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HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL 
 
 Church in Alabama 
 
 1763-1891 
 
 BY 
 
 WALTER C. WHITAKER 
 Rector of Christ Church, Tuskaloosa, Ala. 
 
 ' I/x>k unto the rock whence ye are hewn." — Isaiah s/:i. 
 'To stir you up by putting you in remembrance." 
 
 —ISt.Peterz.-13. 
 
 BIRMINGHAM, ALA. 
 
 ROBERTS & SON 
 1898 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1898, 
 BY WAI/TER C. WHITAKBR. 
 
TO THE 
 
 CHURCHMEN OF ALABAMA. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE author has no apology to make for writing 
 and publishing this history. He feels that an 
 excuse must, from its very nature, be either in vain 
 or unnecessary. The book itself must be his justifica- 
 tion or his condemnation. 
 
 He has of course written, as every man must write, 
 from his own point of view. While claiming that it is 
 his right to do this, he is not unaware that there are 
 other points of view, and to their occupants he cheer- 
 fully concedes the right to criticise his sense of pro- 
 portion. 
 
 It should be borne in mind that this is a history, 
 not of bishops, priests, or parishes, but of a diocesan 
 Church. Hence only those personal and parochial 
 records appear that set forward^he author's purpose. 
 Matters of detail have been unhesitatingly sacrificed 
 to comprehensiveness of statement. 
 
 To those who have furnished much interesting in- 
 formation and many valuable documents, especially 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 to Bishop Wilmer and the Rev. R. H. Cobbs, D. D., 
 the author thus publicly expresses his appreciation of 
 their. kindness. 
 
 Tuskaloosa, Ala., 
 
 Easter Monday, 1898. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 
 The acephalous church. 
 
 chap. • page. 
 
 I. Potest Tolerari ._ u 
 
 II. Organization 17 
 
 III. A Headless Body 24 
 
 PART SECOND. 
 
 THE EPISCOPATE OP BISHOP COBBS. 
 
 I. Bishop Cobbs' Early Life _* 43 
 
 II. Missionary Character of the Diocese 49 
 
 III. Missionary Sowings 53 
 
 IV. Difficulties and Discouragements 57 
 
 V. With Loins Begirt 64 
 
 VI. The Church Building Era 70 
 
 VII. Congregational Growth 75 
 
 VIII. The Church's Slave Children 80 
 
 IX. Endowment of the Episcopate 84 
 
 X. The Diocesan Missionary Society 93 
 
 XI. The Relief of the Clergy 99 
 
 XII. Church Schools 105 
 
 XIII. Personnel of the Clergy 113 
 
8 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE. 
 
 XIV. The Theological Tone 123 
 
 XV. Parish Life 132 
 
 XVI. Last Days of Bishop Cobbs 141 
 
 PART THIRD. 
 The episcopate op bishop wii<mer. 
 
 I. A Confederate Diocese 153 
 
 II. Bishop Wilmer's Early Life 158 
 
 III. War Times 164 
 
 IV. The Bishop and General Orders 171 
 
 V. The Bishop and the General Convention 188 
 
 VI. Decay of the Negro Work 195 
 
 VII. Ethiopia's Uplifted Hands 206 
 
 VIII. The Orphans' Home 213 
 
 IX. The Case of Hamner Hall 219 
 
 X. Edification and Demolition 233 
 
 XI. The Revolution of Boom Times 248 
 
 XII. The Diocesan Missionary Society 257 
 
 XIII. The Golden Age 270 
 
 XIV. Looking Backward _- 284 
 
 XV. Aaron's Sons and Hur's 294 
 
 XVI. Prospective 303 
 
PART FIRST. 
 
 The Acephalous Church. 
 
HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 POTEST TOI.ERARI. 
 
 THE beginning of the record carries us down to 
 the waters of the Gulf and back to the sixth 
 decade of the last century. 
 
 The French and Indian War had just ceased, and 
 in the ensuing division of territory France had ceded 
 to England the fort and village of Mobile. The settle- 
 ment here was sixty years old. Except the garrison 
 few Englishmen ever came to the village, and they 
 that did come fell under the dominant French influ- 
 ence. 
 
 The Governor,* Robert Farmer, a man whose range 
 of reading was so great that he could compare Pontiac 
 with Mithridates, and refresh himself in hours of 
 weariness with Montesquieu, and who, in his corres- 
 pondence with the French governor of New Orleans, 
 evinced thorough familiarity with both the Salic Law 
 and Magna Charta, was withal a notoriously dissolute 
 man. His strong mentality and weak morality yielded 
 
12 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 their accustomed fruits in his subordinates, and the 
 few villagers and more numerous soldiery, copying the 
 weaker traits of their commander, were strangers to 
 virtue and familiars of dissipation and debauchery. 
 
 A person calling himself a clergyman of the Church 
 of England lounged about the place and occasionally 
 held public services. The people seriously questioned 
 his ordination, of which he gave no proof. His charac- 
 ter, however, they did not question. Asa good priest 
 is the best of men, so a bad priest is the worst of men; 
 and this reputed clergyman, drifting among the out- 
 posts of civilization, was so horribly ungodly and 
 lascivious that even the hardened soldiers and camp- 
 followers of Mobile held him in detestation. 
 
 It was to this morally desolate place that the Rev. 
 Samuel Hart, of Charleston, S. C, received license to 
 minister in 1764. The missionary spirit was none too 
 active in those days, even among the missionaries 
 themselves, and Mr. Hart's zeal was not kindled when 
 he found the field so sterile and the society so uncon- 
 genial. He soon determined to return to more civil- 
 ized regions. 
 
 But before his departure he took occasion, at a 
 general congress held with the Indians, to preach 
 them a lengthy and quite dogmatic sermon, which 
 the interpreter explained sentence by sentence. The 
 Indian chief was very attentive. After dinner he 
 asked Mr. Hart whereabouts lived the Great Warrior, 
 God Almighty, of whom he talked so much, and 
 desired to know if He were a friend of "Brother 
 George " across the water. This question started Mr. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 13 
 
 Hart into another long discourse, wherein he expa- 
 tiated on God's being and attributes, and sought to 
 enlighten the dusky warrior on the divine transcend- 
 ence and immanence; but he was utterly unable to 
 impart any idea of his subject-matter to his hearer. 
 Finally his verbosity wearied the chief, who solemnly 
 took him by the hand, and, filling a glass with rum, 
 concluded the interview much to his own satisfaction, 
 by saying: " Beloved man, I will always think well 
 of this friend of ours, God Almighty, of whom you 
 tell me so much; and so let us drink his health." 
 Then he drank the rum and went back to his native 
 forests. 
 
 After a sojourn in Mobile of about a year Mr. Hart 
 saw the growth of the village seriously retarded and 
 its very existence rendered problematic by a fearful 
 scourge introduced from Jamaica by a British regi- 
 ment, and nourished by the dissolute habits of the 
 population; and, in 1765, he returned to Charleston. 
 
 After this no attempt was made to plant the ^Church 
 in Alabama until 1826; a single service held in Flor- 
 ence two years before by the Rev. William Wall not 
 being followed up by either the clergyman or the 
 people. 
 
 In the intervening sixty years Alabama's popula- 
 tion had grown to three hundred thousand. The dig- 
 nity of statehood had been conferred on the territory. 
 Material prosperity had greatly increased. Manners 
 and morals, subject to new influences, showed marked 
 improvement. But nowhere was the Church visible 
 in diocese, parish, or mission. Methodist and Bap- 
 
14 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 tist houses of worship appeared, and here and there 
 Presbyterian, but the Church of Apostolic Succession 
 was without a single minister or congregation in the 
 entire state. 
 
 It would be idle to say that no blame attaches to 
 the Bishops, clergy and laity in the established dio- 
 ceses of the older states; and yet these do not deserve 
 the entire burden of censure heaped upon them even 
 by the Churchfolk of today. The bulk of population 
 in the Tennessee Valley came down from Tennessee 
 and Kentucky wherein Churchmen were few and far 
 between. In Middle Alabama a considerable propor- 
 tion were Churchmen; and so in Mobile. But for 
 thirty years (1783-1813) South Alabama was in the 
 hands of the Spanish, who allowed no public re- 
 ligious exercises trther than those of the Holy Roman 
 Church. In this district Anglican Christianity was 
 not permitted to show its head. Then, when in 1813 
 the territory passed back into the hands of English- 
 speaking people and was for the first time incorpor- 
 ated in the United States, the Church had to contend, 
 not only in Alabama, but all through the Union, with 
 an unfavorable popular prejudice, of which not suffi- 
 cient account is ordinarily taken by those who com- 
 ment on her present numerical weakness in this 
 country. 
 
 Down to the Revolutionary War the Church in the 
 colonies was distinctly Anglican in its customs and in 
 its constitution. Every American clergyman was or- 
 dained in England, and the majority were born there; 
 so that, though living in America, their sympathies 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 15 
 
 were naturally with the mother in her disputes with 
 the daughter. Although their sense of justice caused 
 many of them to side with the rebelling colonies in 
 the struggle for independence and induced well-nigh 
 all to cast in their fortunes with the new-born nation 
 when the war was over, yet they were regarded with 
 suspicion. It was well known that the Protestant 
 Episcopal Church was an offshoot of the Church of 
 England. Practically the Church of England was 
 the English people and the English Government. 
 An organic body in this country that derived its 
 authority from England, and that had been, through 
 its chief official representatives in England, in hostil- 
 ity towards a national uprising, was entirely out of 
 touch with American ideals and institutions, and de- 
 served to be cast out and trodden under foot. It is 
 true that some of the leading patriots were members 
 of this despised body — George Washington, Patrick 
 Henry, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Peyton Ran- 
 dolph, Robert Morris, Alexander Hamilton, Madison, 
 Monroe, and Francis Scott Key, not to mention hun- 
 dreds of others — but their membership was held to be 
 an idiosyncracy for which, in the light of their many 
 virtues, they should not be too severely censured. 
 
 This prejudice, ignorant as is all prejudice, arose 
 and flourished long before the open hostilities of the 
 War of the Revolution began. By the end of the en- 
 suing thirty years of peace with England it had begun 
 to diminish, but the second conflict, the War of 1812, 
 fanned it into brighter flame than ever. The utmost 
 that zealous Americanism would grant the Church 
 
16 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 was "Potest Tolerari." Those men were our grand- 
 fathers. Their bitter prejudice still washes at our feet 
 after two generations. 
 
 So the Church had to await her time and opportu- 
 nity. Here and there, throughout the territory of 
 Alabama, a few Church families, emigrants from the 
 states, were thrown together, and irregularly held 
 lay-services, supplemented at long intervals by the 
 chance visit of some clerical relative, friend, or itiner- 
 ant. Many of these early Churchmen became dis- 
 couraged at the apparent forgetfulness of their Mother 
 and united themselves with sectarian bodies, chiefly 
 Methodist and Baptist, whose noble, self-sacrificing 
 preachers kept in the vanguard of civilization, along- 
 side, and sometimes ahead of, the gambling-den and 
 the whisky-hell. But here and there were forming 
 nuclei of the large congregations that are now found 
 in Mobile, Montgomery, Selma, Birmingham, and 
 Huntsville, and of parishes elsewhere that are only 
 awaiting an uncrystalized material on which to work. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 ORGANIZATION. 
 
 SUCH was the condition of affairs when in Novem- 
 ber, 1826, the Domestic and Foreign Missionary 
 Society of the Church, then five years old, directed 
 the Rev. Robert Davis ' ' to visit the State of Alabama 
 and advance the interests of the Society and religion ' ' 
 there. Shortly after his appointment Mr. Davis set 
 out on what was then a long and tedious journey; but 
 being detained on his way by illness he did not reach 
 Tuskaloosa, his objective point, till the winter of 
 1827. 
 
 Tuskaloosa was then a small village, eight years of 
 age, and with a population of not more than five or 
 six hundred souls. But within the past year it had 
 been made the State capital, and a considerable popu- 
 lation was certain in the near future. At any rate, 
 Mr. Davis thought that with the capital as his center 
 of operations he could the better extend the influence 
 and ministrations of the Church into other villages 
 and hamlets of the interior. Here, therefore, he re- 
 mained several months, ministering constantly to the 
 half-dozen Church families that had moved in, but 
 apparently making no missionary excursions. On 
 January 7, 1828, Christ Church parish was organized, 
 and the building of a parish church undertaken. 
 
 Whether Mr. Davis had any idea of remaining in 
 
 17 
 
1 8 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Tuskaloosa is doubtful. He was not sent out to do 
 missionary work, but was simply a collecting agent of 
 the Missionary Society, working on a commission of 
 ten per cent, of his gross collections. He left Tuska- 
 loosa on March 25th of this year, 1828 ; and his 
 subsequent demand on the Domestic and Foreign 
 Missionary Society for his commission on the sev- 
 enteen hundred dollars subscribed towards the parish 
 church explains in part the zeal that he manifested 
 for the erection of a house of worship. 
 
 Mr. Davis' departure was followed by cessation of 
 effort on the part of the newly-organized parish; but 
 in February, 1829, a newly-appointed missionary, the 
 Rev. William H. Judd, arrived from New York, and 
 infused new life into the project. Mr. Judd lived only 
 six months after he came to Alabama, but his success 
 was marked, the church building being almost com- 
 pleted at the time of his death. He left the congre- 
 gation in a flourishing condition, and not only flour- 
 ishing but united — a fact worthy of note, for there 
 were not thirty communicants in the parish. 
 
 Meanwhile another clergyman was working in Ala- 
 bama. Three weeks before Mr. Davis had reached 
 Tuskaloosa, the Rev. Henry A. Shaw had taken 
 charge of the church families in Mobile. Here in 
 1822 a few Churchmen had built the first non-Roman- 
 ist place of worship in the entire district wrested from 
 the Spanish nine years before. For three years union 
 services were held in this building, ministers being 
 engaged without reference to denomination. In 1825 
 this arrangement ceased, and the Churchmen organ- 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 19 
 
 ized Christ Church parish. A Presbyterian minister, 
 the Rev. Murdoch Murphy, continued to officiate as 
 the parish minister until Mr. Shaw's arrival in De- 
 cember, 1827. The original Christ Church must have 
 been a very small, cheap, and unsubstantial structure, 
 for in 1834 the rector complained that it was "too 
 small and very old," although the parish numbered 
 only twenty-eight communicants, and the building had 
 been used only twelve years. 
 
 In 1830 the Church in Alabama, and especially the 
 parish of Mobile, received some encouragement from 
 a visit of the Rt. Rev. Thomas C. Brownell, Bishop 
 of Connecticut. Dr. Brownell had been requested 
 by the Domestic Missionary Board to make a visita- 
 tion to all the Southern States not then organized into 
 dioceses, and in pursuance of this request he visited 
 Mobile in January, 1830. 
 
 On the 25th day of that month he presided over 
 the Primary Convention, at which the diocese was 
 organized. According to Bishop Brownell's report 
 the convention was composed of "the principal Epis- 
 copalians of the city and from other parts of the state. ' ' 
 But the delegates from outside the place of meeting 
 were few. The state was very deficient in transport- 
 ation facilities. More than a month was required to 
 make the journey by water from Demopolis or Mont- 
 gomery to Mobile and return, and so miserable were 
 the few rough country roads that penetrated the vast 
 stretches of pine forests and the dangerous morasses 
 of the Mobile river and its tributaries that few cared 
 to use them. Therefore the Primary Convention was 
 slimly attended. Besides the Bishop, the local min- 
 
20 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ister (the Rev. Henry Shaw), and the Rev. William 
 Richmond, a New York clergyman, the only other 
 cleric present was the Rev. Albert A. Muller, who 
 had recently been transferred from Mississippi and 
 was stationed at Tuskaloosa. Ten or twelve laymen 
 were in attendance, the majority from Mobile. The 
 parishes of Mobile and Tuskaloosa, and the congrega- 
 tion at Greensboro, which had just been organized 
 by Mr. Muller, were represented. A constitution was 
 adopted, a Standing Committee was appointed, and 
 steps were taken to secure a union with the diocese 
 of Mississippi and the congregations of Louisiana. 
 The Convention then adjourned to meet again in Mo- 
 bile on May 12 of the same year. 
 
 At the time set lay delegates appeared from the 
 same three congregations as before, but Mr. Shaw 
 was the only clergyman present, Mr. Muller appar- 
 ently not caring to spend two months of the same 
 year on the Warrior and Tombigbee rivers. The 
 Convention, without transacting any business, ad- 
 journed to meet at Tuskaloosa on January 3, 1831, 
 hopeful that the accessibility of that place would allow 
 a full attendance. 
 
 The hope was not disappointed. Although Mr. 
 Muller sat in solitary clerical state, Mr. Shaw this 
 time absenting himself, delegates from Mobile were 
 present. Deputations attended also from Greensboro, 
 and from Huntsville, whither a few Churchmen had 
 removed. Ten souls constituted this Convention — 
 a small number absolutely, but relatively six times 
 larger than any Diocesan Council of the last decade. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 21 
 
 A communication was received from the diocese of 
 Mississippi asking the appointment of a committee of 
 six, to meet the same number each from Mississippi 
 and Louisiana, with a view to the formation out of 
 the three bodies of " The Southwestern Diocese." As 
 this request was the outcome of a resolution adopted 
 at the Primary Convention of Alabama the year 
 before, it was granted. The committee appointed 
 consisted of the two clergy resident in the state, Chief 
 Justice Abner S. Lipscomb and Mr. John Eliott of 
 Mobile, and Messrs. J. M. Davenport and A. P. Bald- 
 win of Tuskaloosa. Bishop Brownell was requested 
 to continue in charge of the Church in Alabama, and 
 to render such Episcopal service as might be required. 
 A set of four canons was adopted by this Convention 
 — probably the shortest code of laws ever in force in 
 an American diocese. 
 
 We have seen that at this time parishes were estab- 
 lished and organized in Mobile and Tuskaloosa, the 
 metropolis and the capital, and that congregations had 
 been gathered at Greensboro and Huntsville. A year 
 or two later, Bishop Brownell made a journey of in- 
 spection through the state, and held services at Selma, 
 Montgomery and Florence. These places were all 
 small villages, but the Bishop deemed them favorable 
 missionary soil. 
 
 No other congregations than these existed in Ala- 
 bama when the General Convention of 1832 recog- 
 nized Alabama as an autonomous diocese, and the 
 weakness of the Church was so great that many 
 deemed it idle that such action should have been taken. 
 
22 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 There.was little or no" community of interest between 
 the two clergymen. The Rev. Norman Pinney had 
 succeeded the Rev. Mr. Shaw as rector of Christ 
 Church, Mobile, but he was so much engrossed with 
 his own parochial affairs that he did not appear at a 
 Convention of the diocese till more than three years 
 later. 
 
 Only Mr. Muller and nine laymen composed the 
 Convention of 1832, one-half of whose membership 
 was from Tuskaloosa, where the Convention was held. 
 It was not an over-cheerful Convention. Earnest 
 appeals to the Domestic and Foreign Missionary So- 
 ciety were not heeded, though the Society was mean- 
 while supporting missionaries in Greece, where an 
 orthodox branch of the Holy Catholic Church was 
 already established. Pecuniary reasons influenced 
 Mr. Muller, after two years of faithful service, to dis- 
 continue his monthly visits to Greensboro — a seri- 
 ous discouragement to this congregation, which had 
 secured a lot and raised a considerable sum of money 
 towards the erection of a church building. Hunts- 
 ville was 1 despondent at her failure to secure outside 
 aid in building a house of worship. Liberality towards 
 the Church did not keep pace with the increase of 
 Churchmen's bank accounts. 
 
 Spiritual parsimony was most marked in the Ten- 
 nessee Valley, which was now making great indus- 
 trial progress. Here, in 1832, money enough was 
 found to build, in Madison County, Alabama's first 
 cotton factory, and to construct from Tuscumbia to 
 Decatur the state's first railroad. Churchmen built 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 23 
 
 for themselves houses of cedar, while yet not^ven a 
 tabernacle was erected to the glory of God. 
 
 In 1833 the Church's most faithful children were 
 so disheartened that they did not even attempt to 
 hold the Convention , which was to have met at Tus- 
 kaloosa. Mr. Muller had left this place because of 
 very scandalous lapses from religion and morality 
 that subsequently resulted in his deposition from the 
 sacred ministry, and the congregation which he left 
 behind him was gradually and surely melting away. 
 Only at Mobile, throughout this dark biennium, did 
 any vigor remain, and even there the communicants 
 were a mere handful. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 A HEADLESS BODY. 
 
 THE General Convention of 1832, which admitted 
 the diocese of Alabama into union with itself, 
 took other action which served to arouse Alabama 
 Churchmen from their apathy by giving them some- 
 thing to do, to think of, and to hope for. A special 
 canon was enacted allowing the dioceses of Alabama 
 and Mississippi and the churches in Louisiana to pro- 
 ceed to the formation of that "Southwestern Diocese," 
 which the Churchmen of the three states deemed the 
 only practicable scheme for ensuring constant Epis- 
 copal oversight. 
 
 Then the general Board of Missions determined to 
 send a missionary to Alabama. The selection of the 
 Rev. Caleb S. Ives was providential. He knew 
 where to take hold, and how to inspire hope and en- 
 thusiasm. His first work was to gather together the 
 congregational fragments in what are now Greene, 
 Hale, and Marengo counties. At Greensboro the 
 congregation, which had been organized by Mr. 
 Muller on March 14, 1830, and had scattered, sheep 
 without a shepherd, now numbered six families. But 
 as the mighty influence of Bethlehem Ephrata de- 
 pended not on its numerical strength, so again, on 
 Christmas Eve, this time in Alabama, was born a 
 Christ- spirit; and on December 24, 1833, the little 
 congregation, stirred by Mr. Ives' zeal, aroused itself 
 
 24 
 
CHURCH IN AL ABAMA. 25 
 
 from sleep, formed the parish of "St. Paul's," and 
 went to work in the Master's vineyard. The mis- 
 sionary seed dropped that Christmas Eve has borne 
 fruit a hundred-fold, and today Greensboro is a chief 
 center of missionary activity in the diocese. 
 
 But not even in Greensboro was it plain sailing for 
 the Church in those days. If Mr. Ives encouraged 
 others he often faced difficulties and met with disap- 
 pointments. "The doctrines and services of the 
 Church," he wrote from Greensboro, in 1835, "so 
 far as can be ascertained, are favorably received; and 
 the prospects for building up the Church here are as 
 flattering as could be expected under existing circum- 
 stances. The place has been too long neglected, 
 which, together with the abortive attempt once made 
 to establish the Church here, requires much labor, 
 fidelity, and perseverance to place her even on an 
 equal footing with the other denominations." 
 
 On Sunday, December 15, 1833, a week after the 
 first service that he had held at Greensboro, Mr. Ives 
 officiated at Demopolis, where he found a few Church 
 families. This was the first Church service ever held 
 at Demopolis. In the following month Mr. Ives re- 
 turned to Demopolis, and on January 31, 1834, or- 
 ganized Trinity parish. In this month also he gath- 
 ered a congregation at a point nine miles southwest 
 of Greensboro and on the road to Demopolis, and 
 here, on April 19, 1834, organized the parish of 
 "St. John's in the Prairies."* 
 
 *This parish has been defunct since 1865, when the remnant 
 of the congregation connected itself with St. Paul's, Greens- 
 
26 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 In the following September, at Prairieville* he es- 
 tablished a congregation. Constantly did his field of 
 labor broaden. Thoroughly did he cultivate all his 
 rich territory. Abundantly did it respond to his en- 
 deavors. 
 
 The outlook was now becoming brighter for the 
 whole diocese — what there was of it — and at the Con- 
 vention which met in Mobile in January, 1835, Bishop 
 Brownell, all three of the diocesan clergy, and dele- 
 gates from Mobile, Tuskaloosa, Greensboro, and 
 Demopolis, were in attendance. This Convention 
 recommended to the next annual Convention a revised 
 constitution, somewhat fuller and more explicit than 
 its predecessor, and adopted a body of canons provid- 
 ing for the composition and guidance of subsequent 
 Conventions and for the reception of clergymen into 
 canonical residence in a parish. Through a fatal de- 
 fect in the third canon it became possible for unbap- 
 •tized men to sit in the diocesan Convention, and it 
 was not necessary that a delegate to the General Con- 
 vention, the highest deliberative and legislative body 
 in the Church, should have received the paying on 
 of Hands. The clergy and six laymen were ap- 
 pointed deputies to the Convention soon to meet in 
 New Orleans for the purpose of organizing the South- 
 western Diocese. 
 
 boro. The church building, a memorial of its first rector, the 
 Rev. John Avery, D. D., who served the parish iu 1836, was, 
 in 1878, given to the congregation at Forkland, a neighboring 
 village lying between the Tombigbee and Warrior rivers. 
 * Afterwards Macon, and now Gallion. 
 
CHUR CH IN ALABAMA. 27 
 
 We may here very properly conclude all reference 
 to this scheme, fruitless so far as Alabama was imme- 
 diately concerned. 
 
 The three states interested sent deputies to the Con- 
 vention, which sat in New Orleans on March 4 and 
 5, 1835. Fifteen persons were present. The Con- 
 vention put forth a declaration to the effect that it 
 understood from the special canon of the General 
 Convention, under which it was acting, that the new 
 body, which they were about to organize, was not to 
 be merely a confederation of three organisms, enjoy- 
 ing the benefits of the same Bishop and holding inter- 
 communion only through him, but was to form one 
 organic diocese. With this declaration as a basis the 
 Southwestern Diocese was organized, a constitution 
 was adopted, and a Bishop was elected. The choice 
 fell upon Dr. Francis L. Hawks, rector of St. Thomas' 
 Church, New York, and, with the possible exception 
 of Stephen H. Tyng, the most powerful preacher of 
 his generation. Dr. Hawks declined the office, and, 
 while his declination caused much disappointment, 
 it was doubtless well for the churches that he did not 
 become their Bishop; for when, nine years later, Mis- 
 sissippi, acting for herself, called him to be her Bishop, 
 and subsequently iterated the election, charges made 
 against him at that time of being given to ungovern- 
 able bursts of temper and to financial irregularities ap- 
 pear to have been not without some foundation. At 
 any rate his declination ended Alabama's connection 
 with the new diocese, for the Church grew so rapidly 
 in the next few months that the Diocesan Convention, 
 
28 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 held in Mobile in 1836, passed resolutions affirming 
 Alabama's withdrawal from the Sonthwestern Dio- 
 cese and her intention to preserve her autonomy as 
 an independent diocese. 
 
 The first clerical perversion in the diocese belongs 
 to this period. The Rev. Norman Pinney, rector of 
 Christ Church, Mobile, was the pervert. Even while 
 at heart a Unitarian, he had taken the sacred vows of 
 priesthood in a Church whose prescribed daily services 
 required the minister to declare explicitly his belief 
 in the divinity of Jesus Christ at least nineteen times 
 in one day. For some time the Churchmen of Mobile 
 had deemed his teaching unsound in its expressed 
 or implied contravention of Creed and Articles, and 
 rumor of this unsoundness finally reached Bishop 
 Brownell's ears. As the ecclesiastical authority of 
 the diocese of Alabama, the Bishop, in 1835, sum - 
 moned Mr. Pinney to appear before him. He received 
 from that minister's own lips a definite denial of belief 
 in Christ as God. No hesitation was possible, and 
 Mr, Pinney was promptly deposed from the sacred 
 ministry. Mr. Pinney was an accomplished scholar, 
 but he was not of magnetic mind, his personal follow- 
 ing was not great, and his defection from the faith, 
 followed by twenty years of school- teaching in Mobile, 
 does not appear to have produced any evil effect either 
 on the parish or on any individuals. 
 
 Mr. Pinney was succeeded as rector of Christ 
 Church, Mobile, by the Rev. Samuel S. Lewis, who, 
 removing thither from Tuskaloosa, shortly reported 
 that his new parish numbered 114 communicants. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 2Q 
 
 Mr. Lewis was succeeded at Tuskaloosa by the Rev. 
 Andrew Matthews. The Rev. William Johnson took 
 charge of the shepherdless little congregation at Mont- 
 gomery, in December, 1835, and, after leading their 
 devotions first in a Baptist and then in a Universalist 
 place of worship, succeeded in building a neat brick 
 church, the first St. John's Church of the town, and 
 had it ready for consecration by Bishop Kemper on 
 occasion of his visit to Montgomery in 1837. We- 
 tumpka, then hopeful of being the chief city of the 
 interior, soon owned a brick house of worship, built 
 by the energetic efforts of the Rev. Robert G. Hays, 
 who had come from Tennessee. Florence began to 
 give evidence of that Church life which Bishop 
 Brownell had predicted five years before, and shortly 
 after the arrival of the Rev. Thomas A. Cook, from 
 South Carolina, had, though with only eight commu- 
 nicants on the parish register, raised fifteen hundred 
 dollars for a church building. Mr. Jacob I,orillard, 
 of New York, transferred to the diocese six hundred 
 and forty acres of land in Baldwin county for the 
 support of the future Bishop, and to this gift were 
 added subscriptions to the amount of $4,050, raised 
 by Mr. Ives, who had been compelled by pecuniary 
 necessities to retire temporarily from parish work and 
 devote himself to the more lucrative pursuit of school- 
 teaching in Mobile, and who, while traveling in the 
 interest of his school, found opportunity to solicit 
 subscriptions to the Bishop's Fund. The Baldwin 
 county land was sold ten years later for five hundred 
 dollars. That nothing whatever was realized from 
 
30 HISTORY OP THE 
 
 the subscriptions made to Mr. Ives, was due to a 
 decade of financial stringency upon which the country 
 was just entering. 
 
 The whole nation had given itself over to specula- 
 tion, and values had become greatly inflated. In 
 Alabama the appearances of prosperity were so flat- 
 tering as to beguile tradesmen into an extension of 
 purchases and credits, and planters into extravagant 
 investments in lands and slaves. These delusive an- 
 ticipations were not realized, and the people became 
 deeply involved. The magnitude of this disaster is 
 perceptible when we recall that before the first day of 
 May, 1837, tne failures of the year in New York City 
 alone aggregated $100,000,000, and in New Orleans, 
 Alabama's chief market place, amounted to $27,000,- 
 000. A run was made on the banks. Specie pay- 
 ment was suspended. The rapid depreciation of 
 values to their normal size reduced many to poverty. 
 
 Although eight clergymen were now at work in the 
 diocese, the general distress forbade all thought of 
 the election of a Bishop. The few established par- 
 ishes were pushed to the utmost to support their own 
 ministers, without attempting, even by united effort, 
 to support a Bishop. Bishop Brownell could not be 
 expected to come from Connecticut as frequently as 
 he was needed, for in those days the journey required 
 nearer forty-eight days than forty-eight hours; and 
 when he came he could not undertake the long jour- 
 neys of exploration that are among the chief duties of 
 a pioneer Bishop. Feeling that it was out of question 
 for him longer to exercise Episcopal oversight of 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 31 
 
 the diocese, he delegated his duties as Provisional 
 Bishop of Alabama to the Rt. Rev. James H. Otey, 
 who had, only two years before, become Bishop 
 of Tennessee. Bishop Otey gave what Episcopal 
 supervision he could afford, and in 1836 made visita- 
 tions at which he confirmed altogether about two- 
 score persons. Two years later, at Bishop Otey's re- 
 quest, Bishop Kemper visited portions of the state, 
 confirming about the same number and consecrating 
 the Church buildings in Montgomery and the Prairies. 
 These were the only visits that Alabama received 
 from a Bishop during five years. 
 
 But it would not have sufficed had annual visita- 
 tions been made. The diocese needed something 
 more than an Episcopal confirming-machine that 
 contents itself with visiting those parishes wherein 
 classes await Confirmation; and, though it stumbled, 
 and halted, and doubted sometimes, it knew what it 
 needed. It needed a head to direct its spasmodic 
 efforts to reach the spiritually deserted and famishing 
 in those remote hamlets and sparsely settled neighbor- 
 hoods that were a chief characteristic of a state yet 
 in its minority. In plain words, it needed a resident 
 Bishop. If it were to attempt the life of an exotic it 
 would die. 
 
 Yet, thwarting every effort, there stood that grim 
 and silent Cerberus — Cerberus Ecclesiasticus, with two 
 heads substituted for the papal tiara — "six resident 
 clergymen for a whole year previous to the election of 
 a Bishop," and an "endowment of the Episcopate." 
 That presbyters must be before Bishops in order of 
 
32 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 time, is a proposition that would have impressed 
 St. Paul very deeply, and possibly have occasioned 
 another Epistle. That the Bishopric must be en- 
 dowed before the Bishop may be selected, and that 
 all care shall be taken to prevent the head from suffer- 
 ing even while the body may be dying, is doubtless a 
 post- Apostolic tradition. It is a tradition, an heir- 
 loom of our Anglican ancestry; but in many minds it 
 has all the force of Constitutions and Canons. 
 
 It took several years and much patience to root out 
 this prejudice from the minds of some of the Clergy 
 and laity of Alabama. In 1838, when the canonical 
 sop of "six resident clergy " was ready to be thrown, 
 the cry of the Committee on the State of the Church, 
 ' ' I^et us but have the head that we so much need, ' ' 
 was not met with even the common courtesy, "A 
 resolution to that effect was introduced." The next 
 year, when twelve clergy were at work in the state, 
 the immediate election of a Bishop was staved off by 
 the adoption of instructions to the Standing Com- 
 mittee to take a whole year to ascertain the condition 
 of the Bishop's Fund, the resources of the diocese for 
 the support of a Bishop, and the expediency of pro- 
 ceeding to an election. When this year had passed, 
 the Convention of 1840 decided, after sharp debate, 
 that the diocese had no canonical right to elect a 
 Bishop. On what ground this decision was based is 
 not known; in the diocese ten clergymen were at 
 work, and seven of them had been in residence more 
 than twelve months. Yet once again, in 1841, when 
 there were eleven resident clergy and seventeen organ- 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 33 
 
 ized parishes, the old resolution came forward in its 
 stereotyped form : " It is inexpedient to go into the 
 election of a Bishop at the present Convention." 
 Cause: "The supposed want of canonical right and 
 the want of available means of supporting a Bishop 
 at this time. ' ' 
 
 So passed the precious years of seed-time, forever 
 irreclaimable, wasted away by short-sighted men, who 
 would not elect a Bishop until they could ensure his 
 dignity by making him comfortable. 
 
 Meanwhile some of the clergy were doing such 
 missionary work as was possible, with the Church 
 purely presbyterial and poorly articulated, and were 
 preaching here and there, looking up the stray sheep, 
 dropping seed from place to place, and nurturing it as 
 trial of the soil's fruitfulness. * Some of these at- 
 tempts were successful, but many were the disap- 
 pointments. Movements of population, crystalization 
 of opposition, spiritual paralysis, are contingencies 
 that the most sagacious eye cannot infallibly foresee 
 and provide against. Prevision is especially short in 
 young countries just opening their arms to immigra- 
 tion; and such a country was Alabama. 
 
 *Eufaula was thus visited an 1844 by the Rev. J. L. Gay, 
 who set about gathering a congregation and establishing a 
 parish. While the meeting for organization was in session, 
 and the question of a name for the parish was under consider- 
 ation, the stage rolled in from Columbus, bringing papers that 
 told of the nomination of James K. Polk for President. One 
 of the gentlemen present, Col. John L. Hunter, suggested 
 that the parish be called St. James', and Mr., now ex-Senator, 
 J. Iv. Pugh, seconded the motion, which prevailed unani- 
 mously. 
 
34 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Two examples will suffice to illustrate the uncer- 
 tain outcome of missionary enterprise. One shall be 
 an instance of failure, one of success. The former 
 case shall be that of I<a Fayette, in East Alabama; 
 the latter, Selma. The clergy were of equal zeal. 
 The conditions were alike favorable. In neither case, 
 apparently, was judgment at fault in the organizing 
 of a congregation. 
 
 The church in I,a Fayette was founded in 1838 by 
 the Rev. Thomas A. Cook. The village then had a 
 population of about twelve hundred souls, and though 
 in size equal only to the Auburn, Brewton, and Eutaw 
 of today, was, on account of the small population of 
 the state, of much greater relative importance than 
 are these thriving villages. Within six months the 
 minister reported eight communicants and a Sunday 
 School of forty pupils, and was collecting funds for 
 the building of what was to be Trinity Church. The 
 beginning was auspicious; but in 1840 the sky had 
 clouded over, and the report was full of despondency: 
 ' 'The present moment may be looked upon as the 
 darkest page in the history of our enterprise. In all 
 our demonstrations the people are neither hot nor 
 cold; there is neither the voice of prayer nor praise, 
 but a listless assent to anything. At present our 
 Sunday School is not large; there are from twelve to 
 twenty scholars." In 1841 a slight upward tendency 
 was perceptible; but the community had been hard 
 hit by the long-continued commercial depression, and 
 the congregation worked with the listlessness of hope 
 deferred. No further report was ever made from the 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 35 
 
 ill-fated parish. Only once, and that in 1846, did it 
 receive the visit of a Bishop. Year after year the 
 Finance Committee assessed "Trinity Church, La 
 Fayette," first five, and then, after the election o t f a 
 Bishop, fifty dollars, for diocesan expenses, but the 
 assessment remained unpaid and accumulating year 
 by year, and was ultimately remitted by the Conven- 
 tion. The Rev. Mr. Cook broke down in health, re- 
 moved to Talladega, and quitted the active ministry. 
 In 1846 Bishop Cobbs wrote concerning his recent 
 visit to this region : "It is melancholy to reflect that, 
 in all that beautiful country lying east of the Coosa 
 river, there is not an officiating minister of the 
 Church. May the Lord, in his good Providence, 
 soon send forth a faithful clergyman to labor in that 
 neglected field." The prayer has been answered 
 after many days, and, though the Church is still a 
 stranger in La Fayette, her ministrations are now reg- 
 ularly received at Anniston, Talladega, Jacksonville, 
 Piedmont, Sylacauga, and Childersburg, and at most 
 of these places the prospect of future growth and use- 
 fulness is most encouraging. 
 
 The case illustrative of successful planting is that 
 of Selma. Services were begun here about the same 
 time as at La Fayette, and were conducted twice a 
 month by the Rev. Lucien B. Wright, who served 
 this parish in conjunction with Hayneville. La 
 Fayette and Selma had about the sam% population. 
 Very nearly the same number of communicants was 
 reported at each place, La Fayette reporting eight 
 and Selma seven. But here the points of similarity 
 
36 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 cease. Whilst in La Fayette the Church first re- 
 mained stationary and then retrograded, in Selma it 
 grew from the first. In 1839 Selma gained five com- 
 municants — a seventy per cent, increase — and began 
 the erection of a church, a substantial brick structure, 
 which, at completion a few years later, had cost more 
 than eight thousand dollars. The steady growth of 
 the congregation was uninterrupted, although, from 
 lack of Episcopal visitations, the communicant roll 
 did not grow longer for several years. In 1846 the 
 Rev. J. H. Linebaugh, who had recently become rec- 
 tor, reported very despondently that he saw but little 
 in the condition of the parish to give encouragement, 
 as there were only sixteen communicants and the 
 congregation was struggling under a debt of $2,400, 
 contracted for the building of the church. However, 
 this hopelessness soon passed. In 1847 the creditors 
 accepted $637 in satisfaction of the entire debt, several 
 hundred dollars were raised toward the completion of 
 the building, the communicants increased in number 
 to twenty-two, and the congregation laid aside its 
 mission swaddling clothes, and stepped forth a self- 
 supporting parish. In throwing away the crutch of 
 outside aid the congregation gained new strength and 
 vigor. The communicants numbered 37 in 1850, 57 
 in i860, 169 in 1870, 215 in 1880, and 280 in 1890. 
 There were times of discouragement, and, in single 
 years, of apparent retrogression, but the comparison 
 of decade with decade shows continual progression, 
 and today St. Paul's Church, Selma, which at the 
 beginning had but two communicants, is the sixth 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 37 
 
 parish in the diocese numerically, and the third finan- 
 cially. 
 
 As in these two places, so in others growth and dis- 
 solution were moving on with steps that, under the 
 conditions, the wisdom of man could neither hasten 
 nor retard. The acephalous Church was feeling its 
 way blindly. Even as powerful members of the body 
 as I<ewis and Knapp could not give the oversight and 
 superintendence without which the diocese must at 
 last fail most miserably in its work. Parish priests 
 have not the time to go out into the distant byways in 
 search of the sheep. They have not the opportunity 
 to know the needs of remote regions. They cannot, 
 in their occasional experiments, act with authority. 
 They have a line of duty marked out; and that duty 
 is not the duty of the head. The Church has never 
 done aggressive work without a Bishop. The Church 
 cannot without a Bishop preserve health in what she 
 already has. Alabama in 1840, and Alaska and Mex- 
 ico in 1895, bore identical testimony to these truths 
 across a chasm of more than half a century. Men 
 may ofttimes close their ears to what both history and 
 reason would fain tell them, but there is always a 
 minority that will perceive the truth and proclaim it 
 in season and out of season. 
 
 Some such men were living in Alabama in the early 
 'Forties, and they were heard at Convention after Con- 
 vention. Headed by the Rev. J. J. Scott, of Living- 
 ston, and the Rev. F. R. Hanson, they contended that 
 the lack of an Episcopal head was an unhappy anom- 
 aly, to remedy which the Convention should put forth 
 
38 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 all its energies. Yet so strong was the opposition of 
 some of the clergy to an election, an opposition based 
 chiefly, it would seem, on dread that in some indefin- 
 able way a Bishop would rob them of a portion of their 
 independence, that the clearer-headed were forced to 
 lag with the short-sighted, penny- wise pound-foolish, 
 majority. 
 
 But in 1842 the minority became the majority. The 
 denial of canonical right was now untenable, for eight 
 clergymen had been canonically resident more than 
 twelve months. Only the endowment scheme could 
 be used as a breakwater, and this was not pushed 
 when seven parishes — Christ Church, Mobile, and the 
 churches in Tuskaloosa, Greensboro, the Prairies, Liv- 
 ingston, Florence and Tuscumbia — pledged themselves 
 to raise one thousand dollars of the Bishop's salary, 
 and St. John's, Montgomery, offered to increase this 
 amount by another thousand dollars if the Bishop 
 should also accept the rectorship of that parish. Thus 
 the last obstacle to the election of a Bishop was re- 
 moved. The election was accordingly entered upon, 
 and the lot fell upon the Rev. Martin P. Parks, a 
 presbyter of the diocese of Virginia, but, at the time, 
 chaplain of the United States Military Academy at 
 West Point. But Mr. Parks' reply to the call was, 
 substantially, " Nolo Episcopari." 
 
 Another year passed, and again the Convention was 
 assembled. Bishop Polk, of Louisiana, provisional 
 Bishop of Alabama, was in the chair. He urged that 
 the disappointment of the previous year should but 
 make the members of the Convention more intent to 
 
CHURCH IN ALAB AMA. 39 
 
 secure a Bishop, and that all other business, however 
 urgent, should be subordinated to this supreme neces- 
 sity. The Bishop's charge was followed to the letter. 
 The Episcopal salary was placed at $2,000 in connec- 
 tion with a parochial charge, or $1,200 independently 
 of such charge. The election resulted in the choice 
 of the Rev. James T. Johnston, of Virginia. But he 
 also declined the office. 
 
 The third choice was more successful. The Con- 
 vention of 1844 met at Greensboro, and on May 3 
 again turned its eyes towards a Virginian — a record 
 unbroken to this day. Under the guidance of the 
 Holy Spirit, it elected as first Bishop of the Diocese of 
 Alabama the Rev. Nicholas Hamner Cobbs, D. D., 
 rector of St. Paul's Church, Cincinnati. Dr. Cobbs 
 accepted the election. He was consecrated during 
 the General Convention at Philadelphia, on October 
 20, 1844, the Rt. Rev. Philander Chase being Conse- 
 crator, and Bishops Brownell of Connecticut, Onder- 
 donk of New York, Ives of North Carolina, and Smith 
 of Kentucky, joining in the I,aying-on-of-Hands. 
 
 The Church in Alabama now had a head. 
 
PART SECOND. 
 
 The Episcopate of Bishop Cobbs. 
 
NICHOLAS HAMNER COBBS 
 
 FIRST BISHOP OF ALABAMA 
 
 (From a daguerreotype take,, in isaoand now in possession of Mrs. A. P. Hogan, 
 ol Tnskaloosa). 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 BISHOP COBBS' EARI<Y I.IFE. 
 
 * * T S that the worst they say about me ? I can tell 
 I them many worse things about myself. ' ' 
 This was Bishop Cobbs' only response to a bit of 
 malicious backbiting that was once brought to his 
 attention. It was an answer inspired not by hypocrisy 
 but by genuine humility. It gives the key-note of the 
 character of Alabama's first Bishop. 
 
 A brief survey of his early life will reveal the spirit- 
 ual power which made such repression and sincere 
 meekness possible. 
 
 Nicholas Hamner Cobbs was born in Bedford county, 
 Virginia, on February 5, 1795. In boyhood and youth 
 he knew nothing of Church influences. The clergy 
 were few and far between. The only preaching that 
 he heard in his minority was the hair-raising exhorting 
 of an ultra-Calvinistic divine, who held forth in the 
 neighborhood in a style strongly resembling that of 
 Jonathan Edwards in the moments of his most lurid 
 word-painting. That such distortion of the Gospel 
 neither cast a dark shadow over his faith nor drove 
 him into the prevailing unbelief and defiance was due 
 largely to the devotion of his mother, by whom he was 
 so carefully nurtured. 
 
 From his baptism in infancy to the day of his ordi- 
 nation he never joined in the Church services; but 
 many of the treasures of English theology were scat- 
 
 43 
 
44 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 tered among the private libraries, and to these young 
 Cobbs, as " the school-master, " had free access. His 
 pedagogic duties, which began at the early age of 
 seventeen, gave him the mental discipline requisite to 
 profitable study of theology, and the theological litera- 
 ture that he studied in the intervals of school-room 
 work, gave definiteness to the vague feelings of pietism 
 which passed current for religion. He worked out his 
 own salvation, and after twelve years of hard study 
 he offered himself, when twenty- nine years of age, to 
 Bishop Moore for ordination. 
 
 He was not even confirmed, but his zeal, his learn- 
 ing, and his piety were so marked that on the very 
 day — May 23, 1824 — on which he was confirmed and 
 admitted to the Holy Communion he was made a 
 deacon. This took place at Staunton, "Va. , where the 
 Diocesan Convention was in session. In after years 
 Bishop Cobbs related that often in the lonely horse- 
 back journey from Bedford to Staunton his natural 
 timidity rose within him like a flood and almost made 
 him determine to return home. The Angel of the 
 I,ord opposed Balaam going to curse, and urged on 
 Cobbs going to bless. 
 
 Immediately after his ordination Mr. Cobbs returned 
 to his home as the place marked out for the exercise 
 of his ministry. He had married his fifteen-year-old 
 cousin three years before, and the freedom of a celi- 
 bate was not for him. Five days in the week he 
 worked in the school-room, and two days in the week 
 he preached the Gospel. He had to gather his own 
 congregation. It was a virgin soil, but his work pros- 
 
CHURCH IN AL ABAMA. 45 
 
 pered, and at the end of two years he had built two 
 brick churches where none had stood before. Already 
 his labors were so blessed that many larger congrega- 
 tions were inviting him to come to them, but he felt 
 that the care of Bedford was, at least in its infant state, 
 of divine obligation. 
 
 So for thirteen years he remained in this one charge, 
 until, at the request of the officers of the University of 
 Virginia, the Diocesan Convention appointed him 
 Chaplain to the University.* Though he had for 
 eight years been a deputy to the General Convention, 
 his manner was so modest and retiring, and his esti- 
 mate of his own ability so low, that to some these char- 
 acteristics seemed to render him unfit to cope with the 
 aggressive materialistic spirit of the University. Yet 
 they proved his most powerful natural agents in dis- 
 arming opposition and giving point to his simple re- 
 cital of the wondrous old story of the love of Christ. 
 
 On one occasion, when he was dining at a friend's 
 house, a student of the University amused himself, 
 after under-graduate fashion, and thought that he was 
 amusing others, by jokes that reflected upon the cler- 
 ical vocation. Mr. Cobbs said nothing and did not 
 manifest the least annoyance; but as the company 
 was about to rise from the table he went up to the 
 young man, and, taking his hand in a friendly man- 
 ner, said: "My young friend, I am greatly obliged 
 to you for your admonitions. We of the clergy sel- 
 dom have our faults told us so plainly, and I trust 
 that I shall profit by your discourse." The youth's 
 
 *Dr. George F. Cushman's Memorial Sermon, page 17. 
 
46 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 discomfiture was complete, yet he had no ground for 
 anger; and the incident gave the chaplain an influ- 
 ence that no amount of preaching could have brought. 
 His chaplaincy marked a new era in the history of the 
 institution. 
 
 But the time had come when Mr. Cobbs must exer- 
 cise his great power in a wider field. St. Paul's 
 Church, Petersburg, had for some time been a source 
 of much anxiety to Bishop Meade, who himself took 
 charge of the parish for a few months until he could 
 find some one peculiarly adapted to so difficult a field. 
 He decided that Mr. Cobbs was the man, and called 
 upon him to come to Petersburg, not as a promotion 
 but as a duty. 
 
 God's blessing attended Mr. Cobbs' four years rec- 
 torship (1839-43), and a great material and spiritual 
 harvest was reaped. 
 
 3ut circumstances arose which, in 1843, gave him 
 no choice but to leave both Petersburg and Virginia. 
 Bishop Moore had died in 1841, and Bishop Meade 
 had become diocesan. The Assistant Bishop's theo- 
 logical status had been fixed when he called Mr. Cobbs 
 to Petersburg, but Mr. Cobbs' views while unequivo- 
 cally held were not yet so positively set forth. The 
 quietude of Bedford and the intellectuality of Char- 
 lottesville had furnished him opportunity and incentive 
 to study, and he had been growing stronger and broader 
 and deeper in both spirit and intellect. But this growth , 
 instead of degenerating into a vagueness of view that 
 leaves all things unsolved and declares that Christians 
 are but seekers after truth, made his grasp of the 
 
CHURCH IN AL ABAMA. 47 
 
 Faith delivered once for all more definite and uncom- 
 promising. He held to the visibility and divine origin 
 and authority of the Church, and he had come to say 
 that next to his love and reverence for Christ, who 
 was the Head, was his love and reverence for the 
 Church, which was the Body. With such sentiments, 
 he could not but yield the greatest respect to the Book 
 of Common Prayer and abide to the full extent by the 
 directions of the Rubrics. He believed that Friday 
 was a fast day of obligation. He held that, since 
 especial Collects, Epistles and Gospels had been in- 
 corporated by the Church into the Prayer Book, the 
 Church's manifest intention was that the Feast Days 
 should be observed by especial services. Therefore 
 when he went to Petersburg he revived the long- 
 neglected observance of the Church's appointed feast- 
 days and fast-days. 
 
 By some of the good people of Virginia, and among 
 them was Bishop Meade, this innocent and pious re- 
 formation was held to be a glaring rag of Ritualism, 
 and an infallible sign of Romish tendencies. Mr. 
 Cobbs' own parishioners found no fault with their 
 rector. But elsewhere some of the laity complained. 
 A few young deacons sniffed, as only deacons can 
 sniff. But the Bishop made his displeasure perceptible 
 throughout the national Church. He had requested 
 the diocese to elect an Assistant Bishop. Dr. * Cobbs 
 was respected by all the clergy and almost idolized by 
 the laity, and to him the eyes of a majority of the 
 Diocesan Convention of 1843 instinctively turned. So 
 * Geneva College had conferred the D. D. on him in 1842. 
 
48 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 manifestly was Dr. Cobbs the all-but-unanimous choice 
 of the delegates that the Bishop, in view of what he 
 deemed a prospective calamity to the Church in Vir- 
 ginia, felt it incumbent upon him to oppose with all 
 his power the selection of a person of such unsound 
 theological and ecclesiastical views. The Bishop's 
 action left no doubt as to Mr. Cobbs' proper course. 
 Through the Rev. Mr. Atkinson, afterwards Bishop of 
 North Carolina, he announced that his name must not 
 be placed before the Convention. In a short while he 
 accepted a call to St. Paul's Church, Cincinnati, Bishop 
 Meade's unprecedented action rendering it impossible 
 for him to remain longer in Virginia. 
 
 Scarcely had he entered upon his new work, when 
 the clergy of the diocese of Indiana elected him their 
 Bishop. The laity did not concur in this election, 
 as they deemed his acceptance improbable for many 
 reasons. In the following year he was elected Bishop 
 of Alabama. Not until after his death was it known, 
 even to his family, that in 1841 the House of Bishops 
 had elected him Missionary Bishop of the Republic of 
 Texas, an election which was never sent down to the 
 dioceses, as the lower House thought it inexpedient 
 to assume responsibility for Church extension in that 
 
 country. 
 
 It is a record seldom equalled, and disclosing a char- 
 acter and a reputation seldom paralleled, that a pres- 
 byter should within the period of four years have the 
 eyes of three dioceses and of the Episcopate of the 
 general Church turned upon him as one fit to be a. 
 Bishop in the household of the Faith. 
 
B 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MISSIONARY CHARACTER OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 ISHOP COBBS proceeded to Alabama immedi- 
 ately after his consecration, and entered actively 
 upon his episcopal duties in November, 1844. 
 
 His work, he soon found, was distinctly the work 
 of an evangelist and pioneer. 
 
 In the Tennessee valley two small congregations 
 had been established, aj Tuscumbia and Florence, 
 four years before. The church at Huntsville, which 
 had had a nominal existence for ten years, had just 
 celebrated its first birthday as an organization. These 
 three congregations, not numbering fifty communi- 
 cants among them, were the only representatives of 
 the Church in all that portion of the state north of a 
 line drawn due east and west through Tuskaloosa. 
 In Mobile, Christ Church was enjoying that numerical 
 and financial growth that has ever been its good for- _ 
 tune. It was the one strong parish in the diocese; 
 and rivers, marshes, and pine forests separated it by 
 three hundred miles and two weeks of travel from its 
 nearest neighbor. 
 
 All other congregations of the diocese were, without 
 exception, in the Black Belt, or middle district of the 
 state. Their territory extended, in wedge shape, from 
 east to west, with the edge resting upon the Chatta- 
 hoochee river. 
 
 This peculiar stratification of the diocese rendered 
 49 
 
5° HISTORY OF THE 
 
 it practically a Missionary Jurisdiction, whose three 
 component parts were separated by great reaches of 
 country either indifferent or hostile to the Church. 
 Not five hundred communicants, whites and blacks, 
 lived in the entire state, and, one-half of the entire 
 number residing in Mobile, it is plain that the re- 
 mainder of the diocese was thinly sown. 
 
