.-^■•.: \>' ^ •^-' ..^^! 'M^ T^d ^feetuiaJlouse ^hichJohnHurt biult ro-rtheBafjtistC/iufchof^uvewellA'.J. ^ .^.^^-.^^-^^ COP'iD 8r P£M\ffSS/CA Of W-'BPOJ^S^.ffj^n. THE BAPTISTS AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. BY WILLIAM CATHCART, D.D., PHILADELPniA. PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR. /5*?.C^ ^' ' ■ PHi;^*5Cl5ELrHTA : S. Ji^. O-EIOI^G-E! & CO. 1876. A portion of the following work was prepared at the request of "The Baptist Ministerial Union" of Pennsylvania, and delivered at their annual meeting in Meadville, October, 1875, when the follow- ing resolution was passed : "Besolved, That the thanks of the Union be tendered to Brother Cathcart for his able and instructive essay, and that a committee of three brethren be appointed to confer witli ihe author in regard to the publication and circulation of the essay." Upon the delivery of the same address before the Philadelphia Association at its annual meeting in October, 1875, the following resolution was unanimously carried : "Resolved, In view of the part which the Baptists of America took in the formation of our government, and especially in contending for religious liberty, that Brother Cathcart be requested to furnish a copy of his able and eloquent address for publication in the Minutes of the Association." Entered according to Act of Congress, in tlio year 1870, by WILLIAM CATHCART, D. D., In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. PREFACE Baptists have ever been the ardent friends of civil and reUgious liberty. Their history in the New World overflows with testimonies of this character. They have never regarded the military pro- fession with much favor, and, as a rule, have only resorted to arms in great emergencies when the worst evils threatened an entire people. So that we must not look for them among the principal commanders of the Revolution. The leading men of Massachusetts and Vir- ginia, the two great arms of the Revolution, were hostile to the Baptists, and had lent their aid to laws which grievously persecuted them right down to the commencement of the great 4 PREFACE. struggle^ and it is not to be expected that they would place members of the " Sect everywhere spoken against" in prominent military posi- tions. These oppressive laws kept numbers from uniting with our people, who held their prin- ciples; and compelled many British Baptists to stay in the mother country who would other- wise have found a home in America. Notwithstanding these considerations our brethren acted a glorious part in the conflict, which secured our liberties, and which set the world an example which so many nations have already followed. This little work is not a history of all the efforts of our Baptist fathers to make the American Kevolution triumphant, but a sketch of persons and events precious to our great denomination and dear to patriots of every creed and clime. CONTENTS Introduction. '■s;Lri."s;;;»-.Kssr"":""'.''r.»" , TUSOBEDIENCE TO WICKED LAWS. , ,. , -i Lewis Craig, and Jarne ^^ ^'^\''^4^^ Counties They pveaeh .n i'^^^^^'^J^^^^^^^^Tso^V^ Antliony in prison-Aich.bald cary tne p Massachusetts men and ^Z'n-a^/esSri-ThrSridge sei.ure-Oppression tn- ^^ creases towards the Eevolution ■ Nu,nl,er of Baptists - i'-f-.'' ''^^ly-S^S^T-T Brith :;7n°:^"Grer^^r-I^^^^^^^ 1, ;Sson-Bancroft-Ar„old-Aid ui tlie war The Baptists were amonq the eikst Eeligtous Com- munities TO EECOGKIZE THE CONTINENTAL CONGKESS AS A LEGITIMATE BODY. , , , . . • r^„a ^. . r^ Til a Wnrren and Philadelphia Associations— ^'jl?:sT-Wnu:m K7ffin-Jo.ni Bunya^-English Baptists ^^ ^jf 1689_The Congress recognized The Baptists as a people were enthusiastic advocates OF THE Revolution. ^-S-^Jr^irJl^B"^^^^^^^^^^^ WmiLs- Elder M'Clanahan - Charles Thompson -Dr. |rnSend^l-l^a%»^^^ Kl.«le I'land-Baptists in the army-Baptist influence n DeCarl^Philadelphia Association and Yorktown-Bap- ^ tists too patriotic b CONTENTS. PAGE Baptists have received the highest commendations FOR their patriotism. Jefferson and the Buck Mountain Church — Jefferson and " The General Meeting of Virginia Baptists " — John Leland's cheese — His opinion of Jefferson — Howison compliments the Bap- tists — Washington's opinion of Baptist patriotism 64 Few Tories can be found among the Baptists of the Kevolution. Three hundred and eleven Tories in Massachusetts — Thirty- two hundred in "Sabine's History" — Morgan Edwards — Christopher Sower — Boston Tories and General Howe — Judge Curwen 70 It was difficult for Baptists in the Revolution to throw aav ay the protection of england. The Sovereign shields American Dissenters — First Baptist Church in Boston — Ashfield Baptists — William III. and the Charter of Massachusetts — Roger Williams and the Pequots . 73 The Baptists were chiefly instrumental in rescuing Virginia from the Sceptre of Britain. The Leading men of Virginia were Lairds — Episcopalians with an English-born clergy — They clung to Charles I. — Required a fleet to make them recognize the Parliament — Recognized Charles II. before the English received him — Patrick Henry's resolutions in 1765 — His famous speech — Ingersoll of Con- necticut — English corn laws — Increase of Baptists — Number of Dissenters — Henry and the Baptists — The Baptists probably take Virginia from Britain 79 The Baptists were influential in securing the adop- tion OF the Constitution of the United States. Virginia and Massachusetts nearly equally divided about it — Efforts of Dr. Manning in the latter — Of Dr. Stillraan — Oppo- sition of Patrick Henry in Virginia — Madison — Leland — J. S. Barbour 91 Baptists were the chief instruments in completing the Constitution of the United States, the Charter OF Revolutionary liberty, by adding the amendment SECURING FULL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. The amendment — It could not come from Massachusetts — John Adams and her Constitution — Benjamin Kent — Israel Pem- berton — Thomas Jefferson — Virginia and the amendment — Acts of Parliament repealed, — Tithe laws suspended — Re- pealed — Assessment defeated — Petition of a rustic poet — All ' persecuting laws repealed — Madison — Jefferson — The Bap- tists—Strength of the Baptists — Washington and the Baptists. 97 THE BAPTISTS AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. It is our profound conviction, and we should, on all occa- sions, manifest the same, that we should venture our all for the Protestant religion and the liberties of our country.— " Protest of the Messengers of one hundred Baptist churches in London, in 1QS9 .''—Ivimeifs History of the English Bap- tists, III., 335. The American Revolution secured a fund of glory sufficiently large to give an ample portion to every one who shared in its struggles and sacrifices. Men of nearly every Christian creed, and the author of " The Age of Reason," and " The Rights of Man," aided in obtaining for our country its best temporal blessing, and for the world the richest gift of a beneficent Providence. All Christian communities in the "Thirteen Colonies " labored with quickened zeal to secure our liberties, and they achieved unbounded success. Denominations, whose principles to-day ac- 8 THE BAPTISTS AND THE cord with universal liberty, are not responsible for the persecutions inflicted by their religious ancestors in Colonial times. Nor are modern Baptists entitled to any credit for the glorious doctrines and practices of their fathers in Kevo- lutionary days. But we naturally take a special interest in our sainted and heroic predecessors, whose sacred worth and patriotic deeds have justly earned for them a respectable share of the admiration of mankind. Moved by this consideration, we propose to examine The Eelations of the Baptists to the American Eevolution. When William Pitt stated, in the British House of Commons, May 30th, 1781, that " The American war was conceived in injustice, and nurtured in folly, and that it exhibited the highest moral turpitude and depravity, and that England had nothing but victories over men struggling in the holy cause of liberty, or defeats which filled the land with mourning for the loss of dear and valuable relations slain in a detested and impious quarrel," and when, six months later, in the same assembly, and two days after AxMERICAN REVOLUTION. 9 (Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown had been (published in England, the eloquent Fox adopted the words of Chatham, uttered at the beginning of the Revolution, and said : " Thank God that America has resisted the claims of the mother country!'"^ and when Burke and others, in the same legislature, spoke words of kindred import, full of peril to themselves, they expressed the sentiments of the Dissenters of England, and especially of the Baptists. When Robert Hall, the future eloquent preacher, was a little boy, he heard the Rev. John Ryland, of Northampton, a man of commanding influence among the Bap- tists, say to his father : " If I were Washington I would summon all the American officers, they should form a circle around me, and I would address them, and we w^ould offer a libation in our own blood, and I would order one of them to bring a lancet and a punchbowl and we would bare our arms and be bled ; and when the bowl was full, w^hen we all had been bled, I would call on ever}^ man to consecrate himself to the work by dipping his sword into the bowl * History of England by Hume, Smollett and Farr, III., pp. 155, 162. 10 THE BAPTISTS AND THE and entering into a solemn covenant engagement by oath, one to another, and we would swear by Him that sits upon the throne and liveth for ever and ever, that we would never sheathe our swords while there was an English soldier in arms remaining in America.""^ Dr. Rippon, of London, in a letter to Presi- dent Manning, of Rhode Island College, written in 1784, says : " I believe all our Baptist minis- ters in town, except two, and most of our breth- ren in the country were on the side of the Ameri- cans in the late dispute. . . . We wept when the thirsty plains drank the blood of your de- parted heroes, and the shout of a King was amongst us when your well-fought battles were crowned with victory; and to this hour we believe that the independence of America will, for a while, secure the liberty of this country, but if that continent had been reduced, Britain would not have been long free."f This was the spirit of the British Baptists during the Revo- lution, whose representatives in Parliament, though of another creed, breathed defiance in the ears of the king's ministers. '^Eobert Hall's Works, Harper, vol. lY., pp. 48-9. t Backus' History of the Baptists, :N"ewton, 11., p. 19S, N. american revolution. 11 Just before the Revolution the Baptists gave THE Colonists of America an impressive ex- ample OF disobedience to tyicked laws. Among the Anglo-Saxon people law lias always had a peculiar sanctity, and precedent and custom have enjoyed a special reverence. Other nations in times of excitement have occa- sionally uprooted their most sacred and ancient institutions, and swept avay every trace of their existence. But even slight fundamental changes among populations of Anglo-Saxon origin have been generally regarded with suspicion, and have been only adopted aftermost serious deliberation, and from a conviction of their pressing necessity. The Baptists in this country, in 1770, may have been regarded as fanatics, but they were uni- versally esteemed as men of God who would not perpetrate what they knew to be a wrong for all the world. And when they deliberatel}^, ever}- where, and very frequently violated the plainest Colonial laws, and showed a readiness to suffer anything in their persons and property rather than submit to enactments in conflict with their consciences, the attention of the whole people was aroused, and the wisdom of many of the 2 12 THE BAPTISTS AND THE best men in all the colonies led them to doubt the patriotism of obeying unjust laws. And by this painful method the suffering Baptists trained their countrymen to disregard the tyran- nical legislation of the mother country. In 1770^ many of our Colonial law-makers had a portion of the spirit of Deputy-Governor Dudley, of Massachusetts, who, when he died, had these lines, among others, in his pocket : " Let men of God, in court and churches, watch, Tor such as do a toleration hatch," * But our Baptist fathers demanded full liberty of conscience for themselves, and for all others, and gloried in disobedience to all persecuting laws. In June, 1768, John Waller, Lewis Craig and James Childs, three Baptist ministers, were ar- rested in Spottsylvania county, Virginia, on the charge of "preaching the gospel contrary to law." " May it please your worship," said the prosecuting attorney, " they cannot meet a man on the road without ramming a text of Scripture down his throat." On refusing to pledge them- ^ Grimshaw's History of the United States, p. 58, Phila., 1836. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 13 selves to stop preaching in that county for a year and a day, they were forthwith ordered to prison. And as they were led through the streets of Fredericksburg to the county jail, they united in singing the well-known hymn: " Broad is the road that leads to death, And thousands walk together there ; But wisdom shows a narrow path, With here and there a traveller." * While in prison for preaching " contrary to law " in obedience to Christ's commands, and in accordance with the promptings of hearts full of love for perishing souls, they proclaimed the glorious gospel to listening throngs through the prison doors and windows. And when they were set at liberty they went forth avowed rebels against these tyrannical enactments on the statute book of Virginia, f In Middlesex and Caroline counties, Va., many Baptist ministers were imprisoned for preaching; the jails into which they were cast were loathsome with vermin ; they were sub- jected to the treatment of common felons, and * Cramp's History of the Baptists, p. 532. tllowison's History of Virginia, IT., 167-8. 14 THE BAPTISTS AND THE no legal effort was left untried to stifle their earnest efforts to win the lost to the cross/'^ William Webber and Joseph Anthony were imprisoned in Chesterfield county for preaching Jesus. And such jDoor reverence did they cherish for the unjust laws of Virginia that they actually invited the people to come to the walls of the jail that they might proclaim to them the good news of the kingdom, f Colonel Archibald Cary, of Ampthill, according to tra- dition, was the greatest persecutor in this county; and in it the law outraged the rights of Baptists more frequently and more oppressively than anywhere else in that colony. But so little terror did the Baptists of Chesterfield county feel for the punishments of the law that they cultivated that county more extensively than any other in Virginia and reaped from it an abundant harvest. J The Kev. James Ireland was thrust into prison for preaching in Virginia, and while in jail an effort was made to destroy his life by *Howison's History of Virginia, II., 1G9. t Ibid. I Campbell's History of Yirginia, 5.>5, Phila., 1S60. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 15 putting powder under the floor of his cell, but it was unsuccessful ; then his enemies tried to suffocate liim by filling his little room with the stifling* fumes of burning brimstone and pepper- pods; and finally his physician and jailor con- spired to poison him, and though the attempt • did not immediately destroy him, yet he never fully recovered from the effects of their atrocious dose . t But neither imprisonment nor threatened or attempted murder could silence this grand old minister or his courageous brethren. To keep the people from hearing the imprisoned preachers a wall was sometimes built around the jails in which they were confined, and half drunken outcasts were hired to beat drums to drown their voices; J but they would preach, and the Spirit, as in apostolic times, blessed the testi- mony of the prison witnesses for Jesus. Baptist ministers were mobbed; sometimes, while they were immersing converts, men on horseback would ride into the water and try to turn bap- * Leland's Works, p. 107. 