John Charles Dent - "Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1"

A. T. Quiller Couch - "Major Vigoureux"

James MacQueen - "A General Plan for a Mail Communication by Steam, Between Great Britain and the Eastern and Western Parts of the World"

Charles Clark Munn - "Pocket Island"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

A History of American Christianity

L >> Leonard Woolsey Bacon >> A History of American Christianity




But already this nobly enterprising mind was intent on a new plan, of
most far-reaching importance, not original with himself, but, on the
contrary, long familiar to those who studied the extension of the church
and pondered the indications of God's providential purposes. The
earliest attempt in America toward the propagation of the gospel in
foreign lands would seem to have been the circular letter sent out by
the neighbor pastors, Samuel Hopkins and Ezra Stiles, in the year 1773,
from Newport, chief seat of the slave-trade, asking contributions for
the education of two colored men as missionaries to their native
continent of Africa. To many generous minds at once, in this era of
great Christian enterprises, the thought recurred of vast blessings to
be wrought for the Dark Continent by the agency of colored men
Christianized, civilized, and educated in America. Good men reverently
hoped to see in this triumphant solution of the mystery of divine
providence in permitting the curse of African slavery, through the cruel
greed of men, to be inflicted on the American republic. In 1816 Mills
successfully pressed upon the Presbyterian "Synod of New York and New
Jersey" a plan for educating Christian men of color for the work of the
gospel in their fatherland. That same year, in cooeperation with an
earnest philanthropist, Dr. Robert Finley, of New Jersey, he aided in
the instituting of the American Colonization Society. In 1817 he sailed,
in company with a colleague, the Rev. Ebenezer Burgess, to explore the
coast of Africa in search of the best site for a colony. On the return
voyage he died, and his body was committed to the sea: a "little man,"
to whom were granted only five years of what men call "active life"; but
he had fulfilled his vow, and the ends of the earth had felt his
influence for the advancement of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The enterprise of African colonization, already dear to Christian hearts
for the hopes that it involved of the redemption of a lost continent,
of the elevation of an oppressed race in America, of the emancipation of
slaves and the abolition of slavery, received a new consecration as the
object of the dying labors and prayers of Mills. It was associated, in
the minds of good men, not only with plans for the conversion of the
heathen, and with the tide of antislavery sentiment now spreading and
deepening both at the South and at the North, but also with "Clarkson
societies" and other local organizations, in many different places, for
the moral and physical elevation of the free colored people from the
pitiable degradation in which they were commonly living in the larger
towns. Altogether the watchmen on the walls of Zion saw no fairer sign
of dawn, in that second decade of the nineteenth century, than the
hopeful lifting of the cloud from Africa, the brightening prospects of
the free negroes of the United States, and the growing hope of the
abolition of American slavery.[258:1]

Other societies, national in their scope and constituency, the origin of
which belongs in this organizing period, are the American Education
Society (1815), the American Sunday-school Union (1824), the American
Tract Society (1825), the Seamen's Friend Society (1826), and the
American Home Missionary Society (1826), in which last the
Congregationalists of New England cooeperated with the Presbyterians on
the basis of a Plan of Union entered into between the General Assembly
and the General Association of Connecticut, the tendency of which was to
reinforce the Presbyterian Church with the numbers and the vigor of the
New England westward migration. Of course the establishment of these and
other societies for beneficent work outside of sectarian lines did not
hinder, but rather stimulated, sectarian organizations for the like
objects. The whole American church, in all its orders, was girding
itself for a work, at home and abroad, the immense grandeur of which no
man of that generation could possibly have foreseen.