 Nor was the prospect of immediate growth at all 
 promising. Only eight clergymen — six outside of 
 Mobile — were at work, and they necessarily divided 
 their energy among so many interests, and expended 
 their strength in the fatigue 9^ so much travel in priv- 
 ate conveyances over bad roads to minister to widely 
 separated flocks, that the hope of the most sanguine 
 was but to hold and develop the already established 
 congregations. Demopolis, Livingston, and St. John's 
 in the Prairies received the ministrations of the same 
 clergyman. Another served two country churches 
 forty-five miles apart, one in Dallas County and one 
 in Lowndes. Tuskaloosa was, a little later, conjoined 
 with Elyton, fifty miles away. Another clergyman 
 worked the wide-extending field in East Alabama, 
 comprising Yongesboro, Seale, Girard, Auburn, Tus- 
 kegee, Tallassee, La Fayette, and West Point. In 
 Southwest Alabama still another did the work at St. 
 Stephen's, Bladon Springs, Butler, and Pushmataha.* 
 Some fields even broader than these are comprised in 
 a single missionary station today, but comfortable 
 
 *Stated services have not for many years been held in any 
 of these places, except Auburn. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 51 
 
 steamboats, good railroads, and fair highways make 
 them actually much more compact. 
 
 As weak as the diocese was numerically, it was 
 even weaker financially. Bishop Cobbs came to' Ala- 
 bama on a salary of $1,500 a year and traveling ex- 
 penses,* and, although in 1849 the Bishop had by un- 
 tiring work increased the number of clergymen to what 
 was the phenomenal number of eighteen, the number 
 of congregations to twenty -six, and the number of com- 
 municants to more than seven hundred, yet even then 
 the diocese felt able to increase his salary to only 
 $1,750; and this sum included his traveling expenses. 
 
 Ministerial salaries were as pitiably small as was 
 the Episcopal salary, and were, in many cases, eked 
 out by school-teaching. One of the largest parishes 
 — a parish that enjoyed this distinction, though having 
 fewer than twenty communicants — promised its rector 
 $300 a year, and intimated the possibility of raising 
 another hundred by the efforts of the women in fairs 
 and mite-meetings. In some cases parishes would 
 not promise their minister any specified sum, but 
 would make the very commercial agreement that the 
 weekly offertory — come rain, come shine- — should 
 constitute the rector's salary. This plan, while ob- 
 viously open to serious objection — calling for more 
 trustfulness in parson than in people, making the rec- 
 tor an easy target for congregational caprice, and ren- 
 dering it easy for uncourageous parishes to rid them- 
 
 *His traveling expenses in 1845 were $60. Generally he 
 traveled in his own buggy. When he used the stage he was 
 not permitted to pay fare. 
 
52 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 selves of undesirable ministers by the cruel method of 
 " starving them. out " — did not work at all badly in 
 comparison with the too frequently experienced sys- 
 tem of promising much and irregularly paying little. 
 Indeed, those clergymen upon whom the plan was 
 tried bore witness that the salary averaged well, and, 
 coming in regularly, allowed them to settle their 
 grocery bills punctually.* 
 
 The meager support given the clergy was partly 
 excusable by the necessity laid upon many congrega- 
 tions of building for themselves houses of worship; 
 but, after all due allowance is made, the great cause 
 still remains: the laity were unwilling to test the 
 Lord's promise to them that bring their tithes into 
 His storehouse. Their penuriousness towards the 
 Church resulted from their false, self-erected standard 
 of spirituality, and felt exculpated by comparison 
 of their own ministers' salaries with the salaries of 
 neighboring Baptist preachers and Methodist circuit- 
 riders. Refusing most properly to set up money as a 
 yard-stick of spirituality, they refused most improper- 
 ly to accept it as a weather-vane. 
 
 ♦Convention Journal for 1852, page 10. 
 
H 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MISSIONARY SOWINGS. 
 
 AD a narrower man than Doctor Cobbs become 
 Bishop of Alabama in 1844, it is probable that 
 finding the Church already established in Mobile, 
 Tuskaloosa, Greensboro, Montgomery, Huntsville, 
 and Selma, and a few smaller places, he would have 
 directed every effort towards the upbuilding of the 
 congregations already established. The motive would 
 have been, to make them strong centers of operations 
 in the following generation. The motto would have 
 Jaeen, " Concentrate." 
 
 But as it was Bishop Cobbs that came to the over- 
 sight of Alabama, such was not the course pursued. 
 The new Bishop's mind reverted to the scattering of 
 the Church from Jerusalem and the consequent spread 
 of the Faith. He felt that men, not parishes, were 
 the proper centers of operations. His motto was, 
 " Diffuse." 
 
 In following the line of endeavor suggested by this 
 word, he did not neglect his duty to the flocks already 
 gathered. He visited these first of all. He acquainted 
 himself with them and made them acquainted with 
 himself. When he visited a congregation it was not 
 his chief object to get out of town at the earliest oppor- 
 tunity that decency allowed. He visited the sick and 
 the afflicted at their homes. He catechized the chil- 
 dren in Sunday School. He gathered the Negroes and 
 
 53 
 
54 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 preached them the Gospel. He met with vestries and 
 discussed their present difficulties and future prospects. 
 He counselled with the clergy as brother with brother. 
 Not one of a Bishop's many duties to a congregation 
 did he neglect or willingly forego. He was never 
 happier than when the parish minister unfolded an 
 extensive Episcopal program for the visitation. 
 
 But he was not satisfied that a Bishop's duty to his 
 diocese ended with even the most faithful visitation of 
 established congregations. He was not content merely 
 to ' ' fill his appointments ' ' and go back home. As he 
 passed through the country he sought all possible in- 
 formation about isolated Church families and about 
 towns wherein the Church's voice had never been 
 heard. The former he either visited himself or brought 
 to the attention of the nearest clergyman.* The latter 
 he always visited and tested for their ability to receive 
 the Church. In the earlier years of his Episcopate 
 he visited many such places. Willingness to hear 
 him was as warm an invitation as he cared to receive, 
 and this willingness became yearly more and more 
 pronounced among the people of all denominations. 
 Truly insignificant was the unvisited hamlet lying 
 within fifty or one hundred miles of the Bishop's line 
 of travel. Among the first towns and settlements in 
 which he made experiment were Tuskegee, Marion, 
 Burton's Hill, Sumterville, Northport, Mount Meigs, 
 Jacksonville and Montevallo. At every one of these 
 
 * The Bishop kept a register of such persons, aid in i860 
 had 103 communicants on this list. 
 
CHURCH IN ALAB AMA. 55 
 
 places a congregation was established, and, Tuskegee 
 and Northport excepted, established permanently. 
 
 The almost uniform success that he met with in 
 these pioneer visits impressed deeply upon the Bishop 
 the need for more clergy. He felt that, do what he 
 could, his hands were tied unless he could leave work- 
 men in the field. In 1846 he pointed, in addition to 
 the towns just mentioned, to Livingston, Lowndesboro, 
 Hayneville, Wetumpka, Eufaula, La Fayette, Talla- 
 dega and Tuscumbia as favorable points for missionary 
 work, in case he'could secure missionaries. How true 
 his foresight is indicated by the fact that in all these 
 places but La Fayette and Wetumpka congregations 
 are today living more or less fully the life of the One 
 Body. 
 
 The Bishop's missionary zeal inspired the other 
 clergy, and right heartily did they follow the lead of 
 him who said not "Go!" but "Come!" The rector 
 of St. John's, Montgomery, took upon himself the 
 missionary charge of Mount Meigs in Montgomery 
 county, Robinson Springs in Autauga county, Tus- 
 kegee in Macon county, Hayneville in Lowndes 
 county, St. David's in Dallas county, and Wetumpka 
 (now in Elmore county). A little later, when St. 
 Andrew's, Hayneville, had grown to the stature of 
 a parish, its minister watched over the missions at 
 Lowndesboro and Benton in Lowndes county, and 
 Pleasant Hill in Dallas county. In like manner, 
 points about Huntsville, Greensboro, Selma, and 
 Mobile, received ministrations with considerable fre- 
 quency and regularity. 
 
56 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 It is true that in not a few cases no permanent 
 congregation was formed. There was much going to 
 and fro of population. So young was the state, that 
 Churchmen, like others, did not feel any hereditary 
 love for their homes, and were easily persuaded to try 
 new fields. Old churches passed away, and their 
 congregations dissolved. But the individual mem- 
 bers appeared elsewhere, and, though their personal 
 labors and pecuniary interest were greatly reduced, 
 they were not entirely lost to the Church. 
 
 At any rate the missionary work that was done 
 among the villages and on the plantations was done 
 faithfully, and subsequently bore much fruit. The 
 kaleidoscopic changes in town and country congrega- 
 tions, which for awhile seemed to proclaim the vanity 
 of all the labors ministerial that had gone before, in 
 fact brought about a homogeneity of the entire diocese 
 that has in later days been a chief source of strength. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DIFFICULTIES AND DISCOURAGEMENTS. 
 
 GREAT as were the geographical difficulties that 
 beset the .Church's growth, the theological 
 difficulties were greater. 
 
 Marked distrust pervaded the community as to the 
 evangelical and spiritual character of the Church. 
 The Oxford Movement and the Tracts for the Times 
 were not in sufficient perspective for men to judge 
 rightly of their tendencies. ' ' Puseyism ' ' was a bogy 
 that frightened many men, not merely those within 
 the Church, but multitudes- without it. It was felt 
 that the Anglican communion was, somehow, on trial 
 for attempted liaison with Rome. In 1844 the Gen- 
 eral Convention had been importuned to reprehend 
 and condemn ' ' the serious errors in doctrine which 
 have within a few years been introduced and exten- 
 sively promulgated by means of tracts, the press, 
 and the pulpit." This the General Convention had 
 declined to do, and its declaration that " the Church 
 is not responsible for the errors of individuals ' ' was 
 taken as an evasion of the matter — which it undoubt- 
 edly was — and a confession of sympathy with the 
 new-born evils — which it undoubtedly was not. 
 
 Newman, Wilberforce, Manning, Faber, and Ward, 
 chief exponents of the so-called Catholic Renascence, 
 seemed to declare the true character of the movement 
 by moving into the Church of Rome. In America, 
 — 6 57 
 
58 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 too, Romanism was beginning to lift its head, encour- 
 aged by the great influx of Irish immigrants. Bishop 
 Ives, the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of North Caro- 
 lina, after a mental struggle which, in the course of 
 several years, showed itself in the most remarkable 
 vacillation, at length tendered his allegiance as a lay- 
 man to the Bishop of Rome. Others accompanied 
 and followed him. 
 
 It was a natural result of these defections that 
 throughout the American nation Protestant Chris- 
 tianity felt an increased distrust of the Church, and 
 that in this decade the Church's growth was far less 
 in proportion than the growth of the country. Mis- 
 taking the nature of the disease, the " Memorialists " 
 of 1853 — numbering among themselves the future 
 Bishops M. A. DeWolfe Howe, G. T. Bedell, and A. 
 Cleveland Coxe, and the distinguished presbyters 
 William Augustus Muhlenberg, Alexander H. Vin- 
 ton, John Henry Hobart, and Francis Vinton — 
 ascribed this slow growth to our ecclesiastical polity 
 and liturgical worship. 
 
 But Bishop Cobbs was not panic-stricken. That 
 others had abused what was good did not make him 
 therefore refuse it. He did not protect himself from 
 suspicion by indulging in wholesale denunciation of 
 the Oxford movement and its after effects. While 
 others would fain have conciliated a caviling sectari- 
 anism by a vandalism of order and rite that, after all, 
 would not have produced any better understanding or 
 closer affiliation, he quite contentedly allowed men to 
 call him "a semi-Papist" for holding unwaveringly 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 59 
 
 to the old paths. He exhorted the clergy ' ' to adhere 
 to their own principles and usages with uncompro- 
 mising firmness, and always to perform the worship of 
 the Church with the most scrupulous observance of 
 the rubrics and canons. ' ' At the same time he urged 
 against an increasing formalism, and insisted that the 
 only way by which the clergy of Alabama could pro- 
 tect the good character of the Church in Alabama was 
 by clearly and explicitly setting forth the evangelical 
 principles of the Church as contained in Prayer Book 
 and Homilies — the corruption of human nature, justi- 
 fication by faith in the merits and righteousness of the 
 I,ord Jesus Christ, the need of a renovation of heart, 
 of the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit, and of 
 a dutiful obedience manifested not only in the observ- 
 ance of ordinances, but in the keeping of command- 
 ments, and in the fruits of righteousness and holiness 
 — if only this should be the faithful and consistent 
 teaching of the clergy, the issue would not long re- 
 main doubtful. 
 
 This would have been true but for other considera- 
 tions, which cannot remain unnoticed: 
 
 The outside world was not moving toward the 
 Church. Men were not hungering and thirsting for 
 a better and purer form of religion than that which 
 they already enjoyed. What they had they really 
 enjoyed; and enjoyment was the popular conception 
 of Christian perfection. Indifferentism wore the thin 
 veil of liberality. Into villages and settlements any 
 religious society was welcomed if it did not expressly 
 or by necessary implication question the authority and 
 
6o HISTORY OP THE 
 
 doctrine of prior bodies. Alabama was like the 
 Roman Pantheon, wherein every God was welcomed 
 but the Christian's God, who was rejected because He 
 was " a jealous God." 
 
 Inoculated with the virus of this spurious liberality, 
 many of the Church's own children grew up without 
 adequate ideas of the high dignity of the Church, 
 and her ministry and sacraments. They were igno- 
 rant of her doctrines, careless of her sanction, indif- 
 ferent to her privileges, neglectful of her ordinances; 
 and finally, by inevitable consequence, turned their 
 backs on their spiritual mother and we tit off into 
 schism or worldliness. Their unwillingness to learn 
 the teachings of the Church brought on inability to 
 receive them. Neglecting the ministrations of the 
 Church, they next denied her unity, holiness, catho- 
 licity, and Apostolicity; and finding the teaching of 
 the clergy out of touch with their own raw conclu- 
 sions, denounced their erstwhile teachers as narrow 
 and uncharitable. 
 
 For another hindrance the clergy themselves were 
 to blame. They remained in their own parishes too 
 continuously without holding converse and exchang- 
 ing experiences with fellow clergymen, and thus failed 
 to give and to receive the help that the parish priest 
 so much needs to prevent either his peculiar trials 
 from cowing him or his little successes from puffing 
 him. The relation oiparoikia to dioikia, of parish to 
 household, seems to have been imperfectly appre- 
 hended. Attendance on annual Conventions was mis- 
 erably small and discouraging. It was impossible to 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 6l 
 
 bring the whole diocese to any concerted plan of ac- 
 tion when only one-half the clergy attended the 
 annual Conventions. This was an evil that the Bishop 
 earnestly sought to remove ; but, though a measure of 
 success attended his efforts, improvement was not per- 
 manent until very shame at the absence of two-thirds 
 of their order from the Convention of 1858 made the 
 clergy themselves determine to reform. It could not 
 but be a drag on the Church that, with twenty seven 
 clergy entitled to a vote and more than fifty congre- 
 gations entitled to representation, her Convention 
 numbered, not eighty-five delegates, but only twenty- 
 nine. 
 
 The migratory disposition of the clergy was another 
 substantial hindrance. In the conventional year 
 1847-8 six clergymen removed from one parish to 
 another or left the diocese. Of those who had elected 
 Dr. Cobbs Bishop four years before only one remained 
 in the diocese — the Rev. N. P. Knapp — and he had 
 removed to another parish. In the five years, 1853 58, 
 sixteen of the twenty-seven clergy resident the first 
 year of the period left the diocese, and of the eleven 
 that remained only six remained in uninterrupted 
 charge of their respective congregations. These con- 
 stant migrations were unfavorable to Church growth, 
 for in removing from one parish to another, even 
 though remaining in the diocese, the clergy lost much 
 of their slowly acquired influence, which they could 
 neither transfer to their successors nor carry to their 
 new parishes. The injury thus inflicted upon old con- 
 
62 HISTORY OF THK 
 
 gregations was considerable; upon new ones it was 
 incalculable. 
 
 Other serious obstacles demand passing remark. 
 The Bishop's health was never good, and it was only 
 by sheer force of will that he kept going. But even 
 will power has occasionally to succumb. In 1847-8 
 the Bishop visited few congregations, confirming in 
 the aggregate not quite two-score persons. I,ater in 
 1848, his own sickness in Huntsville, from June to 
 November, and sickness in his family in Tuskaloosa, 
 prevented him from making any visitations. For one 
 reason or another several of the clergy were deposed 
 within a short period. In 1846 the Rev. S. S. I^ewis, 
 long a tower of strength despite the ravages of con- 
 sumption, was obliged to retire from work; two years 
 later he passed away. In 1850 more than one-half 
 the congregations were without ministerial services. 
 In 1 85 1 Mr. I^ay and Mr. Morrison, in Huntsville and 
 Montgomery, were entirely disabled by ill health. 
 A similar reason carried Mr. Massey away from 
 Mobile five months, and Mr. Cushman from Seale and 
 Auburn nearly an entire year; and an overturning 
 stage coach so injured the Bishop in his right shoul- 
 der that he was disabled for a considerable period. 
 In 1854 another prince in Israel, the Rev. N. P. 
 Knapp, rested from his labors. Fierce conflict be- 
 tween the rector and the vestry of Christ Church, 
 Tuskaloosa, and a subsequent parochial schism of a 
 year's duration, gave the enemy much occasion to 
 blaspheme. Yellow fever devastated Montgomery for 
 two months each of this and the two ensuing years. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 63 
 
 In the latter year, 1855, Elyton, Birmingham's fore- 
 runner, summed up in one sentence the obstacle that 
 to less extent dampened ardor and chilled faith in 
 many other portions of the diocese : ' ' The Church 
 service has not been celebrated in this parish for 
 about- two years." 
 
 Yet throughout this period, which from one point 
 of view seems to have been full of doubt, half- 
 heartedness, and gloom, betokening fast-approaching 
 disintegration, the Bishop walked firmly and worked 
 indefatigably, strong in his conviction that the life- 
 giving Spirit of God would, in His own good time, 
 move through the chaos. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 WITH LOINS BEGIRT. 
 
 THE history of the Church in Alabama in the 
 'Forties and 'Fifties is not always to be pursued as 
 in gloom and misgiving. We may speak of the reward 
 of faithfulness and the sifting of the sunshine into 
 the darkness. 
 
 While churches were vacant, clergy itinerant, 
 Churchmen despondent, and sectarians sibilant, signs 
 of increased life-pulsations and stronger heart-throbs 
 began to appear here and there. The second year of 
 this episcopate (1846) saw, in Mobile, the beginning 
 of the "Free Episcopal Church," which, under the 
 careful ministration of the Rev. B. M. Miller, soon 
 became an established congregation, known as Trinity 
 Church; in Huntsville, the erection of a small brick 
 church-building, which enabled the congregation to 
 vacate the court house; and in Eutaw, the subscrip- 
 tion of two thousand dollars towards the building of 
 St. StepTien's Church. The clergy list had increased 
 in the number of active workers to sixteen. Already 
 there were seven candidates for the ministry. 
 
 In the following year (1847) a future Bishop, Henry 
 
 C. Lay, then only twenty-three years old, became 
 
 rector of the Church of the Nativity, Huntsville, and 
 
 soon had impressed his strong young personality on 
 
 the entire diocese. 
 
 The yearly confirmations did not increase apprecia- 
 64 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 65 
 
 bly for ten years, remaining constantly at about one 
 hundred ; but at the end of that period they suddenly 
 rose to two hundred, and seldom afterward fell below 
 this number. 
 
 By immigration the communicant-roll grew with 
 greater rapidity. While it took four years (1849- 
 J 853) to grow from 729 to 1,019, tne same increase 
 was gained in the next two years (1853-1855). 
 
 The clergy were following the Bishop's lead in 
 caring for isolated families, and were enabled the better 
 to do this by the constant increase in their numbers. 
 Twelve clergymen were at work in 1844, sixteen in 
 1850, and twenty-two in 1855. Every Church family 
 was looked upon as the possible nucleus of a congre- 
 gation, and not infrequently the possible became the 
 actual. Six years of careful nursing so developed 
 the diocese that, in 1852, the increase had been four- 
 fold, and the congregations numbered seventy-eight. 
 
 In the autumn of 1851 the Bishop felt that the best 
 interests of the diocese required him to reside in 
 Montgomery. When he came to Alabama Tuskaloosa 
 was the capital, and -he made that place his home be- 
 cause there his influence told for the most. From the 
 capital radiated the three stage lines, to Montgomery 
 (w'« Selma), Huntsville, and Columbus, Miss., and 
 by these, the trunk-lines of early Alabama, Episcopal 
 visitations and missionary excursions were rendered 
 more practicable. But when the capital was moved 
 to Montgomery, in 1847, Tuskaloosa was side-tracked, 
 and facilities of intercourse with the provinces became 
 quite poor. After suffering this inconvenience for 
 
66 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 five years, the Bishop yielded to the same considera- 
 tions that had carried him to Tuskaloosa, and, in the 
 spring of 1852, removed to the new capital. Upon 
 his removal the Churchmen of Montgomery presented 
 him with three thousand dollars towards the purchase 
 of a home. The Bishop bought a house and several 
 acres of land in the edge of town and settled himself 
 there. The long, low red brick house that was his 
 home thenceforward is still occupied by the family of 
 one of his sons, ex-State Treasurer John L. Cobbs, 
 who as a boy accompanied his father on many a jour- 
 ney through the diocese. 
 
 So soon as the awkwardness of living in an out-of- 
 the-way place had been disposed of, Bishop Cobbs 
 showed the ultimate possibilities of his vigor. In 
 1 85 1-2 the amount of work that he accomplished far 
 surpassed that of any preceding year. A synopsis of 
 his work — exclusive of sermonic, epistolary, execu- 
 tive, and pastoral labors, which cannot be synoptized, 
 but of all which he did a large amount — will not be 
 unprofitable reading. 
 
 From Montgomery as his starting-point he made 
 
 his visitations in four distinct series. In the first 
 
 series he went directly from Montgomery to Cahaba, 
 
 where he preached on May 15. The next day he was 
 
 at Selma, fifteen miles northeast, where he preached 
 
 and confirmed two persons. The overturning of the 
 
 stagecoach next day, and his consequent injuries, 
 
 delayed him more than two weeks in his progress. 
 
 On Whitsunday, however, he was at work again, 
 
 preaching at Tuskaloosa in the morning in Christ 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 67 
 
 Church and in the afternoon in St. Philip's chapel 
 to the Negroes. Thence he visited Eutaw, thirty-five 
 miles southwest; went twelve miles further south into 
 the " Fork of Greene," one of the most fertile regions 
 of the whole South; thence into Sumter county to 
 Gainesville, thirty miles northwest; thence to Sum- 
 terville, ten miles southwest; and on to I/ivingston, 
 ten miles due south. From Livingston he crossed 
 the Tombigbee back into Greene county, and, visiting 
 another portion of the "Fork," known as Burton's 
 Hill,* went on to Tuskaloosa. Here he remained 
 three weeks, preaching frequently and catching up 
 with his correspondence. Throughout the next month 
 he was working in Perry and Marengo counties, visit- 
 ing successively Marion, St. John's-in-the-Prairies, 
 and Woodville (now Uniontown), and remaining, not 
 twelve hours, but an entire week in each place — much 
 after the manner, and much with the success, of St. 
 Paul. The next three months — it was now August — 
 were spent in Tuskaloosa, and then the visitation of 
 the northern portion of the diocese began. Ely ton 
 was the first stop, and then came a necessarily long 
 jump through a sparsely settled country to the Ten- 
 nessee River, where the route was, in order, Hunts- 
 ville, Athens, Decatur, Courtland, Florence, and Tus- 
 cumbia. Passing back to Middle Alabama, he stopped 
 at Tuskaloosa long enough to preach twice, and then 
 went on down into Marengo county, where he began 
 
 * It was from this place that St. Mark's Church, Boligee, 
 formerly known as "St. Mark's, Fork of Greene," was re- 
 moved. 
 
68 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 his visitations at Prairieville and Demopolis. His 
 further work in this district was interrupted by his 
 necessary presence at the consecration in Augusta, 
 Georgia, of Bishop Rutledge of Florida; but while on 
 his way to Georgia he visited Jacksonville, and on his 
 return journey preached and confirmed at Talladega. 
 The broken thread of Middle Alabama visitations 
 was taken up at Selma, on October 22, and then the 
 Bishop began to work eastward, taking in, on his 
 route, I^owndesboro, Montgomery, Auburn, St. John's- 
 in-the-Wilderness (Russell county), and Eufaula. He 
 then made a long jump to those places that he visited 
 earlier in the year, going to Greensboro, Tuskaloosa, 
 Greene Springs Academy, back to Tuskaloosa, Bethsa- 
 lem (in the Fork of Greene) , and Eutaw. Two months 
 after his former visits he returned to Greensboro, to 
 make a deacon, and to Tuskaloosa, to officiate at the 
 marriage of a daughter. After a three weeks' sojourn 
 in Tuskaloosa, he went to Montgomery for a few days, 
 and returned to Tuskaloosa for a stay of two weeks, 
 remaining, on his way back, a week each at Selma 
 and Greensboro. He was at Montgomery throughout 
 Lent, assisting the rector in services and pastoral work, 
 preaching for him, and making experimental visits to 
 Wetumpka and Robinson's Springs. Immediately af- 
 ter Easter he went to Mobile, worked there two weeks, 
 and returned home by way of the Dallas county 
 churches, St. David's, St. Peter's, and St. Paul's. 
 
 It will be seen, from this itinerary, that the four 
 series of visitations were made, the first in the west, 
 the second in the north, the third in the east, and the 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 69 
 
 fourth in the south of the state. Confirmation classes 
 were uniformly small, seldom consisting of more than 
 two persons, in only two cases exceeding four, and in 
 one-half the congregations numbering only one. 
 
 The Bishop testified that in his visitations he was 
 no stranger to mortifications, privations, and dangers; 
 not the least of which was the occasional necessity of 
 camping four days in the rain on the bank of a con- 
 stantly rising river, waiting for a steamboat that might 
 have come at any hour but did not come at all. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE CHURCH BUILDING ERA. 
 
 ABOUT 1850 one great cause of small confirmation 
 classes began to disappear. So long as the con- 
 gregation in any town, village, or settlement was com- 
 pelled to worship in a dwelling house, many that were 
 kindly disposed towards the Church but were not 
 strong in the Faith declined to join their fortunes with 
 those of the new-come Christian body. For aught that 
 they knew its local existence was but ephemeral, and 
 they did not care to be identified with an unsuccessful 
 ecclesiastical experiment. 
 
 It is true that this very houseless and hopeless con- 
 dition of many congregations was long their protec- 
 tion against the gnat-like persecution that sectarian 
 villagers are so well skilled to practice ; and it is 
 equally true that so soon as these congregations began 
 to achieve a local habitation disdainful or pitying tol- 
 erance was succeeded by aggressive opposition, char- 
 acterized more by ignorant fanaticism than by Christ- 
 like zeal. Sometimes, it must be confessed, this prej- 
 udice was deepened and intensified with good reason 
 by the intemperate sectarianism of a new-fledged 
 parish. A young clergyman met a child of Methodist 
 parents in the street of a village in Middle Alabama 
 and, on ascertaining that the boy had received his 
 baptism at the hands of a Methodist preacher, ex- 
 claimed pityingly : ' ' Poor child ! Poor benighted 
 
 70 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. £1 
 
 little heathen ! " The hatred of the Church aroused 
 by this speech had not died out a generation later. 
 
 But it was better for the Church that it should grow 
 through pain than that it should die through inani- 
 tion. Sectarian intolerance injured itself by reducing 
 the number of those who would have left the com- 
 munion of the Church, and the prospect of permanent 
 organization encouraged many to return to their spir- 
 itual Mother. 
 
 The same impulse seems to have been felt through- 
 out the entire diocese about this time. Within no 
 other single decade have so many church buildings 
 been erected as in 1850-60. In this period not fewer 
 than eighteen congregations built permanent homes 
 for themselves. Eleven of these were completed in 
 the years 1852, '53, and '54. They were mostly in 
 Middle Alabama. Eufaula, Demopolis, Faunsdale, 
 Auburn, Macon, Sumterville, Montgomery, Cahaba, 
 Burton's Hill, Camden, and I^owndesboro erected 
 substantial houses of worship in the order named ; 
 and Christ Church parish, Tuskaloosa, built a chapel 
 for its Negro congregation. In South Alabama the 
 erection in Mobile of St.. John's Church for the 
 poor of the southern portion of the city was due to 
 the munificence of three liberal parishioners of Christ 
 Church — Emanuel Jones, William P. Hammond, and 
 John Johnson; St. Mary's was built at Summerville, 
 a suburb of Mobile, and St. Paul's at Spring Hill, 
 four miles further west. In North Alabama the con- 
 gregations at Tuscumbia, Jacksonville, and Hunts- 
 ville were well housed before the decade closed. 
 
72 HISTORY OF THS 
 
 The majority of these churches were quite modest 
 in appearance. Only two were of brick — St. John's, 
 Montgomery, and the Nativity, Huntsville — and 
 these, costing respectively $21,000 and $35,000, were 
 built to replace older structures, which had become 
 too small for the growing congregations. Every other 
 church edifice built at this time, even that of St. 
 John's, Mobile, was of wood. 
 
 With the exception of the three new churches in 
 Mobile, Montgomery, and Huntsville, the church 
 buildings of this decade were capable of seating any- 
 where from one hundred to three hundred people, the 
 smaller size predominating. Generally the architect- 
 ural features, without and within, were devoid of 
 beauty, taste, or significance. The designers seem 
 to have drunk in their inspiration from Methodist 
 houses of worship. * A plain rectangle, barely escaping 
 squareness; two doors, dividing the front into three 
 equal parts; rectangular windows, with clear glass 
 and swinging shutters; a high-eaved, wide-angled 
 Corinthian roof; these held the view from the exterior. 
 Within, the body of the church was almost a perfect 
 cube, with high, flat plastered ceiling; the line of 
 beauty was absent, and the acoustics were inevitably 
 bad. The chancel, when recess, was a minute, un- 
 ventilated box; but usually it was only a platform 
 divided from the remainder of the nave by a rail. 
 Sometimes the font and sometimes the pulpit stood in 
 the exact middle of this platform, hindering, and it 
 
 * Noteworthy exceptions were St. John's, Forkland, and 
 St. Luke's, Jacksonville, planned by Dr. Upjohn. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 73 
 
 would seem, hindering symbolically, clear view of the 
 altar and unobstructed access to it. Not infrequently 
 the reredos was made up* of three large panels con- 
 taining the Ten Commandments flanked by the I^ord's 
 Prayer and the Apostles' Creed. Frequently there 
 was no lecturn, and the Minister would either kneel 
 at the rail or go within the Sanctuary for Morning 
 Prayer and I4tany as well as for the Holy Communion. 
 The pulpit was far above the heads of the congrega- 
 tion, and was, in some places, entered only by a flight 
 of stairs from the vestry-room, wherein, during the 
 singing of the hymn before the sermon, the preacher 
 exchanged surplice and stole for black preaching- 
 gown and gloves. The choir was placed at the 
 farthest distance possible from the Minister, either on 
 a low platform between the front doors, or in a gallery 
 constructed, as the event proved, for the especial 
 privacy of the singers, that they might not, in the 
 intervals of repose after their arduous labors, be dis- 
 turbed by the devotions of the congregation. Vested 
 choirs had been heard of, but it is doubtful whether 
 the Minister that suggested their introduction would 
 thereafter have received any more respectful hearing 
 than if he had dared preach in his surplice. The 
 entire service and all the surroundings were barren of 
 beauty and dignity, and if revived today would be 
 unendurable to a city congregation — so far away have 
 we traveled. In a few rural congregations some of 
 these old customs still linger, but the most pronounced 
 are fast fading from memory. 
 
 Of the churches thus built some no longer exist. 
 
 6 
 
74 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 When the stir of war was calmed whole congrega- 
 tions had disappeared. Trinity Church, Auburn, was 
 almost forgotten. Cahaba was given over to bats 
 and owls, the entire white population having emi- 
 grated. Summerville's sparse population could reach 
 the Mobile churches in twenty minutes by horse-cars, 
 and preferring the more ornate services and sermons 
 of the city, no longer maintained a separate organiza- 
 tion. But in their life-time the churches of the past 
 served their purpose. They labored and others have 
 entered into their labors. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CONGREGATIONAL GROWTH. 
 
 THE building of churches by newly-established 
 congregations was not the only evidence of ec- 
 clesiastical growth. Congregations, old and new, 
 were alike growing in size. 
 
 Naturally this numerical increase was most per- 
 ceptible in Mobile, where the Church had struck her 
 roots the deepest. In less than twelve months after 
 its erection, St. John's Church was enlarged to meet 
 the growth of its congregation, and in the next year its 
 rector presented forty persons for confirmation. In 
 Trinity in the same year twenty-eight were confirmed, 
 and in Christ Church sixteen. The following year 
 forty-seven were confirmed in St. John's, twenty-nine 
 in Christ Church, and twenty-seven in Trinity. Of 
 the two hundred and eleven confirmations in the dio- 
 cese, more than one-half were in Mobile. Four- 
 teen of these were Negroes, members of the newly- 
 organized mission of the Good Shepherd. In sub- 
 sequent years of the decade these large confirma- 
 tion classes remained the rule. St. John's were the 
 largest, for that parish was reaping among a people 
 not previously touched by the Church. For the next 
 five years its annual confirmations averaged nearly 
 thirty, Trinity's twenty, and those of Christ Church 
 fifteen. Knapp at Christ Church, Massey at Trinity, 
 and Ingraham at St. John's were a trio of intellectual 
 
 75 
 
76 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 and spiritual giants whose contemporaneous work 
 was, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, irre- 
 sistible. 
 
 Elsewhere parochial growth was, if not so pro- 
 nounced, at least healthy and encouraging. In Mont- 
 gomery the confirmations averaged about fourteen 
 each year, and as early as 1853 St. John's had en- 
 rolled more than one hundred communicants. In 
 Tuskaloosa, where the rate of growth was nearest 
 that of Montgomery, the yearly confirmations aver- 
 aged ten, but not till 1859 did the communicants num- 
 ber one hundred. Huntsville, Greensboro, and Selma 
 come next in order of growth, but the storm of war 
 broke over the land ere they, too, became a century. 
 In i860 Huntsville had only eighty-eight communi- 
 cants, Greensboro seventy- two, and Selma fifty-seven. 
 
 But the strength of the diocese was not then, as now 
 it is, relatively so much greater in the cities than in 
 the country. Social conditions were unlike those of 
 to-day. The most cultured people lived in true baro- 
 nial style, far from centers of population. Many 
 Churchmen lived in scattered settlements on their 
 vast contiguous plantations, remote from railroad and 
 telegraph, off the line of stage travel, and reaching 
 the outside world by their own conveyances. Of 
 Church families thus living not more than five, ten, 
 or fifteen miles apart not a few congregations were 
 formed; and though, from the nature of the condi- 
 tions, numerical progress was either slow or entirely 
 absent, yet growth of influence was plainly percepti- 
 ble. In Lowndes county, St. Peter's Church; in 
 
CHURCH IN A LABAMA. 77 
 
 Marengo, St. Michael's; in Greene, St. Mark's; in 
 Dallas, St. David's; in Russell, St. John's-in-the- 
 Wilderness; in Madison, St. John's — all these were 
 churches set down by the country roadside, and are 
 to-day without parallel in all Alabama. One of these 
 country congregations equaled in size the present con- 
 gregations at Evergreen or Woodlawn. Another was 
 as large as is the church at either Troy or Union 
 Springs. Another's communicant roll equaled that 
 of Marion or Athens to-day. One stood tenth in 
 numbers on a roll of seventy-eight congregations. 
 Several were larger than were the churches at 
 Demopolis, Florence, Uniontown, Eufaula, Camden, 
 Ivowndesboro, and Auburn.. They received the min- 
 istrations, not of raw deacons, but of tried and expe- 
 rienced men — of Morris, Hanson, Cobbs, the Stick - 
 neys, the Smiths, Perdue, Robertson, and L,ee. 
 
 Of the encouragement given by the smaller congre- 
 gations undoubtedly St. Paul's, Carlowyille, is the 
 most striking illustration. In 1839 a mere handful of 
 communicants formed its congregation. The village 
 was a sect-ridden little place, Methodists, Baptists, and 
 Presbyterians holding undisputed sway. The Rev. 
 F. B. Lee, who was made deacon in this year, came 
 directly to Carlowville, and lived and worked in this 
 one charge throughout his ministerial life of fifty-seven 
 years. The first few years of the congregation's life 
 were devoid of special encouragement, but in 1844 the 
 mission-station was large enough — though, in truth, 
 no considerable size was demanded — to be admitted as 
 a parish. Two years later its first statistical report 
 
78 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 showed thirty communicants. The net increase of 
 the next four years was only four communicants, but 
 thereafter increase was marked, the number enrolled 
 being, in 1855 forty-nine, and in i860 eighty-three. 
 In this year only six parishes ranked it in size, and of 
 these Huntsville outnumbered it by but five commun- 
 icants. 
 
 Another small parish of great promise was St. 
 Luke's, Cahaba, which was born in the same year as 
 St. Paul's, Carlowville. It was first served by the Rev. 
 I/Ucien B. Wright, who divided his time equally be- 
 tween this place and Selma. The services were well 
 attended from the first, but there was no indication of 
 permanent establishment. Still, after four years of 
 persevering ministerial work the congregation became 
 an entity. That it was a dim and shadowy entity is 
 evident from the report made in 1846 by Mr. Wright's 
 successor, the Rev. J. H. I<inebaugh, on occasion of 
 his first visit to the place: " I understand that there 
 are perhaps two communicants in the village, and 
 many who decidedly prefer the Church. ' ' One of these 
 two communicants moved away the next year, but 
 his place was filled by the removal of another into the 
 town. Two persons were confirmed ; and the ' ' parish ' ' 
 now had four communicants. During the next five 
 years the number fluctuated between five and ten. 
 Ministers changed. Vacancies were of frequent re- 
 currence. But a slowly improving state of affairs 
 urged patience and perseverance. In 1853 a rectory 
 was built, and the Rev. J. M. Mitchell, Bishop Cobbs' 
 son-in-law, became the first resident minister. Growth 
 
CHURCH IN ALA BAMA. 79 
 
 began at once. The number of communicants went 
 to fifteen, to twenty- one, to thirty-five, and, in 1859, 
 to thirty-seven, its highest number. A five-thousand- 
 dollar church was built, paid for, and consecrated. 
 The Rev. George F. Cushman, subsequently editor of 
 The Churchman, was its rector several years. William 
 1,. Yancey was for a time a member of the vestry. 
 The parish remained prosperous and vigorous so long 
 as Cahaba retained its white population. It passed 
 away more than twenty years ago, but neither the 
 congregation nor the building was lost to the diocese. 
 Martin's Station has the building, and Selma the 
 congregation. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE CHURCH'S SLAVE CHILDREN. 
 
 WHILrE thus slowly but surely developing her 
 strength and influence among the whites of 
 Alabama, the Church was not neglecting the slaves 
 that came within her purview. 
 
 Dr. Muhlenberg's characteristically Northern mis- 
 conception, to which he is said to have given utter- 
 ance " wittily "* a decade before, 
 ' ' The stars are the scars 
 And the stripes are the wipes 
 Of the lash on the Negro's back," 
 
 had little foundation in fact. Forgetting that, aside 
 from moral and religious considerations, selfish desire 
 to keep their property in good condition would in itself 
 be sufficient to prevent slave-holders from maltreating 
 their slaves, writers like Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe 
 were fanning sectionalism into a brighter flame by 
 representing rare local conditions as types of universal 
 practice. 
 
 But even so they were taken in their own craftiness. 
 As Bishop Wilmer subsequently pointed out, the testi- 
 mony of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " was a witness to any 
 thoughtful man of the peaceful relationship between 
 master and slave. " If you want a good, honest, and 
 religious servant, seek him among the slaves — find an 
 
 * Life and Work of William Augustus Muhlenberg, by 
 Anne Ayres, page 137. 
 
 80 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 8 1 
 
 Uncle Tom; if you want to see a glorious specimen of 
 womanly loveliness, seek her among the slave-holders 
 — find an Eva; and keep every Down-Easter from 
 having any power over the poor creatures."* 
 
 In truth both the physical and the spiritual wants of 
 the slaves were supplied most generously; and how- 
 ever closely the motives of the slave-holders be ex- 
 amined, however much it be charged that the slaves' 
 bodies were cared for from selfishness rather than from 
 philanthropy, and religious ministrations provided 
 rather as a moral police-force than as an aid to spirit- 
 ual life, the fact remains that in the South the slaves 
 were admirably well cared for. 
 
 Especially in Alabama do we find evidence of such 
 care. Into the material question it is foreign to the 
 purpose of this history to enter; but from the very 
 beginning parochial reports tell of Negro children 
 baptized and Negro adults confirmed. What other 
 religious bodies did for the slaves it is impossible for 
 the writer to ascertain; but when it is considered that 
 the work of which brief mention is herein made was 
 done by the representatives of a body which numbered 
 only three thousand souls, out of a total white popu- 
 lation of a quarter of a million, and that religious zeal 
 was not monopolized by Churchmen, some conception 
 is possible of the Christian force brought to bear on 
 the ante-bellum Negro. 
 
 In Mobile as early as 1840 the Rev. S. S. I,ewis 
 was preaching regularly to a congregation of these 
 
 ' Bishop Wilmer's Reminiscences, pp. 43 and 44. 
 
82 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 people, which, consisting at first of six or eight per- 
 sons, soon numbered more than one hundred. At 
 St. John's-in-the-Prairies twelve were communicants. 
 Smaller numbers were attached to most of the other 
 congregations. 
 
 When Bishop Cobbs came to Alabama, increased 
 attention was given to this work. In 1846 nearly 
 one-half the baptisms in the entire diocese were of 
 Negroes, and for many years thereafter this propor- 
 tion was approximated. In a single year, sixty-eight 
 Negro children were baptized in St. David's Church, 
 Dallas county. In the ensuing year Mobile, Demop- 
 olis, Uniontown and Faunsdale reported one hundred 
 and fourteen baptisms of Negroes. In Livingston, 
 twenty were baptized in a twelve-month. In Eutaw, 
 the following year, thirty-six were baptized. In Hunts- 
 ville, in 1854, fifty-one were baptized; and in Fauns- 
 dale, the year after, forty-two. In single years Cahaba 
 reported the baptism of twenty-two Negro infants, 
 Uniontown thirty- two, and Lowndesboro fifty-seven. 
 In i860, two hundred and thirteen Negroes were bap- 
 tized in the diocese. Very incomplete records show 
 that the total of Negro baptisms in Alabama during 
 the sixteen years of Bishop Cobbs' episcopate was 
 sixteen hundred, of which about three hundred were 
 of adults. 
 
 The number of confirmations was far less, for the 
 very good reason that many proved themselves after 
 baptism to be unfit for admission to the higher privi- 
 leges of the Church; whilst the caution and thorough 
 instruction necessitated by the weak moral character 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 83 
 
 of the candidates discouraged many more from perse- 
 vering to the end. Yet that much good and effective 
 work was done among them is evident from the num- 
 ber of Negro communicants towards the close of the 
 period. They had grown from fewer than fifty in 
 1845 to more than one hundred and fifty. They 
 formed exclusively the congregations of the Good 
 Shepherd", in Mobile, and St. John 's-in-the- Wilder- 
 ness, in Russell County. They predominated in St. 
 Michael's, Faunsdale, and St. David's, in Dallas 
 County. They formed a considerable portion of the 
 congregations at Tuskaloosa, where they worshipped 
 in a chapel built for their use, and at Spring Hill, in 
 Mobile County. At Selma, alone of the larger con- 
 gregations, nothing was done for the Negro; this par- 
 ish having had, in all its history, only one negro com- 
 municant. 
 
 Much of the religious instruction given the slaves 
 would have been impossible but for the self-forgetful 
 devotion of master and mistress, who would regularly 
 on Sunday catechize the laborers and children, and 
 in some instances even give a half-holiday that the 
 Negroes might attend week-day services. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ENDOWMENT OF THE EPISCOPATE. 
 
 A I/THOUGH the immediate interests of the dio- 
 cese, both temporal and spiritual, were thus care- 
 fully guarded, its future welfare was not forgotten. 
 The period was one of infancy, and, while present 
 growth was small, it was felt that the removal of ob- 
 stacles to the free exercise of the body would be fol- 
 lowed in the years to come by the development of great 
 strength. 
 
 The drags upon the Church were four in number: 
 i st, The taxation of weak congregations for the' sup- 
 port of the Bishop, and the consequent corporate 
 struggle for daily bread and arrested development in 
 good work; 2nd, The inability of many small congre- 
 gations to secure the services of a minister, and the 
 absence of concerted action to introduce the Church 
 into new territory; 3rd, The almost inevitable destitu- 
 tion that awaited the families of deceased clergymen, 
 . and the consequent unrest of the clergy, who were 
 often induced, by offers of larger salaries, to leave 
 a prosperous field; and, 4th, The ignorance that 
 Churchwomen and the future mothers of Churchmen 
 manifested of Churchmanship and the Eternal Veri- 
 ties as distinguished from the evanescent opinions of 
 men and centuries. 
 
 To overcome these obstacles to a higher and freer 
 
 diocesan life, four great undertakings were manifestly 
 
 84 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 85 
 
 necessary: ist, To endow the Episcopate; 2nd, To 
 organize the missionary operations; 3rd, To provide 
 for the worn-out clergy, and the widows and orphans 
 of deceased clergy; and, 4th, To furnish Church ed- 
 ucation to the mothers of the next generation. 
 
 These were the four great divisions of work for the 
 future so nobly undertaken, so patiently prosecuted, 
 and so successfully achieved. The completion of all 
 this work in so short a time is the chief glory of the 
 ante-bellum Church in Alabama. How each under- 
 taking was carried to a successful conclusion shall 
 now be considered. 
 
 It has been told that the original foundation of the 
 Episcopal endowment fund was the gift by Mr. Jacob 
 Iyorillard of a township of land in Baldwin County, 
 and that this gift was the nucleus around which clus- 
 tered unfulfilled promises amounting to four thousand 
 dollars.* The Baldwin County land was sold for five 
 hundred dollars. As late as 1844 this five hundred 
 dollars was the entire endowment fund. 
 
 Though the election of a Bishop entailed an addi- 
 tional expense of less than sixteen hundred dollars, 
 this small sum was not easily raised by the fourteen 
 congregations that comprised the assessable strength 
 of the diocese. The attempt of 1845 to ease this bur- 
 den was, from its nature, doomed to failure. It sought 
 to revive the notes given Mr. Ives during "Flush 
 Times, ' ' and proposed to credit on any parish's assess- 
 ment for the Bishop's salary all the interest that any 
 member of that parish would pay on his long-neg- 
 
 * See page 29. 
 
86 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 lected note. This proposition received no response. 
 It was nullified the following year, and was succeeded 
 by another fruitless experiment: The Senior War- 
 dens of the various parishes were requested to solicit 
 subscriptions to the Bishop's Fund. The result was 
 not at all startling. Not one cent was raised. 
 
 Meanwhile the original five hundred dollars had 
 remained in the hands of the Trustees of the Bishop's 
 Fund — Judge E. W. Peck, Mr. Isaac Croom, and Mr. 
 H. A. Tayloe — increasing slowly by the yearly addi- 
 tion of interest to principal. By 1849 the sum thus 
 accumulated amounted to $818. In this year the 
 apathy caused by the two failures- of 1845 and 1846 
 passed away, and new efforts were made to increase 
 the endowment. The responsibility of urging sub- 
 scriptions was laid upon a single person. Mr. Henry 
 A. Tayloe was appointed to solicit contributions 
 throughout the diocese. A better selection could not 
 have been made. Mr. Tayloe had a wide acquaint- 
 ance through the State, and at the end of a single 
 year was able to report that he had raised, in cash and 
 in subscriptions in the shape of responsible notes, the 
 sum of $10,829. Of this amount the two Mobile 
 Churches gave $2,338, Montgomery $1,005, Huntsville 
 $1,060, and St. David's (Dallas County) $1,185. Mr - 
 Tayloe 's entire expense account in collecting these 
 subscriptions was only $69. 70. 
 
 The amounts subscribed and paid in were given by 
 one hundred and fifty-eight persons, living in twenty- 
 six different parishes. The subscriptions were cred- 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 87 
 
 ited by the Convention to the parish and not to the 
 individual. 
 
 In connection with these subscriptions the aban- 
 doned plan of 1845 was applied to the adjustment of 
 parochial assessments. It was ordered that the Trus- 
 tees of the Bishop's Fund should collect interest on 
 the cash and notes, and pay it into the treasury of 
 the diocese; that such -collections should be counted 
 as so much paid on the diocesan assessment by the 
 parish in which the donor lived; that when the pay- 
 ment of interest in any one year was greater than the 
 parish's assessment for that year, the surplus of inter- 
 est should be added to the principal of the endow- 
 ment fund; and that when the annual interest should 
 become equal to the annual assessment the parish 
 should be released from further assessment. 
 
 It was a complicated scheme, and in its execution 
 it imposed much labor on the Trustees of the Bish- 
 op's Fund; for not only were they required to keep 
 the cash subscriptions of three thousand dollars at 
 interest and in reliable hands, but it was also their 
 duty to keep track of the individual notes, amounting 
 to $7,837, and collect interest at various times through 
 the entire year. The Treasurer of the diocese was, 
 as his part of the labor, required to keep account of 
 the canonical removal, and the date of removal, of a 
 subscriber from one parish to another, in order to 
 make proper debits and credits on diocesan assess- 
 ments. Questions of equity in connection with these 
 subscriptions not infrequently demanded the best 
 
88 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 judgment not only of the Finance Committee but of 
 the Convention itself. 
 
 It was an awkward scheme, yet the only scheme 
 practicable; for the great bulk of these notes, while 
 nominally payable in five years, were not to be paid, 
 it was orally agreed, so long as interest on them was 
 kept up. It was the only practicable" scheme, yet a 
 scheme unsafe and unreliable; for another period of 
 general financial stringency such as the country had 
 but recently weathered would render all personal 
 security worthless and leave the subscriptions worth 
 only the paper on which they were written. 
 
 But these difficulties were inevitable. The proba- 
 bility of loss was reduced to the minimum by the fact 
 that many of the largest notes were signed by the most 
 responsible men of the state, whose failure to pay 
 would synchronize with stoppage of payment on all 
 securities save those of National issue — men like the 
 Ellerbees and Pegueses, in Dallas county; the Alisons 
 and L,ees, of Carlowville; Isaac Croom, and the Pick- 
 enses and Stickneys, of Greensboro; R. W. Nicolson 
 and the Minges, of Uniontown and Faunsdale; W. F. 
 Pierce and Alexander Jarvis, of Eutaw; William P. 
 Gould, of Burton's Hill; John Marrast, of Tuskaloosa; 
 F. S. Lyon, of Demopolis; J. M. Robertson, G. P. 
 Beirne, and the Clays, of Huntsville; Emanuel Jones, 
 William M. Garrow, T. Lesesne, and the Battles, of ' 
 Mobile; and Charles T. Pollard, William Knox, and 
 the Taylors, of Montgomery. These names indicate 
 an array of personal integrity and financial responsi- 
 bility that fully justified the Trustees in their remark 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 89 
 
 of 1852: "These notes are believed to be as good as 
 the same number and date can be, taken under like 
 circumstances. If it were proper to collect them, so 
 long as the interest is regularly paid, we doubt very 
 much whether the amount could be invested on any 
 security to make it more safe and reliable than it is at 
 present. ' ' 
 
 Feeling with the Trustees that the security of these 
 notes could not be increased, even if it were attempted, 
 in violation of explicit understanding to the contrary, 
 to collect them, the Convention endorsed Mr. Tayloe's 
 action, and instructed the Trustees, in accordance with 
 the agreement between him and the subscribers, ' ' to 
 postpone the collection of the principal due upon the 
 notes so long as they were considered good and the 
 interest was annually paid. ' ' But in the ensuing year 
 drawers of notes voluntarily took them up to the 
 amount ot fourteen hundred dollars. This money, 
 together with the cash subscriptions previously in 
 hand, was lent at eight per cent, to various individuals 
 in sums ranging from twenty-five dollars to eight 
 hundred. 
 
 The income from the endowment fund was already 
 almost as great as it is today from a principal more 
 than three times as great. In this as in all other cases 
 safety of investment has been purchased with a portion 
 of the income. 
 
 In 1854 the Trustees of the Bishop's Fund drew 
 attention to the distinction between the ' ' Special 
 Fund, ' ' whose entire interest was to be paid each year 
 towards the Bishop's salary, and the "Permanent 
 — 7 
 
9° HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Fund," which was made up of Christmas offerings, 
 and whose interest was to go entirely to the augmen- 
 tation of the principal. At this time the permanent 
 fund amounted to $2,233.34, and the special fund to 
 $">979-75- 
 
 Renewed effort was now made to increase the en- 
 dowment. A layman had done noble work before, 
 and now a clergyman was selected — the Rev. Henry 
 C. Lay, of Huntsville. For several months after his 
 appointment Mr. I<ay was unable to enter upon the 
 work. But so soon as he began his canvass, in 1855, 
 it became manifest that the Convention had once again 
 made wise choice of an agent. Mr. Lay visited 
 twenty-one congregations, and secured a total amount, 
 above his expenses, of $11,882. Of this amount 
 $4,052 was in cash and $7,830 in notes. Nearly one- 
 fourth of the whole, or $2,245, was given by parish- 
 ioners of Christ Church, Mobile. Greensboro stood 
 next, with a subscription of $1,615, paid in gold, and 
 Montgomery third, with $1,235. Many of those who 
 had given to the same object ten years before, on Mr. 
 Tayloe's canvass, were even more liberal this time 
 than before. The new list was somewhat more of a 
 popular subscription than the former. Fewer parishes 
 were represented, but the subscribers numbered one 
 hundred and sixty-nine. 
 
 The work of the Trustees of the Bishop's Fund was 
 now onerous. About two hundred separate notes had 
 to be watched, both for collection of interest and for 
 proper credit of interest on parochial assessments. 
 On the latter point misunderstanding and complaint 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 9 1 
 
 became more frequent than in previous years. As a 
 whole, -the method was as cumbersome as the Ptole- 
 maic system of astronomy. In 1856 the Convention 
 forgot the original understanding with subscribers, and 
 attempted to secure simplicity of detail by directing 
 the Trustees to consolidate all notes given by the 
 same person at different times, and as fast as they fell 
 due to collect them and reinvest the proceeds' in such 
 securities as seemed both safe and permanent. But if 
 the Convention forgot the agreement that the notes 
 should not be collected so long as interest was paid, 
 the drawers of the notes had a better memory, and 
 the collections were inconsiderable. 
 
 In 1858 the Special Fund* amounted to a little less 
 than $23,000, of which $1,700 in cash was not 
 invested; $4,346 was invested in eight per cent, 
 bonds of the Mobile and Ohio and Alabama and Mis- 
 sissippi (now Alabama Central division of the South- 
 ern) railroads. The next year sixteen hundred dollars 
 more of Alabama and Mississippi Railroad bonds were 
 bought, and the following year four thousand dollars 
 Was invested in bonds of the Alabama and Florida 
 Railroad. 
 