1 t Howe's Virginia Historical Collections, p. 239, Charles- ' ton, 1846. JLeland'sWorks, p. 107. 16 THE BAPTISTS AND THE tisrn into ridicule ; they were often interrupted in their discourses and insulted ; ^ and the law laid upon them its heavy hand, but they de- spised the jailj the lash, and the malicious jeer. And when they were hunted like wild beasts, and denounced as wolves in sheep's clothing, they meekly replied, " That if they w^ere w^olves and their persecutors the true sheep, it was un- accountable that they should treat them with such cruelty ; that wolves would destroy sheep, but that it was never known till then that sheep would prey upon wolves." f And they wxnt forth in violation of law and in contempt for all illegal opposition to prey upon the un- converted sheep and to bring all Virginia to Jesus. In New England they were frequently arrested for not paying taxes to support the Congrega- tional clergy, and women J were honored with this privilege as well as men. Their property was seized, and generally sold for a mere trifle to pay the church dues of their neighbors of the * Howison's History of Virginia, II., 169, Kichmond, 1848. fSemple's History of Virginia Baptists, p. 21. t Backus' Church History, :N'ewton, II., 97. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 17 ^^ Standing Order." The sacred tax collectors at Sturbridge, Mass., according to an unim- peachable Avitness, " took pewter from the shelves, skillets, kettles, pots and warming-pans, workmen's tools and spinning-wheels ; they drove away geese and swine and cows, and where there was but one it was not spared. A brother, recently ordained, returned to Stur- bridge for his family, when he w\as thrust into prison, and kept during the cold winter till some one paid his fine and released him. Mr. D. Fisk lost five pewter plates and a cow ; J. Perry was robbed of the baby's cradle and a steer ; J. Blunt's fire-place was rifled of andirons, shovel and tongs, and A. Bloice, H. Fisk, John Streeter, Benjamin Bobbins, Phenehas Collier, John Newel, Josiah Perry, Nathaniel Smith and John Cory and I. Barstow were plundered of spinning-wheels, household goods, cows, and their liberty for a season." * Sturbridge is but a speci- men of what was occurring all over New Eng- land, except in Bhode Island. But our fathers submitted to robbery and loathsome prisons * Backus' Church History, Newton, II., pp. 94-5, note. 18 THE BAPTISTS AND THE with foul associates rather than render willing obedience to iniquitous laws. In the East and in the South Baptist witnesses, from prison windows, and sometimes with scourged shoul- ders, and in a voice as holy as ever floated on the lips of martyrs, announced to multitudes of men that " Unrighteous laws were conspiracies against God and the best interests of our race, plots of the Evil One, to be met by exposure and stern resistance, disobedience to which was loyalty to Jehovah." Bordering on Ke volution ary days persecutions were more general than ever before, and the tes- timony of Baptists against the crime of obeying sinful laws was in the very air and floating on the sunbeams of every morning, and when George III. resolved on taxation for the Colo- nies without representation, the example of the Baptists became contagious, and resistance to this despotical doctrine became the engrossing thought of the Colonists of America. Al^JEKlCAN REVOLUTION. 19 Rhode Island is a Good Example of the Rela- tions OF OUR Baptist Fathers to Liberty AND THE EeVOLUTION. Many of the noble sons of Rhode Island, in the " times that tried men's souls," were of other creeds, but a much larger number followed the people, the stream of whose denominational life [you can trace through every age till you see it issue forth from the heart of the Great Teacher, stepping up out of the Jordan. Morgan Edwards, a man of great historical learning, who died in 1795, says: "The Baptists have always been more numerous than any other sect of Christians in Rhode Island ; two-fifths of the |iinhabitants, at least, are reputed Baptists. The i: governors, deputy-governors, judges, assembly- I men and officers, civil and military, are chietiy I of that persuasion.'"^' I " The first work of the Rhode Islanders," says [ Edwards, " after their incorporation in 1644, was I to make a law that ' Every man who submits ' peaceably to civil government in this Colony il • ^ ' * Collections of the Kliodo Iskind Historical Society, VI., 1 304. 20 Tin: BAPTISTS and the sliall W(^rsliip Cod according- to tlio dictates of his own conscience without molestation.'"'-' Khode Ishind, as early as 1 TO 1, foresaw the coniinLi: lievolutioiiary storm, and to secure co- operation among the colonists established a *^ Committee of Correspondence," whose special (hitv it was to stir them up to maintain their liherties with spirit and to ccmcert methods for united ellort.t On the 4th of May, 177G, just two montlis before the adoption of the '' Declara- tion of Independence," Khode Island withdrew from the sceptre of Great Britain, and repudi- ated every form of allegiance to George 111. J Scarcely had the retreating troops of General Gage reached Boston from Concord and Lex- ington when the nearest lUiode Island towns liad sent recruits to their Massachusetts l)rethreu in arms; and the Legislature soon after voted fifteen liumhcd men to he sent to the sc(Mie of danger. The people of Newport removed forty ♦Collections ot the Rhode Island Historical Society, W. p. .-^04. t Bancroft's History of the United States, V., 21S. X Hioprai>liy of the Signers of tlie Declaration of HuleixMid once, Philadelphia, IXU, I.. .".Tl; Arnold's History of Hhod. Island, N. Y., 18G0, II., oTl. AMT.KKWX KrVOU'TlOX. iM piocos of ai-tilK'ry from tlic roval f )r( to a place of sc'Ciiritv, ^^ln'^^ tlicy iiiiiilit he rcadx' for the defcju'c and not the (Icstriictioii of patriots. 'Wlicii the hi'claratioii of IiKlcjX'iKlcncr was ni-o- elaiiiu'd at Newport, llast (ireemvieli and Trox i- dcnci'. it falK'(l forth the most entliusiastic out- bursts of dcli-lit. and shouts for " Lihertv o'er and »)\'r the iilohc."--^ A JJritisli liistoriaii sa\s : '• The Khode IshmdiTs were sueh ardent ])ati-iots that al"ter the capture of the ishmd of JJhode I>hind l»y Sir Peter Parker, it i"e(piired a ^reat body of ]uen to b(^ kept there, in perfect idle- ness, for three years, to retain them in sul)jec- tion."-r (Jovernor Green, in a dispatch to Wash- iniiton, in 1781,. says: ^SSometimos every fencible man in the State, sometimes a third, and at other times a foui'th pai't, was called out upon dr.ty/':;: l>ut the little State that had declared its independence while other Colonies Mere hesi- tatini!', and thirty-two days|| belbre the bra\e * I^aiicroft's History of the United States, TX., .Sfi. t History of Kiij^'land liy Iliinic, Smollett and Fair, III.,!)!». t Collections of the Khode Island Ilistoiical Society, A' I., 290. II Ilowison's History of \'irginia, II.. I.'W. 22 THE BAPTISTS AND THE and patriotic Virginians had renounced allegi- ance to the English king, never halted for a moment in her courageous efforts. Her sons, with the blood of Roger Williams and his valiant friends in their veins, showed their American brethren that liberty was the sovereign of their hearts. Before the Revolution Rhode Island w^as the freest Colony in North America, or in the his- tory of our race. Pier Baptist founders had made their settlement a Republic complete in every development of liberty, even while under the nominal rule of a king; they created a government with which there could be no lawful interference by any power in the Old World or the New. Rhode Island had no viceroy ; before the Revolution the king had no veto on her laws. In March, 1GG3, it was enacted that " no tax should be imposed or required of the Colony but by the act of the General Assem- bly."'^' In 1704, Mompesson, the chief-justice of New York, wrote Lord Nottingham that " when he w^as in Rhode Island the people * Biograplij^ of Signers of the Dec laration of Independence, Philadelphia, 1831, I., p. 311. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. ^3 acted in all things as if they were outside the dominion of the crown."''' Bancroft sj^eaks of Khode Island at the Revolution " as enjoying a form of government, under its charter, so thoroughly republican that no change was required beyond a renunciation of the king's name in the style of its public acts."f " Rhode Island," says her historian, Arnold, when the United States Constitution was adopted, '^for more than a century and a half has enjoyed a freedom unknown to any of her compeers, and through more than half of that period her peo- ^ pie had been involved with rival Colonies in a struggle for political existence and for the main- tenance of those principles of civil and religious freedom which are now everywhere received in America." J The State of Roger Williams had more at stake in the Revolution than any other Colony; founded by men who loved a wider liberty than their fellow-settlers elsewhere, its people were accustomed to enjoy higher privi- leges than their neighbors, and the destruction * Sabine's American Loyalists, Boston, 1847, p. 15. t History of the United States, IX., 261. it Arnold's History of Rhode Island, II., 5G3. 3 24 THE BAPTISTS AND THE of American liberty by the king threatened them with heavier calamities than any British plantation on the Continent. With scarcely fifty thousand people of all ages and of both sexes, the Baptist State supported three regi- ments in the Continental army throughout the entire war;'-' an immense number for her, when it is remembered how many men she had to employ for local defence. Rhode Island began the struggle early, and continued inflicting her heaviest blows till victory rested upon the ban- ners of the United States all over their wide- spread territor}^ And when the Constitution of the United States was adopted, requiring each State to sacrifice some of its independence to form a strong General Government, Rhode Island hesitated long before she would accept that grand instrument. The other States, except North Carolina, before 1789 received the plan of government devised by the Convention of 1787. They had, however, never enjoj^ed full liberty except during the brief period of the war, but to Rhode Island full freedom was an ^"Biography of Signers of the Declaration of Independence, I., 373. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 25 inheritance possessed for many generations, to sacrifice the smallest part of which inflicted great pain. As Baptists we have reason to thank God for the Revolutionary deeds of our heroic brethren in Rhode Island. The Baptists were among the first Religious Communities to Recognize the Continental Congress as a Legitimate Body. On the 5 til of September, 1774, in Carj)enter's Hall, Philadelphia, the first Continental Con- CARPENTER S HALL, nilLADELPHIA. 26 THE BAPTISTS AND THE gress assembled. The eyes of the whole Ameri- can people rested upon it, and so did the hearts and hopes of a vast majority of them. Eight days after Congress first met the Warren Association of Baptist Churches solemnly recog- nized it as, in a sense, the Supreme Court of the American Colonies, and sent it this appeal : Honorable Gentlemen : As the Baptist Clmrclies in New England are most heartily concerned for the preservation and defence of the rights and privileges of this country, and are deeply affected by the encroachments upon the same which have been lately made by the British Parliament, and are willing to unite with our dear countrymen to pursue every prudent measure for relief, so, we would beg leave to say, that, as a distinct denomina- tion of Protestants, we conceive that we have an equal claim to charter rights with the rest of our fellow-subjects, and yet we have long been denied the free and full enjoyment of those rights, as to the support of religious worship.* . . . Then follows an appeal for such relief as Con- gress, by legitimate means, may be able to secure. The Philadelphia Baptist Association, the oldest body of this character in America, sent a large committee to Congress to aid the appeal of our New England brethren. Dr. Samuel Jones, * Backus' History of the Baptists, Xewton, IT., p. 200, note. AMEKICAN REVOLUTION. Zi in his Centenary Sermon before the Phihidelphia Association, at its meeting held in this city in 1807, says: "On the assembhng of the first Continental Congress, I was one of the com- mittee, under appointment of your body, that, in company with the late Kev. Isaac Backus, of Massachusetts, met the delegates in Congress from that State in yonder State House, to see if we could not obtain some security for that liberty for which we were then fighting and bleeding at their side. It seemed unreasonable to us that we should be called to stand up with them in defence of liberty if, after all, it was to be liberty for one party to oppress another." ''^' These two Baptist bodies formally recognized the Revolu- tion and the Continental Congress, and they were among the first religious communities in the Colonies to give the sanction of their influence to that great Bevolutionary Legislature. Nor does it detract from their recognition that they wanted Congress to assist them in securing relief from persecution. The conscientious Bap- tists who would preach, though imprisoned and scourged for it, and who refused to pay^ taxes to '•^'MiDutt's of Pliihidelpliiii Baptist Association, p. 460. 28 THE BAPTISTS AND THE support tlie State clergy, though certain to be thrust into jail for their disobedience, , and to have their property seized and sold for less than half its worth by the oificers of the law, would have borne the w^orst penalties ever endured by saintly sufferers rather than have recognized a body tainted with usurpation. The true Baptist will bear any outrage before he will accept relief by unholy means. Never were Baptists more cruelly used than by James II., King of England. He was the most defective sovereign in moral worth that ever polluted a throne. Becoming a Romanist, he issued a decree dispensing with all penal laws against Dissenters and Catholics.'^ James had no authority to alter any law of England. To secure himself from the vengeance of the next Parliament he abrogated the charters of several cities and that of London among the rest, that he might appoint borough magistrates who would return pliant members to the House of Commons. William Kiffin was the most influential Baptist minister in England, and he was a wealthy London merchant. James sought to bribe him by making him an alderman of *Neiirs lli.story of the Puritans, Dublin, 1755, IV., 46. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 29 London, an office then held in high esteem and still regarded with great favor ; he supposed also that by this act of royal favor the Baptists would be disposed to support his usurpation, even though they well knew that he had only ceased to be persecutor for the special benefit of the Papal Church. Kiffin was brought to the palace, and James made his projDOsition with as much grace of manner as his natural rudeness per- mitted, and Kiffin immediately and absolutely rejected it. He knew that James had the might but not the authority to make him an alderman, and he refused an honor that came from usurpation. John Bunyan had spent twelve years of his life in prison for preaching Christ ; the laws were still in force that had handed him to the jailer, and James might put them in execution any time, but James needed Bunyan's popularity to aid him in his assault upon the liberties of his people and upon the established Church, and he intimated to him that he had an office for him that would show the world the king's estimate of the illustrious dreamer. But Banjan turned his back upon the hand that offered him liberty and an office, because it was 30 THE BAPTISTS AND THE the hand of the regal burglar who stole the gifts which he offered."