The grandeur of this work was to consist not only in the results of it,
but in the resources of it. As never before, the sympathies, prayers,
and personal cooeperation of all Christians, even the feeblest, were to
be combined and utilized for enterprises coextensive with the continent
and the world and taking hold on eternity. The possibilities of the new
era were dazzling to the prophetic imagination. A young minister then
standing on the threshold of a long career exulted in the peculiar and
excelling glory of the dawning day:

"Surely, if it is the noblest attribute of our nature that
spreads out the circle of our sympathies to include the whole
family of man, and sends forth our affections to embrace the
ages of a distant futurity, it must be regarded as a privilege
no less exalted that our means of _doing_ good are limited by
no remoteness of country or distance of duration, but we may
operate, if we will, to assuage the miseries of another
hemisphere, or to prevent the necessities of an unborn
generation. The time has been when a man might weep over the
wrongs of Africa, and he might look forward to weep over the
hopelessness of her degradation, till his heart should bleed;
and yet his tears would be all that he could give her. He
might relieve the beggar at his door, but he could do nothing
for a dying continent. He might provide for his children, but
he could do nothing for the nations that were yet to be born
to an inheritance of utter wretchedness. Then the privilege of
engaging in schemes of magnificent benevolence belonged only
to princes and to men of princely possessions; but now the
progress of improvement has brought down this privilege to the
reach of every individual. The institutions of our age are a
republic of benevolence, and all may share in the unrestrained
and equal democracy. This privilege is ours. We may stretch
forth our hand, if we will, to enlighten the Hindu or to tame
the savage of the wilderness. It is ours, if we will, to put
forth our contributions and thus to operate not ineffectually
for the relief and renovation of a continent over which one
tide of misery has swept without ebb and without restraint for
unremembered centuries. It is ours, if we will, to do
something that shall tell on all the coming ages of a race
which has been persecuted and enslaved, trodden down and
despised, for a thousand generations. Our Father has made us
the almoners of his love. He has raised us to partake, as it
were, in the ubiquity of his own beneficence. Shall we be
unworthy of the trust? God forbid!"[260:1]


FOOTNOTES:

[247:1] "Life of David Bacon," by his son (Boston, 1876).

[249:1] Compare the claim of priority for the Dutch church, p. 81,
_note_.

[250:1] J. H. Allen, "The Unitarians," p. 194.

[250:2] "Autobiography of L. Beecher," p. 110.

[252:1] "Herzog-Schaff Encyclopedia," pp. 2328-2331.

[255:1] "The Baptists," by Dr. A. H. Newman, pp. 379-442.

[255:2] I have omitted from this list of results in the direct line from
the inception at Andover, in 1810, the American Missionary Association.
It owed its origin, in 1846, to the dissatisfaction felt by a
considerable number of the supporters of the American Board with the
attitude of that institution on some of the questions arising
incidentally to the antislavery discussion. Its foreign missions, never
extensive, were transferred to other hands, at the close of the Civil
War, that it might devote itself wholly to its great and successful work
among "the oppressed races" at home.

[256:1] It may be worth considering how far the course of religious and
theological thought would have been modified if the English New
Testament had used these phrases instead of _World to Come_ and _Kingdom
of God_.

[258:1] The colored Baptists of Richmond entered eagerly into the
Colonization project, and in 1822 their "African Missionary Society"
sent out its mission to the young colony of Liberia. One of their
missionaries was the Rev. Lott Cary, the dignity of whose character and
career was an encouragement of his people in their highest aspirations,
and a confirmation of the hopes of their friends (Newman, "The
Baptists," p. 402; Gurley, "Life of Ashmun," pp. 147-160).

[260:1] Leonard Bacon, "A Plea for Africa," in the Park Street Church,
Boston, July 4, 1824.




CHAPTER XVI.

CONFLICTS OF THE CHURCH WITH PUBLIC WRONGS.


The transition from establishment to the voluntary system for the
support of churches was made not without some difficulty, but with
surprisingly little. In the South the established churches were
practically dead before the laws establishing them were repealed and the
endowments disposed of. In New York the Episcopalian churches were
indeed depressed and discouraged by the ceasing of State support and
official patronage; and inasmuch as these, with the subsidies of the "S.
P. G.," had been their main reliance, it was inevitable that they should
pass through a period of prostration until the appreciation of their
large endowments, and the progress of immigration and of conversion from
other sects, and especially the awakening of religious earnestness and
of sectarian ambition.