 In this year, i860, it was evident that trying times 
 were ahead, and the Convention deemed it wise to 
 provide for diocesan interests by refusing to grant 
 further time on the notes, now many years overdue 
 legally, but never due morally. On recommendation 
 •of the Finance Committee it began to take in sail by 
 
 *See page 89. 
 
92 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 resolving "That the Trustees of the Bishop's Fund 
 be positively instructed to collect all the notes of con- 
 tributors to the Fund now due." It was one thing 
 for the Convention to pass the resolution; it was 
 another thing to carry the resolution into effect. Ten 
 years later, when the tidal wave of war had rolled 
 back and the few that were not dead or bankrupt had 
 made good their subscriptions, it was found that notes 
 and securities whose face value was $24,724 were 
 worth less than $15,000; of which $5,000 was a note 
 given by the vestry of St. John's parish, Montgomery, 
 secured by a mortgage on Hamner Hall, and destined 
 to be the source of years of contention and of ulti- 
 mate blessing to the diocese. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE DIOCESAN MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 
 
 IT has ever been a loss to the diocese, a loss that 
 increases with the growth of successive genera- 
 tions, that Church families, living far from organized 
 congregations, waiting long years for the promised 
 coming of a missionary, surrounded by the sectarian 
 bodies whose members, pioneer settlers of the country, 
 had come in sufficient numbers to receive regular min- 
 istrations from the beginning, have at last grown hope- 
 less of the Church's ever-deferred mothering, and, 
 impelled by zealous desire to worship God in the 
 company of their fellow-men, or seduced by the spe- 
 cious accusation of Pharisaic righteousness, have at 
 last given the right hand of fellowship to the system 
 of religious opinion prevailing in their immediate 
 vicinity. 
 
 In the early days of the diocese this evil was most 
 marked, for these isolated families formed a larger 
 proportion of the entire number of communicants than 
 they now form. As late as i860 one-fifteenth of the 
 Churchmen of Alabama were thus isolated. It is a 
 moderate estimate that in 1850 the proportion was one- 
 eighth. The necessity for some provision for these 
 families was felt quite as keenly then as now. Ala- 
 bama Churchmen have always rallied loyally to the 
 call of their leaders, whether to go forward or to hold 
 fast what they already have. From the beginning 
 
 93 
 
94 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the same moving Spirit that impelled the Church in 
 Alabama to seek a head was urging the Churchmen 
 in Alabama to keep whole the Body under the head. 
 
 Parishes and clergymen here and there had been 
 spasmodically doing missionary work, but not until 
 1843 was organized work attempted. In that year the 
 Rev. Messrs. S. S. Lewis of Mobile, F. R. Hanson 
 of Greene county, and J. J. Scott of Livingston, and 
 Messrs. A. B. Winn of Demopolis, and George Cleve- 
 land of Mobile, were appointed a committee "to en- 
 quire into the expediency of originating a Diocesan 
 Missionary Society, and, if deemed expedient, to re- 
 port to the next Convention suitable measures to carry 
 the same into effect. ' ' 
 
 The proposed Society was organized in 1844, on the 
 day before Bishop Cobbs' election. With truly Cath- 
 olic spirit the very first Article of its Constitution de- 
 clared that "every baptized member of this Church 
 shall be regarded as a member of this Society. ' ' With 
 wisdom and statesmanship that the Church needs to 
 emulate today the method of operations was thus out- 
 lined: "Your committee are prepared to recommend 
 the appointment, first, of one general Missionary, who 
 shall visit every portion of the diocese, record the 
 names of Episcopal families wherever he might find 
 them not in communion with existing parishes, bap- 
 tize their children, etc., and encourage them with the 
 hope that, by proper exertions on their part, they 
 might soon enjoy the services of the Church at regu- 
 lar periods; and do all other things in accordance with 
 his missionary character. Thus new congregations 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 95 
 
 will be gradually built up throughout the diocese, and 
 whenever one or two parishes felt able, with or with- 
 out assistance, [to join] in the support of a clergy- 
 man, the general Missionary should then give up those 
 parishes, and extend his services to other new places. 
 * * * We want a man full of Apostolic zeal, and 
 fired with the spirit of that love and devotion to the 
 souls of men which animated the hearts and strength- 
 ened the physical energies of the first Evangelists and 
 Missionaries, and, with God's blessing, success will 
 be certain to attend us; and in a short time, instead of 
 one, some five or six missionaries may be in the ser- 
 vice of the Society. ' ' 
 
 How to raise the necessary income — whether by 
 stated offerings or by individual subscriptions — the 
 Committee left for the Convention to determine. The 
 question of method, it felt, was of minor importance. 
 The proper spirit was not, "Let us adopt a method, 
 and try to do this work," but, "Here is a divinely 
 imposed duty. We will do it. How can we do it 
 best?" 
 
 When, in due time, this question of method was 
 reached, the Society answered it by calling on par- 
 ishes instead of individuals, and, without expression 
 of preference,- left each parish to determine its own 
 method. This was eminently the wisest course. Only 
 experience could determine the scheme most practi- 
 cable in Alabama; and it required experience extend- 
 ing through nearly half a century to lead the diocese 
 at large to adopt the present successful system. 
 
 The original necessity for an Evangelist vanished 
 
96 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 with the coming of Bishop Cobbs. The Bishop was 
 himself the Evangelist, and his example roused the 
 dormant missionary zeal of the clergy to some measure 
 of care for hitherto neglected Churchmen. Conse- 
 quently the Missionary Society's activity was restricted 
 to supplementing the meager incomes of those who 
 ministered to already established congregations; the 
 distribution of stipends and the allotment of work it 
 reposed entirely in the Bishop's hands. Its income 
 the first year was quite modest, being only $245, and 
 this sum was divided between two missionaries. This, 
 however, does not represent Alabama's missionary 
 spirit at the time; for in the same year the diocese 
 gave $600 to the Domestic and Foreign Missionary 
 Society; and the total of $845 was a creditable amount 
 for a diocese of only 663 communicants to give to mis- 
 sionary work in a single year. 
 
 The following year the Bishop's appeal for increased 
 liberality toward missionary work in the diocese was 
 answered by an increase of the Society's income to 
 four hundred dollars; and this was the average income 
 until i860. The missionaries, therefore, numbered 
 only two or three until 1856, when the number was 
 increased to four. The number varied from four to six 
 for the next five years. 
 
 Manifestly the Bishop's apportionment to individual 
 missionaries was not overlarge. In 1853 the Rev. J. 
 M. Mitchell, then assisting Bishop Cobbs, in St. John's 
 Church, Montgomery, and in connection with this work 
 doing good service in the mission field of the county, 
 received from the Society fifty dollars; the same amount 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 97 
 
 was given the Rev. T. A. Morris, working in Jack- 
 son county; and the largest beneficiary, the Rev. R. 
 D. Nevius, then a deacon officiating in St. David's 
 Church, Dallas county, received only seventy dollars. 
 In 1857 tne stipends ranged between seventy -five and 
 one hundred dollars. In 1859-60 improvement was 
 visible, and the Society's allowances were increased 
 to a minimum of one hundred dollars and a maximum 
 of one hundred and fifty. 
 
 This increase was due to a. sudden increase of the 
 Society's income from five hundred dollars, towards 
 which it had been slowly growing for several years, 
 to thirteen hundred dollars. That this remarkable 
 increase did not arouse a feeling of thankfulness in 
 the Bishop, but only called forth the statement that 
 ' ' although this is a larger amount than has been con- 
 tributed in any former year, yet it is obvious that the 
 Bishop can do but little toward strengthening weak 
 parishes and occupying new stations until a much 
 greater sum is put at his disposal," must be attributed 
 solely to his physical ill health, which was now be- 
 coming pronounced. The great increase was declara- 
 tive of new zeal in the Church, and was the first 
 ripple of an increasing flow which told that the brook 
 had become a river. Although the Bishop did not 
 live to see it, the Society's income next year had 
 risen to $1,500; and all through the trying years of 
 civil war it remained, after the first year, above one 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 Seven different missionaries were employed during 
 the last ten years. They were the Rev. Messrs. J. F. 
 
98 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 Smith, J. S. Jarratt, F. B. Lee, Edward Denniston, 
 W. M. Bartley, J. A. Wheelock, and J. C. Waddill. 
 The congregations served by them were eighteen in 
 number: Autaugaville and Prattville; Greenville, 
 Letohatchie, and Hayneville; Carlowville; Opelika, 
 Auburn, Yongesboro, and Salem; Tuskegee and Tal- 
 lassee; Eutaw and Gainesville; and Pushmataha, 
 Butler, Mount Stirling, and Bladon Springs. Some 
 of these congregations are to-day extinct, a few have 
 a service when the Bishop makes his annual visita- 
 tion, and of those that are provided with regular min- 
 isters not one is self-supporting. Movements of 
 population have apparently made futile the missionary 
 work of a generation of work. 
 
 But only superficial observers will call that work a 
 failure. The work of Christ, the work of Christ's 
 Church, is rather to establish souls than to establish 
 congregations. If the souls are established the con- 
 gregations may disappear but are not lost. The mis- 
 sionaries in these villages and towns were the real 
 founders of the churches in Anniston and Birming- 
 ham, and were not insignificant factors in the growth 
 of the large congregations in Mobile, Montgomery, 
 and Selma. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE RELIEF OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 THE relief of disabled clergy and of the families of 
 deceased clergy was one of the first undertakings 
 that followed the securing of a Bishop. It was 
 deemed the natural condition of the parish priest that 
 he should be married. It was perceived that clerical 
 stipends were not large enough to dispel gloomy fore- 
 bodings, and that these, increasing with the on-rolling 
 years, beclouded the life and weighed down the heart 
 of the most faithful minister. It was felt that the au- 
 thority of the Church calling a man to leave all was 
 attended with the responsibility of caring for her ser- 
 vants and their families when the call was obeyed. 
 
 It cannot be said that these thoughts led to passion- 
 ate or even deep-rooted conviction in the minds of 
 many. Most of the Churchmen that felt anything 
 about the matter thought that, as an abstract proposi- 
 tion, it was the right thing for the Church to pension 
 the incapacitated and their dependent families. A 
 few were willing, if occasionally urged, to reduce the 
 principle to action by contributing towards a pension 
 fund. A very few were thoroughly in earnest in the 
 formulation of a scheme by which Alabama should do 
 her duty to her clergy. 
 
 In Carlowville, on May 9, 1846, during a recess 
 of the Convention, these last named organized the 
 "Society for the Relief of Disabled Clergy and the 
 
 99 
 
IOO HISTORY OP THE 
 
 Widows and Orphans of Deceased Clergy. ' ' Mr. L. 
 E. Dawson, of Carlowville, was elected President; 
 Judge E. W. Peck, of Tuskaloosa, Vice-President; 
 and Mr. Henry A. Tayloe, of Gallion, Secretary and 
 Treasurer.' Its Standing Committee consisted of the 
 Rev. Messrs. F. B. I,ee and N. P. Knapp, and Messrs. 
 H. L,. Alison, John Ellerbee and John Simpson. All 
 clergymen were members; laymen became members 
 without benefit upon payment of the annual dues of 
 five dollars. A simple but inadequate Constitution 
 was set forth at the primary meeting. It was of no 
 practical importance, for the Society was not incor- 
 porated, and for the next seven years had no autono- 
 mous existence, being merged, at its own request, 
 into the Convention, which appointed its officers, 
 passed upon all applications, and generally discharged 
 the Society's functions.* 
 
 In 1853 the Convention restored the Society to the 
 autonomy of its original organization; whereupon the 
 Society instantly adopted, a new Constitution, and was 
 incorporated by special act of Legislature in February, 
 1854, thus being put beyond the possibility of further 
 control by the Convention. 
 
 The new Constitution of 1853 was an elaborate affair, 
 modeled after that of a like society in the diocese of 
 Maryland. It provided that a layman could become 
 an annual member, always without benefit, on pay- 
 ment of five dollars, but that the clergy must pay ten, 
 twenty, thirty, or forty dollars, yearly, according to 
 the amount of benefit that they desired. When a cler- 
 
 See Journal of 1848, page 24. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. IOI 
 
 gyman married more than once he was fined one extra 
 yearly assessment in the year of every such marriage. 
 These assessments were to be the basis of computation 
 for annuities to widows and orphans. Five annual 
 payments entitled them to an annuity three times the 
 amount of the yearly payment, from five to ten annual 
 payments entitled them to an annuity four times the 
 amount of the yearly payment, and so on. The highest 
 annuity was to be that of a member who had made 
 twenty-five annual payments and whose income would 
 thus be eight times his yearly payment of ten, twenty, 
 thirty, or forty dollars — that is, eighty, one hundred 
 and sixty, two hundred and forty, or three hundred 
 and twenty dollars. To the Society's assets — $i ,470 — 
 all subsequent donations were to be added, and a special 
 fund created and maintained, apart from the mutual 
 insurance scheme, for the benefit of needy diocesan 
 clergy, whether members or not. Such aid was to be 
 given as the Society might deem proper, but no por- 
 tion of the Society's speci^fund was to be expended 
 for the relief of any person whomsoever until it should 
 reach the sum of five thousand dollars, and under no 
 circumstances should the total appropriations of any 
 year exceed the income for the same year. * 
 
 Under this last provision the Society was unable to 
 render aid to any one until 1858, when its capital 
 crossed the line and amounted to $5,238. Meanwhile 
 it was compelled to deny several applications, nota- 
 bly the application in behalf of the children of Dr. 
 S. S. I,ewis. To some these refusals appeared heart- 
 
 * Journal of 1853, pages 45-48. 
 
102 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 less, but they were rendered necessary by the fact that 
 the Society had started without any funds, and there- 
 fore must build up an endowment which should en- 
 sure the permanency of the work. After an exist- 
 ence of three years the Society had, in 1849, a capital 
 of $37.16, and its gross income for the entire period 
 had been only $165. But, following in a small way 
 the plan that its Treasurer, Mr. Tayloe, had adopted 
 to build up the Episcopal endowment two years before, 
 it succeeded in getting several notes signed; and these 
 increased the capital to $511. Three years later its 
 assets were less than one thousand dollars. There- 
 after for several years the growth of the principal 
 though slow was constantly accelerated, the increase 
 being $400 in 1855, $7°° i Q 1856, and $900 in 1857. 
 In the last named year Mr. Tayloe declined longer to 
 act as Treasurer, an office which, in conjunction with 
 that of Secretary, he had held from the Society's or- 
 ganization. The Society divided the two offices, and, 
 leaving Mr. Tayloe Secretory, elected Mr. George P. 
 Beirne, of Huntsville, Treasurer. 
 
 At this time North Alabama was developing rap- 
 idly, and its chief railroad, the Memphis and Charles- 
 ton, in which was incorporated the old Tuscumbia and 
 Decatur, offered a good field for investment to those 
 on the ground. Mr. Beirne immediately lent the 
 whole of the Society's available assets — $5,038 — to 
 the Memphis and Charleston Railroad Company, at 
 eight per cent. For three years he operated in in- 
 vestments in this road, and then, in i860, was able to 
 announce that the Society's assets had grown to $14,- 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. IO3 
 
 123, of which $6,262 were trie profits of the past year. 
 This growth was so remarkable that it merits closer 
 examination : 
 
 In 1857 Mr. Beirne purchased $1,000 worth of stock 
 in the road for $750; on this stock a sixty per cent, 
 dividend was declared on December 1 — a clear profit 
 of $850 on an investment of $750 in less than one 
 year. Mr. Beirne had previously added to bis origi- 
 nal loan to the road, wbich now owed him $6,300; this 
 loan was next exchanged for bonds of the value of 
 $7,000, and these bonds were shortly exchanged for 
 stock of the same face value. All these transactions 
 were completed before December 1, 1859, and the 
 stock thus secured received the same sixty per cent, 
 dividend that the former block received — a clear profit 
 of $4,900 on an investment of $6,300 in less than one 
 year. The remaining increase of $512 was an addi- 
 tional four per cent, dividend on the Society's five 
 hundred and twelve shares of Memphis and Charles- 
 ton stock. ^ 
 
 In another year the assets were $16,901.57. Suc- 
 cess always brings greater success. So soon as a fund 
 begins to grow people are more liberal to it than 
 when it is a puny infant. So soon as fortunate in- 
 vestments sent the Society's income bounding up- 
 ward enthusiasm became contagious. Annual con- 
 tributors increased in one year from twenty-nine to 
 fifty-two, and the year after to sixty-seven. St. Paul's, 
 Carlowville, took the initiative when, in 1857, the 
 parish gave the Society five hundred dollars. At the 
 instance of the Rev. Henry C. I^ay, the Society at once 
 
104 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 resolved that the heirs of the rector of that parish, 
 the Rev. F. B. Lee, should at his death " be entitled 
 to receive the largest annuity allowed to a member of 
 the forty-dollar class" — i. e., $320. In i860 Mr. N. 
 H. R. Dawson, who had in the preceding year been 
 elected President, on Bishop Cobbs' declination to 
 serve longer, made the Society another payment of 
 five hundred dollars to its insurance department, 
 specifying as beneficiaries of this sum for nine years 
 each in the ten-dollar class the Rev. -Messrs. F. B. 
 Lee, J. M. Mitchell, G. F. Cushman, J. H. Ticknor, 
 and William A. Stickney. 
 
 So at the beginning of the Civil War the Society 
 was in a condition to relieve the clergy of much 
 anxiety and their families of more distress. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CHURCH SCHOOLS. 
 
 FOR nothing else did Bishop Cobbs so .earnestly 
 plead and work throughout his episcopate as for 
 a diocesan institution wherein the future mothers of 
 the diocese might, together with their secular educa- 
 tion, drink in the principles of Church teaching and 
 Christian living. In nothing else were his attempts 
 so long frustrated and his hopes so often dashed. Not 
 till three years before his death was the final and suc- 
 cessful movement set on foot. Not till three months 
 before his death did he see of the travail of his soul. 
 The first attempt was made in 1845, and Tuska- 
 loosa, the capital of the state and the residence of the 
 Bishop, was the field chosen. In October of this year 
 the Rev. Aristides S. Smith, an old friend of the 
 Bishop's in the days of his Virginia ministry, was in- 
 duced by the Bishop to establish a Girls' School in 
 Tuskaloosa, and in addition to become assistant to the 
 Bishop, who had become rector of the parish in the 
 summer of that year. At the Bishop's earnest sug- 
 gestion the Convention of 1846 appointed a Board of 
 Trustees of a " Female Institute, "to be under the 
 control of the Church in Alabama. While the Con- 
 vention did not in so many words undertake to erect 
 Mr. Smith's school, a private venture, into a diocesan 
 institution, yet the personnel of the Board of Trus- 
 tees — all the appointees, Judge E. W. Peck, H. A. 
 — 8 105 
 
106 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Snow, C. M. Foster, E. F. Comegys, Charles Snow, 
 A. Lynch, and Dr. S. G. Leach, being residents of 
 Tuskaloosa — shows conclusively that such was its in- 
 tention. But Mr. Smith's sojourn in Alabama was 
 too short to get a diocesan institution into working 
 order. After two years he moved on to Columbus, 
 Miss., whence after four years he returned to Vir- 
 ginia. After his departure no attempt was made to 
 keep the school open. 
 
 A diocesan school for boys, which should be a nurs- 
 ery for the Ministry of the next generation, was Bish- 
 op Cobbs' next attempt. An opportunity presented 
 itself in 1847. Some of the Bishop's friends in the 
 neighborhood of Greene Springs made him the very 
 liberal proposition to purchase and present to him the 
 Greene Springs property (subsequently famous as 
 Prof. Tutwiler's Greene Springs Academy), the only 
 condition being that the Bishop should establish him- 
 self there and give the school his personal supervision 
 in the intervals of his Episcopal visitations. The 
 proposition was the more liberal in that they who 
 made it were not Churchmen. The Bishop, however, 
 felt that it would be imprudent for him to remove 
 from the capital and obligate himself to personal con- 
 duct of the school, and regretfully declined the prop- 
 osition. 
 
 Less than two years later, on January 2, 1849, the 
 project became an attractive but evanescent reality in 
 the foundation at Tuskaloosa of a "Classical Insti- 
 tute and Mission School" for boys and young men. 
 The plan on which the school was to be conducted 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 107 
 
 had been carefully digested, and, could it have been 
 carried out, would have worked an almost miraculous 
 change in the missionary operations and parochial 
 life of the diocese. 
 
 It seems to have been suggested by the recent suc- 
 cess of James I4oyd Breck's venture at Nashotah, and, 
 with allowance for schools of Churchmanship, was 
 projected on parallel lines. A classical and a theo- 
 logical department were organized. Theological stu- 
 dents could pay their expenses by teaching in the 
 classical department a few hours each day. Pupils 
 were regarded not merely as seekers after secular 
 knowledge, but as catechumens preparing for Con- 
 firmation and strong, healthy Christian living. The 
 Prayer Book was a daily text-book. Daily Morning 
 and Evening Prayer were said, and the entire school 
 attended divine services whenever the parish church 
 was opened. The faculty and theological students 
 acted as missionaries in the ecclesiastically destitute 
 regions that extended nearly forty miles in every 
 direction. The Bishop was assisted in this under- 
 taking by the principal and wheel-horse, the Rev.* 
 Charles F. Peake, and by the ushers, Mr. George F. 
 Cushman, a candidate for Orders, and Mr. George W, 
 Stickney, who entered the Ministry a few years later. 
 Two theological students and twenty-two classical 
 pupils made up the first year's enrollment. Tuition 
 fees amounting to about four hundred dollars, and a 
 subscription of one hundred and fifty dollars from 
 a few Northern- friends of the project, made up the 
 income, which was applied to fitting up the school 
 
Io8 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 building — the famous old " Mansion House," now the 
 parish rectory. The boarding department was to be 
 limited to twenty-five boys. Charges for tuition and 
 board were to be kept at a level with necessary ex- 
 penses and to be reduced whenever a reduction should 
 be found practicable. It was held that this was a mis- 
 sionary school, conducted by missionaries, intended to 
 do a missionary work, and that under no circumstances 
 should the ideal be prostituted to lower ends. A few 
 laymen of Tuskaloosa gave the buildings free of rent 
 the first year, and, the Capitol having been changed 
 to Montgomery, the old State House was offered rent- 
 free for the ensuing year. The prospect was most 
 encouraging, when, in July of the same year, after 
 only six months' operation, the school was closed by 
 the death of the burden-bearer, Mr. Peake. Another 
 Peake has never arisen in Alabama. 
 
 In the summer of 1850 the project of a diocesan 
 Girls' School in Tuskaloosa was revived. The Rev. 
 William Johnson, a man of fierce, unyielding temper, 
 vsas chosen as principal, and the school was opened 
 in September. The patronage of the school not yield- 
 ing Mr. Johnson an adequate support, Bishop Cobbs 
 resigned the rectorship of the parish, to which, on his 
 recommendation, Mr. Johnson was elected. At first 
 the Bishop gave the school strong endorsement, and 
 for a time it grew in numbers and reputation. But 
 soon dissensions arose between principal and pupils, 
 and then between rector and vestry. The Bishop 
 ceased to refer to the school in any public manner. 
 In June, 1854, the vestry requested Mr. Johnson to 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. IO9 
 
 resign the rectorship of the parish. He refused. The 
 vestry promptly dismissed him, and, after one disor- 
 derly public service at which Mr. Johnson aired his 
 personal grievances from the chancel floor and was 
 immediately rebuked by several prominent parishion- 
 ers, nailed up the church doors against him. The 
 vestry's action in ousting the rector was uncanonical, 
 but the rector's precedent action had been unwise, 
 and the action of the former was, in December, ratified 
 by the Bishop on the ground that reconciliation had 
 proven impossible. A portion of the congregation 
 followed Mr. Johnson for a few months to the old 
 State Capitol, three blocks from the church, and sub- 
 sequently to a chapel which he erected five miles east 
 of Tuskaloosa, where he continued public services 
 about six months longer. But without his salary as 
 rector, and with school patronage much injured by 
 the parochial contention, Mr. Johnson was unable to 
 continue operations, and the end of his rectorship was 
 virtually the extinction of the school. 
 
 The Bishop was still unwilling to confess that Ala- 
 bama could not support a Church school for Church 
 girls. After waiting two years he again reverted to 
 this fond desire, and in his Convention address of 
 1857 urged the Convention to give it prompt and ef- 
 ficient attention. This request was referred to a com- 
 mittee consisting of the Rev. Messrs. J. M. Banister 
 and F. R. Hanson, of the clergy, and Messrs. Charles 
 T. Pollard, A. W. Ellerbee, and A. R. Bell, of the 
 laity. The committee reported favorably upon the 
 
110 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Bishop's communication, and suggested that a com- 
 mittee be appointed with power to act as they deemed 
 most expedient to further the establishment of a 
 diocesan seminary. This committee, on whom de- 
 volved all the preliminary labors, consisted of the 
 Bishop, as Chairman; the Rev. J. M. Mitchell, and 
 Messrs. Samuel G. Jones and Thomas B. Taylor — all 
 of Montgomery. 
 
 The committee went vigorously to work, and re- 
 turned to the next Convention with a report which 
 the Finance Committee endorsed and the Convention 
 adopted by unanimous vote. Feeling that the pre- 
 ceding failures to establish permanently a girls' school 
 had been due largely to the smallness of the popula- 
 tion from which day -pupils could be drawn, the Com- 
 mittee had decided that the school must be located in 
 a larger place than Tuskaloosa, and they had settled 
 upon Montgomer)-. There, just beyond the corporate 
 limits, west of the town, they had purchased a grove 
 of nearly ten acres, at a cost of six thousand dollars. 
 Nearly the whole of this amount they had already 
 raised in Montgomery by popular subscription, and 
 they expected to raise there fully ten thousand dollars. 
 They called on the remainder of the diocese for twenty 
 thousand dollars more, with which to erect suitable 
 buildings. They expected to lay the foundations and 
 press forward the work so soon as the funds in hand 
 should warrant a beginning. They recommended 
 that, in order to secure a competent principal at the 
 outset, the school be leased free of charge to the most 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. ill 
 
 worthy applicant, the Board of Trustees to determine 
 availability. 
 
 The following year the committee were able to 
 report that Montgomery had raised not ten, but fifteen 
 thousand dollars, and they promised that this should 
 be increased to twenty thousand dollars if the remain- 
 der of the diocese would raise the same amount. 
 Already the Rev. J. Avery Shepherd had opened a 
 girls' school in Montgomery, and was holding himself 
 in readiness to accept the principalship of the ' ' Dio- 
 cesan Female Seminary. ' ' 
 
 All preliminary work having been done, the Con- 
 vention discharged the committee and elected as 
 Trustees of the school Dr. T. B. Taylor, Mr. Charles 
 T. Pollard, Mr. Samuel G. Jones, and the Rev. J. M. 
 Mitchell, their terms of office being respectively one, 
 two, three, and four years, and each trustee's suc- 
 cessor to be elected for a term of four years. By in- 
 struction of the Convention these Trustees proceeded 
 to make themselves a body corporate. 
 
 By the articles of subscription the Trustees were 
 directed to make the first lease of the school for two 
 years, and free of rent. Under this agreement the 
 school was opened by the Rev. Mr. Shepherd, in Oc- 
 tober, i860. The unsettled condition of the country 
 had caused delay in the erection of the contemplated 
 buildings, but a commodious dwelling-house was 
 rented for the boarding department and an adjoining 
 house for school purposes. The first day's enroll- 
 ment was good, and the number of pupils increased 
 
112 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 so rapidly that by the middle of the scholastic year 
 both the day-school and the boarding department had 
 reached their utmost limit. The necessarily heavy 
 expenses of the first year were fully covered by the 
 income. The school was a success. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 PERSONNEL OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 THERE were giants in the earth in those days. 
 It were the part of unwisdom to say that those 
 old times were better than these; but it were also the 
 error of dim vision to ascribe the ante-bellum develop- 
 ment of the Church in Alabama to Bishop Cobbs 
 alone. The greatest of generals can do nothing if he 
 head a mob of weaklings and cowards. The most 
 devoted of Bishops is powerless without the support 
 of loyal and able clergy to do the parochial work 
 which, in the sum total, constitutes the work of the 
 diocese. 
 
 A review of the early history of the diocese dis- 
 closes a galaxy of clerical strength out of all propor- 
 tion to the diocesan firmament, and the strongest tes- 
 timony to the mental vigor and spiritual force and 
 theological acuteness of the Bishop is that he so 
 promptly asserted and so increasingly manifested his 
 ability to lead such men and was so lovingly followed 
 by them. Young men the great majority of them 
 were, and, the few patriarchs excepted, their average 
 age was less than thirty-five years. But Lewis, 
 Knapp, Hanson, Lay, Lee, Pierce, Massey, Cushman, 
 Ingraham, Mitchell, and Stickney, were a company 
 of clergy that any prelate might well feel honored to 
 lead. If, as we call the roll, the names of some are 
 strange to our ears, it is only because no historian has 
 
 113 
 
114 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 arisen to declare what they dared and did. Others 
 were springing into prominence — Banister, Nevius, 
 S. U. and J. F. Smith, Cobbs, and Everhart— but 
 their best work belongs to a later -period, and may not 
 now be described. 
 
 Two of the clergy were elevated to the Episcopal 
 bench — Henry C I<ay and Henry N. Pierce. Of 
 these two it is proper to speak first. 
 
 Mr. I/ay, Virginia-born, had been a deacon only six 
 months when, in 1847, ne came to Alabama, and at 
 the age of twenty-three was placed by the Bishop in 
 charge of the Church of the Nativity, Huntsville. His 
 attainments are attested by the sources of his doctor- 
 ates, both Hobart College and William and Mary 
 conferring D.D. on him, in 1857 and 1873 respect- 
 ively, and Cambridge University I/I^.D. in 1867. His 
 whole priestly life until October 23, 1859, when he 
 was consecrated Missionary Bishop of Arkansas and 
 Indian Territory, was spent in Huntsville. He found 
 that parish with nineteen communicants, and left it 
 twelve years later with ninety-one. He found a four- 
 thousand-dollar church building, and left a beauti- 
 ful structure costing thirty-five thousand dollars. 
 Throughout his rectorship he regularly catechized the 
 children in public, and preached to them twice in the 
 month. Every Sunday night he preached to a large 
 congregation of slaves. He made Huntsville a cen- 
 ter of missionary activity from which, with the assist- 
 ance of two resident clergymen, a priest and a deacon, 
 he provided for services in the counties of Madison, 
 Iyimestone, Jackson, and Morgan. He was, as we 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 115 
 
 have seen*, appointed second canvasser for the in- 
 crease of the Episcopal endowment, and in a single 
 year raised about twelve thousand dollars. In dio- 
 cesan Conventions he was a prominent figure, being 
 generally chairman of the Committee on the State of 
 the Church, a committee that had not then been 
 robbed of its importance by the creation of a Com- 
 mittee on Parochial Reports. In respect of concise- 
 ness, force, and freedom from vague generalities, his 
 reports are worthy of imitation. The following pas- 
 sage, taken from his report of 1857, i n which he is 
 pleading for diocesan esprit du corps, is a fair example 
 of his style: " The blessed sunshine itself illumines 
 all the world, and yet spends itself chiefly on those ob- 
 jects nearest and most exposed thereto. So must we 
 concentrate our energies and our affections on that 
 which is peculiarly our own work. Could each min- 
 ister love his parish with that exclusive affection 
 which a good man entertains for his wife — could we 
 have in each diocese something corresponding to what 
 is so well known in the world as ' State Pride ' — could 
 our people, not despising the day of small things, 
 take a lively interest in all things diocesan, merely 
 because they are diocesan — we should be a Macedo- 
 nian phalanx, hard to be broken and formidable in its 
 aggressions. ' ' 
 
 The other presbyter of this period who was elevated 
 to the Episcopate was the present Bishop of Arkansas, 
 the Rt. Rev. Henry N. Pierce, who, though a Rhode 
 Islander, exercised nearly his whole ministry in the 
 
 * Page 90. 
 
Il6 HISTORY OF THB 
 
 South. He came to Alabama, and to St. John's 
 Church, Mobile, in 1857, and remained rector of that 
 parish eleven years. Only three of these years are 
 within our present purview, but in that short period 
 St. John's made great strides. Not only the commu- 
 nicants increased from ninety to one hundred and 
 thirty-four, and the yearly baptisms from twenty-eight 
 to seventy-seven, but the debt on the rectory was paid, 
 the average income rose to more than five thousand 
 dollars, the church building was enlarged to a total 
 seating capacity of eight hundred, and five thousand 
 dollars was raised for the founding of the Church 
 Home for Orphans in Mobile. Mr. Pierce did not 
 become a prominent figure in diocesan consultations — 
 indeed, men whose recreation is to work in Calculus 
 seldom do — but he expended all of his great energy 
 upon the absorbing work of his developing parish. 
 The University of Alabama conferred D. D. on him 
 in 1862. 
 
 Though mentioned first these future Bishops were 
 neither first in point of time nor pre-eminent in point 
 of ability among the old-time worthies.* Samuel 
 Smith I,ewis was the first in time, and remained until 
 his death senior presbyter and " Father of the Dio- 
 cese." Born in Vermont in 1805, and educated at 
 Washington (now Trinity) College, Hartford, Conn., 
 he entered upon his first charge, Christ Church, Tus- 
 
 * It is very comforting to the clergy that have not become 
 Bishops to think that the Episcopate does not* monopolize 
 clerical ability. Elections by diocesan conventions mean 
 sometimes this and sometimes that. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 117 
 
 kaloosa, in 1832. His work here, he confessed, was 
 eminently unsatisfactory, seventeen of the twenty- 
 eight communicants removing to other places within 
 a few months. He went so far as to suggest to the 
 vestry the advisability of abandoning the attempt to 
 establish a congregation, but the vestry refused to 
 entertain such a proposition and insisted that the 
 parish would soon come upon brighter days. Mr. 
 Lewis' discouragement would probably not have been 
 so great but for deep-seated lung-trouble which had 
 already declared itself. For nearly three years he 
 fought it, and then, in the summer of 1835, he gladly 
 accepted a call to Christ Church, Mobile. Here he 
 remained until 1846, when his rapidly failing health 
 compelled him to desist from all active work. During 
 the Church's acephalous period Mr. Lewis was always 
 President of the Diocesan Conventions, until at the 
 last, the Convention of 1844, when he felt physically 
 unable to perform the duties of the office. Until 1846 
 he was constantly President of the Standing Com- 
 mittee. Missionary work he felt unable to do. He 
 refused to leave his parish ' ' for any ^purpose save the 
 reinstatement of his health," but in his parish, which 
 though of moderate size in comparison with present 
 day parishes in Alabama, was the largest in the dio- 
 cese, his single-hearted devotedness was unsparing of 
 bodily ease, and he was eager to spend and to be spent 
 in the service of his flock. His duties were performed 
 with burning zeal and wasting application. His con- 
 scientiousness led him into a prodigal expenditure of 
 his strength, shortening his life, and bringing him to 
 
1 1 8 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the grave at the early age of forty-four. He died 
 during the rectorship of the Rev. Mr. Knapp, and was 
 buried beneath the chancel of Christ Church, where a 
 handsome tablet marks his resting-place. The text of 
 the funeral discourse delivered by Mr. Knapp was 
 strikingly appropriate: "Hold such in reputation; 
 because for the work of Christ he was nigh unto 
 death, not regarding his life." 
 
 The Rev. Nathaniel P. Knapp was the second giant 
 of this earlier period. He came from New York, 
 from a tutorship in the General Theological Semi- 
 nary, in 1837, and, settling in Lowndes county, 
 founded St. Peter's Church, at Benton, in January, 
 1838.* That this congregation was not a great tax 
 upon his energies may be inferred from a brief note 
 in his report to the Convention: " Number of com- 
 municants, so far as ascertained, two." From this 
 circumscribed field he was called, after four or five 
 months, to Tuskaloosa. Here he succeeded the Rev. 
 Andrew Matthews, whose private character and public 
 reputation had not materially improved the possibili- 
 ties of parochial growth or of ministerial ease. But 
 though the parish was small, the communicants rang- 
 ing in number between fourteen and twenty-one, year 
 by year, the growth during Mr. Knapp's rectorship 
 was constant. In 1843 Mr. Knapp resigned charge of 
 the parish at Tuskaloosa and went North. Here he 
 -fell in with Mr. Lewis, whose parishioners had sent 
 him thither for recreation. It was a s ummer of dread- 
 
 * This church was the foundation of that which now exists 
 at Tyler's Station, nine miles west. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. TH? 
 
 ful suffering in Mobile, yellow fever being epidemic. 
 Knowing the condition of Mr. I^ewis' health, Mr. 
 Knapp promptly offered and successfully urged him- 
 self as Mr. I,ewis' substitute in Mobile for the re- 
 mainder of the summer. In Mobile he worked inde- 
 fatigably and shunned no exposure, until he himself 
 was stricken down. After a serious illness, Mr. I,ewis 
 having returned and the plague abated, he went to 
 Cuba for the winter, and on his return became rector 
 of St. John's, Montgomery. Here his rectorship of 
 four years was most successful. His indomitable will 
 and comprehensive grasp of events is well illustrated 
 by an incident that occurred in the religious life of 
 the town: I^ate in the summer of 1845 a wave of 
 mental and spiritual excitement swept through Mont- 
 gomery, attending and following a great "revival." 
 Every congregation was affected, and in St. John's 
 parish wide-spread sympathy with the revival was en- 
 gendered. Had a less able man been rector of the 
 parish, it is conceivable that, in view of his congre- 
 gation's condition, he would have pursued one of two 
 courses, according to his theological bias: Either he 
 would have joined in the union revival meetings, or 
 he would have inveighed against the whole idea of 
 revivals. Alabama clergy have been known to do 
 both. Mr. Knapp did neither. His unqualified un- 
 belief in a man-made ministry, and his abhorrence of 
 schism, even when but hereditary, forbade him to go 
 with the revivalists. And his conviction, that beneath 
 the waves of commotion that agitated the community 
 there was an undercurrent which, by its deep and 
 
I2Q HISTORY OF THE 
 
 steady flow, marked the brooding of the Holy Spirit, 
 rendered it impossible for him to set himself in oppo- 
 sition. But set as a watchman in Israel, and purpos- 
 ing to keep his own congregation from being driven 
 about by every wind of doctrine, he foregrasped the 
 coming Advent-tide, multiplied the services of the 
 Church, visited from house to house and held cottage 
 prayer-meetings, and, continuing thus six hours a day 
 for three months, not only prevented the loss to the 
 parish of its more emotional members, but actually 
 turned the tide and greatly increased both the numeri- 
 cal and the spiritual strength of his congregation. In 
 two years the number of communicants had quadru- 
 pled; for, with an uncompromising loyalty to the 
 Church, Mr. Knapp had the rare faculty of bending 
 all circumstances, whether favorable or hostile, to the 
 furtherance of the Kingdom. In 1848 he entered upon 
 the rectorship of Christ Church, Mobile, following 
 Mr. Lewis' successor, the Rev. Francis Priolean Lee, 
 who had died, a victim to yellow fever, after a brief 
 but brilliant rectorship of only ten months. Though 
 lacking the fine physique and personal magnetism of 
 these two predecessors, Mr. Knapp fell not one whit 
 behind them in both the excellence and the accepta- 
 bility of his labors. He died here in the harness in 
 1851.* 
 
 * Fifty-nine of his sermons, edited by the Rev. William 
 Johnson, were published in a very large royal octavo vol- 
 ume of five hundred pages in 1855. They are of widely 
 varying degrees of excellence. Mr. Knapp's reputation 
 would have been the better upheld had the volume been one- 
 third as large. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 121 
 
 These two men, Lewis and Knapp, were head and 
 shoulders above their contemporaries. Of Lewis, 
 Bishop Cobbs bore witness "that by his sound Evan- 
 gelical preaching, by his holy walk and conversation, 
 and by his ardent zeal and devotion, he had contrib- 
 uted more than any other one man towards building 
 up the Church in Alabama." Of his "old and be- 
 loved friend," Mr. Knapp, the Bishop said: "He 
 had contributed not a little to the moulding of the 
 diocese's character, being a sound, well-balanced the- 
 ologian, a thoroughly conservative Churchman, and a 
 most faithful, practical and evangelical preacher." 
 
 Of the other prominent clergy of this period not 
 much needs, or can, be said. Their lives were devoid 
 of sensational events. Year after year they labored 
 quietly and faithfully, not sounding a trumpet before 
 their good deeds. The recollections of their surviv- 
 ors are vague and unsatisfactory, and the written 
 records are painfully meager. Scanty parochial re- 
 ports, incidental remarks, and allusions by the Bishop, 
 give momentary, phantom-like glimpses of those 
 strong personalities. Hanson, the patient missionary 
 of Greene and Marengo; L,ee, the pious, far-seeing 
 builder of St. Paul's, Carlowville; Massey, the inde- 
 fatigable "proselyter" of Mobile, founder of St John's 
 and rector of Trinity; Cushman, the cheerful and 
 scholarly incumbent of Cahaba; Ingraham, the Bib- 
 lical student, whose "Pillar of Fire," "Throne of 
 David," and "Prince of the House of David," will 
 live long in literature, to the shame of those who, 
 though following the path blazed out by him, have 
 
122 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 followed but to wrest Scripture to their readers' de- 
 struction; Mitchell, the Bishop's right arm in the 
 rapidly growing parish of St. John's, Montgomery; 
 and Stickney, of Marion, the most advanced Church- 
 man and successful educator in Alabama; — these are 
 men whose deeds live after them, and whose memory 
 is fragrant, though they did the work of the Master 
 without ostentation and left behind them no connected 
 story of their lives. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 the; theological tone. 
 
 THE character of a diocese is as real as the charac- 
 ter of an individual. There may be inharmoni- 
 ous elements here and there, but a composite photo- 
 graph gives the mental and spiritual characteristics in 
 clear-cut lines. Thus, no one would mistake the 
 Churchmanship of Virginia for that of Fond du I^ac, 
 although the theology of scattered individuals in each 
 diocese differs from the theology of the other diocese 
 by less than any appreciable quantity. 
 
 So in this diocese, despite the few extreme teach- 
 ers that have arisen on either wing,. there is a 
 tone of theology and Churchmanship that has never 
 changed in essence, however much the expression of 
 it has changed to grapple with new conditions. "Ala- 
 bama Churchmanship" is regarded in Virginia as 
 having Romish tendencies, and in Fond du I^ac as 
 being little better than Episcopated Sectarianism. But 
 in truth, while Rome is not its goal, neither is Geneva 
 its anti-Christ. 
 
 As now, so in the episcopate of the first Bishop, 
 
 Alabama held that the via media was both the via 
 
 salutis and the via veritaiis. The theology of the 
 
 Early Fathers of the diocese was in harmony with that 
 
 of their diocesan. They chose him because he was 
 
 of their poise. He stamped his own theology upon 
 
 the diocese, in congregations and in his young clergy, 
 
 123 
 
124 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 and the stamp has been repeated and the impression 
 deepened by his successors and theirs. 
 
 It should not be forgotten that this was a time of 
 alarm and contention in the national Church and in 
 many diocesan households. The inevitable leaning 
 of democratic Americans towards a man-made demo- 
 cratic " church," and their abhorrence of all imperi- 
 alism, but especially of papal imperialism, marked 
 with the mark of the Beast, was intensified by there- 
 cent developments in the Church of England, precip- 
 itated by Newman's famous "Tract 90," and result- 
 ing in more than three hundred clerical, and an 
 unknown number of lay, defections to the Church of 
 Rome. Everywhere men were looking for tenden- 
 cies, tendencies were all presupposed to be Rome ward, 
 and the slightest departure from established ecclesi- 
 astical customs was viewed with alarmed suspicion. 
 
 Consequently many of the Bishop's warnings, in 
 sermon and in pastoral, were directed against the in- 
 troduction of any novel practices, however innocent, 
 in the conduct of services. The so-called ' ' Cath- 
 olicity ' ' of Mediaeval Europe received many a hard 
 rap from him; but so also did that spurious liberality 
 which condones sectarianism and declares that ' ' one 
 church is as good as another. ' ' The Bishop was not 
 an alarmist, and his clearheaded diagnosis of the eccle- 
 siastical situation in 1848 must have given much com- 
 fort to the faint-hearted. His conviction was that 
 more uniformity in doctrine existed than might be 
 inferred from many of the publications that were so 
 frequently appearing. ' ' True it is, " he acknowledged, 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 125 
 
 "that there is diversity of opinion; but it is not so 
 much because fundamental errors are held and taught, 
 but because of the giving of undue prominence to 
 some particular doctrines which some men, from edu- 
 cation, position, or association, consider of peculiar 
 importance — and who thus, whilst they do not deny, 
 yet undervalue or partially present other doctrines of 
 equal obligation." 
 
 "There maybe those," he goes on, "who enter- 
 tain low and defective views of the Church, her 
 Ministry, and her Sacraments; but this class is con- 
 stantly becoming more and more decided and con- 
 servative in their principles and their practices. There 
 may be those who are ultra in their views; who attach 
 a superstitious and semi-papistical value to ordinances ; 
 who indulge in much affectation and cant about primi- 
 tive Catholicity; who, though oftentimes but novices 
 in the Church, take upon themselves to be wiser 
 expounders of the Articles and Offices than the aged, 
 learned, and godly men who framed the Prayer Book; 
 yet this class of men, holding views so grossly incon- 
 sistent with the standards of the Church, and being 
 so extremely ridiculous by their pharisaical and sanc- 
 timonious observances of various little peculiarities, 
 will either gradually be rebuked by the good common- 
 sense and the sound evangelical piety of the Church, 
 or in extreme cases will ultimately pass over to a more 
 corrupt and congenial communion. I would again 
 repeat it as my firm belief, that the great body of the 
 Church is sound not only in regard to the doctrines 
 taught in the Offices of the Prayer Book, but to those 
 
1 26 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 great fundamental truths embodied in the Articles and 
 Homilies. ' ' 
 
 The defection of Bishop Ives of North Carolina 
 called forth a new deliverance from Bishop Cobbs, 
 who viewed the perversion with mortification and 
 shame for the Church, but used the occasion to incul- 
 cate a lesson. ' ' There may have been too much 
 boasting and self-glorification on our part," he wrote, 
 ' ' too much overvaluing of Sacraments and Ordi- 
 nances, and not enough of the faithful preaching of 
 Christ crucified, too much departing from the Prot- 
 estant principle of the Church as established at the 
 Reformation, too much relaxing of Christian morals 
 in the way of apology for worldly conformity, and too 
 much of sympathy and of tampering with Romish 
 books, with Romish doctrines, and with Romish 
 usages. * * * Let us, therefore, take in good 
 part this chastisement, and learn to be more prayer- 
 ful, more humble, more faithful, more devoted, and 
 more holy. And let us not be driven from distinctive 
 principles by the occasional defection of those who 
 have gone out from us because they were not of us. ' ' 
 
 Again and again did the Bishop seek to impress 
 upon the clergy that the charity for whose sake truth 
 must be suppressed was in character spurious and in 
 benefit ephemeral. In 1849 he wrote : "The doc- 
 trine that it is a matter of indifference whether people 
 belong to the One, True, Catholic, and Apostolic 
 Church, or to any Christian organization of human 
 origin, is one pregnant with fearful evil, and one that 
 should be boldly met and frankly and fully exposed. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 1 27 
 
 However this doctrine may be praised and admired 
 under the specious name of liberality, yet it is one 
 which naturally terminates in an indifference to all 
 religion, and not infrequently leads to open infidelity. 
 If, then, we really regard the Church as a divine in- 
 stitution, let it be fully and openly avowed; let men 
 be urged to be united with it as a duty which they 
 owe to God; let there be no compromising of her 
 claims for the sake of expediency, and no merging of 
 her means and her influence with other associations. 
 In this way, our children and the members of our con- 
 gregation will grow up intelligent, devoted, and con- 
 firmed members of the Church. They will be inter- 
 ested in her welfare, they will be grounded and settled 
 in the faith once delivered to the saints, and will be 
 less in danger of falling into schism, either in the di- 
 rection of Rome or of sectarianism." 
 
 If the Bishop seemed to dwell unduly upon the dis- 
 tinctive rites, customs, and doctrines of the Church, 
 he was fully warranted in doing so by the real sym- 
 pathy of many of the laity for the unformulated and 
 effusive liturgy of sectarianism, towards which they 
 felt the more closely drawn the nearer the clergy 
 seemed to approach the opus operatum of Roman 
 sacramentarianism. He had to steer clear of both 
 Scylla and Charybdis, to nourish evangelical piety 
 without arousing schismatic tendencies, and to en- 
 courage the seeking of sacramental grace without 
 infusing a trust in the mere mechanism of a bodily 
 deed. To impress upon the diocese the due propor- 
 tion of the faith required constant iteration and re- 
 
128 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 iteration. But while he encouraged conservatism and 
 rebuked extremism he put alarmists out of court very 
 gently but very firmly. A certain clergyman, in whose 
 soundness, sincerity, and ability he had full confi- 
 dence, was accused to him of monkish and Romish 
 practices. Among other counts it was charged with 
 especial gravity that he frequently castigated himself. 
 "Does he?" answered the Bishop; "Is that the 
 worst ? Then we must forgive him. If he does his 
 own whipping depend upon it he will never get near 
 so much as he deserves. ' ' 
 
 But the theology of the Bishop had to do with the 
 pastoral relation as well as with the ecclesiastical. 
 He insisted that it was the duty of the clergy person- 
 ally to care for the children and the slaves and to 
 train them in the doctrines of Christ and the Church. 
 For ceremonialism, for merely formal relationship to 
 the Church, for faith without faith-evincing works, he 
 had a Christ-like contempt. Any teaching of the 
 ' ' wider hope ' ' that encouraged men in the belief that, 
 after serving the god of this world all the days of their 
 life, they are to be made fit for heaven by a little peni- 
 tential sorrow in their last moments, he characterized 
 as "an awful thing. ' ' Support of the work of the 
 Church, in parish and in diocese, he held to be a 
 duty, whose performance was not to be complimented 
 as liberality, but whose neglect was to be reprehended 
 as sin. This support was to be not merely in money 
 but also in personal service, and service must be to 
 God's glory, not to the glory of self. In neglect of 
 this principle he found the cause of parochial schisms. 
 
CHURCH IN ALA BAMA. 1£9 
 
 ' ' Did you ever notice how fond the Devil is of the 
 Church?" he asked Mr. Lay one day in a stage- 
 coach, after striving ineffectually all of the preceding 
 day to adjust a parochial controversy. ' ' I have been 
 at a great many gatherings, from General Conventions 
 down to vestry meetings, and I always find the Devil 
 present, and wonderfully zealous for the Church. He 
 whispers in the ear of this one and that, ' So far as you 
 are personally concerned it would be well to be meek 
 and gentle, but, my dear friend, consider the Church, 
 consider the interests of evangelical truth;' and so he 
 persuades them into complacent pharisaism. As I 
 was saying," he resumed after a short nap, "the 
 Devil is a great apothecary. He knows we won't 
 take his poison with the true name upon it, so he 
 bottles it up and labels it in big letters ' Principle;' 
 and, oh! how poor sinners will indulge in pride, will- 
 fulness, party spirit, and selfishness, boasting all the 
 while of their zeal for principle."* Very persistently 
 and aggressively did he contend against theatre-going 
 and ball-room dancing, and, while he did not censo- 
 riously judge those whose profession was to teach 
 dancing, he distinctly affirmed that he would not 
 confirm a dancing-master. 
 
 With the constant pressure of such teaching upon 
 clergy and people for sixteen years, the Churchman- 
 ship of the diocese in those days is not a matter for 
 discussion. Though many of the clergy are now 
 spoken of as " old-fashioned High- Churchmen," they 
 
 * This anecdote is given in Bishop Lay's Church Review 
 memories of Bishop Cobbs. 
 
13° HISTORY OF THE 
 
 differed from new-fashioned High-Churchmen only 
 in frowning upon a ritualism that seemed both ill- 
 advised and corrupting. The services were, no doubt, 
 painfully bare, and the music was execrable, but the 
 trumpet gave no uncertain sound. Six years before 
 Bishop Cobbs came to Alabama the Committee on the 
 state of the Church could say: " When the Church 
 has been exhibited, it has been as The Church; and 
 as such is it still called for. ' ' * Lewis and Knapp have 
 indeed been denominated " Low-Churchmen, "j but 
 no one that has carefully read their published writ- 
 ings can so place them. Lewis affirmed that (i) 
 Christ established a Church, (2) organized its minis- 
 try, (3) ordained its Sacraments and Ordinances, (4) 
 and that these all were to be perpetuated to the end 
 of the world; he only protested (and who does not 
 agree with him?) that Church, ministry, and sacra- 
 ments were not the end but the means to the end, 
 which was ' ' Salvation to all who place their trust in 
 Christ." Knapp's Churchmanship is forever placed 
 beyond question by these words from his published 
 sermon on the text ' ' The Lord added daily to the 
 Church such as should be saved " : " The Gospel 
 never was designed to be preached independently of 
 the Church — nor can it be, for the Church is part of 
 the Gospel. » * * We maintain that in order to 
 be entitled to call ourselves and the communion to 
 which we belong ' members of the Church ' we must 
 have the same doctrines and ordinances that the first 
 
 'Journal of 1838, page 17. 
 
 t Christ Church, Mobile, Year Book for 1883, page 43. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 131 
 
 Christians had, and be in fellowship with the Apos- 
 tles through the pervading bond of a ministry derived 
 from them; that is, through the Apostolical Succes- 
 sion. That we have this succession, this connecting 
 bond, we can distinctly prove, as clearly as we prove 
 the divine origin of our religion. ' ' 
 
 Such is the clear-cut, decisive teaching that Bishop 
 and Priests alike gave the Churchmen of Alabama in 
 the fourth and fifth decades of the present century. 
 Much vaguer teaching was occasionally heard; but it 
 was this definiteness and dogmatism, this doctrine 
 tangible enough for the people to grasp, that com- 
 mended itself to the hearers; and it was these cour- 
 ageous ministers, who did not hesitate to preach the 
 truth in love, that reaped the most bounteous harvests 
 in their own day and left the most fruitful fields of the 
 present generation. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PARISH LIFE. 
 
 DOMESTIC details reveal character more truth- 
 fully than do widely-heralded deeds wrought 
 before the public gaze. The gossip and small-talk of 
 parish life tell us much that never comes to light in 
 the study of diocesan institutions and of ecclesiastical 
 development. To these it is purposed to turn for a 
 while. 
 