^ The representatives of one hundred congregations of Baptists met in London in 1689, and adopted the Confession of Faith which was subsequently known in this country as the Philadelphia Confession, and they issued a protest against a small number of obscure Baptists who had been persuaded by royal favors to express approval of the dispensing power which James had wickedly assumed, and in this document they declare that : "To the utmost of their knowledge there was not one congrega- tion that gave consent to anything of that nature, nor did ever countenance any of their members to own an absolute Dower in the late kins; to dis- pense with the penal laws and tests, being well satisfied that the doing thereof, by his sole pre- rogative, would lay the foundation of the de- struction of the Protestant religion and of slavery to this kingdom." 'j- KiflBn, Bunyan and the English Baptists of James' day, were worthy pre- decessors of our American brethren in the Kevo- lution. They would have burned with unuttera- '^'Macaulay's History of England, Boston, 1S52, II., 177, 178. t Ivimey's History of the Englisli Baptists, III., 335. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 31 ble indignation and turned away in wrath from any American James II. or from any Congress of Colonial usurpers who would have ventured to offer them deliverance from legal wrongs on a principle that would justify the abrogation of any enactment without the intervention of the lawful representatives of the j^eople. In seeking relief ;from the Continental Congress, the two most influential Baptist organizations in the land gave that Assembly their formal approval. And there is reason to believe that the sanction of two such respectable bodies, publicly bestowed at a time when doubt and alarm prevailed everywhere, had a powerful influence in confirming the faith of patriots in and out of the first Continental I Congress, in the righteous character of its de- liberations. ,The Baptists as a People were Enthusiastic Advocates op the E evolution. They had walked through the furnace of persecution frequently, and they received such sustaining grace from the Great Saviour that |they were afraid of nothing. The timid and I'lovers of ease turned from the Baptist fold. 32 THE BAPTISTS AND THE Thousands in it had been recently converted, and they were fired with a first and a glowing- love. The whole denomination was overflowing with the same enthusiasm which made the early Christians reckon nothing dear to them but the triumph of truth. Their aid in securing Kevo- lutionary freedom was of the highest importance ; difficulties to such men were trifles, opposition only stirred up greater power in them than it controlled. \ The Baptist, by the inspiration of his renewed nature, and by his heaven-given princi^ples, is a lover of universal liberty. He Avill not rob a child of its freedom by making it a church memljer through infant baptism before it has exercised its choice or the Spirit has bestowed his grace ; he will not force any man, by law, to give pecuniary or other support to his own religious opinions, nor will he inflict punishment for any supposed heresies. He who holds these doctrines is necessarily in favor of unfurling the flag of freedom over every quarter of the earth, and over every human being who can be safely sot at libert}^) The Baptist General Association of Virginia notified the Convention of the people of Virginia AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 33 that '^ They had considered what part it would :be proper to take in the unhappy contest, and Uiad determined that ihQj ought to make a inihtary resistance to Great Britain in her unjust invasion, tyrannical oppression, and re- peated hostilities."'^' And they proclaimed to the world that " to a man they were in ftivor of the Revolution." f This action undoubtedly had great weight with the Convention whose dele- gates voted for the Declaration of Independence the next year in the Continental Congress. Preachers and people, says Semple, were j engrossed with thoughts and schemes for effect- ;ing the Revolution. This ardent patriotism led ^ some ministers to become Glicqilalns in the Army. Baptists felt the greatest interest in the soldiers of the Revolution, and having unbounded confidence in the power of prayer they were anxious to have holy men of God with our armed heroes in camps, hospitals, and battle-fields, that •^Ileadley's Cliaplains and Clergy of the Revolution, p. 250, N. Y., 1SG4. t Semple's History of the Virginia Baptists, p. 62. 34 THE BAPTISTS AND THE the J miglit not only point them to the Divine Saviour who gives health and healing to the sick and wounded, and victory in every fierce struggle, but that they might pray to the Lord of hosts for success in every deadly conflict. In A. D. COS, when Brocmail put his army in order of battle in front of Chester, in old England, to defend his people against the heathen king of Northumbria, Ethelfrid, the ministers in large numbers stood apart from the army praying for the success of Brocmail. When Ethelfrid per- ceived, them he inquired what they were doing, and on learning their business he ordered them to be killed first, because they had already com- menced the battle by praying to God against him.'-' In this spirit Baptist ministers were eager to go to the army as chaplains. Leading pastors from the East, from the Middle States, and from the South were with their armed brethren in all the toils, privations and perils of the Revolutionary war. The Baptist General Association of Virginia, which represented a numerous section of our denomination, applied, in 1775, to the conven- *Bede's Ecclesiastical History, II., 2. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. OO tion of their State for permission to preach to the army encamped in their bomids. Their request was granted ; and they sent the Rev. Jeremiah Walker and the Rev. John WiUiams to address the soldiers. These were the most popular preachers in the Baptist denomination in the Old Dominion.''' I Elder M'Clanahan, a Baptist minister, raised a company of soldiers in Culpeper County for the Continental service, chiefly from his own denomination, to whom he ministered as a chaplain, and whom he commanded as their , captain. f The Rev. Charles Thompson, of Massachu- setts, a scholar, an eloquent preacher, and a man of great piety, was during three years a chaplain in the army. Mr. Thompson was deemed such a friend to his country by tthe enemy that he was arrested and kept a iprisoner for a short time on board a guard ship, and then somewhat unexpectedly set at liberty. J ; ^Semple's History of Virginia Baptists, p. G2. t Howe's Virginia Historical Collections, p. 238. JSprague's Annals of the American Baptist Pulpit, p. 134. 4 3G THE BAPTISTS AND THE The Kev. Dr. Hezekiali Smith, of Haverhill, Mass., at the outbreak of the Kevolution, had a church for whose spiritual welhxre he was ten- derly exercised, and to which he was united by fatherly ties. He was a man of refined and re- tiring habits, and seemingly the last minister in his State likely to seek a position in the army. But his patriotic ardor w^as so intense that it tore him from church and family and sent him as a chaplain to the army. In his new position he discharcred the duties of his office Avith marked fidelity; and by his refined manners, wisdom and bravery obtained the confidence of the most distinguished officers in the army. He became the intimate friend of Washington himself, who treated him with unusual courtesy. He served in the army for five years, boldly reproving vice^ and encouraging a confident trust in the Great Captain of our salvation. He had a commanding person, and the air of a perfect gentleman. The constable of a neighboring town, to which Dr. Smith had gone to preach, was " a weak and inferior-looking person," but he was full of self- importance ; and armed with the authority of the law, he came " to warn the stranger out of AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 37 the place." But when he saw the imposing appearance of the intruder he was confused and stammered out: '^1 warn yon — off God's earth." " My good sir," said the preacher, " wdiere shall I go to?" "Go anywhere," was the reply; "go to the Isle of Shoals."'^ But the man of God did not leave God's earth, or visit the Isle of Shoals at that time. The Kev. Dr. Eogers, of Philadelphia, was the first student of Brown University ; and in his day he was a man of celebrity in literary circles and of attractive talents as a preacher. Dr. Benjamin Rush was a member of his con- gregation, and other persons of culture waited upon his ministry. For some time he was Pro- fessor of Oratory and Belles-Lettres in the University of Pennsylvania. An English gen- tleman speaks of Dr. Rogers, wdiile in Philadel- phia, as taking him to the residence of Wash- ington, and says : " When we called the General 'was not at home, but while we were talking with his private secretary in the hall he came i in, and spoke to Dr. Rogers w^ith the greatest ease and familiarity. He immediately asked us * Manning and Brown University, pp. 137-8, Boston. 38 THE BAPTISTS AND THE up to the drawing-room where Lady Washing- ton and his two nieces were."* When Pennsyl- vania raised three battalions of foot, the Legis- lature appointed Dr. Rogers their chaplain. He was afterwards a brigade-chaplain in the Continental army. For five years this dis- tinguished man followed the fortunes of the Revolutionary army as an unwearied and beloved chaphiin.f The Rev. David Jones was an original thinker, and he was fearless in expressing his sentiments. He was an educated man ; but he possessed what schools never gave, a powerful intellect. As a preacher he always secured the undivided atten- tion of his hearers, and never failed to instruct and cheer them. AYhen the Revolutionary War began, Mr. Jones lived in a section of New Jersey where Tories made it neither agreeable nor safe for a patriot to reside, especially if, like Mr. Jones, he w^as an orator capable of moving men by his eloquence, and a brave man to whom fear was an unexplored mystery. So Mr. Jones, believing that he could serve his country better * Manning and Brown University, p. 94. t Sprague's Annals of tlie American Baptist Pulpit, p. 14-5. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 39 than by martyrdom from such hands, removed to Pennsylvania. In 1775, on a public fast, he preached to the regiment of CoL Dewees a sermon overflowing with patriotism, and with unshaken confidence in God. The discourse was given to the printer and widely circulated over the Colonies; and it exerted an extensive influence in favor of the " good cause." In 1776, Mr. Jones became chaplain of a Pennsylvania regiment, and entered upon duties for which he was better qualified than almost any other man among the patriotic ministers of America. lie was never away from scenes of danger; nor from the rude couch of the sick or the wounded soldier when words of comfort were needed. He followed Gates through two cam- paigns, and served as a brigade chaplain under Wayne. He was in the battle of Brandywine, the slaughter of Paoli, where he escaped only by the special care of Providence, and in all the deadly conflicts in which his brigade w^as engaged, until tlie surrender of Yorktow^i. General Howe, learning that he was a pillar to 40 THE BAPTISTS AND THE the Revolution in and out of the arinj;, offered a reward for his capture, and a plot was unsuc- cessfully laid to secure his person. Full of wit, eloquence, patriotism, and fearless courage, he was a model chaplain, and a tower of strength to the cause of freedom. He was the grand- father of our esteemed brother, the Hon. Horatio Gates Jones, of Pennsylvania.'^' The Rev. John Gano was born in Hopewell, New Jersey, and possessed in a large degree the patriotic spirit of the Baptists of that place, which had so many representatives engaged in the Revolution ; he had great mental powers, and as a "minister he shone likef a star of the first ma2:nitude in the American churches." His power as a minister of eminence was widely felt, and his labors extensive and successful. From the pastorship of the First Baptist Church, of New York, he entered the army as a chaplain, and performed services which rendered him invaluable to the officers and men with whom he was associated. His love for his country's cause made the humblest soldier a brother ; his *Sprague's Annals of the American Baptist Pulpit, p. 87. t Ibid, p. 64. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 41 genial manners and fearless daring made him the special friend of officers of all ranks : wliile the spirit of the Saviour so completely controlled his entire conduct that his influence over his miUtary charge was unbounded. Headley says : " In the fierce conflict on Chatterton's Hill he was continually under fire^ and his cool and quiet courage in thus fearlessly exposing himself was afterwards commented on in the most glowing terms by the officers who stood near him." He himself in speaking of it said : " My station in time of action I knew to be among the surgeons, but in this battle I somehow got in front of the regiment; yet I durst not quit my place for fear of dampening the spirits of the soldiers, or of bringing on myself an imputation of cowardice."''* When this courageous man " saw more than half the army flying from the sound of cannon, others abandoning their pieces without firing a shot, and a brave band of only six hundred maintaining a conflict with the whole British army, filled with chivalrous and patriotic sympathy for the valiant men that refused to * Headley 's Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution, pp. 255, 257. 42 THE BAPTISTS AND THE run, lie could not resist the strong desire to share their perils, and he eagerly pushed forward to the fronts ''^ He preserved his moral dignity as a Christian minister under the most trying circumstances, and by his example, spirit, and instructions, he assisted the brave patriots to endure hardships, to struggle success- fully against despair, and to fight with the cour- age of men who were sure that God was with them, and that ultimate triumph was certain. When w^e read of the self-sacrifice of men like these we are not surprised that they attracted the attention of Washington, and that he declared that " Baptist chaplains were among the most prominent and useful in the army."f And Howe, in speaking of the preaching and position of captain assumed by Elder M'Clana- han, is constrained to say that ^^ the Baptists were among the most strenuous supjDorters of libert3^"J We have reason to bless God for these preaching and praying heroes who followed *Headley's Chaplains and Clergy of the Eevolution, pp. 2o5, 257. t Manning and Brown University, p. 13G, Boston, 1864. X Virginia Historical Collections, p. 238. