the whole camp as joyously and eagerly employed in preparing and devouring their most substantial breakfast as if the night had been passed in dancing; and I marked many a fair but pale face, that I recognized as a demoniac of the night, simpering beside a swain, to whom she carefully administered hot coffee and eggs. The preaching saint and the howling sinner seemed alike to relish this mode of recruiting their strength.

  “We soon after left the ground; but before our departure we learnt that a very satisfactory collection had been made by the preachers, for Bibles, Tracts, and all other religious purposes.”

  The time of the revival which Mrs. Trollope witnessed was much later than those described above. By that time revivalism had lost a little of its violence and gained new objectives. Before 1800, America had no Bible society and none for foreign missions or the distribution of tracts but, in the next decade, we find the names of Pliny Fisk and Adoniram Judson and Samuel Mills and Knott and Rice, all pioneers in these fields and all influenced by and associated more or less dir
ectly with the early revivals. The first violence of the new way of finding God was bound to die out, but it left its mark indelibly on the social and religious character of America.

  [1] The spelling is throughout that of the original.

  † The War of 1812 was over, the Spanish dam to Mississippi traffic was broken and the domination of the conservatives had been shattered by the election of infidels and radicals like Jefferson and Madison. † Gentlewomen read Addison and refined selections from Shakespeare, Young’s Night Thoughts and Thompson’s Seasons, but not Byron. Men did the marketing and “a considerable part of the slip-slop work.” † Peale’s Museum was illuminated on certain nights by “gas-lights which will burn without wick or oil.” † Women wore long gloves rucked down and, in Tennessee, Leghorn hats costing $50 and gunboat bonnets. Men, who were giving up wigs, still wore the enormous cravats which had been introduced by George the Third to hide the swelling on his neck. The long trouser was coming in and with it the shoestring.

  † In the North, there was virtually no hunting or coursing but, in Virginia, there were established races and Eclipse, backed by the North, defeated the Southern favorite Sir Henry. † In Ohio, the Regulators or sheriff’s posse kept order. In the East, Ballston Spa and Saratoga Springs were popular. † Arks and flatboats went downstream on the Mississippi and were then sold for lumber. Fulton’s steamboat was opposed because it would ruin shipbuilding and the United States Navy. The great boom in canals had an unfavorable effect on farming in New England. By 1817, twelve steamers had penetrated to western waters; and the conestoga wagon which covered the ninety miles between Philadelphia and New York City in three days was called The Flying Machine. † Rags were being imported to manufacture paper. † The first land office fraud was reported. † Indiana, with a population of 100,000, had no cases of insanity. † In 1817, an advertisement in a New York paper informed gentlemen that no smoking was permitted in a certain theater. † The grouse of the Pocono Mountain was a delicacy in Philadelphia, where also the Lombard Poplar had been introduced. † It was remarked that Princeton College was not as respectable as it had been. † Charcoal and plank roads were being abandoned in the older states and macadamized streets given a trial.