 Only once in this episcopate did the diocese attempt 
 to intermeddle in affairs strictly pastoral, parochial, or 
 personal. In 1849 the Convention received, as part 
 of a new system of canons, a series of provisions en- 
 titled ' ' Of Lay Discipline. ' ' The four canons of the 
 series provided: (1) That every communicant should 
 have daily family prayers; (2) That heads of families 
 should instruct those under them, and send their chil- 
 dren to the minister's catechetical instructions; (3) 
 That notorious transgressors should be excluded, as 
 from Holy Communion, so from Sponsorship; and 
 (4) That the names of confirmed persons neglecting 
 the L,ord's Supper for the space of twelve months 
 should be stricken from the roll of communicants. 
 This attempt to enforce natural duty and to supersede 
 pastoral responsibility by legislative enactment re- 
 ceived short shrift from the Convention of 1850, when 
 the canons were finally acted upon. Only the fourth 
 provision met with favor; it was in force just one year, 
 
 132 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 1 33 
 
 and no similar experiment in legislation has since 
 been attempted. 
 
 The question, What constitutes a communicant? 
 met with more uncertain response then than meets it 
 now. The present substitution of the words ' ' Con- 
 firmed Persons ' ' for the word ' ' Communicant ' ' was 
 not often made in those days. A communicant was, 
 in general, not merely a potential communicant; he 
 was an actual participant in the Supper of the I^ord. 
 Consequently the number of confirmed persons re- 
 siding in a parish cannot be determined from records 
 extant. Neither are we assisted in arriving at the 
 approximate number of the confirmed by the fact that 
 actual communicants are about seventy -five per cent, 
 of the confirmed, for not only was the distinction 
 between confirmed persons and de facto communi- 
 cants not universal, but we cannot say positively what 
 clergymen made the distinction and what did not. 
 The only inference that can be made reasonably is, 
 that a parish reporting twenty communicants was 
 larger than is a parish reporting the same number to- 
 day; but how much larger, it is impossible to estimate. 
 
 Of course the universal American custom of ' ' call- 
 ing ' ' ministers held sway from the beginning. In 
 many parishes it was the- custom to call a minister for 
 a single year. * If he was liked he was re-elected from 
 year to year. If he was not liked he was quietly 
 dropped when the term of partnership expired, and 
 another minister was chosen. In this way the awk ward- 
 
 * This is still the nominal custom in St. Thomas' Church, 
 Greenville. 
 
134 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ness of asking a clergyman to resign and the cruelty 
 of starving him into resigning were alike avoided. 
 The hottest-headed partisan was, as a rule, able to 
 wait a few months. Dr. Lewis was thus elected rector 
 of Christ Church, Mobile, eleven times. 
 
 The ministerial salary, not over-large in prospect, 
 was oftentimes even smaller in realization. Not a few 
 of the clergy were compelled to eke out their salary 
 by adding school-teaching to their clerical duties. 
 Some of the clergy must have welcomed a bright Sun- 
 day morning and a large congregation with somewhat 
 more than spiritual joy, for their whole support came 
 from the unpledged Sunday offerings of the congre- 
 gation. Others whose stipends were fixed did not for 
 a considerable period state the amount in their annual 
 reports, excusing themselves on the ground that this 
 was a private parochial arrangement to which it would 
 be indelicate to refer publicly. 
 
 However hard this training, this combination of 
 secular duties with ministerial, it was beneficial in 
 that the Body Ecclesiastical in Alabama was, in the 
 fullest measure, a "teaching Church." Parochial 
 schools were multiplied, and in them were laid the 
 foundations of Christian life and belief. The times 
 were especially propitious for such schools, as no 
 scheme of common-school education at public expense 
 had yet been broached, and the schools were long in 
 a flourishing condition in many places, notably in 
 Mobile, Montgomery, Tuskaloosa, and Marion. In 
 the last-named place the Rev. W. A. Stickney's school 
 was especially successful, numbering more than eighty 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 135 
 
 pupils and having a standing list of applicants for 
 vacancies year after year.* Trinity Church, Mobile, 
 conducted a free school which numbered more than 
 a hundred pupils. Christ Church, Tuskaloosa, was 
 never without its parish school. Much religious in- 
 struction was given in the Rev. Mr. Cook's school at 
 Talladega. 
 
 The operation of these schools brought about more 
 frequent services throughout the diocese. It was a 
 short step from brief devotional exercises in the school- 
 house to public prayer in the church or chapel, and 
 this step at least three congregations had taken by 
 1854 — Montgomery, Tuskaloosa, and Marion. Daily 
 Morning Prayer was said in these parishes, and in 
 Marion more than three hundred services were held 
 in a single year. The example of these parishes was 
 followed more or less closely in places where there 
 were no parochial schools. 
 
 That was not the Golden Age of parish finances. 
 Parishes lived upon their daily bread and were never 
 known to gather more than enough for their imme- 
 diate necessities. The economic principle that a col- 
 lege that does its work properly is always on the verge 
 of bankruptcy was applied to the work of a parish. 
 One source of embarrassment remained for many 
 years. Quite a number of churches had been built on 
 a kind of joint-stock plan; that is, instead of giving 
 
 * The name of the school was " St. Wilfred's." The name 
 of the parish was at first " St. Michael's," but at the time of 
 its incorporation, in 1853, the parish took the name of the 
 school. 
 
136 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 outright towards the erection of a church building 
 men bought the pews. These they thereafter held in 
 fee-simple. Rectors, wardens, and vestrymen had no 
 control over them, and could not add subsequent con- 
 ditions of ownership. Not till the grotesqueness of 
 dedicating a church to God and still retaining a por- 
 tion of it as a private possession that could be bought 
 and sold burst upon them did the pew-owners volun- 
 tarily begin to make concessions and ultimately sur- 
 render the pews absolutely to the parochial authorities. 
 It seems to have been almost unthought of that 
 there was no necessary relationship between the seat 
 a parishioner occupied in the church and the amount 
 he contributed to the parish treasury. If he did not 
 buy a pew he had to rent one. Free churches were 
 so uncommon, especially in the cities, that the build- 
 ing of Trinity Church, Mobile, as a free church was 
 heralded far and wide. Only pew-holders and sub- 
 scribers of an amount equal to the rental of the cheap- 
 est pew were permitted to vote at parish meetings. 
 It was not the parishioners that voted, but the pews. 
 One vote went with an entire pew. Those persons 
 that economized by renting a pew conjointly had each 
 the corresponding fraction of a vote. The highest 
 bidder had the choice of pews, and the poor sat imme- 
 diately under the three-decker pulpit or far back 
 beneath the gallery or behind obstructing columns. 
 The first parish to break away from this system of 
 owned or rented pews was Christ Church, Tuskaloosa. 
 Bishop Cobbs, who was rector of the parish, looked 
 upon rented pews as " a hedge of thorns and briars ' ' 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 137 
 
 to keep the poor out of the church, and under his 
 advice and urgent entreaty the vestry, in 1849, de- 
 clared that the pews should ever after be free. Trinity 
 and St. John's, Mobile, soon followed this good ex- 
 ample, but the old system long continued good 
 enough for the majority of parishes. 
 
 Song services and the like on Sunday nights had 
 already crept in and to some extent displaced the 
 worship of God and the preaching of Christ. These 
 services were not infrequently arranged by commit- 
 tees from the vestry in consultation with the choir- 
 leader; the rector was not supposed to be interested. 
 Much has been said of the lack of musical culture in 
 those days; but the following action of the Tuskaloosa 
 vestry, on November 12, 1831, would justify the 
 inference that the members of at least one vestry were 
 thorough vocalists: 
 
 "Resolved, That in accordance with the custom of 
 the Pro. Epis. Church in the U. S. the vestry of 
 Christ Church, Tuscaloosa, will celebrate an Oratorio 
 of Sacred Musick, in this church, at some convenient 
 time to be specified by the Committee of Arrange- 
 ments to be appointed for that purpose. ' ' 
 
 While many of these details reveal to us a Church 
 striving, not always wisely, to fulfil its mission, others 
 declare that in some respects the Church in Alabama 
 was forty and fifty years ahead of the old-established 
 dioceses of the North and East. The two most nota- 
 ble instances of this diocesan precocity were: The 
 Brotherhood of the Church, and the Bishop's Cathedral 
 — 10 
 
I3 8 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 project ; of both which remarkably little is known by 
 Churchmen of to-day. 
 
 Reaving consideration of the Cathedral project for 
 the ensuing chapter, we may now speak more par- 
 ticularly of the Brotherhood of the Church, which 
 antedated the Brotherhood of St. Andrew by more 
 than a generation. This society was an inter- 
 parochial organization of the laymen of Mobile. Un- 
 successful attempts had been made to establish it in 
 the summer of 1853 and the summer of 1854, when 
 yellow fever was epidemic. Finally the organization 
 was effected, on May 3, 1855, by four laymen, who 
 determined not to wait for others. The objects of this 
 Brotherhood were far more comprehensive than those 
 of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, and were five-fold, 
 viz.: 1st, To promote Christian love and fellowship 
 among its members by frequent intercourse, and 
 mutual aid and encouragement in good work; 2nd, To 
 relieve and provide for its members when sick or 
 otherwise disabled; 3rd, To secure Christian burial to 
 the bodies of its deceased members and other Church- 
 men, and to succor their widows and orphans; 4th, 
 To assist the clergy, according to its ability, in re- 
 lieving the sick and destitute, especially those of our 
 own communion; 5th, As soon as able, to establish a 
 reading room and library for the use of its members; 
 and to adopt such other measures, from time to time, 
 as may be deemed expedient, and in accordance with 
 the original design.* All five of these objects were 
 realized within the first two years of the Brotherhood's 
 
 * Article II. of Constitution. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 139 
 
 existence. Within three months about a score of 
 members had been enrolled, in anticipation of another 
 yellow fever epidemic. But this year Mobile was 
 exempt from the scourge. Norfolk and Portsmouth, 
 Virginia, however, suffered from the most malignant 
 type of fever that ever appeared on this side of the 
 Atlantic; and the Brotherhood, carrying out the spirit 
 of their organization, gave noble succor to the afflicted 
 cities. Two of the members volunteered to go to the 
 relief of the helpless sufferers, hundreds of whom 
 were dying from sheer neglect; these two and twelve 
 others had in a few moments subscribed enough to 
 pay all expenses of the intended help, and the 
 Brothers were on their journey within twenty-four 
 hours. They had abundant opportunity to perform 
 the first four of the Brotherhood's obligations. In 
 Norfolk alone, out of ten thousand persons remaining 
 after the first exodus, two thousand died in two months 
 — the proportion of deaths among the whites being one 
 out of every three of the white population. Work of 
 every kind was suspended, save the work of physi- 
 cians, nurses, and grave diggers; and even the daily 
 baked bread and the ominous cargoes of coffins were 
 brought from Baltimore and Richmond. The general 
 intellect and energy seemed alike paralyzed. Through- 
 out the epidemic the two Brotherhood men did valiant 
 service, returning to Mobile only when the plague 
 had disappeared with the advent of cold weather. 
 Subsequently, in addition to its altruistic beneficence, 
 the Brotherhood combined in itself the two functions 
 of a Church Congress and a Bible Society. Man v 
 
140 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 subjects of ethics, Churchmanship, and ritual received 
 the freest discussion. A sales depot for Bibles, 
 prayer books, and wholesome Christian literature in 
 general, was successfully operated. 
 
 The Brotherhood of the Church was one of the first 
 lay-organizations for personal service in the American 
 Church. It was the outcome of a spirit that was felt 
 by many individual laymen, and that was manifested 
 by them both before and after the attempted organiza- 
 tion. Perhaps the most notable example of zeal 
 among the laity of this period was the work of Judge 
 E. W. Peck, who, in making the rounds of the cir- 
 cuit over which he presided, always carried an abun- 
 dant supply of Christian and ecclesiastical literature 
 in the back of his buggy, and was quick to drop a 
 tract where he thought it would do good. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 LAST DAYS OF BISHOP COBBS. 
 
 EARI^Y in 1856 it became apparent that the Bishop 
 was breaking. His health had long been pre- 
 carious. He had not spared himself, and his labors 
 were now telling on his frame, which, never strong 
 even in early life, was now at the age of sixty espe- 
 cially susceptible to disorders. It was imperative that 
 he temporarily lay aside all work. 
 
 The Convention itself took the matter in hand. 
 Through a resolution introduced by its Committee on 
 the State of the Church it insisted that the Bishop 
 should ' 'take in the present such respite as his medical 
 advisers may recommend to him, and exercise in the 
 future administration of the diocese a just regard to 
 the preservation of his health;" and through the libe- 
 rality of its lay delegates * it presented him with a sum 
 of money " largely in excess of one thousand dollars," 
 with which to travel and recruit his broken-down and 
 wasted constitution. 
 
 Availing himself of this opportunity the Bishop 
 spent the months of June, July and August in a jour- 
 ney to England, returning with what he termed ' ' a 
 more than ordinary degree of strength and of health. ' ' 
 The phraseology is modest, but his condition war- 
 ranted no stronger words. He was enabled, indeed, 
 
 * Especially of Messrs. R. S. Bunker and H. A. Schroeder, 
 liberal communicants of Christ Church, Mobile. 
 
 141 
 
142 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 by his indefatigable zeal, to perform a vast amount 
 of work, in office, study, and diocese, for two years 
 more; but it became evident that he was nearing the 
 end of pastoral toil and care. 
 
 As he drew near the close of his earthly labors the 
 Bishop's horizon broadened and he meditated large 
 projects. During his absence in England the found- 
 ing of a University for Southern men, and especially 
 Southern Churchmen, had been broached by Bishop 
 Polk of Tennessee, and when he returned he fell in 
 with it most eagerly, and gave to its furtherance the 
 full weight of both his personal and his official influ- 
 ence. He and Mr. Lay were present at Lookout 
 Mountain, on July 4, 1857, when the work was form- 
 ally inaugurated by the episcopal, clerical, and lay 
 representatives of seven dioceses. At the meeting 
 held in Montgomery, on the twenty-fifth of the follow- 
 ing November, to determine the location of the pro- 
 posed University, he objected to both Sewanee and 
 Atlanta, the leading competitors, and favored the 
 neighborhood of Huutsville. Then came the sharp, 
 severe, but short-lived financial crisis of 1857, during 
 which all progress in the work ceased. As soon, how- 
 ever, as the squall was over interest revived. Ala- 
 bama attempted to secure a reconsideration of the vote 
 by which the University was to be established at 
 Sewanee, but after a frank conference with the other 
 trustees it humbled its diocesan pride before other and 
 more important considerations. Bishop Cobbs told 
 the Convention of 1 859 that be expected the Church- 
 men of Alabama to subscribe a quarter of a million 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 143 
 
 dollars towards the University of the South. The 
 rapid march of events prevented the subscription of 
 more than a small fraction of this sum. For the next 
 six years Southern men that had money had small 
 interest in launching new educational enterprises; and 
 afterwards they that were interested were about penni- 
 less. The Bishop never lost interest, however, and 
 probably the last public function in which he partici- 
 pated was the laying of the corner-stone of the prin- 
 cipal building of the University, in the second week 
 of October, i860. 
 
 Bishop Cobbs' other great vision was that of a 
 Cathedral church and organization located in Mont- 
 gomery, and to be known as ' ' All Souls'. ' ' Although 
 he never publicly alluded to this idea, it is almost 
 certain that it was one of the fruits of his visit to 
 England in 1856. 
 
 The Bishop was not afraid of cathedrals, although 
 the Church of England. had them; and he was not 
 afraid to project the establishment of a cathedral, 
 although the American Church furnished no prece- 
 dent. It is true that, a few years before, Bishop Kip 
 of California had placed his Episcopal chair in Grace 
 Church, San Francisco, and called that church his 
 Cathedral; but this he did by virtue of his rectorship 
 of the parish which he exercised in conjunction with 
 the oversight of the jurisdiction, and when his incum- 
 bency ceased his chair was removed and Grace Cathe- 
 dral was again only Grace Church. * But the Cathedral 
 
 * Hon. James M. Woolworth, LL. D., in The Church Cyclo- 
 pedia, art. Cathedral. 
 
144 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 that Bishop Cobbs planned was of entirely different 
 order. It is only as a temporary makeshift that Bish- 
 ops engage in active parochial work; when they 
 confine themselves to their Episcopal duties they are 
 in the anomalous position of being chief pastor, yet 
 having no home- : -of being called upon to perform 
 Episcopal duties, yet depending on the courtesy of a 
 parish priest for a consecrated building wherein to 
 perform them. 
 
 To remove this anomaly was the starting point of 
 Bishop Cobbs' plan; but the vision became broader: 
 The Cathedral must be a large building, seating fifteen 
 hundred whites in the body of the church and one 
 thousand negroes in the galleries. About the quad- 
 rangle in which the Cathedral should stand were to 
 be nine separate buildings, whose purposes declare 
 the scope of the projected work, viz.: (i) diocesan 
 library and Bishop's office, (2) sexton's house, (3) 
 dean's residence, (4) infirmary and house of mercy, 
 (5) home for five deaconesses, (6) house for theolog- 
 ical students, (7) house for high classical school, (8) 
 house for six or eight deacons, (9) steward's house 
 for boarding occupants of last three houses. The esti- 
 mated cost of erection was $175,000, and this the 
 Bishop thought could be collected in ten years. 
 
 The cost of supporting the work after its inception 
 was also thoroughly digested. The Dean was to have 
 the offertory ; the deacons were to do missionary work 
 for a hundred miles out of Montgomery on every 
 Sunday and live on the salaries paid by their several 
 stations — spending the weekdays at home, reading 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 145 
 
 and studying, assisting in pastoral ministrations and 
 fitting themselves for independent labor, and working 
 one hour every day in the flower-, fruit-, vegetable-, 
 and grape-gardens; the candidates for Orders were, as 
 elsewhere, to support themselves, and were to have 
 the privilege of teaching in extra-Cathedral schools in 
 the city; the deaconesses were also to teach, and were 
 to supplement their income by the gifts of the charity- 
 box at Cathedral-door; the steward's support would 
 come from payment of board by deacons, candidates, 
 and grammar-school boys from a distance; the sexton's 
 salary would be provided by special contributions; and 
 the Bishop's was already paid by the diocese. The 
 Bishop set his heart upon the Cathedral as the start- 
 ing point of vast ecclesiastical development. He 
 wrote, under date of January i8, 1859, that it would 
 ' ' enable a Bishop to be not simply Chairman of the 
 Convention, but the heart, the motive power, and the 
 controlling agent, of his Diocese, and thus let him be, 
 what has never been in our Church in the United 
 States, a real Bishop in the Gospel sense of the word. 
 * * Tell Mr. I,ay that after Convention I shall 
 begin to collect materials for this great work, and that 
 if he is my successor he must carry out my plan in 
 tea years' time. * * As David felt himself un- 
 worthy to build the Temple, but contented himself 
 with collecting materials, I am restrained from begin- 
 ning this work, not only by my age, but by a feeling 
 similar to that of David. ' ' 
 
 The dream of a visionary it was; but the visions of 
 one century are the realities of the next. It is not a 
 
146 HISTORY OF THB 
 
 hazardous statement that the next century will not 
 attain its majority before not merely Montgomery, but 
 also Birmingham, shall have a Cathedral erected on 
 Bishop Cobbs' plan — the centers of all the educational 
 and missionary work of the respective dioceses. 
 
 But while thus planning for the future, in which he 
 had so much confidence, the Bishop grew less and less 
 cheerful as to the present. His sermons and Con- 
 vention addresses began to be marked by the dark 
 and desponding tone of overwrought zeal, which re- 
 veals more clearly the nearness of subjective collapse 
 than the enormity of the objective evils assailed or 
 deplored. The Church seemed to him to be con- 
 forming more and more to the world; and in his 
 despair that such should be its rapid drift after so 
 many years of his own unstinted labors and the labors 
 of his faithful yoke-fellows, he cried out: "When a 
 whole country is submerged by a wide-wasting inun- 
 dation, it is too late to talk of dykes and levees: and 
 all that a prudent man can then do is to flee to some 
 eminence and, if possible, to save his own life." It 
 was the cry of despondency that an ever lengthening 
 line of Elijahs is uttering through the ages. 
 
 The gloom that oppressed the Bishop touched the 
 deep heart of the Church. In words of sympathy 
 and stout encouragement, and of trustfulness in the 
 guiding Spirit, Henry C. Lay, as Chairman of the 
 Committee on the State of the Church, expressed the 
 feelings of the entire diocese. "During the last 
 year," he said, "the Bishop has exceeded in labor 
 the laborious years that have gone before. And never 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. I47 
 
 have his efforts been more acceptable than now. We 
 anticipate for him many years of increasing useful- 
 ness. In this his hour of depression and foreboding 
 we are bold to assure him, in the name of his Diocese, 
 of its warmest confidence and attachment. We feel 
 amply warranted in saying for each and every mem- 
 ber of this Convention that we are proud to have for 
 our leader one whose heart we know and whose sym- 
 pathy has never failed us. I^et him be well assured 
 that in his battle against the Devil and the World we 
 will not fail to follow in his charge. — It remains to be 
 considered that the evils which have been alluded to 
 are by no means submitted to in silence. The ser- 
 mons and the private conferences of the present Con- 
 vention give assurance that the watchmen do not 
 slumber, and that faithful warnings fail not to be 
 given. In the present day there are many influences 
 which are not for good; and while we do what we can 
 to resist them, we may well be content to leave all in 
 the hands of Him who in the days of His flesh 
 watched from afar the ship rocked upon the waves, 
 and came mysteriously to the relief of the rowers, 
 when spent with labor and still far from shore. ' ' 
 
 These words, unmistakably the sentiments of the 
 Convention, which emphasized their delivery by its 
 profound silence, and followed as they were by many 
 private interviews in which hearts were opened, 
 moved the Bishop greatly, and gaVe him renewed 
 courage for his work. The next year was a season of 
 unremitting toil and overflowing returns. The re- 
 ceipts for diocesan missions were larger than ever 
 
148 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 before, the Diocesan Girls' School began to take on 
 substantial form, nearly every congregation received 
 stated ministrations, and the number of persons con- 
 firmed exceeded that of any preceding year. 
 
 Throughout the summer and early fall of i860 the 
 Bishop continued his visitations steadily. In the lat- 
 ter part of October, having completed this work in 
 North Alabama, he returned to Montgomery, and 
 thence, without stopping a single day, went over to 
 Prattville and Autaugaville. At the latter of these 
 villages, on October 21, he made the last visitation 
 of his life. Thenceforward he remained at home 
 calmly awaiting the end. All his immediate family 
 were summoned to his bedside and all were present 
 at the last, his sons and daughters and their husbands 
 and wives. The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper 
 was received by them all. The dying father, rising 
 partly in his bed, blessed his children like a patriarch 
 of old, exclaiming with weeping eyes and overflowing 
 heart, "Behold, Lord, here am I, and those that 
 thou hast given me!" 
 
 It was on the eleventh day of January, 1861, that 
 he passed away. On that day Alabama seceded from 
 the Union. Though a true Southern man and loyal 
 to his State, Bishop Cobbs, in common with thousands 
 of other men in the South, was heartily opposed to 
 Secession. The growing probability and final cer- 
 tainty of national disruption and fratricidal warfare 
 had been to him a great grief, and, although his last 
 official act was to direct the clergy of the diocese to 
 refrain from using the Prayer for the President of the 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 149 
 
 United States so soon as the state and diocese of 
 Alabama were no longer within the limits of the 
 United States, he prayed that he might not live to see 
 this great calamity. His prayer was granted. The 
 State Convention which was to determine the question 
 of Secession was sitting in Montgomery less than two 
 miles from the home of the dying prelate. The Bishop 
 passed into Paradise at twenty minutes past noon. 
 The Convention was at that moment preparing for the 
 final vote. Within an hour after Bishop Cobbs' death 
 Alabama had seceded. 
 
PART THIRD. 
 
 The Episcopate of Bishop Wilmer. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 A CONFEDERATE DIOCESE. 
 
 THE Diocesan Convention of May, 1861, met in 
 Montgomery, and was largely attended. The 
 War of the Secession was under weigh. The bom- 
 bardment of Fort Sumter was only two weeks back in 
 history. Actual fighting in the field had not yet be- 
 gun. The entire South was filled with an enthusiasm 
 that foregrasped ultimate and sweeping victory. No 
 man dared sit at the feet of Cassandra. Under the 
 benign influence of a new and thoroughly homo- 
 geneous nation the prosperity of both Church and 
 State was assured. Moreover a Bishop was to be 
 elected, and the future relationship of the diocese, a 
 lone star in the ecclesiastical firmament, with other 
 sovereign dioceses was to be determined. Both secu- 
 lar enthusiasm and ecclesiastical excitement com- 
 bined to cause a full attendance of clergy and laity. 
 
 First and foremost of the matters to be settled was 
 the formal secession of the Church in Alabama from 
 the Church in the United States. It was argued that 
 the State's secession rendered corresponding auction by 
 the diocesan Church imperative. Some delegates 
 wished to go slow; and these made the point that the 
 secession, since it involved a change in the Constitu- 
 tion, must go over to the next annual Convention. 
 The contention was just; it was sustained by the 
 President of the Convention, the Rev. F. R. Hanson; 
 — 11 153 
 
154 - HISTORY OF THE 
 
 but an appeal was taken and the Convention by a 
 large majority overruled the Chair's decision. The 
 same fate awaited the point of order that the secession, 
 since it involved a change in the Canons, must lie 
 over. The Convention did not intend, in an extraor- 
 dinary crisis, to bind itself by rules that contemplated 
 only normal conditions. It was overwhelmingly 
 determined to withdraw, and withdraw immediately, 
 from organic union with the National Church of a 
 foreign nation. The declaration of secession was 
 adopted, and the act of secession was completed by 
 the Convention's order to the Secretary to strike from 
 the Journal the names of delegates to the General 
 Convention of the Church in the United States, and 
 its election of six deputies to a General Council of the 
 dioceses situated in the seceded States. This latter 
 course had been suggested by Bishops Polk and Elli- 
 ott, with a view to the organization of the dioceses 
 into a national Church. The deputies elected were 
 the Rev. Messrs. Banister, Mitchell, and Pierce, and 
 Messrs. J. D. Phelan, A. W. Ellerbee, and F. S. 
 I^yon. 
 
 The occasion was by many deemed most propitious 
 for taking initiatory steps towards a division of the dio- 
 cese. An elaborate scheme was formulated, and 
 kept under consideration two whole years. The State 
 was to be divided into three dioceses named after the 
 cities of Mobile, Montgomery, and Huntsville. The 
 division was not imperative, but permissive; when 
 any prospective See should contain the requisite 
 number of clergy and parishes it should be at liberty 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. I55 
 
 to elect its own Bishop and organize its own house- 
 hold. After two years the hopes of the most sanguine 
 were growing cold, the plan met with no favor from 
 Bishop Wilmer, and finally died in a committee- 
 room. 
 
 The preliminary work of the Convention having 
 been attended to and the Episcopal salary having 
 been set at twenty-five hundred dollars,* the election 
 of a Bishop was in order. According to Article VIII. 
 of the Constitution, which required that the clergy 
 should nominate by ballot and the laity ratify or re- 
 ject in the same way, a majority of each order deter- 
 mining the action of that order, the clergy retired and 
 proceeded to their election. It had been Bishop 
 Cobbs' earnest desire that Henry C . Lay should suc- 
 ceed him. Mr. I^ay had long before shown that he 
 was good Episcopal timber. Only eighteen months 
 before the present Convention the House of Bishops 
 had elected him Missionary Bishop of Arkansas, and 
 he had been consecrated during the session of the 
 General Convention. Being Bishop, not of a Diocese, 
 but of a Missionary jurisdiction, he could be trans- 
 lated, t His name was presented to the clergy, and 
 was strongly urged. But unfortunately Mr. I^ay had 
 lived in Alabama, and his brother clergy knew his 
 faults as well as (or shall we say better than ?) his 
 virtues. It was contended that he had assumed the 
 air and authority of a Bishop before his elevation to 
 
 * This was increased to $3,000 in 1863. 
 
 t He was translated to Easton, Maryland, in 1869, being 
 first Bishop of that Diocese. 
 
I5 6 HISTORY OP THE 
 
 the Episcopate, and had often forgotten that; though 
 of exceptional ability, he was not, therefore, excused 
 from observance of the amenities of ministerial inter- 
 course. At any rate, whether or not his previous 
 manner had been offensive in reality, Mr. I,ay was 
 not popular among the clergy, and three times they 
 rejected the name of one whom the laity would have 
 received with acclamation. 
 
 After an interval the clergy returned and informed 
 the laity that their choice was the Rev. William 
 Pinkney, D. D., of Maryland.* A recess was taken, 
 and when the Convention re-assembled in the after- 
 noon the laity rejected the clerical nomination. The 
 clergy again retired to make a new nomination, but 
 being unable to agree upon any person suggested that 
 the Convention adjourn till night. When night came 
 the clergy were still in dead-lock, and requested 
 further adjournment till morning. When the morn- 
 ing came the clergy were yet unable to make nomina- 
 tion, some still pressing for Bishop I,ay and more 
 desiring to re-nominate Dr. Pinkney, but the majority 
 feeling that such insistence would rouse violent oppo- 
 sition among the laity. When, therefore, the morn- 
 ing session was called to order a committee of confer- 
 ence between the clergy and the laity was suggested, 
 and a resolution was introduced to postpone the elec- 
 tion to a future day. After considerable skirmishing 
 and parliamentary wrangling postponement was car- 
 ried, and the Convention adjourned to meet in St. 
 Paul's Church, Selma, on November 21. 
 
 * Dr. Pinkney became Coadjutor Bishop of Maryland in 1870. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAM A. 1 57 
 
 In the intervening months informal conferences 
 were held, views were exchanged, search was made, 
 and friction reduced. When the Convention met at 
 the appointed time and place it was able to finish its 
 labors and adjourn in a single day. A few still desired 
 Bishop Lay; but it was not long before the unanimous 
 choice of clergy and laity was declared to be the Rev. 
 Richard Hooker Wilmer, D. D., of Virginia. The 
 Committee to notify Dr. Wilmer of his election con- 
 sisted of the Rev. Messrs. Hanson, Massey, and Tich- 
 enor, and Messrs. J. D. Phelan, H. D- Alison, and 
 H. A. Tayloe. The Standing Committee were in- 
 structed to signify to the Senior Bishop of the Church 
 in the Confederate States the desire of the Convention 
 that the consecration of the Bishop-elect be held in 
 Mobile. 
 
 Dr. Wilmer accepted the position offered him. His 
 election was ratified by the Bishops and Standing 
 Committees of the Confederate Dioceses, and order 
 was taken for his consecration. It was attempted to 
 have the consecration in Mobile, as had been re- 
 quested, but the condition of the country was so 
 unsettled that though the time was set and the conse- 
 crators were notified to be present, the day arrived 
 without the necessary consent of a majority of the 
 Bishops. Postponement was unavoidable; and at 
 length, on March 6, 1862, the consecration was held 
 in St. Paul's Church, Richmond, Va., Bishop Meade 
 presiding and joining with Bishops Johns and Elliott 
 in the Laying-on-of-Hands. This was Bishop Meade's 
 last public act. He returned from the church to his 
 death-bed. 
 
T 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 BISHOP WliMER'S EARI.Y UFE. 
 
 HE second Bishop of Alabama was born at Alex- 
 andria, Va., on March 15, 1816. His father, 
 the Rev. William H. Wilmer, D. D. , was one of three 
 brothers, all of whom were clergymen. His brother, 
 Dr. George T. Wilmer, also entered the ministry, and 
 his cousin, Joseph P. B. Wilmer, became Bishop of 
 Louisiana. 
 
 Richard Hooker Wilmer graduated at Yale College 
 in 1836, at the age of twenty. Three years later he 
 completed his theological course at the Virginia Theo- 
 logical Seminary, and was, on Easter Day, 1839, made 
 deacon by Bishop Moore. On the next Easter Day 
 the same Bishop advanced him to the priesthood. 
 
 His ministerial life exemplified the real itinerancy 
 of a Church whose theory is that under normal condi- 
 tions only death shall dissolve the marriage of min- 
 ister and parish. In no one of his charges did Mr. 
 Wilmer remain longer than five years. The first few 
 years of his ministry were spent in Goochland and 
 Fluvanna counties, Va. His success from the first 
 was apparent to men, and soon large parishes were 
 asking him to become their rector. Offers were made 
 to him by wealthy and influential parishes in many 
 cities of the diocese, and by congregations in other 
 dioceses. Once, and once only, was he bewitched by 
 the glamour of " a wider field of usefulness. ' ' For a 
 
 158 
 
RICHARD HOOKER WILMER 
 
 SECOND BISHOP OF ALABAMA 
 (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ABOUT 1895). 
 
CHUR CH IN ALABAMA. 159 
 
 single year early in his ministry he was rector of St. 
 James' Church, Wilmington, N. C, the largest parish 
 in the diocese, and the experience of that single year 
 sufficed for a life-time. The climate was insalubrious. 
 The high pressure and the thronging anxieties of a 
 city parish, allowing little room for mental and spirit- 
 ual refreshment, were incompatible with his nature 
 and his methods. He felt himself called to be a 
 preacher, of righteousness — if of the righteousness of 
 Jesus Christ, so too (and not less) of the righteousness 
 of those who were called of Christ. To do his ap- 
 pointed work thoroughly he must have time for study 
 and meditation, and opportunity to grasp and eluci- 
 date root principles, without which all preaching, 
 however earnest and attractive, is superficial in nature 
 and ephemeral in effect. So, after this one year in 
 Wilmington he went back to Virginia, and entered 
 upon his work among the country parishes, whence 
 no urban or metropolitan calls afterwards seduced 
 him. Five years he ministered in Clarke county, 
 three years in Loudoun and Fauquier, and from 
 1853 to 1858 in Bedford. 
 
 Everywhere his preaching was marvellous in effect, 
 causing multitudes to turn from sin unto righteous- 
 ness. The reason was patent: The grace of God 
 was supplemented by the labors of man. The 
 preacher placed himself en rapport with his hearers. 
 Not like a certain archer of old did he shoot his arrow 
 at a venture. Never did he rest content with the bald 
 statement of abstract principles. His sermons were 
 preached every one to cover the case of a person 
 
l6o HISTORY OF THE 
 
 whom he had in both physical and mental view. His 
 first step in preparing a sermon was to sit down and write 
 a letter of friendly and ministerial rebuke and encour- 
 agement to that person ; from this letter, as from a 
 chrysalis, evolved the sermon that found and pierced 
 the links of sin's protecting armor. 
 
 It was a time that needed just such bold, direct, 
 searching sermons. The men of Virginia, with all 
 the great unspiritual virility of Esau, deemed it the 
 unmanliest thing a man could do to profess and call 
 himself a Christian, and rejoiced over the emancipa- 
 tion of a youth who began to relate profane jests. Mr. 
 Wilmer's first charge embraced about fifty miles of 
 country along the James River. It was settled by 
 descendants of Church families, and yet it did not 
 contain one male communicant. Indeed, not a single 
 male communicant was to be found along the river 
 from I^ynchburg to Richmond, a distance of one hun- 
 dred and fifty miles. It was one of the churches in 
 this spiritually destitute region that the fox-hunting, 
 hard-drinking planters built, under unthinking im- 
 pulse, for the " amusement " of their wives. And it 
 was in this same church, not long after, that every 
 man save one of that drinking party kneeled at the 
 chancel rail and confirmed the vows of his long- 
 neglected baptism. Of such kind was the material 
 Mr. Wilmer had to work upon, and such was the fruit 
 of his toil. 
 
 It was the frequent practice of the Virginia clergy 
 of that day to hold what were called ' ' associations ' ' — 
 forerunners of our present day ' ' missions. ' ' The 
 
CHURCH I N ALABAMA. l6l 
 
 ministers would go forth by twos and preach at one 
 point for a week or ten days. It was thus that in the 
 early days of his ministry the second Bishop of Ala- 
 bama was thrown in contact with the first. A strong 
 attachment grew up between Mr. Cobbs and Mr. 
 Wilmer, and to this fondness of the older for the 
 younger did Bishop Wilmer attribute the fact that he 
 was called to succeed his friend in every charge that 
 Mr. Cobbs left — Bedford, Petersburg, Cincinnati, 
 Alabama; though he accepted the calls only to Bed- 
 ford and Alabama. 
 
 In the summer of 1858 Mr. Wilmer was closing the 
 fifth year of his ministry in Bedford county. For 
 eighteen years he had been doing missionary work 
 that necessarily kept him much from home, and he 
 was beginning to feel that the natural duties of hus- 
 band and father required his settlement in charge of a 
 single congregation. At this time, and almost simul- 
 taneously, several parishes invited him to their rector- 
 ship. While these invitations were under considera- 
 tion he received from a friend with whom he had long 
 been intimate — John Stewart, of Brook Hill, — a 
 proposition that appealed to him more strongly than 
 any other, and ultimately proved irresistible. Mr. 
 Stewart was a resident of Henrico County, and lived 
 a few miles out from Richmond. He was surrounded 
 by many extremely poor people, who were living in 
 practical atheism. He did not aspire to the role of 
 Dives. He felt that God, having given him wealth, 
 and therefore expecting an account of his stewardship, 
 it behooved him to expend his money for the benefit 
 
1 62 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of the lord's children. He proposed, then, that Mr. 
 Wilmer come to that neighborhood and attempt to 
 instil Christ's teaching into the hearts of the poor; he 
 himself would take care of the temporal considera- 
 tions. Mr. Wilmer consulted some of his friends. 
 They unanimously condemned the proposition as 
 visionary, and advised him to reject it without more 
 ado; otherwise, they said in effect, he would be 
 throwing away several of the best years of his life. 
 It was right to make sacrifices for the sake of the 
 
 Gospel; but to cast pearls before swine ! But to 
 
 the heart and the mind of the minister the call 
 seemed, after four months of indecision, manifestly 
 divine. He accepted it, and at the same time pledged 
 himself to give the project a three years' trial. 
 
 When he reached his new field, a field of unknown 
 discouragements and possibilities, he had to begin at 
 the very foundation. Services were at first held in a 
 school-room which was used as the common property 
 of all religious denominations. Gradually the hearts 
 of the people were gained. Very soon a church was 
 built, nominally by the congregation at large, the 
 poorest giving his mite, but practically by John Stewart 
 and his brother Daniel. Then a rectory was com- 
 pleted. The congregations and communicants in- 
 creased steadily until, at the end of three years, a 
 crowded church and a full chancel-rail attested the 
 permanence of the work. The voice of sectarianism 
 had always been that the Church was not suited to 
 the unlearned and uncultured. This experiment at 
 Emmanuel Church disproved the charge. Its success 
 
CHURCH IN A LABAMA. 1 63 
 
 attracted wide-spread attention, and on all sides it was 
 felt that God was with him who had wrought this 
 work. Alabama's Bishop was dead, and the bereaved 
 diocese called on the Bishop's old friend to take his 
 place. 
 
 Dr. Wilmer's pledge of three years' service had 
 been redeemed; the work was secure and could safely 
 be entrusted to another; and he accepted the call to 
 be Bishop of Alabama. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 WAR TIMES. 
 
 IMMEDIATELY after his consecration Bishop Wil- 
 mer came to Alabama and entered upon his Epis- 
 copal duties, working throughout Lent in Mobile, and 
 making a number of inland visitations near Easter. 
 Bishop Green of Mississippi had made the requisite 
 confirmational visits in 1861, but much work had 
 accumulated which neither a visiting Bishop nor a 
 Standing Committee could perform. Within less than 
 six weeks the new Bishop had visited nearly the whole 
 of the southern portion of the diocese, and had con- 
 firmed in Mobile alone ninety persons. 
 
 Scarcely had Bishop Wilmer set foot on Alabama 
 soil when he was called upon to decide some questions 
 which tested his calibre and whose solution manifested 
 the deep sagacity for which he has ever since been 
 famous. Day by day it became increasingly probable 
 that some of the cities of Alabama would in the not 
 distant future be occupied by Federal troops. When 
 these troops took possession of towns where there 
 were congregations of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
 they would find a body of Christians praying, in due 
 course of the service, for the President of the Confed- 
 erate States. In such cases it was certain that trouble 
 would ensue. The clergy asked the Bishop what 
 course they should pursue. 
 
 The Bishop's reply was clear and decided: The 
 164 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 165 
 
 Diocese of Alabama, an autonomous Church, had 
 severed her connection with the Church in the United 
 States, which was now a foreign Church; she had 
 recognized the facts of geography as stated by a sover- 
 eign and independent power, and gladly acquiescing 
 had for more than a year used the prayer for those in 
 civil authority not in a foreign country, but in the 
 ' ' Confederate States ' ' ; the mere occupation of the soil 
 by an invading force could not absolve Churchmen 
 from their allegiance to the government of their delib- 
 erate choice; while armed soldiery might occasionally 
 exercise power over them only the Confederate gov- 
 ernment exercised authority; and finally, to allow 
 military force to overawe them into praying for a 
 government which they did not acknowledge to be 
 their rightly constituted government would be to be 
 guilty of untruthfulness and dishonor.* 
 
 Would the Bishop, then, advise the clergy to use 
 the prayer for the President of the Confederate States 
 in the very teeth of the Federal soldiery? 
 
 Not so. To do this would be to bring on scandal- 
 ous scenes in the sanctuary, and to invite even physic- 
 al violence in the house of God. The course to be 
 pursued was: First, to inquire of the commanding 
 officer whether he designed to interfere with public 
 worship; and then, in case he replied that he would 
 compel either the prayer for the President of the 
 United States to be used or all reference to civil 
 authority to be omitted, to close the church, throwing 
 the odium and responsibility of suspending the pu blic 
 * Bishop Wilmer's first Convention Address, 1862. 
 
1 66 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 worship of God ofl those who sought to establish a 
 state religion after their own imaginings. This was 
 the course followed by nearly all the clergy. One 
 minister, however, insisted on keeping his church 
 open, and with precisely the result that Bishop Wil- 
 mer had foreseen. Disturbance was raised by a Fed- 
 eral officer, who presented the alternatives of immediate 
 use of the Prayer for the President of the United 
 States or immediate cessation of the service. The 
 poor clergyman chose the former alternative, and, as 
 he afterwards explained apologetically, "used the 
 prayer under protest. ' ' The status before God of a 
 prayer made under protest, the Bishop grimly said, he 
 would leave for others to determine. 
 
 This enforced closing of the churches was not, how- 
 ever, immediate, and was never universal. For more 
 than a year subsequently only the Tennessee Valley 
 was even temporarily in Union hands, and parish 
 work went on without undue incident. But as the 
 war progressed and the situation became graver, 
 women, children, and disabled men formed the entire 
 congregation. With the payment of salaries at a 
 standstill and a currency depreciated almost beyond 
 belief, the clerical life became a life of extreme hard- 
 ship and simple endurance. To have the entire 
 income reduced to one-fourth its former sum in a 
 twelve-month, and yet to remain steadfast and un- 
 movable at the post of duty, was a severe trial, but 
 the clergy to a man comprehended the situation and 
 quit them like men. Their hardships were some- 
 what mitigated by the liberality with which some of 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 167 
 
 their parishioners furnished them food from their own 
 larders. The only parishes that were left without a 
 minister were those whose ministers went to the front 
 to become army chaplains, and to endure greater 
 hardness that they might the better care for the souls 
 of the men of the South. A result of their work was 
 soon visible in the increased number of young men 
 confirmed when at home on furlough. 
 
 Throughout the war the number of confirmed per- 
 sons was large, and in the Conventional year 1863-64 
 reached a total of three hundred and thirty-seven. It 
 was felt that God does not absent Himself from battle- 
 fields, and that His Church is not intended to do her 
 work only in time of peace and quietude. Men's 
 hearts were stirred, and Christ came in the press of 
 the multitude. In the larger towns of Montgomery, 
 and Mobile city missionaries began their work — in the 
 former among its English-speaking poor, in the latter 
 among the French and Germans. In the Black Belt 
 numerous chapels were erected by planters for their 
 slaves. Stickney, Cushman, Jarratt, Christian and 
 others ministered almost exclusively to the Negroes. 
 Stickney alone ministered to the slaves on eight large 
 plantations in Marengo and the canebrake, preach- 
 ing, baptizing, communicating, organizing into classes 
 and watchmen, imposing penance on evil-livers, and 
 in many ways reverting to early ecclesiastical disci- 
 pline in his vain attempt to impose upon these volatile 
 people the indissolubility of morality and religion. 
 Menaeos ministered to five congregations just north 
 of Stickney 's field, and on a single occasion baptized 
 
1 68 HISTORY OP THE 
 
 twenty-seven Negro children. In 1864 the Bishop 
 himself confirmed twenty-one Negro adults in Tuska- 
 loosa, where the Rev. R. D. Nevius was interesting 
 himself deeply in the Christianization of the slaves. 
 That such work as this should have been conducted 
 amidst the horrors of a war of which the Negro was 
 the immediate occasion is remarkable. That it 
 should have been persevered in despite the disastrous 
 crisis evidently now near at hand is confirmation 
 strong as Holy Writ of the sincerity and unselfishness 
 of those who labored, and of those who permitted and 
 encouraged the work. 
 
 As the war progressed a new sphere of beneficence 
 opened to the Church. An unusual number of 
 orphans were the fruit of the battle-field, and many 
 •of these orphans were left entirely destitute. To 
 many the Church became a veritable nursing-mother. 
 St. John's, Montgomery, was the first parish to under- 
 take the systematic care of orphans. Its ' ' Bishop 
 Cobbs' Orphans' Home" was in active operation 
 throughout the entire conflict, and when the Federal 
 troops occupied the city the commanding officer, 
 ascertaining that the Home was named after his old 
 minister in Cincinnati, detailed a special guard and 
 furnished the Home with a month's supply of pro- 
 visions. 
 
 The Bishop having commended this parish's benev- 
 olence to the diocese as worthy of imitation, the 
 Council of 1864 passed a series of resolutions calling 
 on every parish to establish within its boundaries a 
 similar institution. This was a rather more sweeping 
 
CHUR CH IN ALABAMA. 1 69 
 
 expression of opinion than the Bishop either expected 
 or desired; for while he believed that a single large 
 institution was less desirable than several small ones 
 he perceived, plainly enough, that it was not practi- 
 cable, and not desirable, to establish a Church Home 
 for Orphans in every parish. Therefore as the evolu- 
 tion of the scheme had been left to him, he settled 
 upon Mobile and Tuskaloosa as the places where the 
 orphans might most easily be collected. These places, 
 in addition to Montgomery's existing Home, would 
 suffice for the present. 
 
 The attempt at Mobile was ill-timed and unsuc- 
 cessful. The expense in Confederate money would 
 have been enormous. The city was momentarily 
 threatened by the enemy. Men were in no mood to 
 hear of the planting of another institution, so strait- 
 ened were they to obtain the necessities of existence, 
 so doubtful of the morrow. The Churchmen of the 
 place, with whom the Bishop held preliminary con- 
 sultation, emphatically discountenanced even a tenta- 
 tive canvass for subscriptions, and the Bishop reluc- 
 tantly retired from the field.* 
 
 More successful was the attempt at Tuskaloosa. 
 Here the rector and the vestry were deeply interested, 
 heartily seconded the Bishop's efforts, and gave more 
 than eight thousand dollars. All the parishes in that 
 section of the state were appealed to for help, and all 
 responded most liberally — Marion giving over six 
 thousand dollars, Faunsdale, Demopolis, and Selma, 
 each five thousand dollars, and Greensboro thirteen 
 
 * Convention Address for 1865. p. 11. 
 — 12 
 
170 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 thousand. In a short time fifty thousand dollars had 
 been secured. With thirty thousand of this a build- 
 ing lot and garden were bought and a dwelling and 
 school-house built. Ten thousand dollars was set 
 aside for investment in real estate with a view to 
 endowment, and the remainder was reserved for cur- 
 rent expenses. 
 
 During the first few months of its existence only 
 eight orphans were received into the Home, but in 
 conjunction with the Home a parochial school of fifty 
 pupils was conducted. The immediate charge of this 
 work was committed to three deaconesses whom the 
 Bishop set apart by prayer, but without imposition of 
 hands, in Christ Church, Tuskaloosa, on December 
 20, 1864. The institution of the order of deaconesses 
 proved that Bishop Wilmer's conception of the inher- 
 ent powers of the Episcopate was not fettered by the 
 shackles of canonical provision. This primitive order, 
 with Phoebe of Cenchrea as its best known represent- 
 ative, had no place in the polity of the American 
 Church. But men of a catholic grasp of mind could 
 not wait for a slow-moving General Convention to 
 give its imprimatur to an inalienable right and the 
 supplying of an immediate necessity. In 1845 Dr. 
 Muhlenberg had set apart one woman for the work of 
 the diaconate in the parish of the Holy Communion, 
 New York City. In 1855 Bishop Whittingham had 
 instituted a similar order in St. Andrew's parish, 
 Baltimore. Bishop Wilmer had only these staunch 
 Churchmen as his predecessors; what they agreed 
 upon was .sufficient warrant for any ecclesiastical 
 departure. 
 
T 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE BISHOP AND GENERAL ORDERS. 
 
 HE War of the Secession closed with the over- 
 turning of the Confederate Government, and 
 the subversion of the government of the seceded 
 States, the abrogation of their Constitutions, and the 
 annihilation of their entire civil polity. Alabama 
 was a military province, her Governor was held under 
 duress, and Federal soldiery administered justice. 
 
 Under these conditions a very serious ecclesiastical 
 difficulty presented itself. The use of the Prayer 
 Book prayer for those in civil authority in the Con- 
 federate States had of course been discontinued when 
 the Confederacy fell. But no other civil authority 
 had been substituted for that which had been 
 destroyed. Not only so, but it was a widely favored 
 suggestion that the temporary occupation of the State 
 by soldiers should be permanent, and the State be 
 reduced to the slavish condition of a military province. 
 For such a condition, nay, for such a prospect, Bishop 
 Wilmer felt that neither he nor his clergy nor his 
 people could ask long continuance. They could most 
 heartily pray God to give the military power ' ' grace 
 to execute justice and maintain truth," but they could 
 not ask God to grant -their commander-in-chief 
 "health, prosperity, and long life." For the exist- 
 ing state of government, impersonated in the Presi- 
 dent, the Bishop frankly stated that he desired the 
 
 171 
 
172 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 least length of days and the least measure of pros- 
 perity consistent with the permissive will of God. * 
 
 Feeling thus, the Bishop, on June 20, 1865, issued 
 the following Pastoral Letter to the clergy and laity 
 of the diocese: 
 
 "The lapse of the Confederate Government does 
 not necessarily involve the disorganization of the 
 General Council of the Church within the limits of 
 that Government. The nationality of a church is a 
 matter purely conventional, and of human arrange- 
 ment. It is assuredly possible for two church organi- 
 zations to exist under one common civil government 
 without violating the unity of the Church. There is 
 an essential difference between the unity of branches 
 of the Church and their union in one legislative body. 
 For example, the Church in England is in perfect 
 unity with tiie Church in the United States; but there 
 is no legislative union between these Churches. 
 Again, and this is a case more nearly in point, the 
 Church in Scotland is in unity with the Church in 
 England, and yet they exist as distinct organizations 
 under a common civil government. Consequently, 
 no charge of schism can justly lie against the Church 
 in the Southern States in case she should see fit to 
 perpetuate herself through a separate organization. 
 She does not thereby necessarily depart from the 
 unity of the Church in doctrine, discipline, or order. 
 Therefore, it may or may not, as circumstances indi- 
 cate, be advisable and expedient to dissolve the Gen- 
 
 * The Recent Past, pp. 144 and 145. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 1 73 
 
 eral Council. This is a question for future ecclesias- 
 tical determination. 
 
 "As to the changes in the language of certain 
 prayers, which are made necessary by late political 
 events, I observe that the lapse of the Confederate 
 Government requires, of necessity, the omission of 
 the ' Prayer for the President of the Confederate States 
 and all in civil authority.' 
 
 ' ' The immediate substitution of another form of 
 prayer does not follow of the same necessity, as will 
 appear from the following considerations: 
 
 "To pray for all in authority is, unquestionably, a 
 duty, but a duty of religious, and not of political 
 origin and obligation. The mode of discharging that 
 duty must be determined by the proper ecclesiastical 
 authority. Consequently, any attempt on the part of 
 a civil or military power to dictate to the Church in 
 this matter cannot but be regarded as unauthorized 
 and intrusive. Certain tests of loyalty have been 
 established by authority; and they who faithfully 
 conform to these tests have fulfilled the requirements 
 of the law, and have a right, in equity and under the 
 Constitution of the country, to manage their ecclesias- 
 tical affairs according to their own discretion. The 
 Church has due regard to established authority, and is 
 not to be presumed regardless of her sacred obliga- 
 tions. She must be left free and untrammeled in her 
 legitimate sphere of action. Any attempt to dictate 
 to her can only serve to retard the action which, in 
 pursuance of her obligations of God and to her own 
 
1 74 HISTORY OP THE 
 
 traditions, she will unquestionably take at the proper 
 time and in the proper manner. 
 
 ' ' Now the Church in this country has established 
 a form of prayer ' for the President and all in civil 
 authority. ' The language of that prayer was selected 
 with careful reference to the subject of the prayer — 
 ' All in civil authority; ' and she desires for that au- 
 thority prosperity and long continuance. No one can 
 reasonably be expected to desire a long continuance 
 of military rule. Therefore, the prayer is altogether 
 inappropriate and inapplicable to the present condi- 
 tion of things, when no civil authority exists in the 
 exercise of its functions. Hence, as I remarked in 
 the Circular [of May 30] , ' We may yield a true alle- 
 giance to, and sincerely pray for grace, wisdom, and 
 understanding in behalf of, a government founded 
 upon force, while at the same time we could not, in 
 good conscience, ask for it continuance, prosperity,' 
 etc., etc. 
 
 "When the Civil Authority shall be restored, it 
 will be eminently proper for the Church to resume the 
 use of that form of prayer which has been established 
 by the highest ecclesiastical authorities, and which 
 has for so many years constituted a part of her Liturgy. 
 
 ' ' You are aware that in times past I have expressed 
 a strong desire ' that the regular and ordinary forms 
 of public worship should be so entirely Catholic in 
 character as to be adapted to all the exigencies of 
 time, place, and circumstance,' and that I urged this 
 matter upon the attention of our Diocesan Council in 
 1864, with a view to action at the approaching General 
 
^ CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 1 75 
 
 Council. I still entertain the preference which I then 
 expressed, but it is not for me, in my individual ca- 
 pacity, to introduce into the liturgy any other form of 
 words than that which the Church, in her collective 
 and legislative capacity, has already established. 
 