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 43 the standards of the Revolution through hunger and cold and nakedness, through retreats, diseases and wounds, through danger and blood and victory; men whose faith and prayers brought success from heaven upon our cause, notwithstanding discouragements and disasters ; men whose names shall be held in everlastins; honor by their Baptist brethren and by Ameri- can patriots while human history preserves the records of generous sacrifices and holy worth. Some Mimsters served the Revolution in other Spheres, James Manning, D. D., president of the col- lege now known as Brown University, was one of these. Few men in his day, in his own or other denominations, wielded a more extensive influence. His polished manners, his acknowl- edged learning, his quick perception, his untir- ing activity, his habit of putting his whole soul into the toils which occupied his time, and the modest ease with which he moved in every society, made him a power wherever he went. In the Eevolution he was the most influential man in Rhode Island. He states in a letter to 44 THE BAPTISTS AND THE Dr. Itippon, of London, written in 1784: "I think I can say that I never in one instance doubted the justice of our cause. "'^' Filled with this conviction he was ever pLanning something for the pubUc good, or performing it witli un- wearied effort and unselfish heroism. His con- flicts were not on the field of glory, and yet his services were more substantial than the marches and wounds and victorious efforts of some of his military brethren. And Ehode Islanders re- garded him as the sage and patriot of their State in Revolutionary times. When General Sul- livan commanded the Continental troops in Rhode Island, three men were condemned to death by a court-martial. Manning had his sympathies enlisted in their behalf, and on making an earnest appeal to the General, he immediately gave the president a reprieve for the unfortunate men, with which he hurried to the place of execution and arrived just in time to save their lives.f The number of men taken away from culti- vating the soil in Rhode Island, and the occu- *Manninfr and Brown University, p. 328, Boston, 1864. flbid., pp. 259, 2G0. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 45 pation of a large section of that State by the enemy, made provisions occasionally scarce. I Several of the States had laws forbidding the transportation of food beyond their own limits, so that a supply for the wants of Rhode Island became a serious question. To obtain relief Dr. Manning was commissioned by the governor and council of war of Rhode Island to make an I appeal to the government of Connecticut to [, relax their laws on this point. Dr. Manning ' attended to the duty imposed upon him and was i^ successful beyond his expectations.* I Once entering the Legislature while it was in I session, without any special motive, the mem- I bers without concert on the motion of Commo- I'i dore Hopkins elected him to fill a vacant seat in II Congress. This graceful tribute to his eminent I worth was much enhanced by its unanimity, j and by the well-known fact that Dr. Maiming i aspired to no secular position, however exalted.f [ After the establishment of the United States government under the Constitution in 1789, and li before Rhode Island ratified that instrument, * Manning and Brown University, pp. 259, 260. tSprague's Annals of the American Baptist Pulpit, p. 92. 46 THE BAPTISTS AND THE Dr. Manning and Benjamin Bourn, Esq., were sent to Congress, then in session in New York, to present a petition for relief from certain grievances which affected the ocean commerce of their State.* By persons in all positions in life from George Washington down, President Man- ning was regarded as one of the chief fathers and founders of the American Revolution. The Rev. David Barrow, a brother of spotless character, and of extensive usefulness, held in universal esteem, not only commended patriotism to others, but when danger pressed he shoul- dered his musket and performed good service against the common foe, and he obtained the same reputation in the camp and in the field which he enjoyed in the happy scenes of minis- terial toil elsewhere. f The Rev. Daniel Mar- shall was so strongly identified with the cause of his struggling countrymen that the British arrested him, and kept him under guard until he had an opportunity of exhorting and praying in the presence of the officers and men, and they at once set him at liberty. J ^Manning and Brown University, p. 424, Boston, 1864. t Semple's History of the Virginia Baptists, p. 359. J Ibid., 372. AMERICAN KEVOLUTION. 47 The Eev. Oliver Hart was appointed by the Council of Safet}^. then the executive of South Carolina, with William IL Drayton and the Rev. William Tennent, to travel through the State and expound the principles and claims of patriotism to the people.'-' The Kev. Dr. Richard Furman was one of the most active and useful patriots in the South, and in recogni- I tion of his services he was appointed by the 1^ Revolutionary Society of South Carolina and I the Society of the Cincinnati to deliver dis- •1 courses commemorative of Washington and Hamilton, and he was elected a member of the ! convention that framed the Constitution of South Carolina, f 'I The Rev. Dr. Stillman, of Boston, was a Christian of great consecration of heart, and lived so much for the better world that few would expect him to take much interest in the I temporal affairs of this. But in our Revolution, [ and in the period when its symptoms foretold I its sure approach, such men as Dr. Stillman I *Sprague's Annals of the American Baptist Pulpit, pp. I 48-9. 1^ tibia., p. 102. 48 THE BAPTISTS AND THE were everywhere enlisted with their whole hearts in ite service. No one in Massachusetts was recognized as a more ardent friend of liberty than the pastor of the ' First Baptist Church of Boston. In eloquent terms he advocated the doctrines of the Revolution in a sermon preached in 1766 on the repeal of the Stamp Act; and in another in 1770 before the Honorable Artillery Company of Boston. * As a preacher he had no superior in New England ; among his admirers were John Adams, General Knox, and Governor Hancock, who, for a season, was a member of his congregation. He was one of the twelve delegates from Boston in the convention which ratified the Constitu- tion of the United States, and he rendered effi- cient help in that almost equally divided assem- bly in securing a majority of nineteen votes for ratification, f But our brethren out of the ministry planned and toiled and suffered grandly in the cause of freedom. And conspicuously among this class of Baptists appears the name of ^Sprague's Annals of the American Baptist Pulpit, p. 78. t Manning and Brown University, pp. 133, 404. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 49 John Hart, a Signer of the Declaration of Incle- pendeiice. The father of Mr. Hart was a man- of cour- age and patriotism; he raised a company of volunteers; which he led to Quebec, and with them he fought bravely on the Plains of Abra- ham against the French. The son inherited his spirit, and was universally regarded as one of the best men in New Jersey. Ue was well in- formed on Colonial and European questions, and he thoroughly understood the inalienable rights of mankind. He was held in such high esteem that he was generally selected to settle the dis- putes of his neighbors, who spoke of him affec- tionately as " Honest John Hart." In the social relations of life he was a man of great modesty and benevolence, and his highest ambition on earth was to serve God and promote the best interests of his countrymen. He had no taste for political life, and in the conventions of his fellow-citizens he expressed himself hy brave deeds rather than eloquent speeches. Wlien he entered the Continental Congress'-' of 1774 he ^'History of Independence Hall, by Belisle, Pliila., p. 250. 50 BAPTISTS AND THE REVOLUTION. was about sixty years of age. lie resigned from Congress in 1775, and became Vice-President of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey. He Avas again elected in 177G, and took his pLace among the patriots and heroes who sent forth the immortal Declaration. It was issued July 4th, 177G. Wlien first published it had only the names of John Hancock as president and Charles Thompson as secretary. Two days before it was given to the world the British landed a powerful amiy on Staten Island, and to impart greater weight to the Declaration it was signed on the 2d*''' day of the month after its adoption hy all the members and circulated extensively throughout the colonies. Mr. Hart had passed beyond the age of ambition and vigorous activity, and the period of life when men voluntarily make sacrifices or even imperil their property or safety, but he considered noth- ing but his country's liberty. He owned a valualjle farm, grist, saw, and fulling mills; he had a wife and family whose happiness and security were dear to him ; his residence was on * Biography of the Sii,mers of the Decliiration of Independ- ence, Phila., 1831, III., 2oG. i'i i:!€K^ 51 52 THE BAPTISTS AND THE the highway of the enemy and his signature was sure to bring down their vengeance in a week or two; he knew that everything which he owned except the soil would be destroyed, his dear ones scattered, and his life taken if by the providence of the Evil One he was captured, and yet he did not hesitate to sign the Declara- tion of Independence, though it might prove his own death-warrant, and though it could hardly fail to inflict the heaviest losses and the most painful sufferings on him and his. The enemy speedily found out the patriotism and the happy home of Mr. Hart. His children fled, his prop- erty was wasted, and though an old man heavily laden with the burden of years he was compelled to leave his residence and conceal himself. He was pursued with unusual fury and malice, and could not with safety sleep twice in the same place. One night he had the house of a dog'^ for his shelter and its owner for his companion. To add intensity to the bitterness of his persecutions he was driven from the couch of his dying wife, whose anguish he was not per- ^ Historical Collections of Xew Jersey, p. 262, N. Y., 1847. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 53 mitted to assuage. But the venerable patriot never despaired and never repented, though he saw the darkest days of the Revolution. His love of country and sufferings gave him the warmest fHace in the hearts of his fellow-citizens. In 177G he was elected Speaker of the House of Assembly ; he was re-elected to the same posi- tion in 1777, and in 1778 the same honor was conferred upon him.=*"' He built the Baptist Church t of Hopewell and gave it its burying- ground. In that edifice he and his flimily wor- shipped God till he rested from his earthly toils and entered upon the joys of the redeemed. John Hart, the Baptist, in brave deeds and saintly worth, left a name fit for the illustrious document that proclaimed to the world our national birth. He departed this life in 1780. A shaft of Quincy granite marks his grave at Hopewell, on which the following epitaph is cut : *Mulforcrs History of New Jersey, pp. 430, 444, 456, Cam- den, 1848. t The Book of the Signers of the Declaration of Independ- ence, Phila., 1861, pp. 35, 36. 54 THE BAPTISTS AND THE [Front.) JOHN HART, A Signer of the Declaration of Independence Fro^i New Jersey, July 4th, 1776— died 1780. {Eight Side.) Erected by the State of New Jersey, By Act apjwoved Apn-il 5th, 1865. Joel Parker, Governor, Edward ^Y. Scudder, President of the Senate, Joseph T. Crowell, Speaker of the House, Jacob Weart, Charles A. Skillmak, Zephaniah Stout, Commissioners. [Left Side.) First Speaker of the Assembly, August 27tb, 1776, Member of the Committee of Safety, 1775—1776. [Bear.) Honor the Patriot's Grave. ' It was dedicated on the 4th of July, 1865, on which occasion Governor Parker delivered an address commemorating his great worth. "^ * Brotberliead's edition of Sanderson's Signers, etc., p. 331, Phila., 1865, AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 55 Colonel Joah Houghton ILid no sympathy with royalty, and no fear of danger. He had a strong mind, an inflexible will, and a courageous heart. He saw the path of duty in a moment, and was unusually prompt in carrying out his convictions. He was one of the first"^' men to advocate the calling of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey, which overthrew the Colonial Government, and de- clared that " William Franklin (the royal gover- nor, a son of Benjamin Franklin) has discovered himself to be an enemy to the liberties of this country, and that measures ought to be imme- diately taken for securing his person, and that henceforth all payments of money to him on account of salary or otherwise should cease." f In pursuance of this resolution, Colonel Heard arrested Franklin, who was placed at the dis- posal of the Continental Congress, and by that body committed to the custody of Governor Trumbull, of Connecticut, and, in that State, Franklin remained a prisoner until the war was *Life of Dr. Cone, p. H, N". Y., 1S5G. fMulford's History of New Jersey, p. 41G, Camden, 1848. 6 THE BAPTISTS AND THE ended.* When the State government was set up, Colonel Houghton was among the first mem- bers of the Assembly sent from Hunterdon County; and he received one of the earliest appointments as a field-officer in the Jersey troops raised for the defence of the United States. Colonel Houghton was in the Hopewell Baptist Meeting-house, at worship, when he received the first information of Concord and Lexington, and of the retreat of the British to Boston with such heavy loss. His great grand- son gives the following eloquent description of the way he treated the tidings : " Stilling the breathless messenger he sat quietly through the services, and when they were ended, he passed out, and mounting the great stone block in front of the meeting-house he beckoned to the people to stop. Men and women paused to hear, curious to know what so unusual a sequel to the service of the day could mean. At the first words a silence, stern as death, fell over all. The Sab- bath quiet of the hour and of the place was deepened into a terrible solemnity. He told them all the story of the cowardly murder at Lexing- ^ Life of Lord Sterling, p. 121. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 57 ton by the royal troops ; the heroic vengeance following hard upon it; the retreat of Percy; the gathering of the children of the Pilgrims round the beleagaered hills of Boston : then paus- ing, and looking over the silent throng, he said slowly : ' Men of New Jersey, the red coats are murdering our brethren of New England ! Who follows me to Boston?' and every man of that audience stepped out into line, and answered : ^I!' There was not a coward nor a traitor in old Hopewell Baptist Meeting-house that day."'^ The annals of the American Eevolution cannot furnish in its long list of fearless deeds and glorious sacrifices a grander spectacle than this Sunday scene in front of the Baptist church at Hopewell. Joab Houghton's integrity, honesty of purpose, and military capacity, must have been of an unusual order to have secured for his appeal such a noble response. And the men who gave it must have been nurtured in the lap of liberty in childhood, and taught enthusiastic love for her principles in all subsequent years. But this was the spirit of American Baptists in the Revolution. At home from the army for *Life of Dr. Cone, pp. 11, 12, X. Y., 1856. 58 THE BAPTISTS AND THE a short time, during the darkest period of the struggle, he found the whole region around his dwelling overrun and plundered by the enemy. The able-bodied men were either away with Washington or hidden in places of security. No one ventured to resist the marauding bands of Hessians who were ready to seize the widow's mite, or the plate of the wealthj^ A large army was near at hand, making it almost certain death for those who should offer resistance unless they were stronger than the powerful foe. Houghton w^atched a detachment of these mili- tary robbers enter a house, and with a few neighbors he quietly seized the arms, which in their contempt for the people of the neigh- borhood they had stacked outside, and then he compelled them to deliver themselves up as prisoners ; and this almost in the very presence of an overwhelming British force, and when the entire population still living in this region was sunk in abject terror."