 " My conclusion is, therefore, and my direction 
 which I hereby give, that when civil authority shall 
 be restored in the State of Alabama, the Clergy shall 
 use the form entitled ' A Prayer for the President of 
 the United States and all in Civil Authority,' as it 
 stands in the Book of Common Prayer. ' ' 
 
 To a man the clergy of the diocese fell into line, and 
 for several months the services of the Church were 
 peaceably conducted according to the Bishop's direc- 
 tions. But soon it became manifest that the military 
 government purposed to review the Bishop's action. 
 The headquarters of the Department of Alabama being 
 at Mobile, and the Church's greatest strength being 
 there, Mobile would evidently be the storm center in 
 the event of a clash between ecclesiastical authority 
 and military. Accordingly the Bishop, who had 
 refugeed in Greensboro, went immediately to Mobile 
 to be on the scene of action. He had scarcely arrived 
 in the city when General Woods sent an officer of his 
 staff to know when the Bishop meant to use the prayer 
 for the President of the United States. The Bishop 
 replied that as the question was put in a tone of au- 
 thority he declined to answer it. The officer then 
 proposed to talk over the matter ' ' as between man 
 and man." The Bishop acceded to this proposition, 
 and the officer asked, ' ' When do you think you 
 
176 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 will use the Prayer Book prayer for the President ?' ' 
 " When you all get away from here," was the reply 
 of the Bishop; and he then asked the officer if with 
 conditions reversed and the Confederate heel on the 
 neck of the Union he could sincerely ask for life, 
 health, and prosperity, to the Confederate General ? 
 The officer very excitedly exclaimed that he would 
 be — something very dreadful — if he would. " Well," 
 returned the Bishop, " I am not disposed to use your 
 phraseology; but, if I do that thing that you come to 
 order me to do, — address the Almighty with my lips, 
 when my heart is not in my prayer, — I run great 
 danger of meeting the doom that you have hypothetic- 
 ally invoked upon your own head. ' ' 
 
 The officer then returned to General Woods. A few 
 days later— September 20, 1865, exactly three months 
 after the appearance of the Bishop's Pastoral — the 
 following remarkable document was promulgated from 
 military headquarters at Mobile, as " General Orders, 
 No. 38." It is so unique in its bold attempt to over- 
 turn constitutional religious freedom and to prescribe 
 forms of public worship, that it deserves to be recorded 
 in full:* 
 
 * The author is indebted to Mr. Richard Hines, of Mobile, 
 for the following exact transcript of the Order, as it appeared 
 in The Daily Register the following morning, September 21. 
 
church in a labama. 177 
 
 ' ' Headquarters Department 1 
 
 "op Alabama, > 
 
 "Mobile, Ala., Sept. 20, 1865. J 
 
 "General Orders, No. 38. 
 
 ' ' The Protestant Episcopal Church of the United 
 States has established a form of prayer to be used for 
 ' the President of the United States and all in Civil 
 Authority.' During the continuance of the late 
 wicked and groundless rebellion the prayer was 
 changed to one for the President of the Confederate 
 States, and, so altered, was used in the Protestant 
 Episcopal Churches of the Diocese of Alabama. 
 
 ' ' Since the ' lapse ' of the Confederate Government 
 and the restoration of the authority of the United 
 States over the late rebellious States the prayer for 
 the President has been altogether omitted in the 
 Episcopal Churches of Alabama. 
 
 ' ' This omission was recommended by the Right 
 Rev. Richard Wilmer, Bishop of Alabama, in a letter 
 to the clergy and laity, dated June 20, 1865. The 
 only reason given by Bishop Wilmer for the omission 
 of the prayer, which, to use his own language, ' was 
 established by the highest ecclesiastical authorities, 
 and has for many years constituted a part of the 
 Liturgy of the Church,' is stated by him in the fol- 
 lowing words: 
 
 ' ' ' Now, the Church in this country has established 
 a form of prayer for the President and all in civil 
 authority. The language of the prayer was selected 
 with careful reference to the subject of the prayer — 
 'All in Civil Authority' ; and she desires for that 
 
178 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 authority prosperity and long continuance. No one 
 can reasonably be expected to desire a long con- 
 tinuance of military rule. Therefore, the prayer is 
 altogether inappropriate and inapplicable to the pres- 
 ent condition of things, when no civil authority exists 
 in the exercise of its functions. Hence, as I remarked 
 in the Circular, ' we may yield a true allegiance to, 
 and sincerely pray for grace, wisdom, and under- 
 standing in behalf of, a government founded upon 
 force, while at the same time we could not in good 
 conscience ask for it continuance, prosperity,' etc., 
 etc. 
 
 ' ' It will be observed from this extract — 1st, That 
 the Bishop, because he cannot pray for the continu- 
 ance of ' military rule,' therefore declines to pray for 
 those in authority. 2nd, He declares the prayer 
 inappropriate and inapplicable, because no civil 
 authority [exists] in the exercise of its functions. 
 
 "On the 20th of June, the date of his letter, there 
 was a President of the United States, a Cabinet, 
 Judges of the Supreme Courts, and thousands of other 
 civil officers of the United States, all in the exercise 
 of their functions. It was for them specially that this 
 form of prayer was established, yet the Bishop can- 
 not among all these find any subject worthy of his 
 prayers. Since the publication of this letter, a Civil 
 Governor has been appointed for the State of Ala- 
 bama, and in every county Judges and Sheriffs have 
 been appointed, and all these are, and for weeks have 
 been, in the exercise of their functions; yet the prayer 
 has not been restored. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 179 
 
 ' ' The prayer which the Bishop advised to be 
 omitted is not a prayer for the continuance of military 
 rule, or the continuance of any particular form of 
 government, or any particular person in power. It is 
 simply a prayer for the temporal and spiritual weal 61 
 the persons in whose benefit it is offered. It is a 
 prayer to the High and Mighty Ruler of the Universe 
 that He would with his power behold and bless the 
 President of the United States and all others in 
 authority — that he would replenish them with the 
 grace of His Holy Spirit that they may always incline 
 to His will and walk in His ways; that He would 
 endow them plenteously with heavenly gifts, grant 
 them in health and prosperity long to live, and finally 
 after this life to attain everlasting joy and felicity. It 
 is a prayer at once applicable and appropriate, and 
 which any heart, not filled with hatred, malice, and 
 all uncharitableness, could conscientiously offer. 
 
 ' ' The advice of the Bishop to omit this prayer, and 
 its omission by the clergy, is not only a violation of 
 the canons of the Church, but shows a factious and 
 disloyal spirit, and is a marked insult to every loyal 
 citizen within the Department. Such men are unsafe 
 public teachers, and not to be trusted in places of 
 power and influence over public opinion. 
 
 " It is therefore ordered, pursuant to the directions 
 of Major General Thomas, commanding the military 
 division of Tennessee, that said Richard Wiltner, 
 Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the 
 Diocese of Alabama, and the Protestant Episcopal 
 clergy of said diocese be, and they are hereby for- 
 
180 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 bidden, to preach or perform divine service, and that 
 their places of worship be closed, until such time as 
 said Bishop and clergy show a sincere return to their 
 allegiance to the Government of the United States, 
 and give evidence of a loyal and patriotic spirit by 
 offering to resume the use of the prayer for the Presi- 
 dent of the United States and all in civil authority, 
 and by taking the amnesty oath prescribed by the 
 President. 
 
 ' ' This prohibition shall continue in each individual 
 case until special application is made through the 
 military channels to these headquarters for permis- 
 sion to preach and perform divine service, and until 
 such application is approved at these or superior 
 headquarters. 
 
 ' ' District commanders are required to see that this 
 order is carried into effect. 
 
 ' ' By order of Major General Chas. R. Woods. 
 
 "Fred. H. Wilson, A. A. G." 
 
 Immediately upon the publication of these orders, 
 which are sufficient in themselves to prove that the 
 civil power had not been restored, save in empty form, 
 Bishop Wilmer inquired of General Woods whether it 
 was his intention to use military force in case the 
 clergy of the diocese should disregard their suspension 
 by the secular arm. This the Bishop did in order to 
 bring out unmistakably the intent of the orders and 
 to make it clear that he and his clergy would yield 
 not to usurped authority but to force. It did not ap- 
 pear seemly that an issue of force should be made at 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. l8l 
 
 the very Altar of God, and the Bishop insisted in his 
 note of inquiry that the declaration of intention to 
 use military force would be regarded by him as equiva- 
 lent to a forcible ejection from the precincts of the 
 Sanctuary. 
 
 General Woods' reply was curt: He would if neces- 
 sary use military force in closing the churches, should 
 his order be disobeyed. Accordingly the Bishop ad- 
 vised that until the order was revoked or military force 
 was withdrawn no attempt to worship in public should 
 be made. At the same time he reminded the Church- 
 men of Alabama that communication with God's 
 mercy-seat could not be obstructed by any created 
 power. Individual prayer could be made. Two or 
 three could be profitably gathered together in Christ's 
 name. Where soldiers were stationed the churches 
 were closed. Where no soldiers were stationed the 
 churches were opened and the usual services main- 
 tained. Under the most stringent restrictions private 
 houses made favorable chapels, and personal freedom 
 allowed the Bishop to confirm and to issue pastorals; 
 much to the indignation of the general who had sus- 
 pended him from the exercise of his functions, and 
 who threatened imprisonment and possible death, but 
 dared not place him under arrest for an offence of 
 which no law of the country took cognizance. 
 
 Meanwhile the Bishop was not content with this 
 condition of affairs, which hampered the Church so 
 greatly. His first attempt was to secure from the 
 General Convention of the Church in the United 
 States, of which, on its own theory, the diocese of 
 
1 82 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Alabama was a component part, a solemn protest 
 against secular interference with ecclesiastical pro- 
 cedure. He hoped that the importance of the prin- 
 ciple involved might unite in public expression those 
 who differed as to his application of the principle. 
 But the hope was vain. Political feeling was too 
 high for the members of the Convention then sitting 
 in Philadelphia to view the Bishop's action with un- 
 prejudiced eye, and the only step taken was by the 
 House of Bishops, which ineffectually sent a single 
 Bishop to Washington to procure if possible a revo- 
 cation of the military interdict. 
 
 The Bishop's next step was to appeal to the Provi- 
 visional Governor of the State — Lewis E. Parsons. 
 General Orders No. 38 had stated that there was a 
 civil Governor, and the Bishop determined to test him 
 for authority. In October he called on the Governor 
 to show the truth of his assertion that the military 
 authority was subservient and subordinate to the civil 
 authority. The Governor was unable to substantiate 
 his claim, but in a very courteous note he promised to 
 lay the whole affair before President Andrew Johnson. 
 This note was shortly followed by another stating that 
 the President declined to consider the matter. 
 
 On November 27 the Bishop himself made direct 
 appeal to the President, calling it to his attention 
 that the Constitution, the supreme law, prohibits Con- 
 gress from interfering with religious worship and that 
 Congress cannot allow her military arm to do what 
 the Constitution expressly forbids to her civil arm ; 
 representing that he found himself, not having been 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 1 83 
 
 accused as a lawbreaker, subjected to the operation of 
 pains and penalties, and assailed with ignominious 
 epithets; affirming that even if he were guilty of vio- 
 lating the law of his own Church (though he was not, 
 for he was not a member of the ecclesiastical organiza- 
 tion mentioned in General Orders) the secular power 
 was not competent to construe and enforce her rubrics 
 and canons; and demanding in equity and constitu- 
 tional law that the unauthoritative General Orders 
 No. 38 be rescinded. After hanging fire some time 
 the appeal was successful. Much against his will, 
 and with much bitterness of soul and pen, General 
 Woods' superior, Thomas, withdrew the offensive 
 General Orders, at the same time using his official 
 position as a cloak for the deepest maliciousness. In 
 tone the last Order was even more violent, in its con- 
 scious impotence, than the first : 
 
 ' ' Headquarters 1 
 
 "Military Division of the Tennessee, > 
 " Nashville, Tenn., Dec. 22, 1865. J 
 
 " General Orders, No. 40. 
 
 ' ' Armed resistance to the authority of the United 
 States having been put down, the President, on the 
 29th of May last, issued his Proclamation of Amnesty, 
 declaring that armed resistance having ceased in all 
 quarters, he invited those lately in rebellion to recon- 
 struct and restore civil authority, thus proclaiming 
 the magnanimity of our Government towards all, no 
 matter how criminal or how deserving of punishment. 
 
 ' ' Alarmed at this imminent and impending peril to 
 
1 84 HISTORY OP THE 
 
 the cause in which he had embarked with all his 
 heart and mind, and desiring to check, if possible, the 
 spread of popular approbation and grateful apprecia- 
 tion of the magnanimous policy of the President in 
 his efforts to bring the people of the United States 
 back to their former friendly and national relations 
 one with another, an individual, styling himself Bishop 
 of Alabama, forgetting his mission to preach peace on 
 earth and good will towards man, and being animated 
 with the same spirit which through temptation be- 
 guiled the mother of men to the commission of the 
 first sin — thereby entailing eternal toil and trouble on 
 earth — issued, from behind the shield of his office, his 
 manifesto of the 20th of June last to the clergy of the 
 Episcopal Church of Alabama, directing them to omit 
 the usual and customary prayer for the President of 
 the United States and all others in authority, until 
 the troops of the United States had been removed 
 from the limits of Alabama; cunningly 'justifying this 
 treasonable course, by plausibly presenting to the 
 minds of the people that, civil authority not yet having 
 been restored in Alabama, there was no occasion for 
 the use of said prayer, as such prayer was intended 
 for the civil authority alone, and as the military 
 was the only authority in Alabama it was manifestly 
 improper to pray for the continuance of military rule. 
 "This man, in his position of a teacher of religion, 
 charity, and good fellowship with his brothers, whose 
 paramount duty as such should have been character- 
 ized by frankness and freedom from all cunning, thus 
 took advantage of the sanctity of his position to mis- 
 
CHURCH IN A LABAMA. 185 
 
 lead the minds of those who naturally regarded him as 
 a teacher in whom they could trust, and attempted to 
 lead them back into the labyrinths of treason. 
 
 ' ' For this covert and cunning act he was deprived 
 of the privileges of citizenship, in so far as the right 
 to officiate as a minister of the Gospel, because it was 
 evident he could not be trusted to officiate and confine 
 his teachings to matters of religion alone — in fact, that 
 religious, matters were but a secondary consideration 
 in his mind, he having taken an early opportunity to 
 subvert the Church to the justification and dissemina- 
 tion of his treasonable sentiments. 
 
 "As it is, however, manifest that so far from enter- 
 taining the same political views as Bishop Wilmer 
 the people of Alabama are honestly endeavoring to 
 restore the civil authority in that state, in conformity 
 with the requirements of the Constitution of the United 
 States, and to repudiate their acts of hostility during 
 the past four years, and have accepted with a loyal 
 and becoming spirit the magnanimous terms offered 
 them by the President; therefore, the restrictions 
 heretofore imposed upon the Episcopal clergy of Ala- 
 bama are removed, and Bishop Wilmer is left to that 
 remorse of conscience consequent to the exposure and 
 failure of the diabolical schemes of designing and 
 corrupt minds. 
 
 " By command of Major-General Thomas, 
 
 "Wm. D. Whipple, 
 "Assistant Adjutant-General." 
 
 This order was promulgated from Mobile, by Gen- 
 
 13 
 
1 86 HISTORY OF T HE 
 
 eral Woods, on January 10, 1866, and on January 13, 
 civil authority then having been restored, Bishop 
 Wilmer issued a final pastoral, calling on the clergy 
 and laity to use the prayer for the President of the 
 United States. 
 
 This pastoral was not a retreat from his former 
 position. Neither was it a compromise. The Bishop's 
 position was never changed. On occasion of the 
 closing of the churches he had written: " Should the 
 General Council, of which the Diocese of Alabama is 
 a component part, order any prayer in place of that 
 which has ceased of necessity, then, from that time 
 forth, the ordering of the Council would be decisive 
 as the supreme law of the churches constituting said 
 Council." The General Council had provided for 
 such a prayer while the Alabama churches were 
 closed, and its provision was to have force of law in 
 any diocese when approved by its Bishop or its Dio- 
 cesan Council. On account of military dictation the 
 Bishop withheld his approval, and gave it only when 
 secular pressure was withdrawn. 
 
 The result of secular interference was to delay the 
 use in Alabama of the Prayer for the President of the 
 United States just two months. What the Church 
 refused to do of compulsion she did of her own free 
 will. Some whose loyalty to the Union blinded them 
 to the presence of a matter of principle, profound and 
 far-reaching, criticized Bishop Wilmer severely for 
 his course. But thirty years later, when time gave 
 sufficient perspective, v and the blindness of prejudice 
 had largely disappeared, no one disputed the con- 
 
CHURCH IN A LABAMA. 187 
 
 elusion of the Historiographer of the American 
 Church, the Rt. Rev. William Stevens Perry, Bishop 
 of Iowa: " This action of the Bishop established for 
 all time to come, in this land at least, the principle 
 that in spiritualities the Church's rule is supreme." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE BISHOP AND THE GENERAL CONVENTION. 
 
 THE Church in the United States was not consulted 
 either in Bishop Wilmer's election or in his 
 consecration. And for this reason: The seceded states 
 formed another nation, and in that nation was erected 
 a national Church, declaring that it held, as regarded 
 intercommunion and legislative independence, the 
 same relationship to the Church in the United States 
 that that Church held to the Church of England. It 
 had its own presiding Bishop, Meade of Virginia, and 
 its own supreme legislative body, the General Council. 
 Its constitution and canons were but slightly altered 
 from those in force in the United States. A majority 
 of the Bishops and a majority of the Standing Com- 
 mittees must consent to the election of a Bishop before 
 his consecration could occur. In Bishop Wilmer's 
 case, the only one that arose within the period of 
 secession, this consent was given and the Bishop was 
 duly consecrated. 
 
 When this action became known in the United 
 States it created much indignation and a considerable 
 amount of intemperate writing. The patent fact was 
 ignored that, though supporting itself against outside 
 aggressions by force of arms, an autonomous, regu- 
 larly constituted, civil government existed, known as 
 the Confederate States, and that the ancient custom 
 
 of legislative independence for branches of the Church 
 
 188 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 1 89 
 
 in separate countries was but followed by the Church 
 in the Confederate States. In diocesan journals, pas- 
 toral letters, and resolutions found in the Journal of 
 the General Convention, the words "rebels," "trai- 
 tors," "schismatics," and the like, were not infre- 
 quently used by the Church's adopted but unassimi- 
 lated sons. In the General Convention of 1862 it was 
 proposed that Bishop Wilmer's jurisdiction be pro- 
 claimed null and void; but the resolution was not 
 adopted. 
 
 With the lapse of the Confederacy it became neces- 
 sary for the Southern dioceses to determine upon a 
 course of procedure. Very pronounced differences of 
 opinion arose. Some claimed that the absorption of 
 the Confederacy into the Union carried with it, and 
 without formal action, the dissolution of the General 
 Council and the attachment of the Southern diocese 
 to the General Convention. It was urged by these 
 that the Bishops and deputies from the various dioceses 
 should take their seats in the General Convention of 
 1865 as if nothing had occurred since the harmonious 
 Convention which had met in Richmond in 1859; 
 that nothing unpleasant would occur; and that the 
 Convention had no other wish or expectation, as 
 witness the fact that even in 1862 the roll-call was 
 never curtailed, but always began, in a vote by orders, 
 with Alabama, and contained in alphabetical order the 
 name of every seceded state. Among the most pro- 
 nounced advocates of this view were Bishops Atkinson 
 of North Carolina and Lay of Arkansas, who pro- 
 
1 90 HISTORY OP THE 
 
 ceeded to Philadelphia and took their seats in the 
 House of Bishops. 
 
 But the majority of Southern Bishops and dioceses, 
 led by Bishops Elliott, Green, and Wilmer, contended 
 that this view was entirely Erastian and un-Catholic; 
 that no organization of associated dioceses that bases 
 itself on geographical and national boundaries can 
 urge any higher claim than mutual agreement, or con- 
 sideration of high expediency; and that, in the present 
 instance, expediency was a matter to be demonstrated. 
 One party in the Church of the General Convention 
 proposed ' ' to keep the Southern Churchmen for a 
 while in the cold," and " to put the rebels upon stools 
 of repentance." Not knowing the strength of this 
 party, but well aware that, generally, fanaticism grows 
 fast in the hour of triumph, having no data on which 
 to estimate the concessions and admissions that would 
 possibly be required but having no concessions and no 
 admissions to make, most of the Bishops and their 
 dioceses determined to maintain the organization of 
 the General Council until the temper of the General 
 Convention should make clear their future course. 
 
 Many were brought to such decision by the publica- 
 tion about this time of some correspondence between 
 John Henry Hopkins, Presiding Bishop and Bishop of 
 Vermont, and Bishop Wilmer. Bishop Hopkins had 
 issued a circular letter to the Southern Bishops, plead- 
 ing with them not to prolong their separate legislative 
 organization, which, being wilful and needless, was 
 schismatical; he had pointed out that in any case it 
 was but "a matter of time" when such separation 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. igi 
 
 must disappear, and urged that what must be done, at 
 any rate, sooner or later, were better done at once. 
 
 Bishop Wilmer's response was couched in terms of 
 stern manliness. He asserted that in some cases the 
 time of action is everything. ' ' There is nothing ille- 
 gal," he said, " in a second marriage, and it is gener- 
 ally a ' mere question of time ' with men when they 
 shall marry again; but 
 
 ' The funeral baked-meats 
 
 Do coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.' " 
 
 It was unnatural to suppose that Southern grief 
 could entirely and immediately turn from the past and . 
 sing Te Deums with the victorious peoples. It must 
 have time. Moreover there was this • insuperable 
 objection: Every single man that represented the 
 Southern dioceses in the General Convention, having 
 obtained such judicial or military rank or such an 
 amount of property as excluded him from the general 
 amnesty, was still, according to the President's proc- 
 lamation, "an unpardoned rebel and traitor; " and it 
 was almost certain that the men who called these pros- 
 pective deputies rebels and traitors would have the 
 courage of their convictions, and, on the floor of the 
 House of Deputies, question the propriety of allowing 
 rebels and traitors to participate in the deliberations of 
 a loyal Church. 
 
 Influenced by these and similar considerations, the 
 Southern Bishops and dioceses held aloof from the 
 General Convention. Bishops Atkinson and I^ay 
 alone resumed their former places in the House of 
 Bishops; but they did not take their seats uncondi- 
 
I9 2 HISTORY OP THE 
 
 tionally. They made the recognition of Bishop Wil- 
 mer as Diocesan of Alabama a condition precedent.. 
 This the entire College of Confederate Bishops had 
 determined upon as their own course, however favor- 
 able the General Convention should be in other 
 respects. They came to this determination despite 
 Bishop Wilmer's express statement that rather than 
 allow his case to constitute a barrier to general pacifica- 
 tion he would resign. 
 
 After hearing the representations of the two South- 
 ern Bishops the House of Bishops assented to the 
 jurisdiction of the Bishop of Alabama upon two con- 
 ditions: ist, That he should furnish evidence of his 
 consecration; and, 2nd, That he should make declara- 
 tion of conformity to the Constitution and Canons of 
 the Church in the United States. These conditions 
 were reasonable, and as they were precisely the terms 
 on which any foreign Bishop would be admitted to 
 legislative authority in the Church in the United 
 States, the most ardent Diocesan-Rights man could 
 not take exception to them. 
 
 It was more than two months before this action was 
 officially communicated to the Bishop of Alabama. 
 Meanwhile the General Council of the Southern dio- 
 ceses had met in Augusta, Georgia, in November. 
 The spirit of charity which had prevailed in the Gen- 
 eral Convention the preceding month commended 
 itself to the heart of all present. Again did the 
 genial warmth of the sun do what the cold Northern 
 blasts could never have done, and the dissolution of 
 the General Council was soon accomplished. Abso- 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 1 93 
 
 lute freedom of action and liberty to withdraw from 
 the Conciliar compact was accorded every diocese. 
 Only one obstacle prevented the prompt return of 
 Alabama to legislative union with the general Church, 
 and that was the military duress described in the last 
 chapter. But this having ended, the Bishop convoked 
 a special diocesan Council in Montgomery, on Jan- 
 uary 17, 1866, laid before it the whole matter, received 
 its unstinted " approbation, admiration, and thanks for 
 the firm, dignified, and Christian manner in which he 
 had maintained the independence and dignity of the 
 Church in this diocese;" and then, by formal resolu- 
 tion, the Church in Alabama resumed its former rela- 
 tion to the national Church. 
 
 Immediately after the adjournment of this special 
 Council Bishop Wilmerset out for New York, and on 
 January 31, 1866, in Trinity Chapel, of that city, 
 made the prescribed Declaration of Conformity, and 
 united with the Presiding Bishop and .the other 
 Bishops and clergy present in the celebration of the 
 Holy Communion. 
 
 "Thus happily, as I think," said the Bishop to the 
 diocesan Convention of 1866, "the Church in Ala- 
 bama has been able, through God's grace and kind 
 providence, to do her full duty, and to maintain her 
 dignity and propriety; and looking alone to the weal 
 of the whole body of Christ, to pursue a steady and 
 consistent course. Henceforward, guided by the 
 same Spirit which has thus far led us and governed 
 all our deliberations, let us more than ever strive for 
 
194 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 those things which concern the glory of God and the 
 good of His Church. 
 
 " We are able to show to the world that we are not 
 a sect, much less a sectional sect; that the catholic 
 spirit of the Southern dioceses has met with a like 
 response in the catholic spirit of the Northern dio- 
 ceses — "deep calling unto deep" — giving us con- 
 fidence that henceforth, as ever before, no political 
 differences shall prevail to break the bonds of catholic 
 unity and of Heaven-born charity. ' ' 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DECAY OF THE NEGRO WORK. 
 
 THROUGHOUT the civil war the relationship of 
 master and slave had remained unchanged. The 
 master realized that the obligations of ownership were 
 not rendered less sacred by the inoperative proclama- 
 tion of a foreign power. The slave was content to 
 serve him to whom he had always confidently looked 
 for food and raiment, for tobacco and snuff, and for 
 that personal consideration which was lacking in few 
 slave-holders and which seldom found an unresponsive 
 object. 
 
 When the impatience of men brought about by 
 revolution that abolition which God was bringing 
 about by the slower but surer process of evolution, and 
 when they whose natures were fit only for serfdom 
 were by one violent effort hurled into an environment 
 for which man had made no due preparation, this 
 state of mutual confidence was changed, as by hideous 
 enchantment, into a state of reciprocal distrust. With 
 the ballot, the white badge of freedom, in their hand, 
 the newly enfranchised felt that they were as gods. 
 They easily fell a political prey to those swarming 
 demagogues and carpet-baggers who unscrupulously 
 exalted the Negro that they themselves might use him 
 as a stepping-stone. With centuries of ignorance, and 
 bondage, and slow development behind them, and 
 without any exercise in intelligent choice and self- 
 i95 
 
I9 6 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 determination, they were unable to discriminate be- 
 tweenjreedom and anarchy. With minds excessively 
 emotional, and without discipline by the in-forming 
 Spirit of God as to the proper objects and limitations 
 of emotion, they confounded the restraints of God with 
 the restraints of man. ' ' Six days shalt thou labor ' ' 
 was an obsolete command, now that no visible law 
 enforced it; and since they were free to idle when they 
 wished, the ex-slaves wandered from place to place as 
 fancy dictated, filled with restless anxiety to demon- 
 strate their freedom by exercising it to the utmost 
 limit. They looked upon their former owners with 
 a suspicion that fast grew into settled antagonism. 
 Labor became thoroughly demoralized, and it seemed 
 that the devastation of civil war would shortly be sur- 
 passed by the tidal-wave of race conflict. The wealth 
 of the South was in land, and the value of the land 
 depended on its yearly harvests. With fewer laborers 
 came reduced acreage, poorer cultivation, smaller crops; 
 and with this the further impoverishment of land- 
 owners. This was succeeded in constantly increasing 
 ratio by the removal of the white people to the towns 
 and the surrender of the country to the blacks. 
 
 This segregation of the races, attended with the 
 numerical predominance of the blacks over those 
 whites that remained on the old homesteads, caused 
 among the whites increased, and often baseless, fear 
 of Negro uprisings, and led to the formation, for com- 
 mon protection, of the Ku Klux Klan, whose purpose 
 was to create and perpetuate such terrorism among the 
 Negroes as to nip in the bud any incipient lawlessness, 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 197 
 
 and to kill out the insolent spirit and habits that 
 were springing up so luxuriantly under „the fructifying 
 presence of Northern troops. 
 
 The political alliance of the Negroes with the aliens, 
 and the apparently necessitated retaliation of the 
 whites, tended to a further disseverance of interests 
 that should have been common. In nine years the 
 Legislature of Alabama, elected by Negroes and com- 
 posed in large part of Negroes and carpet-baggers, had 
 increased the State debt from less than six millions of 
 dollars to more than thirty- eight millions. Evidently 
 the whites must rule or be ruined. To rule they must 
 as a phalanx set themselves in opposition, determined, 
 aggressive, merciless, to the forces of disintegration. 
 And this relationship must be maintained in- every 
 county, township, neighborhood, house, and heart, 
 till the common salvation of whites and blacks alike 
 was secured. 
 
 Such were the conditions that confronted the Church 
 in Alabama after the war. Under the old regime it 
 had been possible to give the slaves frequent religious 
 ministrations, and many a slave-holder had gladly 
 made provision for their spiritual and moral instruc- 
 tion. But now the ex-slaves would take neither their 
 politics nor their religion from their former owners. 
 Northern politicians and renegade Alabamians ini- 
 tiated them into the mysteries of political economy. 
 Preachers of their own color made broad for them the 
 strait and narrow way. Every attempt made by the 
 clergy that had formerly visited them, preached to 
 them, and administered to them the Sacraments, was 
 
198 HISTORY OK THE 
 
 now met with that disingenuousness which has ever 
 characterized the response of the freedman to the ap- 
 proaches of the white. 
 
 The few faithful Negroes that clung to the teach- 
 ings and the communion of the Church in preference 
 to hearing the ranting ululation of sensual enthusiasts 
 were ostracized by their race, and suffered all the 
 social trials that went with mediaeval excommunica- 
 tion. They were regarded as heathen and traitors. 
 In health they had no communication with their own 
 people. In sickness they received no succor from 
 their own kinsfolk. In death hirelings of their own 
 race performed the offices that affection refused. 
 Some endured to the end a martyrdom as real as that 
 of the early Christians. But most wearied after a 
 time, and went with their people. 
 
 The Church in Alabama yielded only to necessity 
 in abandoning for a time her efforts to evangelize the 
 Negro. There were lips to speak so long as there 
 were ears to hear, and long after there were hearts to 
 feel. It must be confessed that the laity did not 
 evince any wild enthusiasm. To any reasonable dis- 
 tance they would follow the rector's lead, but they 
 themselves would not lead. When, in 1866, it was 
 proposed that the Convention should, in its corporate 
 capacity, adopt some authoritative plan for the further- 
 ance of Christian work among the Negroes, the laity 
 flatly, though in parliamentary language, refused to 
 have part or parcel in the matter as a diocesan move- 
 ment. They said that they would "confide all 
 details ' ' to their spiritual pastors and governors, the 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 1 99 
 
 Bishop and the clergy, believing that under then- 
 wise counsel the guiding principles of the Bible and 
 the ordinary forms and appointments of the Church 
 sufficed to meet all the exigencies of the case. 
 
 The Bishop and the clergy did what they could do 
 to stem the tide, but that was little. The General 
 Convention attempted to assist the Southern Bishops, 
 before they asked for assistance, by establishing the 
 " Freedmen's Commission," but the Commission 
 rendered assistance impossible by suggesting, at the 
 outset, that the Church's work among the Negroes 
 pass from the Bishops' jurisdiction and be entrusted to 
 other agencies. This schism-breeding proposition 
 was promptly and forcibly rejected by Bishop Wil- 
 mer, who, magnifying his office and purposing that 
 it should not be belittled by others, took the ground 
 that the Bishop of a diocese is charged with the 
 selection of instrumentalities, and that these, if they 
 are to work properly, must work under his super- 
 vision; that class legislation is repugnant to the mind 
 of Christ, in whom is neither bond nor free; and that 
 the Churchmen of Alabama were debtors to the free 
 as to the bond — not less; but also not more. Finally, 
 the Bishop said, he was willing to accept subordinate 
 help, but not co-ordinate.* Assistance on such terms 
 was not forthcoming, and the diocese was left to its 
 own devices. 
 
 As early as 1867 the many congregations of Negroes 
 had dwindled to two — the Church of the Good Shep- 
 herd, Mobile, and Faunsdale Chapel, on the planta- 
 
 * Journal of 51st Annual Convention, page 36. 
 
200 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 tion of the Rev. William A. Stickney, in Marengo 
 county. Occasionally a solitary Negro communicant 
 was found in white congregations, but the only aggres- 
 sive work attempted, except in the two congregations 
 mentioned above, was among the children. Even 
 this did not long survive. In St. John's parish, 
 Montgomery, Dr. H. M. Smead conducted a Sunday 
 school of six white teachers and one hundred and 
 twenty Negro pupils; but, in face of the parental and 
 social influences that were moulding the pupils' 
 character all through the week, the difficulties and 
 discouragements were too many, and the fruits of an 
 hour's influence and teaching once a week were too 
 few and insignificant, to warrant a continuance of the 
 attempt. When, in addition to these discourage- 
 ments, intermeddling Negro politicians went about 
 proclaiming that the school was simply a hot bed of 
 horrible Democratic sedition, the project was doomed. 
 After two years of faithful labor the entire corps of 
 workers retired from the field. 
 
 In the "Canebrake" of Hale, Perry, Dallas, and 
 Marengo counties, the Rev. William A. Stickney 
 fought a losing fight, single-handed, for nearly twenty 
 years. Mr. Stickney was a large land-owner; it was 
 his property that gave the name to the present town 
 of Faunsdale. On his plantation he had built, at a 
 cost of twenty-five hundred dollars, a neat chapel for 
 the use of those who, at first his slaves, were now his 
 tenants. His return to the practice of the early Church 
 in imposing penance on evil-doers appealed to the 
 Negroes' sense of fitness, and did not diminish his 
 
CHURCH IN ALA BAMA. 201 
 
 popularity among the congregations that he served, 
 and they requested him to preach to them regularly 
 on several plantations. For a short while their attend- 
 ance was good, especially on week-days when field- 
 labor was suspended and the wages of attendants at 
 chapel ran on. Upon his own plantation, when the 
 congregations began to decrease Mr. Stickney refused 
 to renew the lease of his tenants except with the stipu- 
 lation that they should regularly attend public services 
 in the chapel. With the Negroes it was one thing to 
 make this contract, and another to keep it. With 
 those who kept the contract it was one thing to come 
 and another to worship. Very soon the ministerial 
 proprietor of the chapel ceased the attempt to make 
 the Negroes worship the Almighty by contract. 
 
 But this failure did not quench his ardor. With 
 the help of the women of his family he began a day- 
 school for the children that were too young to work 
 in the fields. Only a two-hours' session was held,, 
 and the instruction was entirely oral and sugar-coated. 
 The idea on which the school was founded was that 
 the work of forming Christian character must begin 
 very near the cradle and persist through life. If it 
 seemed hopeless to change those whose characters 
 had crystallized, it was possible to develop unformed, 
 plastic characters along right lines. At least, this 
 was the Stickneys' hope. The two great obstacles to 
 its realization, heredity and environment, were not 
 sufficiently considered. Heredity gave an inborn pre- 
 disposition to sensuality, a phronema sarkos, above 
 
 that of mankind at large; for the sense of morality is 
 — 14 
 
202 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 a growth that their ancestry had not cultivated, the 
 ape and the tiger had not been worked out, and their 
 inborn inclination found favorable atmosphere and 
 soil in the home life. The vices of the Negroes were 
 grosser than those of the whites; their will-power was 
 weaker; their consciousness of sin could not, appa- 
 rently, be germinated. Having little training of the 
 spirit and less of the mind they were debarred from 
 intellectual enjoyments and spiritual restraints. De- 
 velopment of mind and soul did not keep pace with 
 development of body; hence they easily and almost 
 inevitably fell victims to first temptations. At the 
 present day many have reached a high plane of ethics, 
 and in every class an imperfect and arbitrary morality 
 is evident, but in those days the vast majority had no 
 morality at all. They who from afar spun their theo- 
 ries and idealized their brother-in-black believed that 
 Southern men and women were grossly calumniating 
 their old slaves. But they who came down and 
 worked in the midst of them, and went in and out 
 among them, found that enchantment was inseparable 
 from distance. 
 
 Mr. Stickney served the Negro, in face of all these 
 obstacles, long, faithfully, and intelligently; but his 
 zeal could neither blind him to facts nor prevent him 
 from telling what he saw. In 1 869 he wrote : ' ' Viewed 
 from the Christian standpoint, I can say nothing of 
 this race, within my sphere of observation, to en- 
 courage you as to their future. They have not 
 abandoned the spasmodic, emotional religion taught 
 them by sectarian religionists. ' Professing ' is yet 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 203 
 
 their favorite and perhaps only religion, with an utter 
 disregard for the morality enjoined in the Decalogue. 
 It is dismal to think of their licentious depravity who 
 occupy the head and front ranks in this illusory sys- 
 tem. ' ' A year later he said : ' ' Results in this field 
 have not cheered my heart with the hope of elevating 
 the people in pure or Christian morality." A few 
 years later he said : "Perseverance is the rule adhered 
 to amid prospects anything but hopeful. Indications 
 pointing to the growth of morality — especially of 
 truth, integrity, and chastity — do not cheer my toils 
 for and with this people. ' ' From year to year a few 
 were confirmed, and the nominal communicants at 
 Faunsdale chapel long numbered about twenty-five; 
 but the most of these were not actual communicants, 
 and not a few that purposed to communicate were 
 repelled from the Holy Table. 
 
 In 1883 the final full report of this work "showed its 
 virtual disintegration: "I am at a loss to know what 
 to do in this field of labor. For the past twenty years 
 I have been practically familiar with various of the ex- 
 periments recommended on paper in different quarters 
 of the Church. My strength and deepest concern 
 have been expended on them. With the beautiful 
 ecclesiological structure on the plantation in days of 
 slavery, I have had, and used, the opportunity of 
 dealing with it as a regular parish — baptizing and 
 instructing the children, celebrating the Holy Com- 
 munion, visiting the sick as physician to both soul 
 and body, solemnizing marriage, and burying the 
 dead. In settling their quarrels, counselling them 
 
204 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 through difficulties, and in all my dealings, the staple 
 of my conversation has been their responsibility and 
 allegiance to their Creator as taught by our Redeemer. 
 I have found it easy to bring forward classes to Con- 
 firmation. The picture is attractive to them. Out- 
 wardness ever has a charm for them, and the more of 
 it, the greater their avidity to participate in it. But 
 emptiness, sham, hypocrisy, are about all I have seen 
 come of it. I am paralyzed in any and every attempt 
 to induce this race of people to realize that God requires 
 the keeping of His commandments as a condition of 
 pleasing Him. They will flock to the Holy Com- 
 munion besotted in bestial depravity, unless I can find 
 it out and repel them . It distresses me to invite them 
 to a pure participation of that Holy Sacrifice. I have 
 hence reported but one celebration the whole past 
 year, and I cannot actually frame a list of communi- 
 cants. This is not the report of a missionary toiling 
 among the heathen on Afric's shores. But it is the 
 exhibit of Americanized Africans, that have been 
 instructed from childhood in the Catechism ori this 
 plantation. I have in my view successive crops of 
 the young — children's children — who have thus been 
 tried, and I fail to see one step gained for or by them 
 in purity of life and common morality."* 
 
 Similar discouragement and disintegration attended 
 the efforts of the Rev. Dr. Massey in Mobile. The 
 congregation of the chapel of the Good Shepherd 
 gradually melted away and sought the companionship 
 
 ♦Journals of Conventions, Rev. Win. A. Stickney's reports, 
 passim. 
 
CHURCH IN ALA BAMA, 205 
 
 of their own people. From fifty communicants the 
 number dwindled to nine. The separate organization 
 was dissolved, the building was sold for a few hundred 
 dollars, and the handful of communicants became 
 members of Trinity parish. 
 
 So among the children of Montgomery, the farm- 
 hands of the Canebrake, and the literate of Mobile, 
 the Church's attempts failed utterly and completely, 
 and in 1882 not one of the old organized Negro con- 
 gregations was to be found in the Diocese of Alabama. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ETHIOPIA'S UPLIFTED HANDS. 
 
 IN utter ignorance of the unparalleled conditions 
 that confronted the Church and the Churchmen of 
 the unreconstructed South, many Northern journals 
 gave liberal and aggressive advice to the Southern 
 bishops and clergy. When their nostrums and pan- 
 aceas were gently put aside, they quickly abandoned 
 counsel and began to hurl epithets. Inertness and 
 indifference to Negro evangelization were openly 
 charged against the bishops. The Negro was sup- 
 posed to be looking up hungrily to the shepherds, and 
 the shepherds were withholding food; to be swarm- 
 ing about the Church doors eager to enter, and the 
 bishops were waving off the multitudes. 
 
 The true condition was just the reverse. The 
 Negro was waving off the bishop. Every proffer of 
 spiritual food was daintily examined and rejected. 
 Every attempt to benefit individuals contributed to a 
 spirit of self-assertion that misconstrued every effort. 
 And when the political influences playing upon them 
 are remembered it is not surprising that they looked 
 upon these approaches of their old masters as so many 
 attempts to conciliate their most worthy reserve. 
 
 But, however natural the Negro's behavior, it 
 necessitated cessation of effort on the part of his 
 would-be benefactor. The fever must have time to 
 
 206 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 207 
 
 cool off, the reason to return. Experience must teach 
 what affirmation could not teach. 
 
 Years passed. Social equality came not to the 
 Black. Neither did he long retain his political 
 superiority. The rightful owners of the State drove 
 out of power the dishonest carpet-bagger and his un- 
 scrupulous black tools, and put a stop to the fearful 
 knavery that was bankrupting the commonwealth. 
 After a while the Negro learned that legislation could 
 no longer give him his daily bread, and that hence- 
 forth he must earn in the sweat of his face what bread 
 he did not steal. Then he turned to his old master. 
 The former confidence between them was gone, but 
 there was between them a bond that gave hope of 
 better things in days to come. If the ex-slave would 
 not follow from love, he would follow because of the 
 loaves and fishes. He had learned where his best 
 interests lay. From necessity he had learned humil- 
 ity. It was now possible to edify him without puffing 
 him up. 
 
 The attempt at edification was not made imme- 
 diately. The distrust of those who remembered the 
 past was not removable at beck and nod. Time must 
 be given for the* forgetting of fierce conflicts, and for 
 the trying of new things, whether they were of tem- 
 porary or of permanent duration. If the Negro had 
 so changed that the Gospel of Jesus Christ would not 
 incite him to leap the barrier of race and social con- 
 dition that God himself had erected, then Churchmen 
 were willing for the clergy to carry the Gospel to the 
 Negro once more. 
 
208 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 Finally, at what was deemed an opportune time, a 
 new beginning was made in Mobile. It was in 1882 
 — the year that saw the death of the last Black Belt 
 congregation. The remnant of the old congregation 
 of the Good Shepherd formed the nucleus. The clergy 
 and the Bishop bore the entire burden of the attempt. 
 They did not receive the co-operation of the laity; 
 they neither asked nor expected it; for the laymen of 
 Mobile, those of them that were interested in ecclesi- 
 astical and benevolent work, were already doing 
 what they could for the numerous hospitals and 
 widows' and orphans' homes in the city. 
 
 The father of the revived mission work among the 
 Negroes of Alabama was the Rev. J. S. Johnston, 
 who had become rector of Trinity Church, Mobile, in 
 1880. In May, 1882, as chairman of a special com- 
 mittee to which was referred a portion of Bishop Wil- 
 mer's address dwelling upon the Church's responsi- 
 bility to the Negro, Mr. Johnson vigorously and 
 clearly outlined the necessary steps to be taken in 
 leading the Negro to true and acceptable worship of 
 God. Premising that worship necessitated intelli- 
 gence, he insisted that no lasting work could be done 
 that did not seek the co-ordinate development of mind 
 and soul. He soon created the opportunity to exem- 
 plify his theory. On the afternoon of November 19, 
 1882, he brought the Bishop to a hired room where he 
 met the few members of the old organization. Steps to- 
 wards reorganization were taken then and there. On 
 the following Friday the Rev. Chester Newell, hear- 
 ing of the proposed undertaking, gave the Bishop a 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 209 
 
 lot at Kushla, a small neighboring village, the pro- 
 ceeds of sale (ultimately about $300) to be applied to 
 the erection of a new church of the Good Shepherd. 
 With about twelve hundred dollars available (given 
 by friends in New York) the building was begun. So- 
 soon as work actually commenced help came from 
 outside sources. Within a year six thousand dollars 
 had been expended in the purchase of the ground, the 
 erection of church, rectory, and school-house, and the 
 purchase of suitable furniture. The most liberal con- 
 tributors to the support of the school, then and there- 
 after, were Mr. William Butler Duncan, of New York, 
 and the Rev. Dr. Saul, of Philadelphia. The day- 
 school was named in honor of the latter. A Negra 
 man became lay-reader, and held services. Mr. 
 Johnston preached regularly and frequently. At the 
 end of the year there were fourteen communicants and 
 six candidates for confirmation, a day-school of thirty- 
 nine pupils, and a Sunday school of one hundred. 
 
 The Rev; Joseph L,. Tucker, rector of Christ Church, 
 maintained nominal supervision of the mission for 
 about one year. Then it became evident that this 
 temporary arrangement must give way to the settle- 
 ment of a minister-in-residence, who could give his 
 entire time and attention to the work. The Bishop 
 had said that the building should be attractive, the 
 service in great part choral, and all things adapted 
 to the characteristics of the people, and that, in hi& 
 opinion, the offices of the Prayer Book were peculiarly 
 suited to the Negro's needs, and could rubrically be 
 so rendered as to adapt them to his tastes. Accord- 
 ingly he sought a minister that would conduct the 
 
2IO HISTORY OP THE 
 
 services at the Good Shepherd in accordance with his 
 views. 
 
 Such a one was found in the person of the Rev. A. 
 Wallace Pierce, son of the Bishop of Arkansas. Mr. 
 Pierce took charge in May, 1885. The day-school 
 had increased to nearly sixty pupils, who were taught 
 by two of the deaconesses from the Church Home, 
 but the Sunday-school had not increased, and the 
 number of communicants was only ten; and of these 
 six were newly confirmed. The new minister at once 
 established a ritual never before or since equalled in 
 the diocese, introducing the Eastward Position, Eu- 
 charistic and Vesper Lights, Eucharistic vestments, 
 Choral celebrations of the Holy Communion and daily 
 Offices, and Incense. He gave himself entirely and 
 unreservedly to the work, living in the rectory and 
 going in and out among the Negroes with as much 
 freedom as if he were a missionary in Darkest Africa 
 — perchance with more. On account of thus placing 
 himself on the social plane of his congregation he 
 soon met with several rebuffs from former friends. In 
 order to prevent possible repetition of such disagree- 
 able incidents he cut himself off entirely from the 
 society of his own race, abjured diocesan meetings, 
 and was approached by individual clergymen with 
 great difficulty. His doctrine was as high as his 
 ritual was elaborate, and his self-sacrifice was carried 
 far beyond necessity and the highest wisdom. But 
 whatever it was possible to do for the welfare of his 
 people he did, and for seven years he gave every 
 energy of body, mind, and soul to the material and 
 
CHURCH IN A LABAMA. 211 
 
 spiritual advancement of his congregation. In the 
 day-school an industrial department was added, and 
 the girls were taught to sew, wash, iron, cook, and 
 generally to prepare to earn their own living honestly 
 and virtuously. In 1892 Mr. Pierce moved to another 
 sphere of labor. 
 
 Mr. Pierce was succeeded by the Rev. Joseph I/. 
 Berne, who conducted the services along the lines 
 pursued by his predecessor, but adopted other methods 
 of pastoral care. The change did not prove of ad- 
 vantage to the work. Congregations dwindled week 
 by week, the Sunday-school fell off two-thirds, and 
 few of the pupils in day-school and Sunday-school 
 came to Confirmation. In 1896 it was determined 
 that the prosperity, almost the continuance, of the 
 work demanded the ministrations of a clergyman who 
 could enter into his people's mode of thought. In 
 that year a Negro priest, the Rev. James J. N. Thomp- 
 son, took charge. Subsequent growth has been en- 
 couraging, the communicants having been increased 
 in a single year by twenty-five and the parishioners 
 bv one hundred per cent. 
 
 It had never been the Bishop's desire to attempt 
 the organization of Negro congregations in the rural 
 districts. He contended that the only reasonably 
 hopeful fields were the cities and larger towns, 
 where, as with whites so with blacks, the mind is 
 more open to conviction and to the formation of new 
 habits. Yet for many years no other place followed 
 Mobile's lead; no other place, because no other clergy- 
 man. Not until 1 89 1 was the second Negro congre- 
 
212 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 gation in Alabama founded — that of St. Mark's, Bir- 
 mingham. The Rev. J. A. Van Hoose fathered the 
 work, and its success has been due to his own personal 
 interest. This work is still in the experimental stage, 
 but if the past is the criterion of the future the wisdom 
 of its methods and the energy manifested in their ap- 
 plication make sure a success equal at least to that 
 achieved in Mobile. Valuable gifts have been made, 
 and a large brick building for an industrial school is 
 completed. The entire property owned by St. Mark's 
 mission, Birmingham, is valued at sixteen thousand 
 dollars. That of the mission of the Good Shepherd, 
 Mobile, is valued at twelve thousand dollars. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE ORPHANS' HOME. 
 
 WHEN the Convention of 1865 met in Greens- 
 boro Bishop Wilmer was able to announce the 
 successful beginning, at Tuskaloosa, of the Church 
 Home for Orphans, the purchase of suitable property 
 and the possession of certain funds for investment. 
 
 Within ten days after the Convention's adjournment 
 the prospect for the orphans was gloomy. I^ee had 
 surrendered, Davis had been captured, and Watts 
 arrested — the President, the General, and the Gov- 
 ernor — and the Confederate bonds and certificates 
 which constituted the bulk of subscriptions to the 
 Orphans' Home were worthless. The support of the 
 orphans had been swept away, save a few bales of 
 cotton into which the Bishop h a <l wisely converted 
 four thousand dollars of Confederate money. On the 
 proceeds of this cotton, together with what personal 
 solicitation secured from the small pantries and smoke- 
 houses of the surrounding country, the institution was 
 supported nearly three years. 
 
 Early in 1867 the Church Home property in Tuska- 
 loosa, which had cost thirty thousand dollars in Con- 
 federate money, was sold for two thousand dollars in 
 gold; and right glad the Bishop was to make the sale. 
 Litigation of a tedious and expensive nature had 
 arisen almost the day the property was purchased, 
 and when the sale was effected, the title made per- 
 
 213 
 
214 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 feet, and the lawyers were satisfied, fifteen hundred 
 dollars remained. With this the orphans were re- 
 moved to Mobile and settled in a two-room house on 
 a lot given by St. John's parish. Two of the three 
 deaconesses had for the last two years been engaged 
 in conducting a girls' school at Spring Hill, and the 
 orphans had been in charge of the other deaconess 
 and the probationers; but the work of the Sisterhood 
 was henceforth to be concentrated on the Home. The 
 school was rented out and the sisters came into town. 
 The enterprise was commenced with difficulty, and 
 at first met every possible discouragement. The 
 Bishop's wisdom in bringing the orphans to Mobile 
 was seriously questioned. The city was impover- 
 ished. The Church already owned a fourth interest 
 in the Protestant Orphan Asylum, and Churchmen 
 could not see the necessity for a distinctly Church 
 home for orphans. Outside of Mobile, however, the 
 removal gave great satisfaction. Orphans were sent 
 in abundance from the interior; but strangely enough 
 the communities that sent the orphans uniformly forgot 
 to send any money along with them. The congre- 
 gations in the interior believed in the economic prin- 
 ciple of division of labor — they would undertake to 
 supply orphans if Mobile would agree to support them. 
 The Bishop felt this inequality and attempted, but 
 unsuccessfully, to make the inland towns feel it. One 
 of the reasons why he had established the school at 
 Spring Hill was to provide revenue for the Home; 
 but the revenue was insignificant and the load proved 
 too heavy for the deaconesses in charge. 
 
CHUR CH IN ALABAMA. 2£5 
 
 Race, creed, and denomination of parents were not 
 the criteria of admission into the Home. The orphan 
 was an orphan; whether it was a legitimate child or 
 an illegitimate, and it demanded succor whether it 
 was of Italian or of American descent. Only two 
 things were pre-requisite to admittance: That neither 
 parent was living, and that the child was destitute. 
 The Home was a venture based on faith in God and 
 confidence in humanity. At the outset the faith was 
 exercised, the trial was met successfully,, and the 
 reward has continued uninterruptedly and in over- 
 flowing measure to the present day. A butcher, not 
 a Churchman, died and left three children for whom 
 there were no relatives to provide. By the Bishop's 
 direction the children were brought to the Home and 
 were there carefully nurtured until they were able to 
 go forth to earn their own living. The butchers of 
 Mobile felt that such kindness to one of their number 
 was a kindness to all, and they manifested their ap- 
 preciation in a manner possibly without parallel. In 
 the many years that have passed they have supplied 
 the Homes with all the fresh meat that they use, and 
 have never for a day wavered in their generosity. 
 Money is invariably offered; it is invariably refused.* 
 
 Not only to the butchers but to the entire city did the 
 Home commend itself by its breadth of spirit, and not 
 only the butchers but the entire city made ready and 
 generous response. Given more freely to worldliness 
 and grosser vices than any other city in the state, 
 
 * It is worthy of note that not one of the five orphanages 
 in Mobile ever has to pay for fresh meat. 
 
2l6 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Mobile has ever manifested a zeal and liberality to- 
 wards institutions of beneficence that no other city in 
 the state has even remotely approximated. Much has 
 been forgiven her because she has loved much. Her 
 very pleasure seeking she has turned into an instru- 
 ment of mercy. The mad revelry of Shrove Tuesday, 
 or "MardiGras," gave opportunity for a "Bazaar," 
 which turned into the treasury of the Church Home 
 about two thousand dollars annually. * Once in every 
 year a society of train-men ran an excursion to Biloxi, 
 Miss. , and gave the proceeds to the orphans' homes in 
 the city, the Church Home's share being one-fourth. 
 Besides these organized benefactions individual gifts 
 were large and constant. 
 
 But while all praise should be given the people of 
 Mobile for their liberal contributions to this institu- 
 tion, the building of the endowment fund must be 
 credited entirely to the economy of the deaconesses, 
 which left a surplus from the yearly receipfs, and to 
 the sagacity of the Bishop in administering the funds 
 thus saved. While the entire income was not more 
 than three thousand dollars a year, one-half of this 
 sum sufficed to support sixty persons. 
 
 The remainder, except what was put in real estate, 
 was invested, as it came to hand, in interest- bearing 
 securities. At first the money was lent on individual 
 notes. Then, as the amount grew larger, it was lent 
 
 * In justice to the interior parishes it should be stated that 
 not a few of them —notably Montgomery, Sol ma, Greensboro, 
 Tuskaloosa — were liberal contributors, especially of articles 
 for sale, to these Bazaars. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 217 
 
 to private banking houses. Then when the solvency 
 of the banks became doubtful the investment was 
 changed to bonds of the county of Mobile. Only six 
 thousand dollars was thus invested; and when the en- 
 dowment grew beyond this it was invested in Ala- 
 bama bonds, the Bishop as fiduciary preferring secu- 
 rity to income. Alabama bonds were then at a dis- 
 count, on account of the vast increase of the public 
 debt in reconstruction times ; but some men had con- 
 fidence in the State's power of recuperation, in the 
 stability of her credit, and in the inevitable apprecia- 
 tion of her bonds. Fortunate was it for the Church 
 and the Church Home that the Bishop of Alabama 
 was one whose faith in Alabama had not been shaken. 
 The first bonds that Bishop Wilmer bought for the 
 Church Home cost from one-half to three-fourths of 
 their face value, and bore from two to seven per cent. 
 The latter bonds, known as "Class A," were the most 
 profitable investment; for they increased regularly in 
 the rate of interest, and, from paying three and four 
 per cent on the investment when they were purchased, 
 are now paying eight and ten per cent. The apprecia- 
 tion of these securities was remarkably rapid, a bond 
 that cost only $490 in 1879 costing $822 three years 
 later. It was certain that these bonds would go to 
 par, and at every opportunity the Bishop increased his 
 holdings. Every batch, almost every bond, cost 
 more than the last purchase. After 1887 all bonds 
 were bought at a premium. 
 
 Meanwhile the Home was enlarged in scope, a new 
 
 department for boys was opened in another street, and 
 — is 
 
2l8 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 several lots were purchased to meet tlie hygienic 
 demands of the present and the certain develop- 
 ment of the future. Yet by virtue of the liberality of 
 Mobile, the frugality of the deaconesses, and the 
 sagacity of the Bishop, it came to pass that one day 
 in 1896 Bishop Wilmer was able to announce to the 
 people of Alabama that the Church Homes for 
 Orphans had completed their endowment fund of 
 $40,000, and that this amount was securely invested 
 in registered bonds of the State of Alabama. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THB CASE OF HAMNEK HAIX. 
 
 IT is a wide-spread delusion that the letter and the 
 spirit of any law or agreement stand in such rela- 
 tionship to each other that obedience to the spirit 
 is possible only through disobedience to the letter. 
 Always the letter must yield to the spirit, and justice 
 to generosity. They who contend for exact obedience 
 to the letter are termed formalists, and they who are 
 unwilling to pay for generosity to one person by in- 
 justice to another are looked upon as hard-hearted. 
 
 These reflections are occasioned by a review of the 
 many sharp conflicts and wide divergences of opinion 
 and mutual recriminations that arose and held sway 
 in diocesan Conventions through twenty years and 
 more concerning the proper disposition of the Hamner 
 Hall property in Montgomery. Through this period 
 the property in question was developing legally and 
 justly from an institution for the education of the 
 young Churchmen of Alabama into the bulk of the 
 Episcopal Endowment Fund, and through the same 
 period uninformed amiability and illogical sentiment 
 were enacting anew, and with the old-time result, the 
 role of Dame Partington. The physical laws that 
 ■govern tides and storms are not more clearly the laws 
 of God than are those moral laws by which this meta- 
 morphosis was guided. 
 
 We have already seen that Hamner Hall was opened 
 219 
 
HISTORY OF THE 
 
 as the diocesan school for girls in October, i860, and 
 that the school was immediately successful. But for 
 two years the work was handicapped by lack of suit- 
 able buildings, the present structure not being ready 
 for occupancy till 1862. According to the original 
 contract no rent was chargeable for this time, and into 
 so much confusion did the Civil War throw all busi- 
 ness that no attempt was made to collect payment of 
 rent for the next three years. When the War ceased 
 and satisfactory terms could not be made with Mr. 
 Shepherd, the school was transferred to Prof. H. P. 
 I^efebvre, who took charge in October, 1865, and con- 
 ducted it in a thoroughly satisfactory manner till his 
 death, four years later. 
 
 Meanwhile, in 1863, the trustees of Hamner Hall 
 borrowed from the trustees of the Bishop's Fund the 
 sum of $4,968. It was from this loan that all subse- 
 quent complications arose. The Hamner Hall trustees 
 were empowered by the incorporating act of the legis- 
 lature to sell or dispose of the property belonging to 
 the corporation, and to borrow money and pledge the 
 property of the corporation as security for the debt. 
 The sum that they borrowed under such authority was 
 for the purpose of making final payment for the erec- 
 tion of the school-building. This debt was not secured 
 by mortgage, the simple notes of the trustees being 
 deemed ample security; nevertheless the property was 
 liable, both morally and legally, for the payment of 
 the loan. 
 On this debt no payment, whether of principal or 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 221 
 
 of interest, was ever made by the trustees of Hamner 
 Hall. 
 
 The creation of the debt immediately altered the 
 responsibility of the trustees. Originally holding the 
 property in trust for a girls' school, but subsequently 
 in the execution of their trust incurring a debt, they 
 thenceforward held the property in trust for two sepa- 
 rate and distinct objects: ist, The payment of the 
 debt; 2nd, The education of the girls of Alabama. 
 The original trust was displaced by the debt, whose 
 payment now became, both legally and morally, the 
 superior obligation. No transaction could now, 
 either legally or morally, ignore the full payment of 
 the debt with accrued interest. Failure to grasp this 
 point of even worldly ethics was the cause of much of 
 the ensuing discussion. 
 
 Seven years passed, and the indebtedness remained 
 unsettled. Throughout this time no interest was paid 
 to the trustees of the Bishop's Fund; and Hamner 
 Hall enjoyed the benefit of nearly five thousand dol- 
 lars that had been given to endow the Episcopate and 
 thus relieve parish treasuries. Considerable restless- 
 ness began to appear, culminating in 1870, when the 
 Rev. Horace Stringfellow, D. D., who had recently 
 become rector of St. John's Church, Montgomery, 
 proposed to his vestry that St. John's parish buy the 
 Hamner Hall property and make it a parish school. 
 Dr. Stringfellow had viewed with much dissatisfaction 
 the closing of the school after Prof. I/efebvre's death; 
 no one had been found worthy to undertake its man- 
 agement; and Dr. Stringfellow determined to explore 
 
222 HISTORY OP THE 
 
 its possibilities under parochial instead of diocesan 
 auspices. St. John's vestry agreed to Dr. String- 
 fellow's proposition, a special committee of the Con- 
 vention agreed with the vestry, and the Convention 
 with its committee; the trustees of Hamner Hall 
 looked favorably on a plan that promised to re-open 
 the school, relieve them from further responsibility, 
 and settle their indebtedness to the trustees of the 
 Bishop's Fund; and the trustees of the Bishop's Fund 
 felt that this transfer, by which the security for the 
 debt would be increased, was the only escape from 
 the alternatives of loss of their loan to Hamner Hall, 
 or alienation of Hamner Hall from educational pur- 
 poses. So with the free consent and glad approval of 
 all concerned a quadrilateral agreement was made to 
 the following effect: The vestry of St. John's Church 
 bought Hamner Hall from its trustees. As payment 
 the vestry assumed the debt of the trustees of Hamner 
 Hall to the trustees of the Bishop's Fund. As secur- 
 ity for the payment of this debt the vestry gave the 
 trustees of the Bishop's Fund their note for five thou- 
 sand dollars with interest, the note being payable in 
 five years, and the mortgage being foreclosable, not 
 simply upon failure to pay the principal at maturity, 
 but also upon the first default in annual interest. The 
 school was not to be diverted from the educational 
 and charitable purposes to which it had been dedi- 
 cated. 
 
 Two things in this agreement must be held in view: 
 zst, The only legal effect of the transfer was to make 
 the ve-try of St. John's Church the trustees of Ham- 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 22J 
 
 ner Hall. The conditions of the trust were not 
 changed by the change of trustees. The self-imposed 
 trust for education was still subordinate to the state- 
 imposed trust for the payment of a debt contracted in 
 the execution of the original trust. 2nd, The Con- 
 vention acted with generosity towards St. John's 
 Church, and injustice towards the Bishop's Fund, in 
 agreeing that five thousand dollars should be accepted 
 in full payment for a debt that amounted to seven 
 thousand five hundred dollars. Every other parish in 
 the State must contribute towards the difference. 
 
 However, as the event proved, it mattered not how 
 much or how little was conceded. Hamner Hall was 
 conducted as a girls' school two years longer, and 
 during that time St. John's paid the interest on the 
 debt. But in 1873 the girls' school was declared a 
 failure, and Hamner Hall was converted into a boys' 
 school, Francis K. Meade, of Virginia, becoming 
 principal. Thereafter St. John's defaulted in interest 
 every year. Still the trustees of the Bishop's Fund 
 were lenient, and even when, in 1875, the principal 
 fell due and was not paid, no foreclosure was made. 
 
 Four years passed, and still the debt was unsettled, 
 and still the interest, which itself might have been at 
 work, was unpaid. Finally, in 1879, a settlement 
 was made, which, it was thought, was final. The 
 parties to the agreement were the rector and delega- 
 tion of St. John's, on the one hand — Dr. Stringfellow, 
 Joel White, John I,. Cobbs, Charles T. Pollard, Pow- 
 hatan I/Ockett, and Josiah Morris — and a special com- 
 mittee of the Convention, on the other, — the Rev. R. 
 
224 HISTORY OP THE 
 
 H. Cobbs, the Rev. S. U. Smith, A. Benners, and 
 Henry D. Clayton. Their settlement was adopted by 
 the Convention. It was as follows: The trustees of 
 the Bishop's Fund accepted from the vestry of St. 
 John's parish a conveyance of the entire Hamner Hall 
 property, including the Bishop Cobbs Orphans' Home, 
 in satisfaction of the mortgage debt and accrued inter- 
 est; but in consideration of the sum expended by St. 
 John's parish in erecting the Orphans' Home, St. 
 John's was to retain the use of that portion of the 
 property till it should be needed as the residence of a 
 future bishop. The debt for which St. John's was 
 legally liable was seven thousand dollars, and Ham- 
 ner Hall was accepted in lieu thereof. So, after many 
 years, the Bishop's Fund had come into absolute pos- 
 session of a piece of property whose immediate value 
 was certainly not greater than the debt, and whose 
 prospective value was purely conjectural. The trus- 
 tees of the Bishop's Fund had apparently made a losing 
 investment in lending Hamner Hall money. 
 
 During the seven years that now elapsed (1879- 
 1886), the Hamner Hall property was a veritable 
 white elephant to the Bishop's Fund. A six-years' 
 contract was made with the Rev. George M. Everhart, 
 D. D., who undertook to revive the girls' school. No 
 rental was charged the first year, and the entire rental 
 of the next two years was expended in repairs. Sub- 
 sequently still larger amounts were allowed for repairs, 
 and at the expiration of the lease the property had 
 cost more than the rental had yielded. Nevertheless 
 in 1885 the lease was renewed for a term of four years 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 225 
 
 at an annual rental of $560, but the ' ' extraordinary 
 repairs ' ' that were paid for out of this sum reduced 
 the net income considerably. So, until 1887, the- 
 Hamner Hall property was a dead expense to the 
 Bishop's Fund, and money that should have been 
 helping the parishes pay the Bishop's salary was ex- 
 pended for the benefit of a school that was really a, 
 private venture and in no way under diocesan super- 
 vision. The Bishop's Fund had not found in Hamner 
 Hall a Golconda; but now it began to dawn upon the 
 trustees, and, a little later, upon others, that in the 
 end the investment might be made profitable. Mont- 
 gomery was growing, and from a straggling town of 
 twelve thousand souls of whom one half were Negroes, 
 bade fair to be the leading city of Alabama. In every 
 part of the town property values were growing health- 
 ily. This growth of population and appreciation in 
 values was most marked in the southwestern portion 
 of the city, in the vicinity of Hamner Hall, and this, 
 property now came to be looked upon as having great 
 financial possibilities. Very shortly it was valued at 
 several times its original cost. To its ultimate value 
 none dared set a limit. 
 
 At this juncture a few clergymen and laymen, over- 
 zealous for the cause of education, made certain propo- 
 sitions which were formulated and urged by the Rev. 
 Dr. Everhart, lessee of the school. . In a pamphlet 
 published by this reverend gentleman in 1887 the 
 position was taken that no portion of the Hamner 
 Hall property could justly be devoted to the support 
 of the Episcopate, save the amount of principal and 
 
226 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 interest of the debt of St. John's parish to the Bishop's 
 Fund, and that after this claim was satisfied the re- 
 mainder of the property, which he estimated as worth 
 two hundred thousand dollars (so incredibly inflated 
 were prices) , should beheld in trust for a Girls' School', 
 which, with such an endowment, could be maintained 
 with merely nominal tuition. 
 
 It was a position that many have taken under simi- 
 lar circumstances. It was a position that none was 
 ever known to take when the property taken for debt 
 decreased in value. Hamner Hall, when accepted by 
 the trustees of the Bishop's Fund was not worth more 
 than the debt of St. John's parish for which it was re- 
 ceived. Subsequent fluctuations of value were mat- 
 ters of concern to the Bishop's Fund alone. Had the 
 property at forced sale brought less than the debt, 
 none would have suggested that the deficit would be a 
 perpetual claim against any diocesan girls' school of 
 the future. If there was no reponsib"ility under adver- 
 sity, there could be no privilege in prosperity. The 
 Bishop's Fund was not wedded to education " for bet- 
 ter, " unless also "for worse. "* 
 
 Dr. Everhart's untenable position was not long left 
 unassailed. The trustees of the Bishop's Fund— N. 
 H. R. Dawson, of Selm a, andJ.H. Fitts, of Tuska- 
 
 * The celebrated case of Gilmer vs. Josiah Morris, which 
 was fought all through the state and Federal courts, hinges 
 en precisely the principles involved in this case of Hamner 
 Hall. It is well worth studying in connection with this chap- 
 ter, as it was decided in accordance with the views enunciated 
 in the last paragraph written above. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAM A. 227 
 
 loosa — submitted to the ensuing Council a voluminous 
 report in which they reviewed the history of Hamner 
 Hall with great minuteness and demonstrated the 
 legal and the ethical unsoundness of Dr. Everhart's 
 contention. Their language was not lacking in vigor: 
 * ' You are requested to spoliate and destroy a sacred 
 trust;" "The purpose of these persons is to wrest 
 this property from the possession of the present own- 
 ers, thus subverting the design of the original found- 
 ers and destroying at one single blow the morals and 
 good faith of the Convention. " 
 
 It has generally been the diocesan Council's custom 
 to postpone consideration of momentous matters for 
 at least twelve months, especially when discussion 
 has engendered or threatens to engender acrimony. 
 In this case the Council of 1887 was trueto its tradition.. 
 A warm discussion followed the trustees report, and 
 the temperature of the Council was rapidly nearing 
 212 Fahrenheit when the entire matter was, in the 
 interest of harmony, referred to a committee of three 
 lawyers, with instructions to report to the next annual 
 Council the legal status of Hamner Hall. This com- 
 mittee, consisting of F. B. Clark, Jr., of Mobile, and 
 H. C. Tompkins and Horace Stringfellow, Jr., of 
 Montgomery, made a clear, succinct report the follow- 
 ing year, fully upholding the report of the trustees of 
 the Bishop's Fund, showing that the increased value 
 of the property was wholly irrelevant to the question 
 of ownership, and concluding with the pregnant, 
 comprehensive words: "The proceeds of such sale 
 [i. e. , should the trustees see fit to sell the property] , 
 
228 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 regardless of the amount it may bring, will be subject 
 to the same trusts that the other property and money 
 held by the trustees of the Bishop's Fund is subject 
 to, and will be subject to none other." The Council 
 concurred in this report. 
 
 Dr. Everhart's lease expired the following year 
 (1889). For the last few years the school had not 
 been successful, either numerically or financially, and 
 the lessee did not care to continue longer his thank- 
 less attempt. No one else came forward to lengthen 
 the list of failures. The property was therefore rented, 
 first as a boarding-house, and afterwards as a private 
 school for boys. A street was opened along the south 
 side, and another at right angles to this, dividing the 
 whole property into two equal parts. That on the 
 east was subdivided into building lots, and many of 
 these lots being sold on deferred payments with legal 
 interest, the Bishop's Fund was soon growing rapidly 
 from the constant accretion of these small sums, and 
 the proceeds were promptly invested in registered 
 Alabama bonds. 
 
 Some lots still remain to be sold. The school build- 
 ing and surrounding lot are rented, and are held by 
 direction of the Council in hope that changed condi- 
 tions will yet make the school the nursery of the 
 Churchwomen of Alabama. 
 
 Inasmuch as the Churchmen of Alabama have been 
 admonished, collectively and individually, that the 
 failure of Hamner Hall as a diocesan school for girls 
 has been a rebuke to their Churchmanship, and have 
 been advised to increase their shame by considering 
 
CHUR CH IN ALABAMA. 22£ 
 
 the prosperity of denominational schools, especially 
 of Baptist and Methodist schools, it is not amiss to 
 inquire what ground exists for rebuke and self-accu- 
 sation. 
 
 Hamner Hall was dependent, of course, on two 
 classes of pupils — day pupils and boarding pupils. 
 The parents of day pupils demand two things of a 
 girls' school — accessibility and reasonable expense. 
 Hamner Hall met neither of these, demands. It would 
 have been hard to locate in Montgomery a more inac- 
 cessible school. The majority of prospective patrons 
 lived a mile or more away. In its earlier days public 
 conveyances were lacking. Later on mule-cars 
 brought the school nearer some of the pupils; but 
 about this time the public school system sprang into 
 prominence. These public schools were good. Their 
 pupils received instruction at least as thorough as that 
 given in private schools. Parents began* to tire of 
 paying tuition at one school while yet they were taxed 
 to support another. Little by little the local patron- 
 age fell away, and the strenuous efforts made to coun- 
 teract the inevitable were futile. 
 
 Different causes operated to reduce the boarding 
 patronage. "Church School " was the shibboleth at 
 first, but later.it could not be relied on to hold Church- 
 men. Denominational schools have no reason for be- 
 ing unless they inculcate denominational teaching — 
 that is, the Gospel as understood by the denomination 
 to which appeal is made. So, a Church school that 
 suppresses, or even neglects, any legitimate Church 
 influence, ceases to have any claim on Churchmen on 
 
330 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the ground that they are Churchmen. It may have a 
 most excellent corps of teachers, a thorough curric- 
 ulum, and an educator of note at its head, but if the 
 teachers are chosen from different religious bodies for 
 the purpose of drawing pupils from families connected 
 with this denomination or that, and if, when these 
 pupils are secured, certain changes are made in the 
 devotional exercises, habits, and regulations of the 
 school, in order that their feelings may not be hurt, 
 then the school becomes to all intents and purposes 
 simply a " non-denominational school," the strongest 
 reason that could impel Churchmen to send their 
 daughters to an expensive school is deliberately 
 destroyed, and the most zealous Churchman is free to 
 select that or any other ' ' non-denominational school. ' ' 
 This objection was raised against Hamner Hall school, 
 if not justly, still for no inconsiderable portion of its 
 existence. It was altogether legitimate for a lessee of 
 the property to conduct the school according to his 
 own plans and ideals. But when this was done with- 
 out regard to the demands of Churchmanship the esprit 
 du corps of the Church-folk of Alabama could no 
 longer be invoked legitimately.* 
 
 Reference has been made t o the matter of expense. 
 * In at least one portion of its existence this objection to 
 Hatnner Hall had no ground. In 1881 Dr. Everhart made the 
 following report of religious exercises : " The chapel ser- 
 vices consist of the Morning Prayer, beginning with the 
 Lord's Prayer, and omitting one Lesson, and substituting more 
 appropriate Collects for some of those in the regular order. 
 On Fridays, the Litany is intoned. All the services are cho- 
 ral in part, except Compline. " 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 231 
 
 This was a potent factor in the decay of the school. 
 A Church school must be conducted along economical 
 lines. Its charges must bear some proportion to the 
 financial ability of its prospective patrons. No matter 
 how large are the salaries of high-priced teachers and 
 the expenses of proffered luxuries, there is a limit be- 
 yond which parents, however appreciative, cannot go. 
 Almost every boarding-pupil represents some self-sac- 
 rifice at home, and when luxury for daughters means 
 drudgery for mothers it is small wonder that fathers 
 send their children to schools where the curriculum is 
 not inferior, though luxury and the cost thereof are 
 markedly less. The management of Hamner Hall 
 fell into the error of supposing that the Churchmen 
 of Alabama were, as a rule, wealthy; the charges 
 were made according to the supposition ; and Church 
 girls went to lower-priced schools. 
 
 The strongest reason for the failure of the school as 
 a diocesan institution remains to be considered. The 
 strength of boarding-schools is in the villages and 
 the country, where local educational advantages are 
 meager. They receive few pupils from the cities and 
 larger towns. Where boarding pupils for a Church- 
 school were to be obtained if obtained at all, just there 
 Churchmen were found in the smallest proportion. 
 Always three-fourths of the Churchmen of Alabama 
 have lived in the towns and cities. The boarding- 
 pupils must come from the other one-fourth. This 
 fraction comprised about four hundred families. Four 
 hundred country families yield few boarding pupils 
 
£32 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 to even the lowest-priced schools. To Hamner Hall 
 they yielded a mere handful. 
 
 These causes, then, — the inaccessibility of the school 
 to day-pupils, the rise of the public-school system, the 
 reputedly interdenominational character of the school, 
 the great expense, and the unfavorable distribution of 
 Churchmen — sufficiently explain the failure of Hamner 
 Hall as a diocesan school for girls, and explain it 
 -without reflection upon the laity of Alabama. The 
 -diocese willl never have in successful operation the 
 girls' school that it needs until women consecrated to 
 •God shall, with expectations of naught but their daily 
 bread, give themselves to the cause. Thus the school 
 shall rise superior to unfavorable conditions, and 
 furnish forth a higher, Christian, Churchly education, 
 at a cost commensurate with the ability of the great 
 hody of our laity. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 EDIFICATION AND DEMOLITION. 
 
 THE half-century of diocesan life now closing has 
 been marked by three waves of prosperity, foU 
 lowed by three troughs of depression. 
 
 The first wave-length embraced the closing days of 
 Bishop Cobbs' episcopate and the years of civil war. 
 
 The second began in the early days of peace, and 
 ended with the financial panic of 1873. 
 
 The third followed close upon the cessation of gen- 
 eral insecurity, and ovei lapped the local catastrophe 
 of " Boom Times," by which social and diocesan con- 
 ditions of life were revolutionized. 
 
 Through the entire fifty years edification and demoli- 
 tion have never been far apart, yet through all the 
 changes the progress of the diocese, though peculiar, 
 has been steady. It now becomes our task to point 
 out and study the conditions of this growth through 
 the last two periods. 
 
 When peace was restored the diocese was slow to 
 
 take her bearings. Alabama had been the least 
 
 troubled section of the South, and many clergymen 
 
 and laymen had sought a measure of peace and quiet 
 
 within its borders. At the close of the war most of 
 
 these strangers went back home. The departure of 
 
 the clergy left a number of parishes vacant, and the 
 
 departure of the laymen impaired the finances of 
 
 other congregations. In Montgomery an entire par- 
 — 18 233 
 
234 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ish was thus obliterated. Many refugees from Pensa- 
 cola, Fla., had come to Montgomery, and with them 
 their minister, the Rev. J. J. Scott, formerly a clergy- 
 man of this diocese. These organized the parish of 
 the Holy Comforter in May, 1864. In another year 
 or two the rector and almost the whole congregation 
 had returned to Pensacola. The remnant, a few 
 Montgomerians that had attached themselves to an 
 exotic congregation, maintained a nominal organiza- 
 tion for two or three years longer, under the rector- 
 ship of the Rev. J. H. Ticknor; but the parish died at 
 the early age of five years. 
 
 In the single Conventional year of 1865-6 letters 
 dimissory were given to twelve clergymen, who con- 
 stituted more than one-third of the entire clerical 
 force. Their departure was a serious loss to the dio- 
 cese, for among them were John W. Beckwith, after- 
 wards Bishop of Georgia; A. Gordon Bakewell, now 
 of New Orleans; Henry Sansom, now of Vicksburg; 
 and George F. Cushman, who had been chosen to 
 preach the Council sermon in memory of Bishop 
 Cobbs, and who afterwards was associate editor of 
 The Churchman. Demopolis and Selma were doubly 
 bereaved; their ministers were not, and their churches 
 had been burned by Federal soldiers. 
 
 There was much, indeed, to discourage, but the 
 prospect was not of Cimmerian darkness. Northern 
 dioceses and ecclesiastics were emphasizing and 
 strengthening the unity of the Church by proffering 
 little courtesies to their sisters and brethren in the 
 afflicted South. Gladly did wealthy Churchmen of 
 
CHURCH IN ALA BAMA. 235 
 
 the Kast help the crippled missionary work of the 
 South to its feet; and their liberality was unstinted 
 until it was checked by the misunderstandings of 
 reconstruction days. The Domestic and Foreign 
 Missionary Society appropriated three thousand dol- 
 lars for a single year's work in the diocese, and in 
 the same year a layman of i/ouisville, Ky., gave a 
 thousand dollars more. With four thousand dollars 
 from without the diocese the Bishop was enabled for 
 a short time to put in execution his cherished plan of 
 sending out evangelists to care for the scattered hand- 
 fuls of people that were not under the stated ministra- 
 tions of any other clergyman. The Rev. W. J. Per- 
 due was evangelist along the Selma, Rome & Dalton 
 Railroad, with headquarters at Wilsonville, and the 
 Rev. Thomas J. Beard for North Alabama, with head- 
 quarters at Athens. No report was ever made of Mr. 
 Perdue's work, but the reports of Mr. Beard showed 
 that he was holding stated services at Maysville, 
 Madison Station, Mooresville, Athens, Decatur, Tus- 
 cumbia, Florence, Triana, and Courtland. Through- 
 out this field the prospects were especially promising. 
 Bishop Wilmer was much pleased with his twelve 
 months' evangelistic experiment, and sought at the be- 
 ginning of the next year to add yet another to the 
 corps of workers. Along the line that may be said 
 to divide Middle and North Alabama the Church was 
 unusually weak; but the few communicants scattered 
 here and there were Christians and Churchmen. They 
 were also possible nuclei of congregations. At Ely- 
 ton, Montevallo, Alpine, Harpersville, Talladega, 
 
236 HISTOR Y OP THE 
 
 Gainesville, Jonesboro, I/ime Kiln, Silver Run, and 
 Brierfield, were from two to fourteen communicants 
 each. For this virgin field which Mr. Perdue seems 
 scarcely to have touched the Bishop was earnestly 
 seeking a missionary of the necessary staying and 
 moving powers ; when one day he was notified by the 
 Domestic and Foreign Missionary, which was at that 
 time beginning to extend foreign missions at the ex- 
 pense of domestic, that it had cut off twelve hundred 
 dollars from the appropriation to Alabama. In the 
 face of this reduction extension was out of the ques- 
 tion ; it were, well to support what was already in 
 hand. The diocese was straining every nerve to 
 give the clergy a scanty and uncertain support. No 
 fixed amount was promised the Bishop ; and, except a 
 few of the more favored in old and substantial parish- 
 es, all the clergy, from bishop to youngest deacon, 
 were entirely dependent on voluntary offerings, and 
 were harassed with those temporal cares from which 
 they should have been free, but which, since they 
 must bear them, enabled them to sympathize as never 
 before with their people. A reduced force, the result 
 of their labors was unprecedented in the history of 
 
 diocese. 
 
 There was no fatalistic yielding to circumstances, 
 and no Micawberish waiting for something to turn up. 
 Many were the schemes, some fruitless, some fruitful, 
 for the welfare of the diocese. A few of these de- 
 serve notice : The publication of a Church paper, 
 and the attempts to organize the missionary work and 
 to systematize the financial operations of the Church. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 237 
 
 The publication of a diocesan paper was suggested 
 as early as 1867. The project was licked into shape 
 in two Conventions, and in June, 1868, the paper was 
 launched with the name The Church Register. The 
 Rev. J. H. Ticknor of Montgomery was at the helm. 
 It was literally a venture of faith. Today when 
 Churchmen in this diocese and throughout the South 
 are twice and thrice as numerous as they were thirty 
 years ago, the projector of a weekly Church journal, 
 to be published in this portion of the country, would 
 be a bold man. Mr. Ticknor's confidence was soon 
 and rudely dispelled. Though the paper was cor- 
 dially endorsed by the Bishops of Mississippi and 
 Iyouisiana, and they promised to urge its circulation in 
 their respective dioceses, the bulk of the circulation 
 must be in Alabama. It was hoped that the weekly 
 visits of such a paper, given, as it was, less to news 
 than to instruction, would be the means of enlarging 
 the borders of the Church. But faith does not come 
 by reading, and the non-Churchman to whom appeal 
 was made was the very man that could not be per- 
 suaded to read what was written for him. A few of 
 the faithful were marvellously edified, but the paper 
 failed to achieve its main purpose. It was well edited, 
 and Mr. Ticknor labored unselfishly and untiringly to 
 keep it alive; but he was in the field fifty years too 
 soon, and finally succumbed to the apathy and luke- 
 warmness that are the common attitude of many of 
 the clergy and most of the laity towards Church period- 
 icals, whether general or diocesan. Three other at- 
 tempts at a diocesan paper have since been made. In 
 
238 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 1878 the Rev. George H. Hunt of Tuskaloosa tested 
 the diocese with a monthly twenty-four-page magazine, 
 The Old Church Path, which, though with few supe- 
 riors in the plainness, directness, and simplicity of its 
 instruction, was also but short-lived. In 1889 the 
 Rev. I,. W. Rose of Birmingham published The Ala- 
 bama Churchman for a few months. Not until 1892 
 was a diocesan paper permanently established. Its 
 first name, The Diocese of Alabama, proving unwieldly 
 and confusing, was after a year changed to The Church 
 Record. It was first published in Montgomery, but 
 was after two years removed to Tuskaloosa, where it 
 is now located. It has been of invaluable assistance 
 in keeping the various portions and interests of the 
 diocese in touch with one another. 
 
 Bishop Wilmer insisted from the first that what the 
 diocese needed for its financial salvation was system. 
 Somehow it had become the tradition that faith and 
 method were opposed to each other, that the weekly 
 pledge destroyed the free-will offering, that to tie one's 
 camel was to evince distrust of God. But fervent an- 
 nual appeals and spasmodic efforts are not the way 
 that either reason or revelation teaches us is best to 
 meet demands that are not spasmodic. Persistent ex- 
 penses must be met, if they are to be met properly, by 
 perennial income. 
 
 In like manner the evangelization of Alabama must 
 not be by haphazard methods, but according to settled 
 plan and on well-defined responsibility. This respon- 
 sibility rested ultimately on the shoulders of the 
 Bishop. He was encouraged to go forward, but he 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 239 
 
 was not provided with funds for the maintenance, of 
 outposts. He had no appointed advisers as to the dis- 
 position of the missionaries and the allotment of 
 funds. Such trust showed perfect confidence in the 
 Bishop. It worked well in the outgo, because it fixed 
 on one man the whole responsibility for wise expendi- 
 ture ; but it worked ill in the income, because " the 
 diocese" bore that responsibility, and in matters 
 having no legal bearing the diocese is always an in- 
 tangible entity without identity. 
 
 The Bishop sought such organization of the mis- 
 sionary work in its executive department a# would 
 delegate to the parochial clergy and the laity a portion 
 of the responsibility that he was bearing, and arouse 
 in them as individuals a sense of the necessity for sys- 
 tematic endeavor to develop the sinews of war. His 
 leading idea was to divide the diocese into Convoca- 
 tions, and make each Convocation answerable for 
 Church extension within its borders. The Conven- 
 tion of 1869 fell in with this plan and adopted a quasi 
 convocational system. The Convocations were to be 
 five in number and were to be known as the Convoca- 
 tions of Mobile, Montgomery, Selma, Demopolis, and 
 Huntsville. Each Convocation was to be autono- 
 mous, with such officers and regulations as were not 
 in conflict with the diocesan law. * 
 
 Unhappily, these Convocations did not come to the 
 birth. For a year or so, it is true, two or three clergy- 
 
 * The proposed distribution of Convocations gives incident- 
 al witness to the congestion of the Church in the Black Belt 
 — three out of the five Convocations being in that region. 
 
240 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 men would meet in one another's parish and hold 
 double daily services after the fashion of a Virginia 
 "Association"; the visiting clergy were dined (and 
 sometimes wined) from house to house, and were 
 encouraged (and sometimes puffed up) by the praise 
 of men. Such services were not without good effect 
 on the established congregations, but they were not 
 fulfilling the purpose for which Convocations were 
 desired. No aggressive and sustained missionary 
 operations were planned and undertaken, and the 
 great majority of the clergy, content with the isola- 
 tion of parochial life, were utterly indifferent to the 
 movement. 
 
 After a sleep of two years an attempt was made to 
 infuse life into the project. Convocations had been 
 established by "resolution" of the Convention. In 
 the diocese were some good men that attributed the 
 failure of the Convocational system entirely to the 
 manner in which it had originated. They had great 
 faith in canons, and contended that if the system could 
 base itself on a canon instead of a resolution it would 
 be sure to succeed. It happened, however, that there 
 also lived in the diocese some influential clergymen 
 and laymen to whom the ' ' Digest of Canons ' ' was 
 peculiarly sacred. In their eyes its sanctity would 
 be desecrated by the settlement therein of any " Title, ' ' 
 " Canon," "Section," or " Paragraph," that had not 
 been tried and examined, in every bone, and nerve, 
 and muscle, for at least two and preferably three or 
 four consecutive Conventions. These were in suffi- 
 cient force to prevent the proposed canon, ' ' Of Convo- 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 2$Z 
 
 cations," from becoming a law immediately; and the 
 Convention spent several years in discussing and 
 amending the canon, and postponing consideration of 
 it from each annual session to the next. * They were 
 sublimely unmindful !of the inconsistency that they 
 manifested in refusing to do with the right hand what 
 they had already done with the left. 
 
 Finally, in 1873, the Convention adopted a canon 
 that provided for the establishment of Convocations. 
 Their number and their boundaries were left to the 
 Bishop's determination; the Bishop also was to con- 
 fer upon the presiding officer of each Convocation 
 such ecclesiastical title — Dean, Archdeacon, or what 
 not ? — as he saw fit; and every minister was to give 
 four Sundays in the year to such missionary work 
 within the Convocation as the presiding officer should 
 assign — his expenses to be paid out of the missionary 
 treasury. 
 
 Acting under the provisions of this canon, Bishop 
 Wilmer, on May 20, 1873, set forth the four Convoca- 
 tions of Huntsville, Tuskaloosa, Selma, and Mont- 
 gomery, gave the title of " Dean " to their presiding 
 officers, and appointed as Deans the Rev. Messrs. J. 
 M. Banister, D. D., George H. Hunt, F. R. Hanson, 
 and Horace Stringfellow, D. D. Two years later he 
 called into being the Mobile Convocation — scarcely 
 more than a clericus — and appointed the Rev. J. A. 
 Massey, D. D. , Dean. These first Deans were imbued 
 
 * In 1893 a special committee was appointed to revise the 
 entire digest. At this writing (1898) it has not yet made its- 
 report. 
 
242 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 with missionary spirit; but as the records of convoca- 
 tional work were carelessly kept, easily misplaced, 
 and soon lost, and the Deans themselves made only 
 oral reports to the Convention, our knowledge of the 
 specific undertakings of convocations is meager, be- 
 ing limited, in fact, to one item: That the Birming- 
 ham (formerly the Tuskaloosa) Convocation* had 
 determined to concentrate its efforts upon Gadsden. 
 It may be stated comprehensively that some of the 
 clergy gave a few services when called upon, that the 
 Convocations occasionally held sessions, that the 
 work was done almost exclusively by the Deans, that 
 the Deans aroused their own congregations and others 
 to give more freely to diocesan missions, and that the 
 burden of securing not only the missionaries, but also 
 their stipends, was lifted as to its latter part from the 
 Bishop's shoulders. 
 
 Meanwhile no little energy was manifested in other 
 lines of work. The Rev. Robert Jope's Boys' School 
 at Summerville, Mobile, had a brief existence. The 
 Orphans' Home at Huntsville, for which a fund was 
 accumulating year after year, never materialized. 
 The Rev. J. F. Smith's attempts at Autaugaville and 
 Snowdoun, at the latter place of which a building 
 fund of twelve hundred dollars was once in hand, 
 were the beginning of a long series of dissolving 
 views wherein faithful work was so often annihilated, 
 as to corporate continuance, by the removal of all the 
 congregation to other places. The same failure 
 seemed to attend many of the efforts in East Ala- 
 * The change of name was made in 1S85. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 243 
 
 bama, where services were undertaken at Mount 
 Meigs, Chunnanuggee, Oswichee, Seale, Cross Keys, 
 Tallassee, and Auburn. At some of these points 
 church buildings were erected, for a time occupied, 
 and finally deserted and uncared for till they either 
 were removed or rotted down. After twenty years 
 new congregations appeared at Auburn and Mount 
 Meigs; over the others death still reigns. But in this 
 period were born the congregations at Birmingham, 
 Talladega, Decatur, Union Springs, and Evergreen; 
 while Montgomery (St. John's), Selma, Opelika, 
 Greensboro, Demopolis, Hayneville, and Montevallo, 
 were building themselves houses of worship, noble or 
 simple, ornate or unpretending, according to their 
 worldly circumstances. 
 
 The outlook was encouraging. Two thousand six 
 hundred communicants were enrolled on parish and 
 missionary registers. The annual confirmations-aver- 
 aged three hundred and fifty. At Selma alone, with 
 a communicant list of barely more than one hundred, 
 fifty-six persons were confirmed in a single year. 
 Three thousand five hundred dollars was given for 
 diocesan missions. The churches at Montgomery, 
 Mobile, Huntsville, Selma, Tuskaloosa, Union 
 Springs, Greenville, Livingston, Eutaw, and Seale 
 felt so comfortable financially that they voluntarily 
 increased their assessments so that the Bishop's salary 
 might be increased from four thousand to four thou- 
 sand five hundred dollars.* It was now, when every 
 
 * Some conception of prevalent financial conditions can be 
 formed from knowledge of the assessments then levied (and 
 
244 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 one had a mind to work, and when the whole diocesan 
 edifice was progressing most favorably, that the panic 
 of 1873 came, disorganizing all diocesan and parochial 
 undertakings, crippling the larger congregations, and 
 well-nigh threatening extinction to the missionary 
 operations. 
 
 The first blow came in the reduction by the Domes- 
 tic Board of Missions of its allowance to Alabama. 
 A few years previously the Board's appropriation had 
 been three thousand dollars. After one year this had 
 been reduced to eighteen hundred dollars. And now 
 a further reduction was made to one thousand dollars. 
 This action was taken two years before the storm 
 burst and was consequent upon the first turn of the 
 thumb-screw. 
 
 At the same time missionary offerings within the 
 diocese showed a sharp decline, the decline in a single 
 year being one thousand dollars. This decrease was 
 due in part to the general stringency, but chiefly to 
 local demands for church buildings and other paro- 
 chial enterprises which the largest contributors to dio- 
 cesan missions — Mobile, Montgomery, Selma, and 
 Huntsville — had begun and were forced to complete. 
 
 The third blow was consequent upon the first two. 
 Within a twelve-month the net decrease in the clerical 
 force, which had largely recovered from the imme- 
 diately post-bellum depletion, was six, and many 
 church doors throughout the diocese were not opened 
 
 paid). The largest were : Montgomery (St. John's) {1,000 ; 
 Mobile (Christ Church) $880 ; Mobile (Trinity) $605 ; Hunts- 
 ville $550 ; Selma $500 ; Mobile (St. John's) $30°- 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 245 
 
 for months. Miss Catherine Wolfe, of New York, did 
 much to relieve the ecclesiastical distress all over the 
 •country ; in Alabama alone she eased the situation 
 materially by a gift of two thousand dollars. The 
 missionaries had for a short period before this been re- 
 ceiving a minimum stipend of one thousand dollars, 
 but now their uncertain incomes were but a fraction 
 of this amount, and what they received came irregu- 
 larly. Those that were temporally and spiritually 
 able remained at their posts ; some because they could 
 not better their condition by moving away, most be- 
 cause they were not hirelings. 
 
 The passing of the crest in 1873 was the beginning 
 of a time of long and anxious watching and waiting. 
 Every financial and industrial collapse is followed by 
 social and individual restlessness. New fields are 
 tried by those who, not anchored by sheer inability to 
 move, feel that they are at the storm center and that 
 conditions elsewhere are surely more favorable. It 
 was so in Alabama. The restlessness engendered by 
 the Civil War had not passed when this new occasion 
 brought on a more extensive running-to-and-fro than 
 ever before. The ecclesiastical and spiritual injury 
 would have been serious enough had these removals 
 been only from place to place within the state. But 
 unfortunately for Alabama it was at this time that 
 hope was looking towards the setting sun and the 
 stream of Western immigration was flowing level with 
 its banks. Five thousand souls had been confirmed 
 in the thirteen years of Bishop Wilmer's episcopate, 
 yet scarcely more than three thousand communicants 
 
246 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 remained in the diocese. The whole state was suffer- 
 ing from depletion of population. Its mineral wealth 
 was almost untouched. Its vast timber resources were 
 undeveloped. Its manufactories were in the womb of 
 time. Its strength lay in its cultivated fields. And 
 its fields were wearing out under the negligent hus- 
 bandry of white owner and black tenant. In not a 
 few portions of the state the original forest was begin- 
 ning to encroach upon the once cultivated fields and 
 to resume its primeval sway— parabolic of the condi- 
 tion of the Church. 
 
 Patiently and hopefully had Bishop Wilmer worked, 
 thus far, but when in 1874 the Board of Missions re- 
 duced its apportionment to Alabama from one thousand 
 dollars to a sum too insignificant to be mentioned, he 
 gave measured expression to the indignation that such 
 folly, whether partisan or but short-sighted, aroused 
 within him: " In the midst of our peculiar depression 
 I had indulged the hope that the General Missionary 
 Board would come to the aid of the Church in the 
 Southern Dioceses. It would have been a reasonable 
 hope. We might have been pardoned for supposing 
 that the wise admonition of the Apostle would have 
 been heeded — ' As we have opportunity, let us do 
 good unto all men, especially unto them which are of 
 the household of faith.' I wish to say no word in 
 disparagement of any effort that looks to the weal 
 of any class of men. I recognize fully the claims 
 of the barbarian. But it strikes me that, for every 
 reason, it is the wise policy aad stern duty of the 
 Church to abandon no position that has been already 
 
■ CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 247 
 
 gained, and to lose no ground that has been once 
 occupied. If the Church in this country is to play 
 the important part in the evangelization of the world 
 that she is fitted for, then she is but poorly preparing 
 herself for the mighty work in hand by allowing large 
 areas of territory, now occupied by Anglo-Saxon 
 people, to lie neglected, and (which is sadder still) to 
 permit churches already established to perish for want 
 of aid during a period of peculiar distress and im- 
 poverishment. ' ' 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE REVOLUTION OF BOOM TIMES. 
 
 THE low-water record of diocesan life was made in 
 1875. In the following year improvement be- 
 gan; for ten years it was constant; at no time was it 
 remarkable. It was a decade of strong heart-throb 
 and steady pulse-beat, of dawning consciousness of 
 power and increasing determination to do and dare 
 for Christ and His Kingdom. 
 
 It was a period of rooting and transplanting. 
 Growth along the Selma, Rome & Dalton Railroad 
 from Selma to Cross Plains * was especially notable. 
 In the Tennessee Valley the prospect became less 
 ■discouraging. In the Gulf Coast missions results were 
 at last perceptible. In the Black Belt almost every 
 available point was occupied that had not long ago 
 been tried and dropped. 
 
 In the Mineral Region alone there was, at first, no 
 progress, and no apparent hope of progress. A single 
 parish, the Church of the Advent, had been organized 
 at Birmingham, two miles northeast of Elyton, as 
 early as 1872;! it was first served by an eloquent 
 preacher and faithful pastor, the Rev. Philip A. 
 
 * Now Piedmont. 
 
 t At this time Elyton had a population of 700 souls, and 
 was the county seat. Birmingham had been incorporated the 
 preceding year, the first house having been built August 29, 
 1871, and was already a town of 2,000 inhabitants. 
 
 248 
 
CHURCH IN A LABAMA. 249 
 
 Fitts, who had abandoned a successful career at the 
 bar that he might bear witness of the truth; but its 
 growth was slow, and nine years elapsed before an- 
 other congregation was organized in that region. 
 
 Church extension in the Mineral Region began 
 with the founding of Grace Church, Anniston, in 1881. 
 This Church was one of the first fruits of the rapidly 
 approaching Boom Times. Birmingham had already 
 heralded forth her mineral wealth and industrial pos- 
 sibilities, and people were already coming in, a few 
 from the country at large, the majority from the agri- 
 cultural regions and commercial centers of our own 
 state. What the Elyton Land Company was to Bir- 
 mingham, that the Woodstock Iron Company was to 
 Anniston. Each company developed its own city, 
 but better preparation was made in Anniston than in 
 Birmingham for the expected population. Before the 
 city was thrown open to the world by the customary 
 auction day of building lots, which is the birthday of 
 all premeditated booms, the streets were macadamized 
 and lighted, water mains were laid, and a sewerage 
 system was completed. Chief among the promoters 
 were the Nobles and Tylers, staunch and zealous 
 Churchmen. These and a few others living in Annis- 
 ton had been receiving regular ministrations from the 
 Rev. J. F. Smith as far back as 1875, but no parochial 
 organization had been attempted, and later on the 
 services were intermittent; but now these persons, 
 out of the wealth already coming to them, built at a 
 cost of thirty thousand dollars a chaste and beautiful 
 Gothic structure of gray stone, with inside furnish- 
 — 17 
 
250 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ings of cedar and brass. The only defect of this 
 church was its diminutiveness. The seating capacity 
 was only two hundred and fifty, and was monopolized 
 by the wealthier parishioners. There was no room 
 for the poor. This defect was in part met by the 
 erection at Glen Addie of a chapel for the poor; unfor- 
 tunately many of the poor lived elsewhere. The re- 
 sult was that Grace Church never became a large 
 parish, and that its work among the poorest has been 
 comparatively unimportant. 
 
 Meanwhile the Church of the Advent, Birmingham, 
 working in and from a small frame building intended 
 for a village congregation, was growing rapidly. In 
 two years it doubled in size, and year by year its de- 
 velopment registered the growth of the city. Bir- 
 mingham was leaving Anniston behind. They who 
 were making haste to become rich cared more for op- 
 portunities than for improvements. Anniston gave 
 the latter, Birmingham the former. Anniston had 
 iron ore in abundance, and fully equal in quality to 
 that of Birmingham ; but Birmingham had what An- 
 niston did not have — coal ; and this one consideration 
 turned the main current of immigration into the Bir- 
 mingham district, leaving but a modicum for Annis- 
 ton. 
 
 The speculative fever, the boom-specter that will 
 not down, was soon rising, and as its opportunity was 
 greatest in the vicinity of Birmingham so there it 
 reached a higher temperature than elsewhere. It was 
 not long ere metropolitan prices were paid per front 
 foot. Every corner lot was a gold-mine. It mattered 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 25 1 
 
 not that the frontage was on the primeval forest, and 
 that the sanguine purchaser who dallied after night- 
 fall upon his newly acquired property experienced no 
 small difficulty in finding his way out of the woods 
 and back to inhabited avenues and streets . If there 
 were no houses in the neighborhood, that was only 
 because purchasers found it more profitable to sell un- 
 improved property on a rising market ; the houses 
 would come when the lots could remain in one man's 
 hands long enough for the mason and the carpenter, 
 whose operations were slower than those of aerial 
 builders. If there was no rapid transit, that was not 
 needed yet ; it would come as soon as the street began 
 to build up ; meanwhile dotted lines served at public 
 auction and private sale to show the projected railway 
 and street car systems. 
 
 It was an exciting game, that of trying who cquld 
 blow the bubble largest; and while it lasted fortunes 
 were made, invested in other speculative enterprises — 
 and ultimately lost. A single lot would often change 
 hands a half-score times between day-dawn and mid- 
 night, every purchaser selling it at a profit, and the 
 same speculator buying and selling it more than once. 
 It is easily seen that each inflation was a greater strain 
 upon the existence of the bubble, increasing its tenuity, 
 and bringing the day of bursting a step nearer. Gen- 
 erally part payment was made for each purchase, and 
 notes were given for the balance due. Thus was 
 formed an ever growing chain of debtor-creditors, the 
 failure of any one of whom to meet his obligations 
 would be disastrous to all, and the danger of the ina- 
 
252 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 bility of some one increasing with every transaction. 
 
 However, the time of settlement was not yet at 
 hand. The fever spread throughout Alabama, en- 
 suring a long procession of men bringing with them 
 more breath, more lung power, and more bubble- 
 mixture. After a little these newcomers were starting 
 new bubbles of their own in the vicinity of the center 
 of activity. No pent-up Birmingham could contract 
 their powers. Thus Woodlawn and Avondale, and, 
 on a larger scale, Bessemer, were created. Bessemer, 
 indeed, would fain have been the compeer of Birming- 
 ham, but in her adventurous ambition succeeded only 
 in giving new point to the ancient fable of the 
 frog and the ox. In all these places Churchmen 
 were found and congregations established. The Rev. 
 Thomas J. Beard, who had become rector of the 
 Church of the Advent, Birmingham, and the Rev- 
 J. A. Van Hoose, a deacon whose injured eyesight 
 had prevented him from pressing on to Priest's Orders, 
 and who had become a prosperous business man, 
 labored independently and indefatigably to meet the 
 demands of the new-born conditions. In Birmingham 
 alone from fifty to one hundred and fifty new commu- 
 nicants were enrolled annually; how many came and 
 went without making themselves known cannot be 
 estimated. ' 
 
 By 1887 the parish of the Advent numbered eleven 
 hundred souls. Many of the congregation had re- 
 moved to the South Highlands, and a new parish was 
 a manifest necessity. At first the Rev. Mr. Beard re- 
 tained charge of his old parishioners in the new parish 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 253 
 
 of St. Mary's, but soon a neat frame building was 
 erected and a rector was in charge — the Rev. L. W. 
 Rose. A few years later this church was burned, Mr. 
 Rose went back to Virginia, a stone church was built 
 on the plan of the former structure but on a better site, 
 and the Rev. Owen P. Fitzsimmons, recently a Pres- 
 byterian minister, became rector. The congregation 
 increased rapidly, its greatest growth being due to re- 
 movals of the wealthier members of the Advent to 
 the church which was nearest their new mansions on 
 the Highlands. The parish church of the Advent 
 was wofully inadequate to its needs, not more than 
 two hundred persons being able to gain admission at 
 the public services. A subscription paper was circu- 
 lated, and enough money was raised, on paper, to 
 build the present costly edifice. The cash, however, 
 was not forthcoming, and when the church was finally 
 completed (which was not until 1894) it was strug- 
 gling under a mortgage debt of twenty-three thousand 
 dollars. 
 
 Not merely in the immediate vicinity of -Birming- 
 ham and Anniston but all through the hill country of 
 Alabama prospectors and developers were at work, 
 and workmen and speculators were multiplying. To 
 catalogue these places would be foreign to the purpose 
 of this record. Suffice it to say that to greater or less 
 extent all of them demanded the ministrations of the 
 Church. Whether the new comers were Alabamians 
 or aliens, as Churchmen they had right to expect nur- 
 ture from the Church in Alabama. Where, but a few 
 years earlier, a single missionary with his headquar- 
 
254 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ters at Talladega, fifty miles away, sufficed for the 
 score of communicants in this district, and found a 
 horse and gig a sufficiently rapid means of locomotion, 
 now ten clergymen were unequal to the demands and 
 opportunities. Avondale, Bessemer, Blopton, Bloss- 
 burg, Bridgeport, Coalburg, Fort Payne, Pratt City, 
 and Woodlawn were a few of the new congregations. 
 Twenty new parishes and missions were established 
 in five years (1885- 1890), and in the same length of 
 time the missionary force increased from seven to 
 thirteen. 
 
 The social and industrial revolution wrought by the 
 development of the Mineral Regions had thus its coun- 
 terpart in the congestion of the body ecclesiastical. 
 There was engorgement of the large arteries, and the 
 chill of death at the extremities. * The drain on the 
 rural and village congregations was unprecedented. 
 In five years Greensboro, Tuskaloosa, and Union- 
 town lost one-third of their communicants; Union 
 Springs lost two-thirds of hers; Livingston was almost 
 obliterated, losing more communicants than were en- 
 rolled in 1885. Of the larger non-boom places Selma 
 lost nearly, and Montgomery more than, one hundred 
 communicants, and Mobile more than two hundred. 
 Hundreds of those who remained in their old homes 
 brought themselves to sore straits to get money for 
 "investment" in "good bargains" and "sure 
 things. ' ' Joint stock concerns bought up old fields 
 in all possible and impossible locations, and received 
 
 * See Bishop Wilmer's Council Address for 1887. 
 
CHPRCH IN ALABAMA. 255 
 
 for shares much of the money that had been going 
 into the parochial and missionary treasuries. 
 
 Had the removal of the fortune-seekers been merely 
 a transfer of strength to newly-formed congregations 
 the upheaval w might have been of immediate, positive 
 benefit to the diocese. But with comparatively few 
 exceptions the removal of a communicant into the 
 boom district was a distinct loss of financial strength 
 to the diocese, of personal service to the parish, and 
 of true religion to the pilgrim. The men that made 
 haste to be rich fell into divers temptations, and the 
 glamour of gold concealed the evil of lowered stand- 
 ards. They invested all their cash, and frequently 
 discounted their incomes for months and years, in 
 getting ' ' a good start, ' ' and after paying their house- 
 hold, office, and personal expenses, had but little left 
 with which to pay their spiritual taxes. With the 
 bursting of the bubble disappeared their capital, their 
 employment, and their income. 
 
 But they, and the congregations that they formed, 
 did not disappear. Not one of the newly formed par- 
 ishes and missions was annihilated. The wave that 
 brought them there left them there. During the 
 boom they had needed aid; after its collapse their 
 need increased. Their formation into parishes had 
 been effected with meteoric rapidity; their financial 
 impoverishment followed with even greater celerity. 
 Three years after its organization Trinity Church, 
 Bessemer, was paying its rector a salary of twelve 
 hundred dollars; two years later it was conjoined with 
 
256 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 Avondale and Woodlawn, and was paying only two 
 hundred dollars toward the missionary's support. 
 