^' Colonel Houghton was in the field during the entire war and rendered courageous help in many a bloody battle, and secured for himself * Historical Collections of New Jersey, p. 262, N. Y. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 59 imperishable fame. He was an honored mem- ber of the BajDtist Church, of Hopewell, and grandfather of the late Spencer Houghton Cone, D.D., of New York. Jolin Brovm, Of Rhode Island, a brother of the celebrated Nicholas, after whom Brown University was named, was a Baptist, whose record is an honor to the denomination, and an American of whom every friend of liberty might be proud. He owned twenty vessels, everyone of which might be seized by the navy of the enemy, and yet, from the very hrst, he was a frank Revolu- tionist. When the First Baptist Church, of Providence, wished to erect their present edifice in 1774, John Brown was appointed "a com- mittee of one " to build it. And he reared for them a meeting-house eighty feet square, with a spire 19G feet high, at an expense of $25,000, when materials and labor were unusually cheap. The house is a handsome structure even at the present time ; but in that day it had few equals on the continent for size and beauty. Provi- dence then had a population of 4321, Mr. 60 THE BAPTISTS AND THE Brown was a man of magnificent plans, and he had the genius to carry them out with success.* John Brown might be said to have begun the Revolution himself. In 1772, a British armed schooner called the " Gaspee " came into Narra- gansett Bay to carry out orders from the British commissioners of customs, in Boston, w^ith a view to prevent violations of the revenue laws. The " Gaspee " was a continual annoyance to the mariners and ship-owaiers, with whose busi- ness she interfered. On the 9th of June, 1772, she ran aground on Namquit, below Pawtuxet. Mr. Brown heard of it, and he immediately ordered eight large boats to be placed in charge of Captain Abraham Whipple, one of his best ship-masters, and he put sixty-four armed men in them. At about 2 a.m., Mr. Brown and his boats reached the "Gaspee;" two shots were exchanged, one of which w^ounded Lieutenant Duddingston. " This was the first British blood shed in the war of Independence." The crew and officers left the " Gaspee " very speedily, and Whipple blew her up. Mr. Brown was the last * Manning and Brown University, pp. 227-229. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 61 man on board/^' In Bartlett's Colonial Records, during four years, from the beginning of 1776, his name occurs in " important committees, and in connection with various public services twenty-six times; no other name has such frequent mention in Bartlett's volume." f John Brown was a brave, generous, and large-minded patriot, whose services were invaluable to his country in the hour of her great need. The Laymen Crowded the Ranks of the Army and Labored for the Triumph of the Revolution ivith all their might. And they earned for themselves a reputation for love of country and valor which will never die. And, in the peaceful scenes of domestic life, the churches labored to provide for the army and to plant the seeds of patriotism in hearts halting between their country and its enemies. And they cheered the brave men in arms, by sympathy with them in their trials, and rejoicings with them in their victories. John Adams, of Massachusetts, was, on some * Manning and Brown University, pp. 170, 171. tibid., p. 167. 62 THE BAPTISTS AND THE occasions, the bitterest enemy the Baptists had in Kevolutionary days, and yet he gives them considerable credit for bringing Delaware from the gulf of disloyalty, to the brink of which he declares "The missionaries of the London Society for the Propagation of the Faith in Foreign Parts " had brought her to the platform of patriotism.* On the 19th of October, 1781, the American army entered Yorktown, having received Corn- wallis and his troops as prisoners ; on the 2od, the Philadelphia Association was in session; that night the tidings of the great triumph came; the next morning at " sunrise " the Association met, and overwhelmed with the glorious news, praised God for the victory, and recorded their grateful feelings in appropriate resolutions.-)- To some Americans in Pennsylvania and New Jersey the capture of Cornwallis was a terrible blow : it meant the loss of everything, including country. But the oldest Baptist association in the land got up by sunrise to celebrate the best ^Life and Works of John Adams, by Charles Francis Adams, X., 812. t Minutes of Philadelphia Association, p. 274. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 63 news that had reached them for six long years — tidings for which their inmost souls blessed God. And this was the spirit of the whole Baptist people all over this broad land. In the Revolution some thougld the Baptists luere too Patriotic. Our brethren in the Revolution were so devoted to liberty, and as a result of this so warlike, that a man who believed in non-resist- ance could not stay among them. Martin Kauf- mun, a Baptist minister in Virginia, originally from the Mennonites, who still believed Avith them that all wars were sinful as well as all appeals to the courts of law, abandoned the Baptists and formed a little sect of his own, where only the friends of peace would meet. There is no evidence that Kaufmun was a Tory. Some sturdy patriots in the Society of Friends joined the Revolutionary army, and w^ere expelled by their respective meetings. After the war they formed the '' Church of the Free Quakers," wdiose ancient house of worship is now " The Apprentices' Library," at Fifth and Arch streets, in this city. Mr. Kaufmun reversed 64 THE BAPTISTS AND THE ft their position : he left a militant church to found an abode of peace.'*'- If our fathers erred in the struggles of the Revolution, it was in j)ossessing a superabundance of zeal in their country's cause. Baptists have Received the highest Commen- dations FOR their Patriotism. Thomas Jefferson was the soundest ex- ponder of true liberty whom God ever made ; endowed with rare mental power and full of ardor in the cause of freedom, he had ample ability to enable him to detect the lukewarm and discover the enthusiastic. Writing to the Baptist church, of Buck Mountain, Albemarle County, Virginia, neighbors of his, in reply to a congratulatory address which they had sent him, he says : " I thank you, my friends and neigh- bors, for your kind congratulations on my re- turn to my native home, and on the opportu- nities it w^ill give me of enjoying, amidst your affections, the comforts of retirement and rest. Your approbation of my conduct is the more valued as jon have best known me, and is an Semjile's History of the Yirginia Baptists, p. 188. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 65 ample reward for any services I may have rendered. We have acted together from the origin to the end of a memorable Eevolution, and we have contributed, each in a line allotted us, our endeavors to render its issue a perma- nent blessing to our country. That our social intercourse may, to the evening of our days, be cheered and cemented by witnessing the freedom and happiness for which we have labored, will be my constant prayer. Accept the offering of my affectionate esteem and respect.""^ This letter was written in 1809. Jefferson's ojDinion of the Buck Mountain Baptists w^as exceedingly flattering to their patriotism. He well knew their love for experimental religion, with which he had no sympathy. From his correspondence it is evident that Jefferson was simpl}^ an advanced Unitarian, full of sensitiveness to slights on his heretical doctrines, and very earnest in advocating them ; and that he should w^rite such an epistle to a Baptist church, only shows that they abounded in their love of liberty. Jefferson had a special regard for "Jefferson's Complete Works, by Washington, K. Y., Till., 168. 66 THE BAPTISTS AND THE Baptists. The union between him and them was peculiar; he speaks in his letters with scorn sometimes of other denominations, but in a mass of them, which we have read, there is not a word unfriendly to Baptists. They loved liberty intensely, and so did he ; and this was the bond that united the sage of Monticello, and the followers of Roger Williams. In his com- plete works there are replies to congratulatory addresses from the Danbury"^ Baptist Associa- tion, the Baltimore and Ketocton Associations, and the representatives of six Baptist Associa- tions, met at Chesterfield, Ya., Nov. 21st, 1808. This last body was " The General Meeting " of the Baptists of Virginia, then representing a host ; to them he says : " In reviewing the his- tory of the times through which we have passed, no portion of it gives greater satisfaction than that which presents the efforts of the friends of religious freedom and the success with which they were crowned. We have shown, by fair trial, the great and interesting experiment whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. -^Complete AVoiks, by IVashington, INT. Y., VIII. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 67 And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reasOT."* Here the retiring President clearly tells these Baptists that they have been the successful friends of religious freedom, and that he and they together, and their friends and his, had swept away all laws that chained conscience, and put the amendment prohibitory of religious establishments in the Constitution. The Bap- tists loved Thomas Jefferson. The church at Cheshire, Mass., made a cheese, which weighed fourteen hundred and fifty pounds, and sent it to Washington to President Jefferson, in 1801, by the celebrated John Leland, their pastor, as an expression of the warm regard which they entertained for their great leader in freedom's battles. John Leland was a man of singular ability, independence, frankness, humor and piety. Listening to a sermon, in Virginia, on a very cold day, at the conclusion of which several persons were to be baptized^JiejMjm- *Wasliington's Complete Works o£ Jefferson, N. Y., VIII., 139. 68 THE BAPTISTS AND THE posed the well-known hymn^ beginning with the stanza : Christians, if your hearts are warm, Ice and snow can do no harm ; If by Jesus you are prized, Believe, arise, and be baptized.* Leland represented the opinions of Baptists on public questions better than any man living in his day, and he speaks of Jefferson as having •'justly acquired the title of the Apostle of Liberty;"-}- and when he attained the presidency, he describes him " as the brightest orb in the greatest orbit in America." J No language was too flattering for Revolutionary Baptists to apply to Jefli9rson, and he, with no love for other denominations except the sect of Dr. Priestly, cherished a warm regard for our fathers in the faith. Only two addresses from religious bodies in addition to those already named, one from the Methodist church in Pittsburg, and another from the church of the same denomination, in New London, Conn., are noticed in his " Com- plete Works." Howison, the historian of Virginia, says : " No * Leland's Works, p. 28. f Ibid. , p. 36. % Ibid., p. 255. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. G9 class of the people of America were more devoted advocates of the principles of the Revolution, none were more willing to give their money and goods to their country, none more prompt to march to the field of battle, and none more heroic in actual conflict than the Baptists of Virginia." '^ Washington pays a glorious tribute to the Baptists for their Revolutionary sympathies and deeds. In his reply to the " Committee of the Virginia Baptist Churches," which expressed to him grave doubts about the security of religious liberty under the new Constitution, a part of which has been already quoted, he says : "I recollect, with satisfaction, that the religious society, of which you are a member, has been, throughout America, uniformly and almost unanimously the firm friends of civil liberty, and the persevering promoters of our glorious Revolution. I cannot hesitate to believe that they will be the faithful supporters of a free, yet efficient, general government." f With such a *IIo\vison's History of Virginia, II., 170. t Writings of George Washington, by Sparks, XII., 154-5, Boston. 70 THE BAPTISTS AND THE testimony from the noblest patriot of the human race, we may well bless God for our religious ancestry, and pray to him earnestly for grace, that we may never degenerate in piety or patriotism. Few Tories can be found among the Bap- tists OF THE KeYOLUTION. When the Legislature of Massachusetts, in 1778, forbade the return of 311 public enemies to their government, the historian, Backus, who w^as acquainted with the facts, declares that not one of them was a Baptist.* The English Government gave twelve million pounds to compensate American Tories, f and we doubt if one dollar of this money ever went into the pocket of a true Baptist. In his brief biography of 3,200 Tories, given by Sabine in his " History of American Loyalists," we find forty-six clergymen of one denomination, six of another, three of another, and but one of the Baptist faith. This minister was Morgan Edwards, a man of great ability and general * Backus' Church History, Phila., p. 196. t History of England by Hume, Smollett and Farr, III., 174. AMERICAN KEVOLUTION. 71 worth, but eccentric. He had a son, an officer in the British service, whose position is charged with helping to bhnd his father s eyes to the glories of patriotism. He gave up the public duties of the ministry while the war lasted, and conducted himself with so much moderation as to save himself from exile during and after the Revolutionary struggle.* Edwards was about to be arrested by Colonel Miles, a member of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia, but he was notified of his danger and left this city immediately. It is gratifying to know that the most rigid scrutiny cannot discover a second Tory among the Baptist ministers of America. Sabine represents Christopher Sower, of Ger- mantown, in this State, as a German Baptist minister. Sower was a printer and book- seller, and unbound Bibles belonging to him furnished cartridge paper for the patriotic troops at the battle of Germantown. He is said to have lost $30,000 through indignation inspired by his disloyalty in the American army.t He was not a Baptist, but a memberof^pecti^^ -x-The American Loyalists, by Sabine, i-. 271, Boston, 18i7. tibia., p. C27. 72 THE BAPTISTS AND THE German commimitj that has no reLations with our denomination. There may be some Baptist laymen hidden in Sabine's long list ; it would be remarkable if there were not two or three. But we do not know of a single one. Brethren of other creeds fought bravely for our common freedom, and we shall not object to any amount of glory they may desire to claim, so long as they permit our Baptist fathers to enjoy the position which their unsurpassed fidelity and heroism justly earned. In the work of the Tory refugee, Judge Curwen, there are the names of 92G persons who fled from Boston, when General Howe evacuated it and sailed for Halifax ; there are also the names of many others who were exiled by State laws. Committees of Safety, or their own well-grounded ai^prehensions ; among these persons were governors, judges, subordinate colo- nial officials, eighteen* clergymen, and people of all ranks and occupations. This venerable, gossipping ex-judge of New England, while he lived on British alms, wrote a somewhat copi- *The Writings of Washington, by Sparks, vol. III., p. 325, Boston, 1834. AMERICAN KEVOLUTION. 73 ous account of the persons and objects that claimed his attention. Science, literature, war, politics, theatres, and theology are frequently discussed by the fugitive from Salem. But it is not known that a single Tory Baptist has a place in his numerous pages; nor is there even the hint of a suspicion that one of tliem belonged to our ancient and honored denomination.* It ^as difficult for the Baptists in the Revo- lution TO THROW AWAY THE PROTECTION OF England. The sovereign was a refuge to the Dissenters in any Colony where church and state were united. Time and again the king, in council, had disannulled persecuting laws and released our fathers from odious oppressions. The first Baptist church in Boston, after assembling for years in private dwellings, erected a meeting- house in 1677, which was closed by order of the General Court of Massachusetts; after some time they ventured to use it again, when the doors were nailed up and a paper posted on them which read: "All person^^ir^to^e 1^^^^^^,^^n^^J^v\ and Letters, p. 448, Boston, 1S64. 74 THE BAPTISTS AND THE notice, that by order of the court the doors of this house are shut up, and that they are pro- hibited from holding any meeting therein, or to open the doors thereof without license from authority till the general court take further order, as they will answer the contrary at their peril." =^^ This was a wicked outrage, and on an appeal being made to the king, in council, he immediately rebuked the authors of this base act, and commanded that liberty of conscience should be given by the Congregationalists to Episcopalians and Dissenters.f The town of Ashfield, Mass., was settled by Baptists, and when it had a few Pedobaptist families in it they built a Presbyterian church and settled a minister, and then laid a tax upon the land to meet the expenses of both. The Baptists re- fused to pay the church bills of their neighbors, to which the constable so unceremoniously in- vited their attention ; immediately the best por- tion of the cultivated lands in the town were seized and sold for trifling sums to pay their ecclesiastical dues; the house and garden of * Hildreth's History of the United States, I^. Y., I., 497-9. t Backus' Church History, Philadelphia, p. 121. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. '^^ one man was taken from him, and the young orchards, the meadows and cornfields of others, and the grave-yard of the Baptists was actually among the lots disposed of. These properties realized onlv £35.10, and they were worth _ £363 8 Three hundred and ninety-five acres were 'unjustly seized at this time from their owners. The orthodox minister was one of the purchasers. This was but the first payment, and a couple of others were coming. This pro- ceeding occurred in 1770, just six years before the Declaration of Independence.* An appeal was made to the king, in council, and the law authorizing this civil proceeding was " disan- nulled "f In 1691, when that illustrious Hol- lander, William III., sat on the throne of Britam, he granted a new charter to Massachusetts, in which he increased their privileges, but took away some which they had previously enjoyed. He expressly declared that no law should be made without the consent of the governor, whom the crown appointed, and having re- ceived his approbation it couldj^e^isan^^ * Minutes of the Philadelphia Association L. 116. t Benedict's History of the Baptists, p. 4.0. 76 BAPTISTS AND THE REVOLUTION". at any time within three years after it was enacted. William, who was a tolerant and en- lightened king, intended to stop Puritan perse- cutions in Massachusetts, and he was successful for full fifty years." '^ On many occasions the kings of Britain stopped Colonial persecutions and sheltered Baptists and Quakers from the wrath of their American neighbors. It was a serious thing for our Baptist fathers to throw away this refuge, this last hope in many a gloomy day, and trust their religious rights to men who were executing laws full of tyranny up to the commencement of the Revolution. And it was a little difficult to join the same military company with the tax-gatherer who had robbed you by due process of law, the con- stable who had lodged you or your widowed sister or mother in prison because conscience for- bade the payment of a tax to support religion, or the jailer who had put you in the stocks or scourged you for preaching Jesus, or with the justice who had condemned you. But Roger Williams, a short time after his banishment among the savages, discovered that the Pequot * Backus' Church Ilistoiy, p. 12G. ROGER WILLIAMS. 77 78 THE BAPTISTS AND THE Indians were trying to get the MohegaPs and Narragansetts to unite witli them in extermi- nating the Massachusetts Colonists, and know- ing the immense power of these tribes in that day, he at once notified his former persecutors of their danger, and then having successfully used his efforts to throw the whole burden of fighting the English on the Pequots alone, he saved the men and their wives and their chil- dren who had no mercy on him.* And like the great founder of Rhode Island, our Baptist fathers, in Revolutionary days, forgave their per- secutors, and in view of great dangers threaten- ing the liberties and lives of their countrymen, stood knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder with patriots of loving and persecuting ante- cedents, and never gave up the conflict until the flag of freedom floated in undisturbed majesty over the entire territory claimed by the thirteen Colonies. * Collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society, 11., ol9. AMEEICAN REVOLUTION. 79 The baptists ayere chiefly instrumental in RESCUING Virginia from the sceptre of Britain. The leading men of Virginia were the de- scendants of high-born English families, whose .aiding principle for centuries had been loyalty to the king. Treason to one of them was the xnost infamous crime. They were rigid Episco- palians, and so was the king of England a,nd inost of his influential subjects in the British islands. The rectors of Virginia were native Englishmen,* many of whom were specially ac- ceptable to the gay young Virginians because they frequented the race course, betted at cards, and rattled dice like experts. One of them was president of a jockey club, and another fought a duel There could not be a more perfect con- trast between a large majority of these men and their successors in the Episcopal Church of Virginia to-day. But as they naturally con- formed to the tastes and habits of their people, and as they wereboimdtoEnsl^^ -Tn^:^.m.io.j of Yirgiuia, II., 159-60, Richmond, 1848 80 THE BAPTISTS AND THE cation and blood, they were fitted to streno-then the ties uniting the Old Dominion to the mother country. The planter was by position and hereditary inclination what in Scotland is called a laird a ^nmor noble who controlled the dependent por- tion of the white population by his wealth and his slaves by force and kindness mixed to- gether; he was born to rule, and he was rei^arded with feudal reverence from his earliest conscious years. The toiling New England farmer, or the cultivators of the soil in the Middle Colo- nies, might fight for freedom because they lived among equals, but the great planters of Vir- ginia were the natural friends of the mightier lords of England, and of the British kino- They clung to Charles I., who was as unscru- pulous a tyrant as ever oppressed any people. He levied taxes without the consent of any representative body of legislators, and in shame- ess violation of law, and enforced his decrees by that Tudor and Stuart inquisition, the Star Chamber. But Virginia adhered to his cause and '-enacted a declaration that they were bom under a monarchy, and would never degenerate \ AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 81 from the condition of their birth by being subject to any other government." After the king was executed they acknowledged his son, and retained Governor Berkeley, with a commis- sion from Prince Charles.'^ And though Mary- land recognized the authority of the British Commonwealth, and Massachusetts bowed to its supremacy and prohibited all intercourse with Virginia tillf she renounced the Stuarts, it required a portion of a powerful British fleet sent out to subdue the Colonies, under Captain Dennis, to constrain Virginia to acknowledge the British government, and remove Sir Wil- liam Berkeley.J In 1660, Governor Mathews of Virginia died, and the people insisted on Berkeley, who was still in the Old Dominion, resuming the office of governor. But he de- clined to accept it unless they united with him in recognizing Charles II. "This," says Bev- erly, "was their dearest wish." Sir William Berkeley, while the king was still in exile, ^ Howe's Virginia Historical Collections, p. 132, Charles- ton, 1846. tibid., p. 63. Jllowison's History of Virginia, I., 298, Phila., 1843. 82 THE BAPTISTS AND THE united with the Virginians in forthwith pro- daiming " Charles IL, king of England, Scot- land, Ireland, and Virginia, and he caused all processes to be issued in his name. Thus his majesty was actually king in Virginia before he was in England." * The Virginians were surely loyal to royalty in these proceedings, but no one can detect any love for hberty in them. The Stuarts that sat on the throne of England were destitute of all love for freedom, and in no deed showed even the faintest regard for it. When Patrick Henry introduced his ^vi^ cele- brated Resolutions into the Virginia Assembly in 1765 in connection with the Stamp Act, the men of influence in that body were hostile to any opposition to that tyrannical measure, and were going to let it become a law without resist- ance of any kind.f Unaided, Henry made his bold assault on the usurpation of the British Parliament in his twenty-eighth year, and during his first session in the legislature. His fifth resolution was: * Howe's Virginia Historical Collections, p. 133, Charles- ton, 1846. t Campbell's History of Virginia, p. 541, Pliila., 1860. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 83 " That the General Assembly of this Colony has the sole right and power to lay taxes and im- positions upon its inhabitants, and that every attempt to vest such power in any person or per- sons whatsoever other than the General Assem- bly aforesaid, has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American freedom." After the amendment of the fourth resolution, the first four were passed by small majorities. But the fifth was carried by but a single vote, and yet it was only the doctrine of John Hampden and the Long Parliament and of the American Revolu- tion. "Speaker Robinson," says Campbell, "Pey- ton Randolph, Richard Bland, Edmund Pendle- ton, George Wythe, and all the leaders of the House and proprietors of large estates made a strennous resistance. Mr. Jefferson says : The resolutions of Henry were opposed by Robinson and all the cyphers of the aristocracy."* In a speech of wonderful eloquence and power, Henry advocated these resolutions, in which he used the words : " Tarquin and Caesar had each his Brutus, Charles I. his Cromwell, and George in." — " Treason ! " shouted the speaker ; " trea- * Campbell's History of Virginia, pp. 541-2. 84 THE BAPTISTS AND THE son, treason/' was echoed round the house, while Henry, fixing his eyes on the speaker, continued without faltering,— -^ may profit by their exam- ple." ^-^ The next day the men who voted for the fifth resolution, alarmed for their presumptu- ous deed, actually had it expunged from the journals of the House.f In Connecticut, the stamp-officer, Ingersoll, was taken in charge by five hundred men on horseback, each bearing a long white pole, from which the bark had just been stripped, and by these five hundred arguments they persuaded him to resign, and to throw his hat into the air and shout three times, " Liberty and property." J Elsewhere vigorous opposition was shown to the execution of the despotical Stamp Act. But the leaders of the powerful families of Virginia denounced Henry's fifth resolution, containing the doctrine of the American Revolution : No taxation without representation; which was in- tended to rebuke the authors of the Stamp Act; with boisterous indignation they made their "Bancroft's History of the United States, Y., 277. t Ilowison^s History of Virginia, II., 52, Eichmond, 1848. : Bancroft's History of the United States, V., 818-320. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 85 house ring with cries of " Treason," when he nobly advocated his glorious resolution, and they succeeded, the very next day, in alarming those who voted for it, and in securing its erasure from the records of the House. How, then, did Virginia take her place in the list of States that fought so bravely for freedom ? If, just ten years before the Revolution, her^ foremost citizens were ^^strenuously" opposed to the doctrine that there should be no taxes, without the consent of those who were to pay them, it is a matter of great interest to know how they changed their minds. In Great Britain, perhaps forty years ago, both houses of the British Praliament were filled with land-owners who had legal possession of, probably, four-fifths of the soil in England, Ireland, and Scotland. They had made laws to keep out foreign grain, until wheat reached a certain price in their own markets; and this price would enable them to secure a high rent for their lands. Corn laws were the most im- portant articles in the political creed of a major- ity of the aristocracy of Great Britain, and they were determined not to repeal them. The 86 THE BAPTISTS AND THE people of England took a different view of the matter, and felt that they had to pay an extra price for every loaf to secure for the landlord an extravagant rent; and they commenced to agitate against the corn laws ; they held meet- ings in every direction, attended by 50,000, 70,000 and 100,000 men, many of whom were often hungry ; and Sir Kobert Peel, a warm advocate of the corn laws, at last, was persuaded that he and his Tory friends must repeal those laws, lest the British constitution should be annulled, and the throne overturned ; and it is more than probable that loyalty to Britain, in Virginia, was chiefly destroyed in the same way. In 1774, according to Howison, "The Bap- tists increased on every side ; if one preacher was imprisoned, ten arose to take his place ; if one congregation was dispersed, a larger assem- bled on the next opportunity. The influence of the denomination was strong among the com- mon people, and was beginning to be felt in high places. In two points they were dis- tinguished : first, in their love of freedom ; and, secondly, in their hatred of the church establish- ment. They hated, not its ministers, but its AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 87 principles. To a man they were united in the resolve never to relax their efforts until it was utterly destroyed."'^ These religious descend- ants of men who had suffered for truth in every country of Europe, and in every age of persecu- tion, since Stephen's blood was shed, were among the most fearless heroes and earnest men the world ever saw. They would journey any distance, and make any sacrifice of time, property, or liberty, to spread their principles ; and, though at first treated with insults by the masses, they had now secured so many of the common people in their ranks, and the remain- der had become so convinced of the justice of their views about a free state and a free church, that, practically, the Baptists controlled the larger number of white Virginians, whom they led directly into the Revolution ; for, to a man, they were in favor of it. At the Revolu- tion, according to Jefferson, two-thirds of the people were Dissenters ;f these were composed chiefly of Baptists and Presbyterians ; but while the Presbyterians had men of eminent worth, *Howison's History of Yirginia, II., 170, Richmond, 1848.. t Jefferson On the State of Virginia, p. 169, Richmond. 