 The old established congregations, with reduced 
 numerical and financial strength, had not only to 
 bear their own burdens, but also to help bear the 
 burdens of the new weaklings. And right nobly did 
 they rise to their new responsibility. When the boom 
 began only twenty-two congregations in the diocese 
 were helping the weaker congregations, and these 
 gave only eighteen hundred dollars. When the boom 
 collapsed thirty-three congregations were contributing 
 thirty-five hundred dollars a year to the work. It is 
 worthy of remark that with the exception of what was 
 given by the Church of the Advent, Birmingham, and 
 Grace Church, Anniston, every cent of this came from 
 the congregations outside the boom districts. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE DIOCESAN MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 
 
 1 1 '""pHE difficulty of raising such small sums as we 
 1 are speaking of — a few thousand dollars for 
 mission and parish work — is not so much in the hard- 
 ness of the times as in the want of system. We South- 
 ern people are proverbially unsystematic. There are 
 peoples with half our resources who accomplish double 
 results. Practically, a very few of the people do the 
 work of the Church ; and it falls heavily and unequal- 
 ly upon the few. The great majority of our people 
 stand aloof from active co-operation, and, I am satis- 
 fied, not entirely from want of interest, but from the 
 absence of a well-digested plan, by which each one 
 shall be pledged to do regularly and systematically 
 what he can afford to do. ' ' 
 
 Bishop Wilmer was very urgent when he wrote 
 these words in 1873. The general and increasing 
 financial stringency of the last" few years had aroused 
 murmuring and restlessness in many parishes. Some 
 had complained outright that the assessment laid upon 
 them for ' ' Conventional expenses ' ' — which were 
 chiefly the Bishop's salary — was unbearable. Others 
 had indirectly made the same complaint in their plea 
 for " a more equitable adjustment" of assessments. 
 Many had thought it hard that, with their limited re - 
 sources, they should, after contributing liberally to- 
 ward the Bishop's salary, be continually exhorted to 
 
 257 
 
258 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 give as liberally to aid the missionary work. This 
 feeling was not quieted by the Convention's unpremedi- 
 tated and impulsive increase of the Bishop's salary, in 
 a year of so great distress, to $4,500.* With the dio- 
 cesan assessment now twice as great as the amount 
 contributed towards the support of the entire mission- 
 ary staff, it was inevitable that individual parishes 
 would understand the Convention to say, in effect: 
 " We have placed a positive obligation upon you, and 
 you must meet it. Your contribution to missionary 
 operations is a voluntary contribution. We desire 
 that you give to that cause as liberally as you can ; 
 but before all else you must pay your debt to the 
 Bishop." Likewise it was inevitable that, with a 
 given amount raisable in each parish and with ex- 
 clusion from the Convention as penalty for non- 
 payment of the diocesan assessment, the parishes 
 would pay their assessments and let the missionary 
 work remain a stunted growth. 
 
 What ought to have been done was one thing; what 
 was done was another. For years the Bishop and 
 others had been publishing tables of figures to prove 
 that it was the easiest thing in the world for the diocese 
 to raise from twenty to fifty thousand dollars a year 
 for Conventional and Missionary purposes. ' ' A dime 
 
 * The Bishop's salary remained at $4,500 until 1879 when, 
 at the Bishop's request it was reduced to $4,000. A still 
 further reduction, with the same initiative, was made in 1892, 
 when it was demonstrated after a year's trial that Alabama 
 was unable to pay $7,000 a year for Episcopal service. Bach 
 Bishop has since then received a salary of $3,000. 
 
CHURCH I N ALABAMA. 259 
 
 a week from every communicant' ' — so ran the formula. 
 But the communicants did not consist of wheat only. 
 In neither diocesan nor parochial churches will the 
 time ever come when every communicant will give a 
 dime a week, or any other sum regularly, to the sup- 
 port and extension of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Yet the Bishop's contention that many stood aloof 
 from financial co-operation in Church work because of 
 lack of system in the doing of Church work was, in 
 the main, correct. The missionary operations of the 
 diocese had come to that point where well-digested, 
 thoroughly worked system was essential to further 
 development. He that sets ten men to work does 
 better than he that does the work of ten men. He 
 that sets ten men to give does better than he that 
 gives as much as ten men. These were, in effect, the 
 principles on which Bishop Wilmer was working. 
 He had set forth his ideas as soon as the subsiding 
 ground swell from the Civil War allowed the consid- 
 eration of aggressive work to come to the front. He 
 had made many suggestions to the more prominent 
 Churchmen as they gathered to the Conventions from 
 year to year, and the clearness of his views and the 
 force with which he expressed them stirred Conven- 
 tion after Convention to interest, enthusiasm, and the 
 passing of earnest resolutions. But when the Con- 
 vention adjourned, and they returned home to confront 
 the same old parochial trials and discouragements 
 which had for a time passed from memory, the temper- 
 ature of these good men fell very rapidly — a phenome- 
 non not unknown in more recent days. For example: 
 
260 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 In 1869 the Convention resolved to give the offering 
 on the second Sunday in every month to diocesan 
 missions; and then the clergy went home and, to a 
 man, forgot all about the resolution. The next year 
 at Convention much compunction was manifested and 
 it was determined to do better; but at the end of the 
 next six months one solitary parish had given as much 
 as one cent — and this despite the fact that the burden 
 of supporting the eight missionaries was borne by the 
 Bishop alone. Small wonder is it, then, that in 1872 
 the Bishop very nearly rose in insurrection, and told 
 the Convention plainly that he would no longer bear 
 the Convention's own responsibility for support of the 
 missionaries unless the brethren gave him, not words 
 of approbation, but tangible evidence of determination 
 to help. He demanded some system; he left the Con- 
 vention free to choose its own plan. 
 
 Sufficient pressure to cause movement having been 
 applied, the Convention of 1872 gave Alabama its first 
 attempt at systematizing the missionary work. The 
 plan adopted was that presented by the Rev. Dr. 
 Horace Stringfellow, Jr., a recent accession to the 
 ranks of the diocesan clergy. It was extremely simple : 
 To leave standing the old order for monthly offerings 
 and to supplement these offerings by the pledge of a 
 minimum sum from each congregation. The clergy 
 and their lay delegates made pledges, and went home 
 and kept them. The amount raised in the ensuing 
 year was more than three thousand dollars. 
 
 But it was in 1873 that the present system, which 
 was allowed to sleep fourteen years before it was 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 26l 
 
 aroused and put to work, saw the light. The Bishop 
 had just made a strong plea for system to replace 
 spasms. He had received enough money, in conse- 
 quence of his appeal of the previous year, to keep 
 open the churches at Jacksonville, Talladega, Monte- 
 vallo, Union Springs, Seale, Carlowville, Tilden, 
 Opelika, Marion, Greenville, Evergreen, and Whist- 
 ler; but he was unable to assist the congregations at 
 Livingston, Pushmataha, Autaugaville, Gadsden and 
 the smaller places in the Tennessee Valley. The 
 Bishop's appeal was grounded on the thought that if 
 the diocese was truly one body, each part must minis- 
 ter to the others. " In theory," he said, " we realize 
 our mutual membership, one in the other, and our 
 common membership in Christ. When we realize 
 this in heart and deed, then the abundance of one will 
 ever flow to the relief of another; the strong will reach 
 its hand to help the weak; and, when charity becomes 
 more perfect, will extend itself as unconsciously as 
 one hand helps another in doing a work which one 
 cannot do alone. In a word, we shall reproduce the 
 Pentecostal spirit, and no man shall think that to be 
 his own which a brother needs more than himself. ' ' 
 
 There sat in this Convention a layman who, because 
 of his reputation as a remarkably painstaking, method- 
 ical, successful, trustworthy banker, was at this, the 
 second, Convention he had attended in the novitiate 
 of his Churchmanship, elected Treasurer of the dio- 
 cese — Mr. James H. Fitts, of Tuskaloosa. Mr. Fitts 
 was appointed a member of the special committee to 
 which were referred the Bishop's observations on 
 
262 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 missionary work. The Rev. R. A. Cobbs was chair- 
 man of this committee, and, as chairman, his duty 
 was to write the committee's report. But in the pre- 
 liminary consultation of the committee Mr. Fitts sug- 
 gested a plan so simple, yet so thorough- and worka- 
 ble, that the chairman and the entire committee 
 requested him not only to formulate it, but to present 
 it to the Convention as the committee's report. I,ike 
 Columbus' method of setting an egg on end, it was 
 alphabetical in simplicity; only — no one had thought 
 of it before. 
 
 First of all, the committee expressly condemned the 
 existing plan of securing pledges from parishes as 
 wrong in principle and unsatisfactory in results. In 
 lieu thereof it recommended : 
 
 ist, That it should be the duty of each clergyman 
 to obtain from every communicant in his congregation 
 a written pledge to pay a specific amount weekly for 
 missions; this pledge to be given and redeemed through 
 the Offertory, and thus formally consecrated to God; 
 2nd, That it should be the duty of each clergyman 
 to appoint collectors of the pledges not redeemed by 
 the end of each month; 
 
 3rd, That it should be the duty of each clergyman 
 to transmit the receipts every month to the Treasurer 
 of the Diocesan Missionary Fund; 
 
 4th, That it should be the duty of the Treasurer of 
 the Diocesan Missionary Fund to send a quarterly re- 
 port of his receipts and disbursements to every clergy- 
 man in the diocese; and, 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 263 
 
 5th, That it should be the duty of the clergy to read 
 these reports to their congregations. 
 
 These recommendations aroused the liveliest inter- 
 est and discussion. Some of the clergy were very 
 jealous for the dignity of their order, and these un- 
 limbered on the phraseology of the report. They 
 decidedly objected to having laymen dictate to them 
 their "duty;" especially when that duty was pro- 
 claimed to be the collecting of money in small amounts. 
 They contended that the clergy were insulted by the 
 attempt to make them the financial agents of an 
 organization. The Rev. Dr. John Fulton very em- 
 phatically assured the Convention that, as for him- 
 self, he ' ' would not pick picayunes ' ' in Christ Church , 
 Mobile. Some one suggested, in the interest of peace 
 and harmony, that for the antagonizing phrase "It 
 shall be the duty," should be substituted the less 
 forcible, but more euphemistic, words, " It is recom- 
 mended." But the committee stood by their guns. 
 They thought they had properly located the responsi- 
 bility, and they purposed to fix it where it belonged. 
 The opposition slept over the matter. After a good 
 night's rest the committee's report did not seem so 
 dreadful; besides, there was no penalty for disregard 
 of the Convention's action. So in quieter mood they 
 went up to the Church (Trinity Church, Mobile) 
 that morning and made no opposition to the unani- 
 mous adoption of the plan, and its verbiage, exactly as 
 proposed. 
 
 So the Convention declared what was the duty of the 
 clergy in the matter. The clergy by their own vote 
 
264 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 confessed to a sense of their duty. The records show 
 that they went back home and were as unanimously 
 inactive as they had been enactive. Not a single cler- 
 gyman in Alabama did his self-confessed duty. A 
 few, indeed, did put the Fitts plan into operation; but 
 these applied it strictly to parochial purposes!* 
 
 The Bishop was in despair. For years he had urged 
 system and at last the clergy seemed to declare that 
 they would not have system. ' ' I will not press this 
 matter further," was the Bishop's heart-sick con- 
 clusion. " I have, perhaps, in the judgment of some, 
 been already too importunate. If they think so, they 
 must forgive me for my cause. ' ' 
 
 So, systemless as to missionary finance, spasmodic- 
 ally enthusiastic, and with income diminishing year 
 by year, surely and constantly, until in 1883 the 
 amount contributed was less than one thousand dol- 
 lars, the Church in Alabama allowed her missionary 
 work to disintegrate and her missionary force to slip 
 from her nerveless grasp. One by one the clergy of 
 the dependent congregations were dismissed to other 
 dioceses, and were scattered to the four winds. They 
 went to Tennessee, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, 
 Maryland, Kentucky, Indiana, Kansas, Texas — where- 
 ever, in fact, there lived those who deemed the laborer 
 worthy of his hire. They were frozen out, these men. 
 Like the mercury shrinking before a cold-wave the 
 missionary receipts fell from two thousand dollars to 
 seventeen hundred, and then dropped rapidly to fifteen, 
 to fourteen, to eleven, and finally (1883) rested at nine 
 * See Journal of 1874, page 42. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 265 
 
 hundred; while the missionaries themselves decreased 
 from twelve to ten, to seven, and finally to six. 
 
 Through these ten years the Bishop remembered his 
 words of former days, and resolutely refrained from 
 importuning the diocese for ' ' system. ' ' Once only 
 did he refer, and then only incidentally, to this work. 
 In 1878 he complained of the "utter want of all 
 system ' ' in every branch of ecclesiastical endeavor, 
 and suggested that the clergy and laity should be as- 
 sociated with himself in the missionary work. There- 
 upon the Convention, following its old custom, referred 
 the suggestion to a special committee; the committee 
 reported back a slight variation of the Fitts plan, the 
 distinctive feature being the provision for an advisory 
 committee of clergymen and laymen whom the Bishop 
 could at his pleasure call into consultation. The Con- 
 vention received the special committee's report, and 
 referred it to the Committee on Canons to be shaped 
 into a canon. This committee dawdled, and the plan 
 was soon with the silent majority. 
 
 So far the decade had been marked by disintegra- 
 tion, decay, and discouragement. The first positive 
 step towards the rehabilitation of the missionary work 
 was taken in 1884. The old Convocational system 
 had not, as we have seen, amounted to much, but 
 now it was rubbed up a bit and found to have kept 
 ready a number of " Deans. " As these deans were 
 already nominally supervising missionary operations 
 in their respective Convocations, what could be more 
 natural, in integrating Church extension work, than 
 
 to put them in the Bishop's missionary cabinet? 
 — 18 
 
266 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 What could be more natural than to add from each 
 Convocation a layman, and thus bring representative 
 clegymen and laymen from various parts of the dio- 
 cese to feel a common interest in the entire work? 
 The men that formulated this idea were the Rev. Drs. 
 Joseph 1,. Tucker and Horace Stringfellow, the Rev. 
 Messrs. J. C Taylor and H. K. Rees, and Messrs. N. 
 H. R. Dawson, David Buell, and Charles E. Waller. 
 The resolutions presented by these men as a com- 
 mittee went through without a dissenting voice, and 
 the Convention followed up its action by at once 
 placing on the ' ' Board of Missions ' ' men whose chief 
 recommendation was not that they were figure-heads. 
 The Bishop, of course, was President of the Board. 
 The deans — the Rev. Messrs. H. K. Rees, Horace 
 Stringfellow, D. D., R. H. Cobbs, D. D., T. J. Beard, 
 and J. M. Banister, D. D. , — were ex-officio the clerical 
 members. The lay-members elected were : J. H. 
 Fitts, of Tuskaloosa; R. E. Coxe, of Huntsville ; 
 James Bond, of Mobile ; Charles L- Stickney, of 
 Greensboro ; and David Buell, of Greenville. 
 
 The creation of this Board of Missions and the ad- 
 mission of laymen to a share of official responsibility 
 was attended with immediate and marked improve- 
 ment in the treasury and in the field of missions. Not 
 only was the long and steady decline in receipts 
 checked, but a sharp upward turn was given them, 
 and in the following year they amounted to more than 
 in any of the ten preceding years. The Bishop was 
 enabled to put four new missionaries in the field at 
 once, and to re-occupy the long vacant fields of 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 267 
 
 Whistler, Citronelle, Grand Bay, and Bon Secour ; 
 I^ivingston ; Burton's Hill (Fork of Greene) and 
 Gainesville ; and Eufaula and Clayton. The diocese 
 in next year's Convention assembled felicitated itself 
 upon this improvement. Having done so much better 
 than had been expected it proceeded for the -next two 
 or three years to do much worse than was to be ex- 
 pected. Enough was raised to support the four new 
 missionaries, but a number of congregations in North 
 and Middle Alabama were still shepherdless and the 
 missionary board was forced to play the horse-leech. 
 
 It was not simply for salaries that money was needed; 
 though in later days the overwhelming necessity to 
 meet this demand has seemed to make the pay-roll 
 the only legitimate channel of expenditure. Mis- 
 sionaries, whose families were not infrequently of 
 more than moderate size, needed assistance to pay 
 their railroad fare into the diocese. One hundred 
 dollars was appropriated towards the building of every 
 new mission church or chapel. Sudden and excep- 
 tional cases demanded immediate help. To meet all 
 these extraordinary calls the Bishop appealed for one 
 hundred communicants to give him ten dollars each 
 per annum. Parishioners of Christ Church, Mobile, 
 gave nearly one-fourth of what he desired. Every 
 lay-member of the Board of Missions responded to 
 the appeal. In all the remainder of the diocese only 
 one person gave anything. 
 
 It is possible, now, in the light of subsequent events, 
 to diagnose the missionary condition: The laity of 
 Alabama had never been properly approached in 
 
268 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 behalf of diocesan missions. The thigh of fervent 
 appeals, of exhortations to duty and denunciations of 
 judgment for negligence, is not as large as the little 
 finger of detailed and correlated statements of facts, 
 and illustrations of present conditions and future pos- 
 sibilities. • It is a moderate estimate that two-thirds of 
 the Churchmen of Alabama never heard of a single 
 one of the Convention's many missionary resolutions, 
 and that ninety-nine one-hundredths were totally igno- 
 rant of the status of missionary work in the diocese. 
 Furthermore, it is safe to say that, under the condi- 
 tions, wider information was impossible. What knowl- 
 edge the clergy themselves had was ill-digested, and 
 the clerical mind is so constituted that it has a tend- 
 ency, often irresistible, to exhort before it has laid a 
 solid foundation for exhortation. What the Church 
 needed was a layman accustomed to dealing with facts, 
 able to grasp them in detail and to arrange them in 
 symmetrical proportion, desirous to study the condi- 
 tions, and prepared to make them known to the con- 
 gregations of the diocese. An organizer was wanted, 
 an organizer that could speak and work with the 
 authority of the Council behind him. Could such a 
 man be found ? 
 
 Charles E. Waller, a young lawyer of Greensboro, 
 was the man to whom the Council turned as by divine 
 guidance. For ten years Mr. Waller had been coming 
 to Convention. For three years he had sat on the 
 Board of Missions. In Convention and in Board he 
 had often been heard in debate. From the first he 
 was interested in the missionary problem. The earnest- 
 
CHURCH IN ALA BAMA. 269 
 
 ness with which he put forward his views on this sub- 
 ject had marked him out as pre-eminently the man to 
 push forward the organization of missionary finances. 
 He was accordingly elected Treasurer.* His first 
 duty as Treasurer was to relieve the Bishop of the 
 responsibility of being the Board's financial agent. 
 He threw himself into this new work with all his cus- 
 tomary enthusiasm. He deemed the Fitts plan the 
 best plan, and undertook to vitalize it. He spent 
 much time in visiting all the larger parishes, and 
 many of the smaller. Everywhere the clergy wel- 
 comed him cordially. He addressed the congrega- 
 tions from the chancel floor "on Sunday, and followed 
 up the good impression thus made by the immediate 
 organization in most of the parishes of branches of the 
 Missionary Society. St. John's, Montgomery, was 
 the only parish whose rector refused point blank to 
 allow the formation of the society within its borders, t 
 but Dr. Stringfellow saw to it that no other parish 
 exceeded his in the amount of its yearly contributions 
 to missions. Everywhere the money began to flow 
 in for the work. The boom, while depleting, had 
 stirred, and the system moved off into new fields with 
 the mighty momentum gained by the increase of re- 
 ceipts in a single year from seventeen hundred to three 
 thousand five hundred dollars. 
 
 * All previous Treasurers of the Missionary Fund had lived 
 in Mobile. Only four men had served in the entire forty-two 
 years — Thomas W. McCoy, Joseph W. Field, Stephens Croom, 
 and Robert Middleton. 
 
 t Dr. Stringfellow never allowed any societies to be organ- 
 ized in St. John's parish. 
 
T 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE GOLDEN AGE. 
 
 HE life of a community and that of a common- 
 wealth are alike in this: that long continued quie- 
 tude brings mental stagnation and that unexpected up- 
 heavals, threatening destruction of past labors, arouse 
 latent energy and lead to fuller life and development. 
 
 The life of a parish and that of a diocese are subject 
 to similar conditions. The burning of a church is 
 often the salvation of a parish. The economic per- 
 turbation of a state is often the opportunity for dio- 
 cesan progress. 
 
 So it was in Alabama in the 'Eighties, and so it 
 came about that the years when the Boom shook the 
 agricultural and well-established town and city con- 
 gregations to the center, and shook the very life out 
 of some of them, were the years when the general 
 condition of the diocese was, and was becoming, the 
 most satisfactory. The years 1 884-1 891 may properly 
 be termed the ' ' Golden Age ' ' of the Church in Ala- 
 bama. The labors of the diocese were more abun- 
 dant in these years, and the harvest was greater, than 
 in any other period of the same length in the history 
 of the diocese. 
 
 1. The earliest noticeable improvement came in the 
 
 easier flow of money into the diocesan, parochial, and 
 
 missionary treasuries. The loosing of purse-strings 
 
 had first been for speculation in the mineral regions. 
 
 270 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 27 1 
 
 Bank deposits with cobwebs over them were brought 
 out, and dusted, and pressed into active service. Men 
 began to speak familiarly of amounts that previously 
 had been mentioned with some reverence. For very 
 shame at the contrast between their week-day expendi- 
 tures and those of Sunday they pocketed the five-cent 
 piece which habit had unconsciously separated from 
 larger coin, and enriched the alms-basin with twen- 
 ty-five cents. Twenty-five cents a month to diocesan 
 missions began to seem parsimonious, and a fifty-cent 
 pledge was given. A yearly subscription of twenty 
 dollars to the rector's salary was raised to fifty dollars. 
 The ministerial salaries were increased from ten to fifty 
 per cent. Parochial debts were paid, improvements 
 were made in church buildings and rectories, and 
 goodly sums were gathered intrust for further develop- 
 ment. The missionary income, under zealous admin- 
 istration of the new system, remained more than three 
 thousand dollars. Diocesan assessments were met 
 promptly, and payment of the Bishop's salary was 
 never carried into another fiscal year. 
 
 2. Resulting from this favorable financial condition, 
 wherein a diocese of five thousand communicants 
 raised $125,000 in the single year 1889-90, was the 
 second improvement, viz., the increase in the number 
 of clergy. The missionary force grew from seven to 
 thirteen, and the active clergy from twenty-two to 
 thirty-four. Not the least encouraging feature of this 
 increase was that it was largely indigenous, giving 
 promise (not always fulfilled) of a permanent minis- 
 try of Alabamians wedded to their own people. 
 
272 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 3. The infusion of all this new blood, by grafting 
 and by ordination, aroused a godly emulation in the 
 body clerical. In a single year (1888) the rector of 
 St. John's, Mobile, made eleven hundred visits, bap- 
 tized more than one hundred persons, preached one 
 hundred and thirty-six sermons, and presented for 
 Confirmation in the parish one hundred and twenty- 
 three persons. Others worked no less indefatigably 
 as their fields permitted. The missionaries did not 
 preach so frequently as the city clergy, or baptize and 
 visit so many, or present as large numbers for Con- 
 firmation, but their diligence was not one whit less. 
 Sometimes, though, they were permitted to waste a 
 large amount of energy. For example: One minister 
 was stationed at Auburn. Seven miles from Auburn 
 was Opelika. The two places, each with less than 
 thirty communicants, were served by different clergy- 
 men, neither of whom had any other charge. The 
 Auburn minister resided in his mission. The minis- 
 ter who served Opelika lived first in Montgomery and 
 afterwards at Decatur, Georgia. From the former 
 place he traveled one hundred and thirty-two miles 
 on each visit to Opelika, and from the latter two hun- 
 dred and forty. When he lived in Montgomery each 
 visit carried him through Auburn, and when he lived 
 in Decatur he passed through Atlanta and three or 
 four Georgia mission stations served by a minister 
 who lived within three miles of Opelika.* 
 
 •The explanation of this remarkable condition is that 
 Emmanuel Church, Opelika, was a " parish," and called its 
 own minister. This particular minister, having independent 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 273 
 
 4. The unexampled energy of the laity in personal 
 work was one of the most encouraging features of this 
 period. This manifested itself in two distinct lines — 
 the growth of parochial societies and guilds, and the 
 increase of lay-readers. The parochial societies were 
 for the greater part expression of women's energy; 
 they were engrossed with the raising of funds for 
 parish improvements and the preparation of boxes for 
 missionaries. The societies and their membership 
 quadrupled in number in five years. I^ay-readers had 
 first appeared in Alabama, so far as can be ascertained 
 from memory and records, in 1861, St. Paul's Church, 
 Greensboro, being kept open by lay-service during the 
 interval of six months between the removal of the 
 Rev. Mr. Banister and the arrival of the Rev. Mr. 
 Cobbs. They had done service again, at Marion and 
 Uniontown, in 1865; but for years their numbers had 
 been small and their duties nominal, their chief sphere 
 of action being to read the prayers and lessons for the 
 minister. In rare instances they had been known to 
 do missionary work, and not infrequently they had, 
 as at Greensboro, kept the church doors open between 
 rectorships; but their availability did not develop 
 fully until about 1880, when the necessity lay upon 
 the Bishop, and was recognized by the laity, of extem- 
 porizing an unordained and unsalaried diaconate to 
 
 means, was satisfied to serve the parish for less than his 
 traveling expenses. After his death Opelika's independence 
 ceased, and that congregation and the congregation at Auburn 
 were conjoined, and served by a minister receiving aid from 
 the Board of Missions. 
 
274 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 meet the exigencies of diocesan development. From 
 this time forward men of ability offered themselves or 
 were sought out by their minister. The Bishop, re- 
 posing in this new force a confidence that they never 
 betrayed, added to their commission as lay-readers, in 
 some instances ' ' power to exhort ' ' — a faculty differ- 
 ing from that of preaching by less than any apprecia- 
 ble distinction. The majority of the lay-readers did 
 good service at the smaller places — Uniontown, Fauns- 
 dale, Eutaw, Prattville, Troy, Geneva, Columbia, and 
 the like. Of the larger parishes only Christ Church, 
 Mobile, seemed to realize the vast reserve of lay- 
 energy only waiting to be evoked to evangelize the 
 whole surrounding country. 
 
 5. The number of confirmations steadily increased, 
 until in 1889 more than five hundred persons received 
 the I,aying-on-of-Hands. I,ess than half as many 
 were confirmed in the following year, the Bishop's 
 illness allowing but few visitations. 
 
 6. The general spirit of hopefulness gave men the 
 courage to try -greater things and the ability to accom- 
 plish them. At one time six churches were awaiting 
 consecration, having been built and completed almost 
 simultaneously without debt. ' ' Divide and over- 
 come ' ' became the cry in three cities that had each 
 been content with one congregation, and soon the 
 Holy Comforter, Montgomery; St. Mary's, Birming- 
 ham; and St. Michael and All Angels', Anniston, 
 were living, growing parishes. The last-named parish 
 was due to the gift by Mr. John W. Noble, of Annis- 
 ton, of a magnificent pile of buildings consisting of 
 
CHUR CH IN ALABAMA. 275 
 
 church, chapel, parish house, and rectory, built of 
 stone, after the Norman order of architecture, at a cost 
 of more than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. 
 It was established for the benefit of the poorer classes, 
 but the anticipated increase of population was checked, 
 just as the church was completed, by the collapse 
 of values throughout the mineral regions, and St. 
 Michael's has apparently yet many years to wait 
 before it enters upon its destiny. About the time 
 of the completion of St. Michael and All Angels' 
 Church, Mr. Josiah Morris gave a ten thousand dol- 
 lar chapel to St. John's, Montgomery, while Christ 
 Church, Mobile, was enabled by the hard work of the 
 women, assisted by the munificence of Mr. H. A. 
 Schroeder, to whom the parish already owed its rec- 
 tory, to build a thoroughly modern parish-house cost- 
 ing ten thousand dollars. A chapel costing the same 
 amount was given to the Church of the Nativity, 
 Huntsville, by Mrs. Wilson Bibb, as a memorial of 
 her husband and little daughter. 
 
 Such were some of the more encouraging features 
 of the diocesan life in the later 'Eighties. 
 
 On March 15, 1888, Bishop Wilmer issued a cir- 
 cular letter announcing that on account of his failing 
 health and increasing inability to give the necessary 
 oversight to the missionary work he would ask the 
 Council at its approaching session to elect an Assist- 
 ant Bishop. The Bishop issued this letter without 
 sounding public opinion, but public opinion was not 
 slow in declaring itself. The proposition met with all 
 but unanimous opposition, both by clergy and by laity. 
 
276 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 They had not expected such a proposition, and the 
 time was too short for them to come to a well-balanced 
 decision. Moreover, Assistant Bishops were not as 
 plentiful as Coadjutors are today. All that was 
 known of the working of a double Episcopate was 
 derived from the custom in Virginia of always having 
 an Assistant ; and the clergy were afraid of the possi- 
 bilities. When, therefore, the Council convened, the 
 Bishop withdrew his notification. 
 
 Though the Churchmen" of Alabama were unwilling 
 to elect an Assistant Bishop they were desirous to give 
 the Bishop all possible non-episcopal assistance in his 
 work. Accordingly, the Council of 1888 proceeded 
 to create an office to which the Board of Missions 
 should give the title. The Board called the officer 
 "Archdeacon," and the Council elected as first 
 (and, so far (1898), only) Archdeacon of the diocese 
 the Rev. Horace Stringfellow, D. D. The duty of the 
 Archdeacon was to relieve the Bishop of all detail 
 work and to have general supervision of missionary 
 posts. 
 
 The same Council also provided for an Evangelist, 
 but in tying to this provision another, that two thous- 
 and dollars must be pledged specifically for the mis- 
 sionary's salary, over and above the regular mission- 
 ary offerings, before the Evangelist should be ap- 
 pointed, it adopted the most effective method to kill 
 the scheme at its birth. It is not improper to remark, 
 in passing, that the Council has never been able to 
 express the diocese's need for an Evangelist save in 
 terms of two thousand dollars. It had added this 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 277 
 
 same proviso to a like resolution adopted in 1887. It 
 re-iterated the provision in 1891, and this time ren- 
 dered success more improbable than ever by post- 
 poning the appointment of the Evangelist until a 
 salary of $2,500 a year should be guaranteed for three 
 years. 
 
 In fulfilling his archdiaconal functions Dr. String- 
 fellow visited many of the smaller congregations, 
 when the onerous duties of his own large parish 
 permitted, and set many things in order. The brusque- 
 ness of his manner and the positiveness of his convic- 
 tions sometimes made ministers and congregations 
 unwilling to follow his counsel, but ultimately wisdom 
 justified her child. In some cases the Archdeacon 
 was called upon to settle serious difficulties and mis- 
 understandings. Among other cases he was able to 
 secure the peaceable settlement of an unnecessary 
 ritual squabble that had arisen in the little congrega- 
 tion of St. Peter's, Talladega. The minister in charge 
 of this parish had accepted two memorial vases, and, 
 in placing them on the re-table, had taken occasion to 
 discuss and defend ritualistic practices and symbolism 
 in general. He had then set up a strong defence 
 of these vases in particular, before anyone had been 
 offended at their presence. Thus he invited and 
 succeeded in bringing about ritual discussion and 
 parochial division in a congregation that had pre- 
 viously felt no interest in such questions, and created 
 an abnormal apprehension of ritualism that has not 
 been quieted to this day. Under Dr. Stringfellow's 
 
278 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 advice the minister returned to Fond du Eac and the 
 congregation to church. 
 
 It had been hoped by the more sanguine that with 
 an Evangelist, an Archdeacon, and a Bishop, the 
 supervision of missionary operations would be com- 
 plete. So it would have been had the Evangelist 
 been appointed, and the Bishop been able to visit all 
 the places where confirmees were awaiting him. But 
 the evangelist movement came to naught, and the 
 Bishop was subject to more frequently recurring ill- 
 ness. In 1889-90 he visited, in addition to the Mobile 
 parishes, only the congregations at Evergreen, Green- 
 ville, Hayneville, Lowndesboro, Selma, Uniontown, 
 Faunsdale, Anniston, Jacksonville, and Talladega — 
 fourteen in all. It was now evident to all that the 
 well-being of the diocese demanded more Episcopal 
 service than it was possible for Bishop Wilmer to give. 
 
 When the Council of 1890 met in St. John's chapel, 
 Montgomery, on May 20, it was the determination of 
 not a few to reopen the matter of electing an Assistant 
 Bishop. Bishop Wilmer made no suggestion one way 
 or another. At Huntsville he had said that he would 
 not again trouble the diocese with the question, and 
 that the initiative in any subsequent reviving of it 
 must be taken by the Council. The Council deter- 
 mined to take the initiative. 
 
 Dr. Stringfellow was presiding, Bishop Wilmer, 
 though in the city, not being able to attend all the 
 sessions. A committee was appointed to wait on the 
 Bishop ' ' with a view of ascertaining from him his 
 wishes as to any episcopal assistance in the future." 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 279 
 
 The committee was appointed only after vigorous 
 opposition, led by Dr. Stringfellow, who deprecated 
 any action whatever on the ground that the financial 
 barrier was insuperable. Dr. Stringfellow himself 
 was made chairman of the committee, and he ap- 
 pointed as the remaining members the Revs. J. M. 
 Banister, D. D. , and R. W. Barnwell, and Messrs. J. H. 
 Fitts and R. M. Nelson. The committee had not 
 been charged to express the Council's wishes; its in- 
 structions were to ascertain the Bishop's wishes. The 
 Bishop did not purpose to recede from his position 
 taken three years before. He had no wishes; an 
 assistant would be necessary in the future, but none 
 was needed imperatively now; he trusted, on his 
 physician's authority, that his present disability was 
 but temporary; he expected to call in a neighboring 
 Bishop to complete the visitation of the diocese. 
 
 This was such an answer as they who knew Bishop 
 Warner might have expected, but it was not an an- 
 swer that satisfied the majority of the Council. At 
 the noon recess the younger clergy and laymen, led 
 by the Rev. J. A. Van Hoose, determined to press 
 forward and to make known the Council's wishes to 
 the Bishop. Immediately upon reassembling, the 
 Council had before it a resolution that it would meet 
 at 5 p. M. in Committee of the Whole ' ' to consider 
 whether, in their judgment, the time has not arrived 
 when the health and long and faithful services of the 
 Bishop of the diocese demand such help as love and 
 devotion to him and to the Church press upon us to 
 offer, and to take into consideration the election of an 
 
280 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Assistant Bishop." The battle over this proposition 
 was won by its advocates after three hours of deter- 
 mined opposition. For another hour and a half in 
 Committee of the Whole it was attempted to stave off 
 the inevitable, but at 6:30 p. m. a series of resolutions 
 was adopted declaring that the Bishop needed an 
 assistant, and that the Council desired the Bishop's 
 permission to proceed to the election of an Assistant 
 Bishop, promising that the payment of a salary of 
 three thousand dollars to the assistant should not in- 
 volve any reduction in the Bishop's salary. A 
 strongly favorable committee — the Rev. Messrs. R. 
 W. Barnwell and Philip A. Fitts, and Mr. R. M. 
 Nelson — communicated this action to the Bishop, who, 
 next morning, gave his canonical consent to the elec- 
 tion. 
 
 The Council entered upon the election that after- 
 noon. Three clergymen were placed in nomination — 
 the Rev. Thomas F. Gailor of Sewanee, the Rev. 
 Robert S. Barrett of Atlanta, and the Rev. J. S. 
 Lindsay, D. D., of Boston. These clergymen were 
 not candidates. They did not seek the office. They 
 were nominated by their friends without previous 
 consultation. Their friends, however, did considera- 
 ble electioneering. It cannot be doubted that Mr. 
 Gailor would have been elected but for the apparently 
 well-founded assertion of some who knew him that he 
 had unalterably cast in his lot with Tennessee. The 
 choice then fell upon Dr. Lindsay, who, though rector 
 of St. Paul's Church, Boston, was a native Virginian. 
 A committee was appointed to notify Dr. Lindsay of 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 28 1 
 
 his election. The parishes met the problem of the 
 Assistant Bishop's support by voluntarily increasing 
 their assessments. Then the Council adjourned. The 
 committee on notification discharged its duty. Dr. 
 Lindsay declined the office. 
 
 After ascertaining the further wishes of the diocese 
 Bishop Wilmer convoked a special Council, which 
 met in St. Paul's Church, Selma, on October 29, 
 once more to elect an Assistant Bishop. The Rev. 
 Mr. Barrett's friends, led by the Rev. L- W. Rose, of 
 Birmingham, and Mr. George A. Wilkins, of Selma, 
 again brought forward the name of Mr. Barrett. The 
 clergy, convinced that the representations that had 
 prevented his election at Montgomery were unfounded, 
 nominated him to the laity by a vote of fifteen out 
 of a total of twenty-one votes cast— the Rev. Henry Mel- 
 ville Jackson, D. D., of Richmond, receiving four 
 votes, and the Rev. Philip A. H. Brown, of New 
 York, two. When the nomination was communicated 
 to the laity the strongest Churchmen in the diocese 
 stood shoulder to shoulder in opposition to it. The 
 nomination was rejected by a vote of fourteen parishes 
 to seven. 
 
 Upon the rejection of their nomination the clergy 
 
 again withdrew for consultation. The friends of Mr. 
 
 Barrett urged that the name of their nominee should 
 
 once more be sent in to the laity. Failing in this, 
 
 they next sought, but unsuccessfully, to bring about 
 
 an adjournment of the Council without nomination. 
 
 Many names were informally discussed, but none 
 
 present seemed to have personal acquaintance with 
 — 19 
 
282 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 those whom they suggested, and at length only three 
 were formally nominated — the Rev. R. W. Barnwell, 
 of Selma, the Rev. Joseph Blount Cheshire, of Char- 
 lotte, N. C. , and the Rev. Henry Melville Jackson, 
 D. D. , of Richmond. The nomination of Mr. Barn- 
 well met with general approbation, and by almost 
 unanimous vote the clergy were about to nominate 
 him to the laity when he arose and most earnestly as- 
 serted that no earthy consideration could induce him 
 to accept the office even though the laity should elect 
 him. Despite this statement he came within two votes 
 of the clerical nomination on the first ballot. As it 
 was, repeated ballots were taken, some of the clergy 
 firing aimlessly into the air and some using blank 
 cartridges. Finally the clergy returned to the nave of 
 the church for consultation with the laity. It was 
 now far into the night, and the attempt to adjourn 
 without action was renewed. Again it failed. Once 
 more the clergy prepared to ballot, this time without 
 withdrawing, and on the second ballot, taken amid 
 the breathless excitement of a large gathering of the 
 public, the Rev. Dr. Jackson received the clerical 
 nomination by a majority of one vote. The laity im- 
 mediately and unanimously concurred in the nomina- 
 tion, and Dr. Jackson was declared Assistant- Bishop- 
 elect. The Rev. Messrs. J. L. Lancaster (who had 
 nominated Dr. Lindsay and again had nominated Dr. 
 Jackson), R. W. Barnwell, and Gardiner C. Tucker 
 were appointed the committee to notify Dr. Jackson 
 of his election. 
 
 One or two clergymen, dissatisfied with the election, 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 283 
 
 made certain representations to the Bishop-elect as to 
 diocesan conditions, hoping that he would decline the 
 office. Their hope was in vain, and Dr. Jackson was 
 consecrated in St. Paul's Church, Selma, on January 
 21, 1891, Bishop Wilmer consecrating, Bishop Ran- 
 dolph (Assistant of Virginia) preaching the sermon, 
 and Bishops Thompson of Mississippi and Peterkin 
 of West Virginia presenting the Bishop-elect. All of 
 these, together with Bishop Howe of South Carolina, 
 united in the Laying-on-of-Hands. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD. 
 
 THE first particular that attracts attention as we 
 review the history of the Church in Alabama 
 for the past generation is the apparent strangeness of 
 diocesan development. From 1861 to 1872 the com- 
 municants were quadrupled in number, increasing 
 from 1,683 to 6,196; the contributions were sextupled, 
 rising from twenty thousand dollars to one hundred 
 and twenty-five thousand; but the number of congre- 
 gations had not materially changed, and the number 
 of clergymen in the active exercise of the ministry 
 was exactly the same. Many of the old-time clergy 
 had passed, and younger men filled their places. 
 Many of the country congregations had disappeared 
 in the general movement townwards, and while new 
 parishes appeared here and there the net increase in 
 the whole diocese was only twelve; and that, despite 
 the fact that, on an average, one new church was 
 built in every year of the entire period. 
 
 We need not go far afield in search of ample ex- 
 planation of this apparent combination of life and 
 dry-rot. In these thirty years Montgomery, Selma, 
 Birmingham, Anniston, and Huntsville, at first small 
 towns, villages, or even without existence, became 
 cities. Their growth was at the expense of the 
 country and was out of all proportion to the growth 
 
 of population in the state at large. As the cities 
 
 284 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 285 
 
 grew the city congregations increased in like propor- 
 tion. As the villages and country were depopulated 
 the rural congregations were diminished. As financial 
 weakness came upon these little congregations some 
 ministers were compelled to seek work elsewhere. 
 Those that remained counteracted the reduced ability 
 of single parishes by increasing the number of their 
 charges. As the numbers and financial ability of the 
 urban congregations increased new parishes were or- 
 ganized and additional clergy called. Thus the loss 
 in the rural clergy was met by the gain of clergymen 
 in the city, and the extinction of country congrega- 
 tions was about offset by the formation of new city 
 parishes, while the average parish numbered many 
 more communicants because of the increased propor- 
 tion of city parishes. 
 
 Nothing more clearly shows the transition of the 
 diocese from a rural to an urban Church than the fact 
 that while in 1862 one-half the communicants lived 
 in the larger towns, in 1892 two-thirds lived therein; 
 and that while the city growth of communicants in 
 the same length of time was four hundred per cent. 
 (or from eight hundred to thirty-two hundred) the 
 country growth was only fifty per cent, (or from eight 
 hundred to twelve hundred). That is to say, the 
 Church in Alabama has in thirty years grown four 
 times as rapidly in the cities as in the smaller towns 
 and the country.* 
 
 * Of the sixty-six church buildings at the end of this period 
 exactly one-half were built since 1862. These church build- 
 ings represent thirty-three new congregations, and testify 
 
286 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Not less remarkable than the Church's peculiar 
 growth was its absolute freedom from theological and 
 ecclesiastical controversy. The clergy represented 
 every school of thought that the Church tolerates, the 
 questions of the day gave opportunity for wide differ- 
 ences, and pugnacious men could have stirred up 
 much trouble in diocesan consultations. The Cum- 
 mins schism agitated the Church at large, ritual con- 
 formity was sought through hard and fast limitations, 
 and the doctrine of Regeneration, as contained in the 
 Office for Holy Baptism, was a battlefield wherein 
 many doughty knights jousted and broke spears. 
 The clergy of Alabama were interested in these mat- 
 ters, and approached and treated them according to 
 individual bias. - Some occasionally disputed in gen- 
 eral Church journals with brethren of other sections. 
 But the general temper was practical rather than 
 speculative, and each attended to his own business — 
 remaining steadfast in the communion of the Church, 
 rendering the services according to the simple inter- 
 pretation of unaffected dignity, baptizing the children 
 
 to what few have sufficiently considered — that one-half the 
 parishes and mission stations in Alabama were organized in 
 the first thirty years of Bishop Wilmer's episcopate. The 
 congregations organized in this period are: Athens, Annistoh 
 (3), Avondale, Auburn, Bessemer, Birmingham (2), Bon 
 Secour, Clayton, Coalburg, Columbia, Dallas County (Grace), 
 Decatur, Evergreen Fowl River, Gadsden, Gainesville, Hayne- 
 ville, Mount Meigs, Montevallo, Montgomery (1), Prattville, 
 Piedmont, Sheffield, Scottsboro, Talladega, Trinity, Troy, 
 Union Springs, Whistler, and Woodlawn. (Journal of 1892, 
 pp. 42 and 43.) 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 287 
 
 and trusting that God gave them new birth in the 
 water of regeneration. Parochialism, prudence, and 
 toleration make an incombustible mixture; and these 
 were three distinct notes of the clerical character. 
 
 But perhaps it was Bishop Wilmer's catholicity of 
 spirit that contributed more than all other factors to 
 this diocesan peace. The Bishop did not consider 
 himself wiser than the Church, and did-not abuse the 
 Church's toleration, as some Bishops did, by using 
 her catholicity for a cloak of sectarianism. He was 
 very desirous that the General Convention should 
 make a pronouncement upon the lawful limitations of 
 ritual, but when the General Convention refused to 
 enact the desired legislation he refused to declare un- 
 lawful what the national Church tolerated. He had 
 clearly defined opinions upon many points of contro- 
 versy, but he did not canonize them. He made known 
 his opinions, but he did not urge them, or transform 
 them into a " godly admonition," unless a congrega- 
 tion took offence at its minister's eccentricities of 
 ritual or of dogma. If a clergyman avowed his dis- 
 belief in the efficacy of prayer to change atmospheric 
 conditions, and his congregation expressed no desire 
 in time of drought to pray for rain , in time of flood to 
 pray for fair weather, the clergyman and his congre- 
 gation were at liberty to indulge their Mohammedan 
 fatalism to its farthest reach. If a clergyman held hazy 
 views of Apostolic Succession, questioning whether 
 it were essential to the being or only to the well-being 
 of the Church, but did not, in his incertitude, invite 
 unordained ministers to preach in his church and ad- 
 
288 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 minister the Sacraments, no Episcopal thunder rolled, 
 and the utmost suggestion was that the head, and not 
 the heart, must settle a matter of which Holy Scrip- 
 ture and ancient authors give sufficient evidence. On 
 the other hand, when unleavened bread was intro- 
 duced it was not viewed as symbolic of Peter's Pence, 
 but was highly commended by the Bishop, and all but 
 universally adopted by the clergy, as being in sub- 
 stance" the Bread of original institution and in form 
 most suitable for a decent administration of the Lord's 
 Supper. When, too, genuflections, candles, anli- 
 phons, Eucharistic vestments, and the like, were in- 
 troduced by a few clergymen in small parishes, their 
 innovations were left to work out their destiny in the 
 congregation where they originated.* It was only 
 when fundamentals were attacked, and the teachings 
 of Christ as recorded in Holy Scripture were explained 
 away, that the Bishop reproved both publicly and 
 privately, and brought about, if not a return to purer 
 doctrine, at least a discontinuance of heterodox teach- 
 ing. Zwingianism and Transubstantiation, Mariola- 
 try and Invocation of Saints, Papal Infallibility, the 
 doctrine of Posthumous Purgation, and that of Univer- 
 salism, were unsparingly brought under the search- 
 light of Christ's words and impartially condemned as 
 incompatible with Revelation. 
 Through the whole generation a steady, uniform im- 
 
 * The wisdom of this policy of non-interference is shown by 
 the fact that except in one, and that a very weak, parish, ex- 
 cessive ornateness of ritual, whether doctrinal or simply aes- 
 thetic, has never survived the removal of its originator. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 289 
 
 provement in the conduct of public services was ap- 
 parent. When Bishop Wilmer came to the diocese 
 some of the clergy, overawed by sectarianism and 
 willing to throw it a sop in return for toleration, were 
 remarkably lax in their conduct of public worship, not 
 infrequently interjecting extemporaneous prayers, 
 and in more instances than one gathering the offerings 
 of the people by sending around a hat, as if to reward 
 the preacher for his sermon, and then indifferently 
 thrusting it under the Communion Table or behind 
 the vestry-door.* There was no rule, save that of 
 personal inclination, as to the behavior of the congre- 
 gation during the Baptismal, Confirmation, Marriage, 
 and Burial services, and the majority remained seated 
 throughout as mere onlookers at a spectacle in which 
 they had no part. All this the Bishop succeeded in 
 banishing, persistently urging uniformity and reason- 
 able ritual on the clergy and their congregations, and 
 finally bringing about a dignified symbolism, im- 
 pressive by its very simplicity to him that seeks to 
 understand it. But almost invariably extravagant 
 ritual and extreme dogmatism lived short lives. Rash 
 attempts at boy-choirs in St. Wilfred's, Marion, and 
 Trinity, Mobile, were laughed to an early grave, and 
 it was not until Decembers, 1880, in St. John's, Mont- 
 gomery, that the first permanent vested boy-choir was 
 organized in the diocese. Choral services were spo- 
 radic, met with small favor, and did not linger long. 
 The exchange of surplice for preaching-gown and 
 black gloves, in honor of the sermon, was a harmless 
 
 * Bishop Wilmer's Convention Address for 1871, page 44. 
 
290 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 bit of Evangelical ritual that also died long ago, but 
 in Mobile the black gown is still used at funerals. 
 
 But while theological and ritual controversy were 
 happily absent the clergy succeeded, with the un- 
 selfish assistance of the many lawyers in attendance 
 upon Councils, in improving themselves in dialectics 
 by perennially offering and opposing amendments to 
 the diocesan Constitution and Canons, and by period- 
 ically hauling the entire system over the coals of re- 
 vision. At irregular intervals the canons were 
 amended into irreconcilable confusion , and committees 
 were appointed to harmonize them by preparing a 
 new set. These were, as a rule, hastily prepared, 
 unanimousily adopted, and continually amended. 
 By good fortune, small attendance at Councils, and 
 economy in distributing the Journals, comparatively 
 few knew much about the law department of the dio- 
 cese ; and the Church did her work as well as if she 
 had no canons, and lived as healthily as do all bodies 
 that are unconscious that they have such a thing as a 
 constitution. 
 
 Some diocesan legislation was very interesting. In 
 1867 deacons could sit and speak in Council, but not 
 until 1876 were they allowed to vote. In 1868, and 
 again in 1874, the deputies to the General Convention 
 were instructed to urge that body to set forth an au- 
 thorized translation of the Nicene Creed for use in 
 churches, the Filioque to be omitted as an interpola- 
 tion without ecumenical authority, however true the 
 doctrine. As early as 1869 it was required that' dele- 
 gates to the diocesan Convention should be cotnmuni- 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 29 1 
 
 cants,* but not till 1891 was alike restriction adopted 
 as to vestrymen. In 1871 the Convention refused, on 
 motion of the Rev. Dr. Fulton, to ratify a proposed 
 amendment to the Constitution of the national Church, 
 which provided that new dioceses could not be organ- 
 ized until they had satisfied the General Convention 
 that they had a sufficient endowment fund to support 
 the Bishop. In 1886 the name "Convention," by 
 which the diocesan legislature had been known, was 
 laid aside as having political connotations, and in its 
 stead was resumed the more ecclesiastical title ' ' Coun- 
 cil," which had been borne during the Civil War. 
 In the same year the Council memorialized the Gen- 
 eral Convention on the subject of lay-readers, urging 
 that they should be at least twenty-three years old, 
 that they should be required to begin the service at 
 the I,ord's Prayer, and that they should be instructed 
 to wear, as the canonical dress of lay-readers, "a short 
 surplice worn over a cassock, without any stole or 
 other ecclesiastical vestment or ornament."! About 
 
 * When the vote was taken and the result announced, two 
 unconfirmed delegates arose and took formal and indignant 
 leave of the Convention. They were both back again the 
 following year — confirmed. 
 
 t The whole is wiser than any of its parts, and this memo- 
 rial, which was adapted from a similar memorial presented in 
 the same year by the Missionary Jurisdiction of Colorado, 
 brought about no change in the existing canon. Twelve 
 years before, in 1874, Bishop Bedell, of Ohio, wrote to a young 
 candidate for Holy Orders, who was desirous to wear a choris- 
 ter's cassock and cotta when officiating as lay-reader: " As to 
 your request to wear a ' cotta ': I am much obliged by your 
 description of it. But it is evidently a garment not known 
 
292 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the same time the dignity of the Episcopate received 
 additional safeguard, without diminution of its influ- 
 ence, by a provision that the Bishop should not par- 
 ticipate in any debate in the Council, but should have 
 the privilege of delivering his sentiments upon the 
 matter debated immediately before putting the,ques. 
 tion. 
 
 This last mentioned action of the Council was in 
 line with the uniform respect with which the Church 
 in Alabama has ever treated its Bishops. No attempt 
 has ever been consciously made to abridge the Episco- 
 pal power, or to usurp any of its prerogatives. * Its 
 Bishops have never been deemed infallible, and 
 clergymen and laymen alike have dared differ from 
 them on matters both of discipline and doctrine, of 
 opinion and of dogma, but they have been regarded 
 as possessing inalienable rights and as having excep- 
 tional mental and spiritual gifts. In 1871 some dio- 
 cesan Churchmen would fain have erected the Bishop 
 into a third branch of the Council, with legislative 
 
 to our Church. The House of Bishops, in Bishop White's 
 day, described the garments clerical to be ' the gown, the 
 bands, and the surplice,' and expressly forbade candidates for 
 the ministry to wear either. I cannot give you permission to 
 wear either of those; nor can I allow you to wear a garment 
 not known to the Church, in the diocese of Ohio." 
 
 * This has been largely due to the fact that there has been 
 no straining of the Episcopal authority. Bishop Wilmer has 
 often said, concerning propositions to confer greater canon- 
 ical power on the Episcopate, that such action would be un- 
 wise; that if a Bishop is the right man he has already more 
 power than he wants; if he is a weak man he cannot have too 
 little. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 293 
 
 powers co-ordinate with those of the clergy and the 
 laity; but Dr. Fulton succeeded in having the matter 
 referred to a committee, which, it was hoped, the Gen- 
 eral Convention would some day appoint to take all 
 such grave constitutional measures into consideration. 
 Twenty years after a more zealous clergyman pursued 
 this proposition to its logical outcome by suggesting 
 that all diocesan legislation be left ' ' where it properly 
 belongs — in the hands of the Bishop;" but the Coun- 
 cil was unable to receive the proposition seriously. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 AARON'S SONS AND HUR'S. 
 
 IT is not the acts alone that interest us most in a 
 study of the past. We desire to learn somewhat 
 of the actors. We want to feel the pulse of person- 
 ality, and know that the things of which we read were 
 done by men of flesh and blood, neither superhuman 
 nor marionetic, but of like passions with ourselves. 
 
 Some there are who feel this necessity, but can 
 yield to it only in part. To their vision one vast 
 character — a lyincoln, a Napoleon, a Washington, a 
 Caesar — fills the canvass, and all others are but pyg- 
 mies. Yet, in truth, it were less wise to exalt a 
 leader by speaking lightly of his subordinates than to 
 elevate him by exalting his subordinates; for the gen- 
 eral will always be above his lieutenants. 
 
 These remarks have pointed application in the past 
 conditions of the Church in Alabama. We should be 
 led to infer from much that has been written that 
 only two strong mental and spiritual forces have ap- 
 peared in the entire history of the diocese — Bishop 
 Cobbs and Bishop Wilmer. Yet as in the first episco- 
 pate, so in the second there were other strong person- 
 alities — lesser lights, it is true, yet of great mass and 
 independent power. Hanson, Cushman, Massey, 
 Pierce, Beckwith, Stickney, and Nevius, of the clergy, 
 and White, Bunker, Taylor, Ross, S. G. Jones, Pol- 
 lard, and Bryce, of the laity, belonged to both regimes. 
 