88 THE BAPTISTS AND THE they were few in comparison with the Baptists. Patrick Henry found them his lifelong friends, and he would journey any distance to serve them. He rode fifty miles, to Fredericksburg, to be present at the trial of John Waller, Lewis Craig, and James Childs, who were indicted for the crime of " preaching the gospel contrary to law," whose acquittal he speedily secured. "^ " In their efforts to avail themselves of the Tolera- tion Act," says Campbell, " they found Patrick Henry ever ready to step forward in their behalf: and he remained through life their unwavering friend." f And they applauded all his eloquence for patriotism, and spread over the whole Colony until their country became uncomfortable to Tory Virginians, and the repeated aggressions of the British made it needful to give up Virginia or their political opinions; and the majority of the planters became the friends of a free country. Had not the Baptists planted their love of liberty in the hearts of the common j^eople of Virginia, had they left them to the teachings of ^ Howison's History of Virginia, p. 168, Richmond, 1848. t History of Virginia, Pliila., 1860, p. 555. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 89 Tory rectors from British universities, and lairds educated in English schools, the descendants of the men who lamented the death of Charles I., and resisted the authority of the Parliament till its fleet compelled their obedience, some of whom were the very men who expunged Patrick Henry's fifth resolution from the journals of the House of Assembly, it is more than probable would have kept Virginia loyal to England in the Kevolutionary struggle, and if she had been, every Southern Colony would have stood by her side. And, if the struggle had been confined to New England, without Washington on Dorchester Heights, or warm wishes and material encouragements from southern com- munities, however bravely our eastern friends might have fought, and they showed themselves men of valor in the field, it would have ended speedily, and most probably in a torrent of Massachusetts blood vainly shed. Without the Baptists of Virginia, the genius and glory of Washington might have been buried in the quiet home of an almost unknown Virginian planter. The English might not have had to evacuate Boston; our country I THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 91 might have been still in Colonial bondage with ten millions of j^eople, and no great cities ; and instead of being the refuge and admiration of all nations, we might have been an obscure and feeble section of a great transatlantic empire. And we should not then have had a glorious Centennial. Baptists were Influential in Securing the Adoption of the Constitution of the United States. It is a matter of surprise to-day that the wis- dom of this instrument was ever doubted, or that it should ever have been opposed by any number of inteUigent and patriotic men. The two great States that supported the Revolution were nearly equally divided about the Constitu- tion ; and some of the best men in these powerful centres of political life regarded it with unmixed alarm, and resisted it with all their influence and eloquence. In Massachusetts, the Convention called to ratify the Constitution assembled on the 9th of January, 1788. It was composed of nearly four hundred members. It possessed much of the ^2 THE BAPTISTS AND THE intellect and the patriotism of the State. The parties for and against the Constitution were about equal. The debates lasted for a month, and the contest was carried on with great earnestness. The entire United States took the deepest interest in the deliberations. It was universally felt, as Dr. Manning expressed it, that "Massachusetts was the hinge on which the whole must turn," and that if she rejected the Constitution it would be discarded in the other States. The Baptists lield the balance of power in the Convention, and thej were gener- ally opposed to the Constitution in Massachu- setts. The Baptist delegates were chiefly ministers who had the liighest regard for Dr. Manning. And he, fully convinced that noth- ing but the new Constitution could save the country from anarchy, spent two weeks in attendance upon the Convention, and he and Dr. Stillman exerted themselves to the utmost to persuade their brethren to support the Con- stitution. With the Rev. Isaac Backus, the fear- less friend of the Baptist cause, and of liberty of conscience, they failed, but they met with success in other cases. And the Constitution AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 93 was adopted by a majority of nineteen votes. There were 187 yeas and 168 nays on the hist day of the session, and before '' the final question was taken, Governor Hancock, the president, invited Dr. Manning to close the solemn con- vocation with thanksgiving and prayer." Dr. Manning addressed the Deity in a spirit glowing with devotion, and with such lofty patriotism that every heart was filled with reverence for God and admiration for his servant. And such an effect was produced by this prayer that, had it not been for the "popularity of Dr. Stillman, the rich men of Boston would have built a church for Dr. Manning."^ There is a strong probability that the Baptists of the Conven- tion would have followed Isaac Backus, and changed the insignificant majority into a small minority, if it had not been for Manning and Stillman. In Virginia, the opposition to the Constitution was led by more popular men ; but the parties, otherwise, were about equal in strength. The Convention met in Richmond, in June, 1788. The most illustrious men in the State were in ^Manning and Brown University, pp. 103-4, Boston, 1864. 94 THE BAPTISTS AND THE it. Patrick Henry spoke against the Constitu- tion with a vehemence never surpassed hy him- self on any occasion in his whole life, and with a power that was sometimes overwhelming. Once, while this matchless orator was address- ing the Convention, a wild storm broke over Richmond ; the heavens were ablaze with light- ning, the thunder roared, and the rain came down in torrents ; at this moment Henry seemed to see the anger of heaven threatening the State, if it should consummate the guilty act of adoj)t- ing the Constitution, and he invoked celestial witnesses to view and compassionate his dis- tracted country in this grand crisis of her his- tory. And such was the effect of his speech on this occasion, that the Convention immediately dispersed.'^ The Convention, when the final vote on ratification was taken, only gave a ma- jority of ten in favor of the Constitution. Eighty-nine cast their votes for it, and seventy- nine against -j- it. James Madison possessed the greatest influence of any man in the Conven- ^Howison's History of Virginia, II., 326, 327, S32. t Howe's Yirginia Historical Collections, p. 124, Charles- ton, 184G, AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 95 tion ; 'had he not been there, Patrick Henry would have carried his opposition triumphantly. And Madison was there by the generosity of John Leland, the well-known and eccentric Baptist minister. Madison remained in Phila- delphia three months, with John Jay and Alex- ander Hamilton, preparing the articles which now make up " the Federalist ; " this permitted Henry and others to secure the public attention in Virginia, and, in a large measure, the public heart. Henry's assertion, that the new Consti- tution " squinted towards monarchy," was eagerly heard and credited by many of the best friends of freedom; and when Madison came home he found Leland a candidate for the county of Orange, the constituency which he wished to represent, with every prospect of success, for Orange was chiefly a Baptist county. Mr. Madison spent half a day with John Leland, and the result of this interview was that Leland withdrew and exerted his whole influence in favor of Madison, who was elected to the Con- vention, and, after sharing in its fierce debates, he was just able to save the Constitution of the United States. In a eulogy pronounced on 9 96 THE BAPTISTS AND THE James Madison, by J. S. Barbour, of Virginia, in 1857, he said " That the credit of adopt- ing the Constitution of the United States j)rop- erlj belonged to a Baptist clergyman, formerly of Virginia, named Leland : ^ If,' said he, ' Madi- son had not been in the Virginia Convention, the Constitution would not have been ratified, and, as the approval of nine States was necessary to give effect to this instrument, and as Virginia was the ninth State, if it had been rejected by her the Constitution would have failed (the remaining States following her example), and it Avas through Elder Leland's influence that Madi- son was elected to that convention.""^ It is unquestionable that Mr. Madison was elected through the efforts and resignation of John Leland, and it is all but certain that that act gave our country its famous Constitution. *Sprague's Annals of the American Baptist Pulpit, p. 179. american revolution. 97 Baptists were the Chief Instruments in com- pleting THE Constitution of the United States, the Charter of Revolutionary Liberty, by adding the Amendment Secur- ing full Religious Freedom. The first amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted in 1789, the year it went into operation. It reads : " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the rights of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The first clause of this amendment occupies properly its prominent place in that addition to the Constitution. Without it the remaining parts would have appeared as lacking in seriousness. The idea that free speech, a free press, a free discussion of grievances and the right of petition were in danger in a country just victoriously emerging from a protracted war in defence of Liberty, could not be deliberately entertained by reflect- ing persons ; and yet, when religious freedom is to receive Constitutional protection^ these other 98 THE BAPTISTS AND THE links in the chain of liberty are appropriately joined to it. But freedom of conscience was in legal bondage, in 1789, and its friends had too much cause to be alarmed for its safety. An absolute necessity rested upon them to deliver religion from the tyrannical enactments which then fettered her, and by Constitutional prohibition guard her from slavery in the future. The passage of this amendment by Congress and the Legislatures ultimately but indirectly destroyed the union between Church and State in the United States. But suppose it had not been adopted ; Massa- chusetts might have had her State Church to- day, and her citizens rotting in prison because they could not conscientiously pay a church tax ; and any State might have established the Episcopal Church and then committed Baptists or other ministers to prison, as they did in Virginia down to the Revolution. And Congress might have decreed that the Catholic Church was the religious fold of the nation, and might have levied taxes to support her clergy, and made laws to give secular power to her cardinals, archbishops, bishops and pjriests over our schools. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 99 religious opinions and personal freedom. With the amendment we have been educated to practise universal religious freedom ; without it sacerdotal tyranny might have destroyed all our liberty. The grandest feature of our Constitution is the first clause of the first amendment. The Baptists have always claimed that the credit for this amendment belongs chiefly to them. It is in strict accordance with their time-honored maxim : The major part shall rule in civil things only. Where could it have come from? In the Kevolution and for a few years after there were two great centres of political influence in our country, around which the other States moved with more or less interest — Massachusetts and Virginia. Freedom of conscience could not come from Massachusetts ; she was wedded to a State reUgion in 1789, which defied any divorc- ing agency to create a separation. Just ten years before, she adopted her new Constitution, and to secure an article in it giving legal support to Congregational ministers, John Adams, her favorite son, and the future President of the United States, accused the Baptists of sending a delegate to Philadelphia to break up the Con- 100 THE BAPTISTS AND THE tineiital Congress by creating dissensions about State taxes for ministers. And^ after exciting the indignation of the Convention against the Baptists for plotting such a calamity, he repre- sented them as the great advocates of the heresy of separating Church and State, and as the par- ties to be benefited by this departure from the ways of their fathers ; and through this odious misrepresentation Adams had no trouble in fastening the Church to the State, as in the good old Puritan times. And this tie only perished in 1834.'^ Writing to Benjamin Kent, he saj' s : " I am for the most liberal toleration of all denominations, but I hope Congress will never meddle with religion further than to say their own prayers. . . . Let every Colony have its oion reUgion icithou t m olesta tionJ'-f T h at is, from Congress ; he wished every Colony to have its own establislied church without molesta- tion, if it desired such an institution. He un- justly charged Israel Pemberton, a Quaker, whom, with the Baptists and other Friends, the * Backus' Cburch History, Pluladelpliia, p. 197. tLife and Works of John Adams, by Charles Francis Adams, IX., 402. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 101 Massachusetts delegates met, during the sessions of the first Continental Congress, with an effort to destroy the union and labors of Congress, because he j)lead for the release of Baptists and Quakers imprisoned in Massachusetts for not paying the ministers' tax, and for the repeal of their oppressive laws. And John Adams actually argued that it was against the con- sciences of the people of his State to make any change in their laws about religion, even though others might have to suffer in their estates or by imprisonment to satisfy Mr. Adams and his conscientious friends. And he declared that they might as well thhik they could change the movements of the heavenly bodies as alter the religious laws of Massachusetts."' This was the spirit of New England when the first amend- ment was proposed, except among the Baptists and the little community of Quakers. Thomas Jefferson, w^riting to Dr. Rush, says : " There was a hope confidently cherished, about A. D. 1800, that there might be a State Church throughout the United States, and this expecta- *Life and Works of John Adams, by Charles Francis Adams, vol. II., 399. 102 THE BAPTISTS AND THE tion was specially cherished by Episcopalians and Congregationalists." * This was the senti- ment of not a few New England Pedobaptists, and the hope of the remains of the Episcopal Church in the South. Massachusetts and her allies had no love for the first amendment. It came from Virginia, and chiefly from Bap- tists of the Old Dominion. The ^^ Mother of Presidents" was the mother of the glorious amendment. In 1776 the first Eepublican Legislature of Virginia convened, and after a violent contest, daily renewed, from the 11th of October to the 5 th of December, the Acts of Par- liament were repealed which rendered any form of worship criminal. Dissenters were exempted from all taxes to support the clergy, and the laws were suspended which compelled Episcopa- lians to support their own church. But it was the pressure of Dissenters without that forced this legislation on the Assembly, for a majority of the members were Episcopalians.^ While this act relieved Baptists, the unrejDealed com- * Memoirs, Correspondence, etc., Charlottesville, 1829, III., 341. tibid., T., 32. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 103 mon law still punished with dismissal from all offices for the first ofience, those who denied the Divine existence, or the Trinity, or the truth of Christianity ; and for the second, the transgressor should he rendered incapable of suing or of acting as guardian, administrator, X)r executor, or of receiving a legacy, and, in addi- tion, should be imprisoned for three years/^ These persecuting laws were not repealed till 1785. The tithe law, after being agitated fre- quently in every session and annually sus- pended, was repealed in 1779. The Presby- terians and Baptists were the outside powers that swept away the State Church of Virginia. After tithes ceased to be collected, a scheme known as the "Assessment" was extensively discussed in Virginia by Episcopalians and others. The assessment required every citizen to pay tithes to support his minister, no matter what his creed. The Episcopalians warmly ad- vocated the assessment. The united clergy of the Presbyterian church petitioned for it,f though * Jefferson's Notes on tlie State of Virginia, Eichmoncl, 1853, p. 169. t Rives' Life and Times of James Madison, I., 601-2. 104 THE BAPTISTS AND THE many of their people disliked and denounced it. Patrick Henry aided it with all the power of his eloquence;'*" Richard Henry Lee, the most polished orator in the country, John Marshall, the future Chief- Justice of the United States, and George Washington himself advocated it.f The Baptists directed their whole forces against it, and poured petitions into the legislature for its rejection. The following lines accompanied one of the Baptist petitions ; they Avere addressed : " To the Honorable General Assembly," as THE HUMBLE PETITION OF A COUNTRY POET. Now liberty is all the plan, The chief pursuit of every man, Whose heart is right, and fills the mouth Of patriots all, from north to south ; May a poor bard, from bushes sprung, Address your honorable House And not your angry passions rouse. Hark ! for a while your business stop ; One word into your ears I'll drop : No longer spend your needless pains, To mend and polish o'er our chains. But break them oif before you rise, Nor disappoint our watchful eyes. * Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, Hartford, p. 263. t Rives' Life and Times of James Madison, I., 601-2. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 105 What say great Wasliington and Lee ? "Our country is and must be free ! " What say great Henry, Pendleton, And Hberty's minutest son ? 'Tis all one voice— they all agree, " God made us and we must be free !" Freedom we crave with every breath, An equal freedom or a death. The heavenly blessing freely give. Or make an act we shall not live. Tax all things ; water, air and light, If need there be ; yea, tax the night, But let our brave heroic minds Move freely as celestial winds. Make vice and folly feel your rod, But leave our consciences to God : Leave each man free to choose liis form Of piety, nor at him storm. And he who minds the civil law, And keeps it whole without a flaw, Let him just as he pleases, pray, And seek for heaven in his own way ; And if he miss, we all must own, No man is wronged but he alone.* After expending every effort the friends of the assessment were defeated, and it was finally rejected in 1785, and all the laws punishing * Howe's Virginia Historical Collections, p. 381, Charles- ton, 1846. 106 THE BAPTISTS AND THE opinions repealed. This was a work of great magnitude. The EjDiscopalians, the Method- ists, the Presbj^terian clergy and the eloquence and influence of some of the greatest men the United States ever had or will have, were over- come by the Baptists, and Jefferson and Madi- son, their two noble allies, and some Presbyte- rian and other laymen. Semple truly says : '' The inhibition of the general assessment may, in a considerable degree, be ascribed to the oppo- sition made to it by the Baptists. They were the only sect which plainly remonstrated against it. Of some others it is said that the laity and ministry were at variance upon the subject so as to paralyze their exertions for or against the bill."^^ Nor need any one dream that Jefferson and Madison could have carried this measure by their genius and influence. They were opposed by many men whose transcendent services, or unequalled oratory, or wealth, position, finan- cial interests, or intense prejudices would have enabled them easily to resist their unsupported assaults. Like a couple of first-class engineers *Semple's History of the Virginia Baptists, p. 72-3. AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 107 on a "tender/' with a train attached but no locomotive, Avould Jefferson and Madison have appeared without the Baptists. They furnished the locomotive for these skilful engineers which drew the train of religious liberty through every persecuting enactment in the penal code of Vir- ginia. In 1790, just one year after the adoption of the amendment, Dr. Samuel Jones, of Penn- sylvania, states that there were 202 Baptist churches in that State.=-*- Semple, the historian of the Virginia Baptists, says, that, in 1792, " The Baptists had members of great weight in civil society ; their congregations became more numerous than those of any other Christian sect."f The Baptists outnumbered all the de- nominations in Virginia, in all probability, in 1789, and they far surpassed them in the burn- ing enthusiasm which persecution engenders; and to them chiefly was Virginia indebted for her complete deliverance from persecuting en- actments. In 1789, a few months after Washington be- ^ Minutes of Philadelphia Baptist Association, p. 459. t History of the Virginia Baptists, p. 39. 10 108 THE BAPTISTS AND THE came President^ " The Committee of the United Baptist Churches of Virginia" presented him an address written by John Leland, marked by felicity of expression and great admiration for Washington, in which they informed him that their religious rights were not protected by the new Constitution. The President replied that he would never have signed that instru- ment had he supposed that it endangered the religious liberty of any denomination, and if he could imagine even now that the government could be so administered as to render freedom of worship insecure for any religious society, he would immediately take steps to erect barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny.* Large numbers were anxious about the new Constitu- tion, and it had many open enemies. The Bap- tists who presented this address controlled the government of Virginia, and they were the warmest friends of liberty in America. They will suffer anything for their principles, and as they suspect the new Constitution, it must be amended to embrace their soul liberty, and * Writings of George Washington, by Sparks, XII., 154-5, Boston. TOO AMERICAN REVOLUTION. !"•' secure their hearty support. A few weeks later ;:is Madison, the special friend of Washing- ton who aided him five months before in com- posing his first inaugural address to Congress, rises in the House of Representatives and pro- poses the religious amendment demanded by the Baptists, with other emendations, and de- clares Lt " a great number of their cons - ents were dissatisfied with the Constitution, In! whom were many respectable for their Ints and their patriotism, and respec able for the jealousy which they feel for their libertie . n,.,ilies to his Baptist constitu- ^ and Congress passes It. Tv^othIras_ , ,.,rt of ^,.a r.f it and it IS a part oi Legislatures approve ot it, anu the Constitution."!- Denominationally, no communi^ asked or this change in the Constitution but the Bap- SL.Th: Quakers would pi^bablyliave pel i tioned for ifif they had thought of it, bu they ^ did not. John Adam^^in^tii^<>^^^^ --^^r^^^Zt^^^e. of James Madison, III., 64. t Ibid., HI., 39. 110 INDI'^PENDENCE HALL IN 1876. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. HI ists did not desire it, the Episcopalians did not wish for it, it went too far for most Presbyte- rians in Revolutionary times, or in our own days when we hear so much about putting the Divine name in the Constitution. The Bap- tists asked it through Washington; the request commended itself to his judgment and to the generous soul of Madison, and to the Baptists, beyond a doubt, belongs the glory of engrafting its best article on the noblest Constitution ever framed for the government of mankind. Conclusion. The Baptists, through WiUiam Carey, have given modern missions to the Christian nations. Through Roger Williams the Baptists founded the first State on earth where absolute liberty of conscience was established. Through a letter issued by the Rev. Joseph Hughes, a Baptist minister, advocating the establishment of a society to circulate Bibles, a meeting was held in London, May 4th, 1804, at which the British and Foreign Bible Society was founded, and through it, indirectly, every Bible society on earth.* Through the^^lev^^John^^^ai^^ ^^^^y's History of the English Baptists, IL, 93. 112 THE AMERICAN REYOLUTIOISr. H o twenty-one years of toil, marginal references were first placed in the English Bible,* and Canne was a Baptist minister. And, as a people, we took a leading part in secnring and perfect- ing American freedom. Our liberty is now shaking all the nations of the earth. It has blessed every section of the mother country, rapidly falling into despotism one hundred years ago. It has torn down the old throne of the B^ourbons in France and all the tyrannies that succeeded it. It has banished the petty oppres- sors that cursed Italy for centuries, and restored some measure of her ancient liberty to the for- mer mistress of the nations. It has bestowed some gifts upon Austria and Germany. It has tried many times to bless the land that gave birth to St. Dominic, Torquemada and Ignatius Loyola. It has reached far distant Japan, and already it is breathing freedom upon its inge- nious people. And it will march onward in its career of victory until it breaks the sceptre of the last despot, and the chains of the last victim of royal caprice on the face of the earth. In unbinding the chains of American liberty, * NeaFs History of tlie runtaiis, Dublin, 1755, II., 50. 114 BAPTISTS AND THE REVOLUTION". and in sending her forth to bless our country and exalt all nations, the Baptists occupied a place conspicuous for its toils and its triumphs. Long before 1776 they had all the seeds of American Independence. They were the seed- bearers of the Revolution, who scattered the seed in every direction -and cultivated it under a burning sun. Jefferson was the statesman of the Revolution, Franklin was its sage, Patrick Henry was its tongue of fire, Washington was its sword, Hancock, Hamilton, Adams, Madison, Richard Henry Lee and Jonathan Trumbull were its apostles, and the American people of all creeds and classes were its warriors. May the temple of our country's liberties, reared by the hands of heroes, cemented by the blood of the nation's noblest sons, survive the decay of ages, hurl back the assailing forces of corruption, and continue the admiration of the nations until the recording angel ceases to watch the events of time. Our country is a miracle of progress unmatched in the annals of mankind, and its greatness is the fruit of Independence. And as every grace in man come-s from God, and all his temporal 115 ^ 116 BAPTISTS AND THE REVOLUTION. blessings, we will unite with holy John, and say : " Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, unto him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen." THE END. WOEKS QUOTED IN BAPTISTS AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. History of England, by Hume, Smollett, and Farr. Robert Hall's Works. Backus' History of the Baptists. Newton. Grimshaw's History of the United States. Cramp's History of the Baptists. Ilowison's History of Virginia. Campbell's History of Virginia Leland's Works. Howe's Virginia Historical Collections. Semple's History of Virginia Baptists. Collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society. ]5ancroft's History of the United States. Biography of The Signers of The Declaration of Independ- ence. Arnold's History of Rhode Island. Sabine's American Loyalists. Minutes of the Philadelphia Baptist Association. Neal's History of the Puritans. ^^;lcaulay'a History of England. Ivimey's History of the English Baptists. 117 118 WORKS QUOTED. Headley's Chaplains and Clergy of the Ee volution. Bede's Ecclesiastical History. Sprague's Annals of the American Baptist Pulpit. Manning and Brown University. History of Independence Hall, by Belisle. Historical Collections of ]S'ew Jersey. Mulford's History of New Jersey. The Book of The Signers of The Declaration of Independ- ence, by Brotherhead. Brotherhead's Edition of Sanderson's Signers, etc. Life of Dr. Cone. Life of Lord Sterhng. Life and Works of John Adams. Jefferson's Complete Works. Writings of George Wasliington, by Sparks. Backus' Church History, Philadelphia. Curwen's Journal and Letters. Hildreth's History of the United States. Benedict's History of the Baptists. Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry. Rives' Life and Times of James Madison. THE PAPAL SYSTEM, BY AVILLIAM CATHCART, D.D., Pliiladelx^liia. This work contains sketches of the orighi and growth of every Romish belief, claim, institution, usurpation, and observance; and also of all great councils, ancient and modern. It gives all impor- tant canons, bulls, and testimonies in the original words and in trans- lations. The History of the Ancient Church and the Leading Facts of Modern Christianity are Largely Presented in this Work. Authorities given for all statements. Philadelphia : G. S. FERGUSON, 714 SANSOM ST. ■^ Prom the Philad>l})hia Age. "This book is not virulent or gross, but in a calm and dignified tone argues the great points of difference that sever the Christian world into Catholics and Protes- tants. It is a calm and learned appeal to authority upon questions that demand research and scholarship for their elucidation. These qualities the author possesses." From the Philadelphia Christian Instructor (^United Presbyterian). " It is emphatically a book for the times. It ought to be widely read in this country. Ministers would do well to procure it, as it w ill afford them a vast amount of the material they need in discussing popery. It is written in the best spint.'' Prom the Philadelphia Methodist Home Jotirnal. "The latest, and we have no hesitation in saying, the most calm, comprehensive, and unprejudiced work on the subject. A reliable and exhaustive exposition of the whole subject. We particularly recommend the circulation of this work as the best of the kind lor scholarly style and public enlightenment.'" From the Philadelphia North American, " It is a work to receive the utmost censure of Catholics, and a very high commen- dation from Protestants; and it is cool, argumentative, and replete with authorities for every statement." From the Philadelphia Evening Tclograph. ■"The author has thrown a bondwhdl of the hugest dimensions into the Roman Catholic camp." ^-^^. .s^ ^^. <^' "^^: •^ ^ %. .^'^ '* ^/ "^^. ^'^ ^^ ^ -0^ oo .\V' co^ .0- o>' ,0 o .-^^ . -^^' '-' ^ -J- '■> * 9 1 ^ * ^0- % / A-^^' '^>. .. ,,^^ ^$^^. "■r^. S ,0 °c. ■' o o 0' ' > S' '' c^ \' Or ..^'>" '^■^, %■ ^ A V 1 fi "/' *^ "--*. "^ ■^; '- .Oo ?^ ^d^. .0 0, .0- .^^^ -^ ■\ > o 1' *■ if OO ,^-^ , ■% .0 o. A^' '^oo^ aX' -,/_ '^' r a\ ■% A " 0-, .V, -^