 294 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 295 
 
 The work of Stickney, Banister, R. H. Cobbs, Beard, 
 Hunt, Stringfellow, Fulton, Drysdale, Everhart, John- 
 ston, and the Tuckers (besides others previously men- 
 tioned), lies within Bishop Wilmer's episcopate; as 
 does also the ecclesiastical activity of I,efebvre, Buell, 
 Bond, and Dawson, of the departed, and a score of 
 prominent Church-workers now living. These men 
 were not lay-figures, but were living, breathing, 
 human beings, some knowledge of whose personality 
 will add to our interest in their times. 
 
 Francis R. Hanson was a typical clergyman of the 
 the old school. A conservative Churchman, the title 
 ' ' Father, ' ' which affection bestowed on him in his 
 old age, was not indicative of his theological views. 
 Quiet and undemonstrative, he refrained alike from 
 ordinary marks of affection and from emotional mani- 
 festation of religious feeling. Yet these suppressed 
 emotions were overpowering forces in the determina- 
 tion of his actions. Shortly after ordination to the 
 priesthood he felt impelled to offer himself for the 
 foreign mission field. He was accepted, and sent to 
 China. There hard and bitter and humiliating expe- 
 rience taught him that emotion had led him into mis- 
 understanding the voice of God. He had no aptitude 
 for missionary work among the heathen, and he was 
 entirely lacking in ability to learn a foreign language. 
 He had been loving enough to be mastered by emo- 
 tion; he was now sensible enough to understand what 
 God said to him through the voice of his limitations; 
 and he came back home. His life work was done in 
 Alabama. For forty-one years he labored within a 
 
296 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 radius of twenty-five miles, being rector of St. John's- 
 in-the-Prairies, St. Andrews', Macon, and Trinity, 
 Demopolis, from 1839 to 1873. Shortly after the close 
 of civil war he made a tour through some of the 
 Northern dioceses to solicit funds to rebuild the then 
 ruined church at Demopolis. During this tour the 
 rectorship of a beautiful church was offered him. The 
 support was comfortable, the surroundings were at- 
 tractive, and he was growing old and infirm. He in- 
 stantly declined the call, and when pressed for his 
 reason responded: "The people of Alabama shared 
 with me their prosperity, and now I will share with 
 them their adversity. ' ' 
 
 Horace Stringfellow, D. D., rector of St. John's 
 Church, Montgomery, was the most prominent clergy- 
 man of Bishop Wilmer's entire episcopate. He was 
 made deacon by Bishop Whittingham and priest by 
 Bishop Meade. His earliest ministry was spent in 
 Virginia. At first his father, himself a clergyman of 
 note, was distressed at the increasing elevation of his 
 son's Churchmanship, but subsequently became rec- 
 onciled to it when he saw that his son was not bound 
 to the " Harlot of the Seven Hills. " Both before 
 and after the civil war he was rector of Grace Church, 
 Indianapolis, and during his second incumbency built 
 St. Paul's Cathedral at a cost of one hundred thous- 
 and dollars, superintending, as was his wont, the 
 minutest details even of brick-laying and stone-cut- 
 ting. He came to Alabama and St. John's in 1870 at 
 Bishop Wilmer's urgent solicitation. From the first 
 the soundness of his judgment and the strength of his 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 297 
 
 will set him apart from the multitude. His strong 
 convictions and unyielding temper were detrimental 
 to his popularity among chance acquaintances, while 
 his absent-mindedness and great stature, combining to 
 make him overlook those whom he met, were instru- 
 mental in wounding much self-esteem. But all yield- 
 ed to him the honor due remarkable energy and 
 ability, and those who knew him best admired and 
 loved him most. 
 
 A strong but not extreme Churchman, his energy 
 was not absorbed by ecclesiastical activities, but went 
 out into active works of mercy and morality. At one 
 time he stirred the community so deeply on the sub- 
 ject of a proposed cock-pit to be held at the State Fair 
 that the management were but too glad to strike the 
 brutalizing exhibit from their list of attractions. At 
 another time when all combined action had failed he 
 personally undertook first the building and later on 
 the rehabilitation of the Infirmary, an institution 
 sorely needed in Montgomery, and he succeeded in so 
 interesting a few gentlemen, notably Ignatius Pollak, 
 that money was forthcoming to pay all expenses until 
 brighter days came. At social gatherings he bubbled 
 over with spontaneous cheerfulness. True, he some- 
 times invited a friend to breakfast, but forgot the in- 
 vitation and cheerfully entertained his hungry guest 
 in the library whither he himself had repaired after 
 an early meal ; but after a time men learned to over- 
 look such small matters as these, excused themselves 
 after a brief visit, and hied them to some restaurant for 
 bodily refreshment. In 1874, knowing that well nigh 
 — 20 
 
2 9 8 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 every delegate to the Convention, which was to meet in 
 Eufaula, must pass through Montgomery and remain 
 several hours, Dr. Stringfellow wrote a separate note 
 to each clerical and lay delegate asking him to lunch- 
 eon on the day before Council. Each supposed that 
 only he was thus remembered, but when the rectory 
 was reached late comers found the parlors filled and 
 almost the entire Convention present. The women of 
 the parish were there in force, and saw to it that the 
 luncheon was comfortably despatched and that the 
 Convention left the house in time to catch the after- 
 noon train for Eufaula. 
 
 Under Dr. Stringfellow 's rectorship St. John's 
 Church was greatly enlarged and beautified. Under 
 his immediate supervision, the new Christ Church, 
 Tuskaloosa, and the Church of the Holy Comforter, 
 Montgomery, were built; while he was interested in 
 the building and furnishing of other churches in 
 smaller towns. His fields of action were so many, 
 and his energy was so intense and unresting, that all 
 he asked of his congregation was, that they stand 
 aside and let him do the work. He would have no 
 parochial societies; he abhorred Easter Monday con- 
 gregational meetings and discouraged attendance at 
 them; and he gave the vestry to do only what it was 
 physically impossible to do himself. His counsels 
 controlled the diocesan Councils for at least a decade. 
 In later years he was generally chairman of the Com- 
 mittee on Canons; he was a member of the Standing 
 Committee eight years; and he was a deputy to the 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. , 299 
 
 General Convention, first from Indiana and then from 
 Alabama, twenty-seven years. He died in 1893. 
 
 Dr. John Fulton remained in Alabama only six 
 years, coming from Georgia in 1869 and going to 
 Indiana in 1874, but in that brief period he made a 
 lasting impress of his personality upon the diocese. 
 Already he was known as a canonist of great learning, 
 and his reputation was enhanced by the publication 
 of his Index Canonum in 1872, while he was rector of 
 Christ Church, Mobile. His views were based on 
 accurate information and were clear and compre- 
 hensive, and his expression of them was marked by 
 strict logical progression. He was always chairman 
 of the Committee on Canons, member of the Standing 
 Committee, and deputy to the General Convention. 
 Abstract propositions did not exhaust his energies, 
 nor did national and diocesan questions prevent him 
 from guarding zealously the interests of his parish. 
 Christ Church was a wealthy parish in those days, 
 and paid its rector a salary of $4,500. Dr. Fulton 
 was just thirty-five years old when he came to Ala- 
 bama; he was endowed to a rare degree with a per- 
 sonal magnetism that worked wonders upon pastoral 
 burdens; his gift for extemporaneous speaking was 
 extraordinary, and out of the full store of his ready 
 mind the thought of a half hour extracted the material 
 for a discourse brilliant and profound. The man was 
 a clear-headed worker, the parish was a fertile field, 
 and the harvest was plenteous. The Sunday congre- 
 gations crowded the church, the yearly confirmations 
 averaged twenty-five, and the annual income ranged 
 
3°Q HISTORY OF THE 
 
 from fifteen to twenty-five thousand dollars. In this 
 rectorship the parish debt was paid, and several 
 thousand dollars given to the Church Home for Girls. 
 Of the laymen who passed to their reward in the 
 first decade ot Bishop Wilmer's episcopate, one of the 
 most earnest was Prof. Hubert P. I^efebvre, who had 
 succeeded the Rev. J. Avery Shepherd, as principal of 
 Hamner Hall, Montgomery. Professor I^efebvre lived 
 only four years after coming to Alabama in 1869, but 
 those were years of good works and rapid develop- 
 ment into a Church helper. Despite the unfavorable 
 circumstances under which he assumed the manage- 
 ment of Hamner Hall, the school enrolled thirty 
 boarding pupils and one hundred day pupils in the 
 first year of his incumbency. Apart from his effi- 
 ciency as a teacher he possessed unusual aptitude for 
 parochial work. Under his superintendency the Sun- 
 day-school of St. John's attained an unusual degree 
 of prosperity, and contributed largely to the support 
 of the Bishop Cobbs Home for Orphans. He was 
 chiefly instrumental in organizing and energizing 
 the "Young Men's Episcopal Association " of Mont- 
 gomery, like the Mobile Brotherhood of the Church, 
 a local forerunner of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew. 
 This Association established and supported the paro- 
 chial school, wherein eighty children of the poor 
 received free tuition and, in many cases, free clothing. 
 In addition to these undertakings, Professor I<efebvre 
 was beginning to take a lively interest in matters 
 diocesan and was imparting his fire to others, when 
 his work ceased. 
 
CHURCH IN ALA BAMA. 3OI 
 
 David Buell was another layman of great intelli- 
 gence, weight of character, zeal of service, and lib- 
 erality of purse. A lawyer of prominence he was for 
 many years the" mainstay of St. Thomas' Church, 
 Greenville. The practice in public speaking which 
 he obtained at the bar rendered him exceptionally able 
 in the chancel. Under his lay-readership the congre- 
 gation, instead of decreasing, as is ordinarily the case 
 under lay-ministration in an organized parish, in- 
 creased steadily throughout his many months of con- 
 tinous service, and not without regret consented to re- 
 ceive once more ministrations from a resident priest. 
 
 But the list grows of those into whose labors the 
 present generation has entered, and our limits pre- 
 clude further extension of the roll. Yet six men 
 must be named, in passing, to ignore whom were to 
 ignore six of the strongest pillars of the diocese : 
 Joel White, modest, retiring, serving in the diocesan 
 Convention of 1834 an( i thenceforward to the Council 
 of 1896, first from Tuskaloosa, then from Montgom- 
 ery, and a deputy to the General Conventions of 1835, 
 1871, 1877, 1880, and 1892, the host of every prom- 
 inent man in the state for the last two generations ; 
 James Bond, the mainspring of St. John's, Mobile, 
 Chancellor of the diocese, or legal adviser of the 
 Bishop, member of the Standing Committee and of 
 the Committee on Canons, and deputy to the General 
 Convention ; Samuel G. Jones, a foundation stone of 
 Hamner Hall and of the original Church of the Holy 
 Comforter, Montgomery ; N. H. R. Dawson, who in 
 the twenty-six years in which he was treasurer of 
 
302 CHURCH I N ALABAMA. 
 
 the Bishop's Fund brought the wreckage of that fund 
 to thirty-five thousand dollars ; and Alexander R. 
 Bell, and Charles T. Pollard, quiet and unassuming, 
 perfect types of the Christian gentleman. 
 
 To such clergymen and laymen does the Church in 
 Alabama owe its present spiritual, theological, and 
 financial ability to ride out the storms and distresses 
 that assail it from time to time. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 
 
 THE author has now completed the undertaking 
 which he proposed to himself of writing a his- 
 tory of the Church in Alabama from the earliest times 
 down to the close of the undivided episcopate of Bishop 
 Wilmer; but he cannot lay down the pen without 
 briefly declaring present conditions and forecasting 
 the lines of future development. 
 
 The present condition, then, is this: The Orphan's 
 Home at Mobile has completed its endowment of 
 $36,000,* and no longer appeals to the Church for 
 assistance. The Bishop's Fund has increased to 
 $38,000, and by the sale of lands in the near future 
 will reach the limit of $50,000, when the necessity for 
 assessments on parishes will be obviated and the 
 Church will be free to give more generously to mis- 
 sionary development, t 
 
 The endowment of the Society for the Relief of Dis- 
 abled Clergy and the Widows and Orphans of Deceased 
 Clergy, after being laboriously brought by Christmas 
 offerings and annual dues to well-nigh $20,000, was 
 
 * The Bishop was compelled early in the present year (1898) 
 to expend $4,000 of the $40,000 endowment in purchasing 
 property, known as the "Widows' Row," adjoining the 
 Church Home for Girls. 
 
 t Councils and Finance Committees have for many years 
 wrestled with the question: What portion of the income from 
 
 303 
 
3°4 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 largely sacrificed to political apprehension, in 1896, 
 by the forced sale of Alabama bonds and the re-invest- 
 ment of the proceeds in lower grade of securities, 
 whose value is as yet indeterminate; and the work of 
 the past ten years must again be undertaken. The 
 Diocesan Missionary Society, without any endow- 
 ment, dependent entirely on free-will-offerings from 
 month to month, is supporting in part sixteen mis- 
 sionaries, who are ministering to eighty congregations. 
 
 the Bishop's Fund can properly be appropriated in any year 
 to supplement the assessments laid upon parishes? It has 
 been asserted that one-third of the income can thus be used, 
 and this proposition is determined upon on the supposition 
 that one-third of the whole amount saved after the War of 
 Secession belonged to the "Special Fund" [for which see 
 p. 89]. That this assertion has no foundation is evident from 
 these two forgotten facts: 
 
 1. During the War the two funds were confused, and no 
 separation of them was subsequently made. [Compare Jour- 
 nals: 1862, p. 24; 1863, p. 75; 1864, p. 27.] 
 
 2. The division now accepted was made in 1869 by new 
 Trustees— N. H. R. Dawson, George O. Baker, and A. G. 
 Mabry — on a purely arbitrary basis; and these Trustees say 
 " they have no means of distinguishing the notes belonging 
 to these two funds." |_See Journals: 1868, pp. 31 and 34; 
 1869, pp. 36 and 37.] 
 
 Hence all subsequent citation of this report is simply to use 
 a guess as basis for an argument. How wide of the mark the 
 guess probab y is may be estimated from the fact that while 
 in 1863 the Permanent Fund was $4,459 and the Special Fund 
 $23,561, the 1869 Trustees assigned a nominal value of only 
 $8,225 to the Special Fund and a value of $16,499 to the Per- 
 manent Fund. 
 
 Only one principle can be appealed to hereafter in the use 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 305 
 
 ^ — 
 
 Forty-two lay-readers are attempting to supply the 
 serious breach in the Apostolic ministry caused by the 
 practical obsoleteness of the diaconate. 
 
 The lines of future development may be accurately 
 forecasted by observation of the last two episcopates : 
 The episcopate of Bishop Cobbs was the period of Ex- 
 periment ; when it was tried what places would re- 
 ceive the Church and what would not. The undivided 
 episcopate of Bishop Wilmer was the period of Ad- 
 justment ; when the necessity was laid upon the 
 Church to meet the constantly changing conditions 
 brought about by the civil war, the panic of 1873, 
 and the boom of 1885, and to transplant her parishes 
 as her congregations were swept from country to 
 village, and from village to city. Today with no 
 panics, no booms in near prospect, but with sur- 
 rounding forces that apparently ensure the per- 
 manence of present industrial conditions and their 
 development along normal lines, it would seem that 
 the period upon which we are now entering is to be 
 the period of Aggression ; wherein the Church is to 
 go out into the byways and waste-places of Alabama 
 where her voice has never been heard, and to preach 
 the Gospel where it has never been heard in its com- 
 
 of the Bishop's Fund: It was intended to form an endow- 
 ment of $50,000 in order to free the parishes from taxation 
 forever, not to help them tide over a crisis. 
 
 Careful examination of the statements of this note has been 
 made by Mr. J. H. Pitts, Treasurer of the Diocese and of the 
 Bishop's Fund, and he gives them his unqualified endorse- 
 ment. 
 
306 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 pleteness, and where zeal has so long been left un- 
 tempered by knowledge. 
 
 The possibilities of such missionary aggression have 
 been illustrated in the last few years by two note- 
 worthy achievements — one in the agricultural regions 
 and one in the mineral : 
 
 Along the Alabama river missionaries had been 
 active, as we have seen, as early as 1855, and the 
 result of a few years' work was the establishment of 
 congregations at Claiborne, St. Stephen's, Camden, 
 Bladon, Butler, and Pushmataha. For some years 
 services had been conducted with greater or less fre- 
 quency and regularity ; but there were long periods 
 when no ministers could be secured, and many of the 
 Church-folk removed elsewhere, while nearly all of 
 those who remained left their first love and lost all in- 
 terest in the Church. The land lay fallow an entire 
 generation. At one place, indeed, — Camden — efforts 
 were long made to keep the spark alive, and the Rev. 
 F. B. I,ee made it many visits. But month by month 
 interest waned and congregations dwindled. At last 
 one beautiful day Mr. Lee came and found that no 
 provision had been made for services. He opened 
 the church, swept and dusted it, built a fire in the 
 stove, rang the bell, donned his surplice, and prepared 
 to enter the chancel. But no one was at the church ; 
 he waited some time, and no one came. In fact the 
 congregation had unanimously remained at home; 
 and Mr. Lee thereafter followed their example. But 
 in 1893 anew generation had grown up, many derelict 
 Churchmen had become tired of the bitter-sweet of 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 307 
 
 sectarianism, and a new attempt was made. Mr. 
 John G. Murray, whose active interest in the work of 
 the Selma chapter of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew 
 had energized his long suppressed intention to become 
 a candidate for Holy Orders, undertook, while but a 
 lay-reader, tbe work of breaking up the ground. In 
 a short while he was ministering to seven newly es- 
 tablished congregations, of which three — Mount 
 Pleasant and Perdue Hill, in Monroe County, and 
 Camden, in Wilcox County, — were on or near the 
 Alabama River, and four — Martin's Station, Orrville, 
 and Tyler's, in Dallas County, and Stanton in Chilton 
 County, — were grouped about Selma. They were 
 known as the "Alabama River Missions, " but the 
 Board of Missions was not called upon to help them 
 until the re-formation of the field in 1896, caused by 
 the removal of the Rev. Mr. Murray to Birmingham 
 and the death of the Rev. F. B. I^ee. Camden's old 
 church, long the abode of bats and goats, was rebuilt. 
 The old St. Luke's, Cahaba, was removed to Martin's 
 Station. The dismantled building at Benton was 
 sold, and the proceeds were used in the erection of a 
 church at Tyler's. 
 
 The other noteworthy missionary achievement of 
 the recent past is that of the Rev. T. J. Beard, D. D., 
 in the mineral regions about Birmingham. After his 
 most successful work in North Alabama in the 'Sixties, 
 and a brief sojourn in Arkansas, Mr. Beard had been 
 rector of St. John's, Mobile, eleven years, and of the 
 Church of the Advent, Birmingham, fourteen years. 
 In 1896 he resigned the latter charge and returned to 
 
308 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the evangelistic work for which he was so admirably- 
 fitted. In a few months he had about solved the long- 
 continuing problem: How to secure an Evangelist. 
 With Bessemer, Woodlawn, and Avondale as a nucleus 
 he proceeded to create a mission field. The many 
 railways radiating from Birmingham gave him easy 
 access to the mining camps and villages that had 
 sprung up on hill-sides and in valleys like so many 
 mushrooms. These villages grew like mushrooms, 
 but with their iron roots it was plainly not theirs to 
 die like mushrooms. Soon Dr. Beard was ministering 
 at intervals of from a week to a month to eighteen 
 congregations, generally visiting at least seven congre- 
 gations every week. Adamsville, Brookside, Carbon 
 Hill, Patton Mines, and Warrior, had never seen a 
 clergyman of the Church, but already they have had 
 baptisms and confirmations. Ashville, Blocton, Coal- 
 burg, Cullman, and Jasper, had long before fainted 
 by the wayside, but these are all now receiving both 
 spiritual and numerical edification. 
 
 In other portions of the diocese, too, successful 
 attempts to establish missions are on foot. Notable 
 among these is the Gulf Coast field. In the village 
 of Bon Secour, all whose inhabitants are supported by 
 fishing and oystering, only five or six families are not 
 parishioners of St. Peter's. At Oak Grove, a mission 
 established by the Mobile Brotherhood of St. Andrew, 
 at Citronelle, at Navy Cove, at Magnolia, at Point 
 Clear, and other places, has grown up a work not 
 dreamed of ten years ago, not undertaken five years 
 ago. 
 
CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 309 
 
 It may be truthfully affirmed that the development 
 of the Church in Alabama is limited only by the faith, 
 the energy, the persistence of its head, and its body — 
 the Bishops, and the clergy and laity. Many congre- 
 gations now forming will disappear and some of the 
 old congregations will die out, as congregations have 
 disappeared in the past, but many of the new and 
 most of the old will live, while in none will the disso- 
 lution of the congregation mean, of necessity, the loss 
 of the communicants. 
 
 Two fields call for early endeavor and promise a 
 goodly harvest. Southeast Alabama is a virgin field, 
 wherein Bishop never yet worked; it is rapidly increas- 
 ing in population, as railroads push in from every side, 
 and water power is developed. Northwest Alabama, 
 south of the Tennessee River, is just opening her arms 
 to the outside world. These two sections of the state 
 are today the most inviting fields, and if their invita- 
 tion shall soon be accepted the number of congrega- 
 tions in Alabama, which has increased fifty per cent, 
 in five years, will at the end of the next five years have 
 increased fifty per cent, on the present number. 
 
 In Alabama, as elsewhere, men are becoming tired 
 of a theology that anathematizes because of a variant 
 philosophy about revelation. They are beginning to 
 rebel against a discipline that makes the voice of 
 prejudice the voice of God, and that in rural districts 
 punishes with excommunication that which, under the 
 same pair of eyes, is condoned in the town or the city. 
 They will welcome, if she come in her own glorious 
 apparel, the religious Body that brings them the una- 
 
310 CHURCH IN ALABAMA. 
 
 dulterated facts of the Creed as the test of theological 
 and ecclesiastical orthodoxy, and the glorious freedom 
 of the sons of God as the rule of their daily walk and 
 conversation. 
 
 It is for the Church to enter in and possess the land. 
 There are giants to overcome; but so long as the Body 
 is true to the Head there is no doubt as to the consum- 
 mation. 
 
 The; end. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Adamsville, 308. 
 
 Alabama, first Gh. services, 12; 
 character of immigration, 14; 
 general restlessness, 66; effect 
 on Gh., 56 ; secession, 149 ; milita- 
 ry province, 171 ; resultof aboli- 
 tion, 195 ; movement townward, 
 196 ; carpet-bag legislature, 197 ; 
 emigration, 245; "Boom," 251. 
 
 "Alabama Cburcbman," 238. 
 
 Alabama River Missions, 307. 
 
 Alison, H. L., 100, 157. 
 
 Alpine, 235. 
 
 Americanism, manifestation of, 
 124. 
 
 Anniston, 98; J. F. Smith, 249; 
 Grace Church, 249-50 ; Glen Ad- 
 die, 250; 256; St Michael and 
 All Angels', 274-5; 278. 
 
 Archdeacon, office of, 276; Dr. 
 Stringfellow as, 277. 
 
 Architecture, church, 72. 
 
 Ashville, 308. 
 
 Athens, 67, 77, 235. 
 
 Atkinson-, Bp., 48, 189, 192. 
 
 Auburn , 50, 62, 68, 71, 74, 77, 98, 243, 
 272,273 m. 
 
 Autaugaville, 98, 148, 242, 261. 
 
 Avery, Kev. John, 26 n. 
 
 Avondale, 252-4-6, 308. 
 
 Bakewell, Rev. A. Gordon, 234. 
 Baldwin, A. P., 21. 
 Baldwin county, 29, 85. 
 Banister, Kev. J. M., 109, 114, 154, 
 
 241, 266, 273, 279, 295. 
 Barnwell, Rev. R. W., 279, 280, 282. 
 Barrett, Rev. R. S , 280-1. 
 Bartley, Rev. W. M., 98. 
 "Bazaar" in Mobile, 216. 
 Beard, Rev. Thos. J., 235, 252, 266, 
 
 295, 307-8. 
 Beckwith, Rev. Jno. W., 234, 294. 
 Bedell, Bp., 58. 
 Beirne, Geo. P., 88, 102-3. 
 Bell, A. R., 109, 302. 
 Benners, A., 224 
 Benton, 55, 118, 307. 
 Berne, Rev. J. L., 211. 
 Bessemer, 252-4-5, 308. 
 Bethsalem, 68. 
 Bibb, Mrs. Wilson, 275. 
 
 Birmingham , 98, 243 ; Advent or- 
 ganized, 248 ; Philip A. Fitts at, 
 248; rapid growth, 250; T. J. 
 Beard, 252; St. Mary's, 252-3, 
 274; new churches, 253, 256. 
 
 Bishops of Alabama, provisional, 
 19, 31, 38; diocesan, 39, 157, 283. 
 
 Bishop's Fund, origin, 29; Ives' 
 work, 29; at a standstill, 85-6; 
 Tayloe's work, 86; a compli- 
 cated scheme, 87; subscribers, 
 88; income from, 89; "Special 
 Fund" and "Permanent Fund" 
 distinguished, 89 - 90 ; Lay's 
 work, »»; Convention seeks to 
 violate agreement, 91-2; invest- 
 ment of, 91; loan to Hamner 
 Hall and outcome, 220-8; pro- 
 portion now useable, 303-5 n. 
 
 "Black Belt," bulk of Ch. in (1844), 
 49 ; war time missions, 167 ; 248. 
 
 Bladon Springs, 50, 98, 306. 
 
 Blocton, 254, 308. 
 
 Blossburg, 254. 
 
 Board of Missions organized, 266. 
 
 Boligee, 67. 
 
 Bon Secour, 267, 308 
 
 Bond, James, 266, 295, 301. 
 
 Boy choirs, 289. 
 
 Breck, Jas. Lloyd, 107. 
 
 Bridgeport, 254. 
 
 Brierfield, 236. 
 
 Brookside, 308. 
 
 Brotherhood of the Church, 138- 
 40 ; of St. Andrew, 308. 
 
 Brown, Rev. Philip A. H., 281. 
 
 Brownell, Bp., provisional Bp. of 
 Ala., 19; visits Selina, etc., 21; 
 26, 28; delegates duties to Bp. 
 Otey, 31. 
 
 Bryce, Peter, 294. 
 
 Buell, David, 266, 295, 301. 
 
 Bunker, R. 8., 141 n, 294. 
 
 Burton's Hill, 54, 67, 71, 267. 
 
 Butler, 50, 98, 306. 
 
 Cahaba, 66, 71. 74, 78-9, 82, 307. 
 Camden, 71. 77, 306-7. 
 "Canebrake," Negro work in, 
 
 200. 
 Canons, first set, 21 ; defective, 26 ; 
 
 of lay discipline, 132; 290-3. 
 
 3" 
 
312 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Carbon Hill, 308. 
 
 Carlowville, 77-8, 98, 99, 103, 261. 
 
 Cathedral, All Souls', projected, 
 143; purposes and support, 
 144-6. 
 
 Cheshire, Rev. Joseph Blount, 
 282. 
 
 Choirs, quartette, 73 ; vested, 289. 
 
 Christian Rev. W. l> , 167. 
 
 Church in U. S., causes of slow 
 growth, 14-16. 
 
 *' Church Record," 238. 
 
 " i :hurch Register," 237. 
 
 Churchmanship, lip. Cobbs', 123- 
 81; diocese's, 123, 130: Lewis' 
 and Knapp's, 130 ; Bp. wilmer's, 
 287-8. 
 
 Churchmen, of Revolution, 15; 
 build first Frot. church in Mo- 
 bile, 18; apathy in 1833, 23; 
 sympathy with sectarianism, 
 127; activity, 140; worldliness, 
 146. 
 
 Citronelle,267, 308. 
 
 Claiborne, 306. 
 
 Clark, T. B., Jr., 227. 
 
 Clayton, 267. 
 
 Clayton, Henry D., 224. 
 
 Clergy, restlessness, 61 ; first per- 
 version, 28 ; salaries, 61 ; paroch- 
 ialism, 60; sectarianism, 70; 
 called for one year, 163; as 
 school teachers, 134; extreme 
 propriety, 134. 
 
 Cleveland. Geo.; 94. 
 
 Coalburg, 254, 308, 
 
 Cobbs, Bp., election and conse- 
 cration, 39; early life, 43-8; sal- 
 ary, 51; immediate success, 
 61; plan of work, 53; a typical 
 visitation, 53 ; communicant 
 list, 64; miss, excursions, 54-5; 
 not panic-stricken, 58; health, 
 62, 141 ; accident, 62 ; removal to 
 Montgomery, 66 ; a year's work, 
 66-9 ; work among Negroes, 88 ; 
 sole charge of dioc. miss., 96; 
 rector of St. John's, Montgoni- 
 
 tlon, 126; on false liberality, 
 117; difficult theological path, 
 127; treatment of alarmists, 
 128 ; on " wider hope," 128 : pas- 
 toral theology, 128; on "Prin- 
 ciple," 129; on dancing, 129: on 
 rented pews, 136; visits En- 
 gland, 141; Univ. of So., 142; 
 143; Cathedral project, 143-6; 
 despondence, 146 ; Church's 
 
 sympathy, 147 ; opposes Seces- 
 sion, 148 ; prayer, 148 ; death, 149. 
 
 Cobbs, John L.,223. 
 
 Cobbs, Rev. R. A., 262. 
 
 Cobbs, Rev. R. H., 77, 114, 224, 
 266, 273, 296. 
 
 Columbia, 274. 
 
 Comegys, E. F., 106. 
 
 Confirmation classes, 69; why 
 small, 70 ; in Mobile, 76 ; during 
 War, 167; at Selma, 243. 
 
 "Convention," name abandoned, 
 291. 
 
 Convocations, projected, 239 ; 
 failure, 240; established, 241; 
 small succesB, 242. 
 
 Cook, Rev. Thos. A., 29, 34-5, 135. 
 
 " Council," name adopted, 291. 
 
 Country chnrches, 76-7. 
 
 Courtland, 67, 235. 
 
 Coxe, R. E., 266. 
 
 Coxe, Bp. Arthur Cleveland, 58. 
 
 Croom, Isaac, 86, 88. 
 
 Croom, Stephens, 269 n. 
 
 Cross Keys, 243. 
 
 Cross Plains. See Piedmont. 
 
 Cullman, 308. 
 
 Cushman, Rev. Geo. F . 45, 62, 79, 
 104, 107, 113, 121, 167, 234, *S4. 
 
 Dallas County, 50; St. David's, 
 55, 68, 77, 82, 83, 86, 97; Pleasant 
 Hill, 55; St. Peter's, 68; St. 
 Paul's, 68. 
 
 Davenport, J. M., 21. 
 
 Davis, Rev. Robert, 17, 18. 
 
 Dawson, L. K.. 100. 
 
 Dawson, N. H. R., 104, 226, 266, 
 295,301. 
 
 Deans, 241. 
 
 Deaconesses, order of, instituted, 
 170; at Tuskaloosa, 170; at 
 Spring Hill, 214; in Mobile, 210, 
 216. 
 
 Decatur, 22, 67, 235, 243. 
 
 Demopolis, 25, 26, 60, 68, 71, 77, 82, 
 169, 234, 243, 296. 
 
 Denniston, Rev. Edward, 98. 
 
 Diocesan papers, 237-8. 
 
 Diocese of Ala., organized, 19; in 
 union with Gen. Conv., 24; 
 stratification, 49 ; weakness, 6* ; 
 clergy (1(44), 50; obstacles, 57- 
 63 ; rural character of early, 76, 
 93 ; progressiveneBS, 137: seces- 
 sion, 163-4; proposed division, 
 164-6; a lone star, 166; military 
 Interference, 176, and Its effect, 
 186; hard times, 236; emigra- 
 tion , 246 ; practically abandoned 
 by Board of Miss,, 246; lack 
 
INDEX. 
 
 313 
 
 of system, 259; disintegrating 
 mission work, 264; peculiar de- 
 velopment, 284 ; catholicity, 286- 
 88; ritual uniformity, 289; new 
 fields, 309-10. 
 
 Division of diocese, suggested, 
 146; proposed, 154. 
 
 Doctrine. Oxford movement, 57: 
 Bp. Cobbs on, 69; ignorance of 
 Churchmen, 60. 
 
 Drysdale, Rev. Alex., 295. 
 
 Duncan, Wm. Butler, 209. 
 
 Eliott, John, ' 1. 
 
 Elliott, Bp. 157, 190. 
 
 Ellerbee, A. W., 109, 154; John, 
 
 100. 
 Elyton, 63, 67, 235, 248. 
 Episcopal authority, 292 n. 
 Episcopal elections; staved of, 
 
 32 ; 38, 166, 167, 280, 281. 
 Episcopate, endowment of, 32. 
 
 See Bishop's Fund. 
 Episcopate, necessity for, 37; 
 
 anomalous position of, 144. 
 Eufaula, 33 n, 55, 68, 71, 77, 267. 
 Eutaw, 64, 67, 68, 82, 98, 243, 274. 
 Evangelist, need for, 93 : first obj. 
 
 of Miss. Soc, 95; need passes, 
 
 96; first two evangelists, 235; 
 
 fruitless attempts, 276-7. 
 Evergreen, 77, 243, 261 , 278. 
 Everhart, Rev. Geo. M., 114, 224, 
 
 225,227, 230 n, 295. 
 
 Farmer, Robert, 11. 
 Faunsdale, 71, 82, 83, 169, 274, 278. 
 Field, Joseph W., 269 n. 
 Fitts, Rev. Philip A., 248-9, 280. 
 FittS. J. H., 226, 261, 266,279. 
 Fitzsimons, Rev. Owen P., 363. 
 Florence, 13, 21, 29, 38, 49, 67, 77, 
 
 235. 
 "Flush Times," 30; collapse of, 
 
 30; 86. 
 " Fork of Greene," 67, 68, 267. 
 Forkland, 26 «., 72 n. 
 Fort Payne, 254. 
 Foster, C. M., 106. 
 French mission, 167. 
 Fulton, Rev. John, 263, 291, 293, 
 
 296, sketch of 299. 
 
 Gadsden, 261. 
 Gailor, Rev. T. F., 280. 
 Gainesville, 67, 98, 236, 267. 
 (Jallion, 26. 68, 71, 296. 
 Gay, Rev. J. L , 33 n. 
 Garrow, Wm. M., 88. 
 General Convention, sectional 
 feeling in, 182, 189, 190. 
 
 21 
 
 " Genei al Orders," of Woods, 177 ; 
 
 of Thomas, 183. 
 German mission, 167. 
 Geneva, 274. 
 
 Gilmer vs. Josiah Morris, 226 n. 
 Girard, 50. 
 Gould, Wm.P.,88. 
 Grand Bay, 267. 
 
 Green, hp., visits Ala., 164; 190. 
 Greene county, 24, 77. 
 Greene Springs, 106. 
 Greensboro, 20, 22, 24, 25, 26, 38, 
 
 39, 55, 68, 76, 90, 169, 216 n, 243, 
 
 254 273- 
 Greenvilie, 98, 133 n, 243, 261, 278, 
 
 301. 
 Gulf Coast missions, 248, 267, 308. 
 
 Hammond, Wm. P., 71. 
 Hamner, Hall, 92; early history, 
 
 110-112; 220; financial problem. 
 
 220,228; why a failure, 228-32; 
 ' division and sale, 228, 300. 
 Hanson, Rev. F. R„ 37, 77, 94, 109, 
 
 113, 121, 153, 167, 241, 295-6. 
 Harpersville, 236. 
 Hart, Rev. Samuel, 12. 
 Hawks, Rev. Francis L., 27. 
 Hayneville. 37, 55, 98, 243, 278. 
 Hays, Rev. Robert G.,29. 
 Hopkins, Bp. J. H , 191. 
 Howe, Bp.,W.B.W., 283. 
 Hunt, Rev. Geo. H., 238, 241, 295. 
 Hunter, John L„ 33 
 Huntsville, 20, 22, 65, 62, 64, 67, 71, 
 
 72, 76, 82, 86, 114, 115, 242, 244, 275. 
 
 Ingraham, Rev. J. H., 113, 121. 
 Ives, Up., defection of, 58, 126. 
 Ives, Rev. Caleb S., 24, 25, 29, 85. 
 
 Jackson county, 97. 
 
 Jackson, Bp., nominated as Asst. 
 
 Bp. of Ala., 281; elected, 282; 
 
 consecrated 283. 
 Jacksonville, 64, 68, 71, 72 n, 261, 
 
 278. 
 Jarratt, Rev. J. S.. 98, 167. 
 Jarvis, Alex., 88. 
 Jasper, 308. 
 Johns, Bp , 157. 
 Johnson, President, Governor's 
 
 appeal to, 182; Bp's, 183. 
 Johnson, John, 71. 
 Johnson, Rev. Wm., 29, 108, 109, 
 
 120 n. 
 Johnston, Rev. J. S., 208, 295. 
 Johnston, Rev. James T , elected 
 
 Bp. of Ala., 39. 
 Jones, Emanuel, 71, 88. 
 Jones, Samuel G., 110, 111, 294, 301. 
 
314 index. 
 
 Jonesboro, 236. 
 
 Jope, Rev. Robert, 242. 
 
 Oudd, Rev. Wm. H., 18. 
 
 Kemper, Bp., third provisional 
 Up., of Ala,., 31; 29. 
 
 Kip, Bp., 143. 
 
 Knapp, Rev. N. P., 37, 61, 62, 100, 
 113;Bketch of, 118-20; volume 
 of sermons, 120 n; Bp. Cobbs' 
 estimate of, 121 ; Churchman- 
 ship, 130. 
 
 Knox, Wm., 88. 
 
 Ku Klux, 196. 
 
 La Fayette, 34, BO, 55. 
 
 Lancaster, Rev. J. L., 282. 
 
 Lay, Rev. Henry C, 62, 64, 90, 103. 
 
 113; sketch of, 114; 129 n. 155 
 
 and n., 156, 189, 192. 
 Lay discipline, 132, 291. 
 Lay readers, 273-4; proposed 
 
 legislation, 291 ; 305 
 Leach, Dr. S. G.', 106. 
 Lee, Rev. F. B., 77, 98, 100, 104, 
 
 113, 121 ,,306-7. 
 Lee, Rev. Francis Priolean. 120. 
 Lefebvre, H. P., 220, 295, 300. 
 Legislation, some diocesan, 290-3. 
 Lesesne, T., 88. 
 Letohatehie, 98. 
 Lewis, Rev. S. S., 28, 37, 62, 81, 94, 
 
 113; sketch of, 116-18; influence 
 
 on diocese, 121 ; Churchman- 
 ship, 130; 134. 
 Lindsay, Rev. J. S., elected Bp. 
 
 of Ala., 280-1. 
 Linebaugh, Rev. J. H., 36, 78. 
 Lipscomb, Chief Justice A. 8., 21. 
 LivingstoD,37, 38, 60, 55, 67, 82, 
 
 243,254,261,267- 
 Lockett, Powhatan, 223. 
 Lorillard, Jacob, 29, 85. 
 Lowndes county, 50, 76. 
 Lowndesboro, 56, 68, 71, 77, 82, 
 
 278. 
 Lynch, A ., 106. 
 Lyon, F. 3., 88, 154. 
 
 Macon. See Gal lion. 
 
 Madison, 235. 
 
 Madison county, 22, 77. 
 
 Magnolia, 808. 
 
 Marengo county, 24, 77. 
 
 Marion. 54, 67, 77, 134, 135, 135 n, 
 
 169,261,278,289. 
 Marrast, John, 88. 
 Martin's Station, 79, 307. 
 Massey, Rev. J. A., 62, 113, 121, 
 
 157, 204, 241, 294. 
 Matthews, Rev. Andrew, 29. 
 
 MayBVille, 235. 
 McCoy, Tnos. W., 266 n. 
 Meade, Bp., 46, 47, 48, 157. 
 Meade, Francis K., 223. 
 Menaeos, Rev. A., 167. 
 Middle Alabama, character of 
 
 immigrants, 14; 267. 
 Middleton, Robi-rt, 269 n. 
 Miller, Rev. B. M., 62. 
 Mineral region, 248. 307-8. 
 Mitchell, Rev. J. M., 78, 96, 104, 
 
 110, 111, 113, 122, 154. 
 Missionary Society, organized 
 94; spirit of, 94-5; original 
 scope. 96 ; income and stipends 
 of, 96-7. 
 Mobile, ceded by France to Eng- 
 land, 11; Ch. of England ser- 
 vices, 12 ; under Spanish rule, 
 14. 
 
 Christ Church, organized, 18; 
 Presbyterian minister, 18; ID, 
 23, 26 ; Mr. Pinney deposed, 28 ; 
 38, 49, 50, 55, 62, 68, 75, 81, 82, 86, 
 90, 98, 117, 119. 120, 134; Brother- 
 hood of the Church, 138-40 : city 
 missions, 167; 214 n, 267, 274; 
 parish house, 275 ; 299. 
 Trinity Church, founded, 64; 
 Massey at, 76 ; 86 ; parish school, 
 135 ; free, 136 ; 244 n, 254 ; vested 
 choir, 289. 
 
 St. John's Church, founded, 71 ; 
 built, 71-2; enlarged, 75; Ingra- 
 hain at, 75; Pierce at, 116; 
 founds Church Home, 116, 214; 
 free, 137; 244, 272. 
 Good Sheph erel, organized, 75; 
 83 ; dissolved, 205 ; re-organized, 
 208; 209. 210,211,212, 
 Montevallo, 54, 235, 243, 261. 
 Montgomery, 21; St. John's 
 founded, 29; 31. 38, 55, 62; capi- 
 tal, 66 ; 66, 68, 71, .2, 76, 86, 90, 92, 
 98; diocesan school, 110-11; 
 Knapp, 119-20; parish school, 
 134 ; daily services, 135 ; project- 
 ed cathedral, 143; city missions, 
 167 : Negro S. 8., 200; 224; first 
 Holy Comforter parish, 234 ; 243- 
 4 n. 254, 269 ; second Holy Com- 
 forter parish, 274; chapel, 275; 
 vested choir, 289 ; 298, 300. 
 Moore, Bp., 44, 46. 
 Mooresville, 235, 
 Morris, Josiah, 223; Gilmer vs., 
 
 226 n; 275. 
 Morris, Rev. T. A., 77, 97. 
 Morrison, Rev. J. H., 62. 
 Mt. Meigs, 64, 65, 243. 
 Mt. Pleasant, 307. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 315 
 
 Mt. Stirling, 98. 
 
 Muhlenberg, Rev. Wm. A., 68, 80, 
 
 170. 
 Muller, Rev. Albert A., 20, 22, 23. 
 Murray, Rev. John G., 306. 
 M usie, Church, 73, 130, 137 ; vested 
 
 choirs, 289; choral services, 289. 
 
 Nashotah, experiment suggested 
 by, 107. 
 
 Navy Cove, 308. 
 
 Nelson, R. M., 279, 280. 
 
 Negro, abolition, 195; demoral- 
 ized, 1S6; terrorized, 196; bank- 
 rupting State, 197; mutual dis- 
 trust of races, 197; martyrs, 198; 
 position of laity toward, 198; 
 " Freedmen's Commission,'' 
 199; Good Shepherd, Mobile, 
 199; Faunsdale chapel, 200; 
 Montgomery, 200 ; Stickney's 
 work; 200-4; worship by con- 
 tract, 201; heredity, ?01; pecu- 
 liar temptations, 202; failure 
 at Faunsdale, 203 ; at Mobile, 
 204 ; Northern error, 21)6 ; revival 
 in Mobile, 208; St. Mark's, Bir- 
 mingham, 212. 
 
 Nevius, Rev. R. D., 97, 114, 168, 
 294. 
 
 Newell, Rev. Chester, 208. 
 
 Nicolson, R. W., 88. 
 
 Noble, John W., 274. 
 
 Northport, 54, 55. 
 
 Oak Grove, 308. 
 
 " Old Church Path," 238. 
 
 Opelika, 98, 243, 261, 27a, 273 n. 
 
 Orphans' Home, Bp. Cobbs, 168; 
 diocesan, left to Bp., 169; futile 
 attempt at Mobile, 169; success 
 at Taskaloosa, 169-70; deacon- 
 esses, 170; removed to Mobile, 
 214; spirit of administration, 
 215; liberality to, 215; Bazaar, 
 216; economy in, 216; Bp.'s 
 financiering, 217; enlarged 
 scope, 217; endowment com- 
 plete, 217, and now impaired, 
 303. 
 
 Otey, Bp., second provisional Bp. 
 of Ala., 31. 
 
 Oxford movement, effect of, in 
 America, 57-8; on Bp. Cobbs, 
 58-9. 
 
 Parochialism, 60, 287. 
 Parks, Rev. Martin P., elected 
 Bp. of Ala, 38. - 
 
 Parsons, Gov. Lewis E., 182. 
 Patton Mines, 308. 
 Peake, Rev. Chas. F., 107, 108. 
 
 Peck, Judge E.W.. 86, 100, 105, 140. 
 
 Perdue, Rev. W. J., 77, 235, 307. 
 
 Peterkin, Bp.,283. 
 
 Perry, Bp., 187. 
 
 Pews, ownership of, 136; voting 
 power of, 136; rented, con- 
 demned by Bp. Cobbs, 136; 
 Tuskaloosa has first free, 136; 
 Trinity Church, Mobile, free, 
 136. 
 
 Phelan, J. D., 154-7. 
 
 Pierce, Rev. A. W., 210. 
 
 Pierce, Rev. H. N., 113, 115, 116, 
 154, 294 
 
 Pierce, W. F., 88. 
 
 Piedmont, 248. 
 
 " Pillar of Fire," 121. 
 
 Pinkney, Rev. Wm, 156 and n. 
 
 Pinney, Rev. Norman, 22, 28. 
 
 Pleasant Hill, 55 
 
 Point Clear, 308. 
 
 Polk, Bp , fourth provisional Bp. 
 of Ala., 38. 
 
 Pollard, Chas. T., 8 s , 109, 111, 223, 
 294 302. 
 
 Prairies, St. John's-in-the, 25, 26, 
 31, 38, 50, 67, 82, 296. 
 
 Prairieville. See Gallion. 
 
 Pratt City, 254. 
 
 Prattville, 98, 148, 274. 
 
 Presbyterian minister of Christ 
 Ch., Mobile, 19. 
 
 Primary Convention, 19, 20. 
 
 " Prince of the House of David," 
 121. 
 
 Prayer for Pres. of U. S., re- 
 moved, 164; Bp. Wilmer'g ob- 
 jection to, 171. 174; attempt to 
 compel use, 175-80; order re- 
 voked, 183-5; prayer restored, 
 186; Bp. Perry on the principle 
 involved, 187. 
 
 Pugb, J. L.,33. 
 
 " Puseyism," 57. 
 
 Pushmataha, 50, 98, 261, 306. 
 
 Randolph, Bp., 283. 
 
 Rees, Rev. H. K., 266. 
 
 Relief of Disabled Clergy, Society 
 for; organized, 100 ; merged in- 
 to Convention, 100; autonomy 
 of, 100; plan of relief, 101; 
 Beirne's financiering, 102, 103-4. 
 
 Richmond, Rev. Wm., 20. 
 
 Ritual, Gen. Convention's decla- 
 ration on, 57; at Hamner Hall, 
 230 n; laxity in, 289. 
 
 Ritualism, evangelical, 73; me- 
 diaeval, 124; in Mobile, 210; at 
 Talladega, 277; toleration of 
 and result, 288 n. 
 
316 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Robinson's Springs, 55, 68. 
 Robertson, Rev. J. M., 77, 88. 
 Romophobia, 124. 
 Rose, Rev. L. W., 238,253, 281. 
 Rosa, Wm. H.294. 
 Russell county, 68,77, 83. 
 
 Salaries, Bishop's, 51, 155, 243, 258 
 
 n ; clergy's, 51 ; how eked out, 
 
 El, 134: in war times, 166. 
 Saleui, 98. 
 
 Sansom, Rev. Henry , 234. 
 Saul School, 21)9. 
 Schools, parish, 134-5; diocesan, 
 
 228-32. 
 Schroed'er, H. A., 141, 275. 
 Scott, Rev. J. J., 37, 94, 234. 
 Seale, 50, 6a, 243, 261. 
 Sectarianism, why intolerant of 
 
 Church, 59, 60 ; condemned by 
 
 Bp. Cobbs, 124. 
 Selma, 35 ; first church, 36 ; 55, 66, 
 
 68,76, 79,83, 98,169, 216 n, 234; 
 
 new church, 243; 244 n, 254, 278. 
 Shaw, Rev. Henry A., 18, 20, 22. 
 Shepherd, Rev. J. Avery, 111, 220. 
 Silver Run, 236. 
 Simpson, John, 100. 
 Slaves, error as to, 80; treatment 
 
 of, 81; ministrations to, 81-3; 
 
 war time missions, 167-8. See 
 
 Negro. 
 Smith, Rev. A. S., 103-6. 
 Smith, Rev. J. F., 77, 98,114, 242. 
 Smith, Rev. S. U ., 77, 114, 224. 
 Snow, Chas., 106. 
 Snow, Henry A, 106. 
 Snowdoun, 242. 
 
 Society for Relief. See Relief. 
 South Alabama, religious intol- 
 erance in, 14; wrested from 
 
 Spanish, 14. 
 Southwestern Diocese, 21,24, 26, 
 
 27 28. 
 Spring' Hill, 83. 
 St. John's-in-the-Prairies. See 
 
 Prairies 
 St. John's-in-the- Wilderness . See 
 
 Russell county. 
 St. Stephen's, 50, 306. 
 Stewart, Daniel, 162. 
 Stewart, John, 161 2. 
 Stickney, (Iibs. L.,266. 
 Stickney, Rev. (i. W., 77, 107. 
 Stickney, Rev. W. A., 77, 104, 113, 
 122 ; at Marion, 134-5 ; plantation 
 
 missions, 167; exercises primi- 
 tive discipline, 167, 200:294-6. 
 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 80. 
 Strlnefellow, Rev. H., 221, 223, 
 241, 260-6-9, 276-7-8-9, 195-6-9. 
 
 Stringfellow, H., Jr., 227. 
 Summerville, 74. 242". 
 Sumterville, 54, 71. 
 
 Talladega, 55, 68, 135, 235, 243, 261, 
 •277-8. 
 
 Tallassee, 50, 98, 243. 
 
 Tavloe, H A., 86, 100-2, 157. 
 
 Taylor, Rev. J. C , 266. 
 
 Taylor, Thos. B., 110-1, 294. 
 
 Tennessee Valley, character of 
 immigrants, 14; temporal pros- 
 perity, 22; 39, 248, 261-7. 
 
 Theiogical novels, 121. 
 
 Thomas, General, 179; malicious- 
 ness of, 183. 
 
 Thompson, Bp., 283. 
 
 Thompson, Rev. J. J. N., 211. 
 
 "Throne of David," 121. 
 
 Ticknor, Rev. J. H., 104, 157, 234-7. 
 
 Til den, 261. 
 
 Tompkins, H. C.,227. 
 
 "Tract 90," 124. 
 
 Triana, 235. 
 
 Troy, 77, 274. 
 
 Tucker, Rev. G. C, 272, 282. 295. 
 
 Tucker, Rev. J. L., 209, 266. 295. 
 
 Tuscumbia, 22, 38, 49, 55, 67, 71, 235. 
 
 Tuskaloosa, state capital, 17; 
 Christ Church founded, 17: 20, 
 22, 23, 26, 29, 38, 50, 62 ; parochial 
 schism, 62, 108-9; capital re- 
 moved, 65; 66, 67,68; St. Philips' 
 chapel , 71 ; 76, 83 ; first diocesan 
 schools, 105-6-8; 108-9, 117-8, 
 134-5; daily services, l.« ; first 
 free church, 136; 137, 168; first 
 deaconesses, 170 ; Orphans' 
 Home, 169, 170, 213-4; 216 n, 243 
 n, 254, 298. 
 Tnskegee, 50, 54, 55, 98. 
 Tyler's, 118 n, 3i)7. 
 
 " Uncle Tom's Cabin," 80, 81. 
 
 Union Springs, 77, 243, 254, 261. 
 
 Uninntown, 67, 82, 254, 273-4-8. 
 
 Univ. of South, attempt to estab- 
 lish in Ala., 142; Ala. asked for 
 $250,000, 142. 
 
 Univ. of Va., Bp. Cobbs chaplain 
 of, 45-6. 
 
 Van Hoose, Rev. J. A., 212, 252, 
 
 279. 
 " Via Media," 123. 
 Vinton, Alex. H.,58; Francis, 58. 
 
 Waddill, Rev. J. C, 98. 
 Wall, Kev. Wm., 13. 
 Waller, Chas. B., 266-8-9. 
 Warrior, 808. 
 
INDEX. 317 
 
 West Point, 50. 
 
 Wetumpka, 29, 55, 68. 
 
 Wbeelock, Rev. J. A., 98. 
 
 Whistler, 261, 267. 
 
 White, Joel, 223, 294, 301. 
 
 Whittingham, Bp., 170. 
 
 " Wider Hope," Bp. Cobbs on, 128. 
 
 Wilderness, St. John's -in -the. 
 See Russell county. 
 
 Wilkins, George A . , 281 . 
 
 Wilmer, Bp., dissects "Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin," 81; election and 
 consecration, 158; early life 
 158-63; shows his calibre, 165: 
 establishes orphans' home, 169 
 and order of deaconesses, 170: 
 conception of Epis. preroga- 
 tive, 170; objection to Prayer 
 forPres. of the U. 8., 171; on 
 diocesan rights, 172 ; on ecclesi- 
 astical freedom, 173; position 
 denned, 174 ; clash with military 
 power, 175; "suspended," 179; 
 disregards suspension, 181 ; 
 appeals to Gen. Conv., 181, Gov. 
 Parsons, 182, and Pros. John- 
 son, 183; carries his point, 186; 
 principle at stake, 187; on re- 
 union, 190 ; correspondence 
 with Bp. Hopkins, 190-1; juris- 
 
 diction recognized by House of 
 Bps-, 192; Declaration of Con- 
 formity, 193; "Freedmen's 
 Commission," 199; reorganizes 
 Negro work in Mobile, 208 ; and 
 proposes ritual, 209; settles 
 Church Home in Mobile, 217; 
 no fixed salary, 236 : urges sys- 
 tem, 257; ill health, 274; asks for 
 an Assistant, 275, and with- 
 draws request, 278; gives con- 
 sent to election, 280; catholi- 
 city, 287; on Episcopal authori- 
 ty, 292 n. 
 
 Wilsonville, 235. 
 
 Winn, A. B., 94. 
 
 Wolfe, Miss Catherine, 245. 
 
 Woodlawn, 77, 252-4-6, 308. 
 
 Woods, Gen. Chas.K., 175-6, 180-1. 
 
 Woodville. SeeUniontown. 
 
 Woolworth, Hon. J. M., 143 n. 
 
 Wright, Rev. Lucien B., 35, 78. 
 
 Yancey, Wm. L., 79. 
 
 Yellow fever, in Montgomery, 62; 
 in Mobile, 138 ; in Norfolk and 
 Portsmouth, 139. 
 
 Yongesboro, 50, 98. 
 
 "Young Men's Episcopal Asso- 
 ciation," of Montgomery, 300.