In New England the transition to the voluntary system was more gradual.
Not till 1818 in Connecticut, and in Massachusetts not till 1834, was
the last strand of connection severed between the churches of the
standing order and the state, and the churches left solely to their own
resources. The exaltation and divine inspiration that had come to these
churches with the revivals which from the end of the eighteenth century
were never for a long time intermitted, and the example of the
dissenting congregations, Baptist, Episcopalian, and Methodist,
successfully self-supported among them, made it easy for them,
notwithstanding the misgivings of many good men, not only to assume the
entire burden of their own expenses, but with this to undertake and
carry forward great and costly enterprises of charity reaching to the
bounds of the country and of the inhabited earth. It is idle to claim
that the American system is at no disadvantage in comparison with that
which elsewhere prevails almost throughout Christendom; but it may be
safely asserted that the danger that has been most emphasized as a
warning against the voluntary system has not attended this system in
America. The fear that a clergy supported by the free gifts of the
people would prove subservient and truckling to the hand by which it is
fed has been proved groundless. Of course there have been time-servers
in the American ministry, as in every other; but flagrant instances of
the abasement of a whole body of clergy before the power that holds the
purse and controls promotion are to be sought in the old countries
rather than the new. Even selfish motives would operate against this
temptation, since it has often been demonstrated that the people will
not sustain a ministry which it suspects of the vice of subserviency.
The annals of no established church can show such unsparing fidelity of
the ministry in rebuking the sins of people and of rulers in the name of
the Lord, as that which has been, on the whole, characteristic of the
Christian ministers of the United States.

Among the conflicts of the American church with public wrongs strongly
intrenched in law or social usage, two are of such magnitude and
protracted through so long a period as to demand special
consideration--the conflict with drunkenness and the conflict with
slavery. Some less conspicuous illustrations of the fidelity of the
church in the case of public and popular sins may be more briefly
referred to.

The death of Alexander Hamilton, in July, 1804, in a duel with Aaron
Burr, occasioned a wide and violent outburst of indignation against the
murderer, now a fugitive and outcast, for the dastardly malignity of the
details of his crime, and for the dignity and generosity as well as the
public worth of his victim. This was the sort of explosion of excited
public feeling which often loses itself in the air. It was a different
matter when the churches and ministers of Christ took up the affair in
the light of the law of God, and, dealing not with the circumstances but
with the essence of it, pressed it inexorably on the conscience of the
people. Some of the most memorable words in American literature were
uttered on this occasion, notwithstanding that there were few
congregations in which there were not sore consciences to be irritated
or political anxieties to be set quaking by them. The names of Eliphalet
Nott and John M. Mason were honorably conspicuous in this work. But one
unknown young man of thirty, in a corner of Long Island, uttered words
in his little country meeting-house that pricked the conscience of the
nation. The words of Lyman Beecher on this theme may well be quoted as
being a part of history, for the consequences that followed them.

"Dueling is a great national sin. With the exception of a
small section of the Union, the whole land is defiled with
blood. From the lakes of the North to the plains of Georgia is
heard the voice of lamentation and woe--the cries of the widow
and fatherless. This work of desolation is performed often by
men in office, by the appointed guardians of life and liberty.
On the floor of Congress challenges have been threatened, if
not given, and thus powder and ball have been introduced as
the auxiliaries of deliberation and argument.... We are
murderers--a nation of murderers--while we tolerate and reward
the perpetrators of the crime."

Words such as these resounding from pulpit after pulpit, multiplied and
disseminated by means of the press, acted on by representative bodies of
churches, becoming embodied in anti-dueling societies, exorcised the
foul spirit from the land. The criminal folly of dueling did not,
indeed, at once and altogether cease. Instances of it continue to be
heard of to this day. But the conscience of the nation was instructed,
and a warning was served upon political parties to beware of proposing
for national honors men whose hands were defiled with blood.[264:1]

Another instance of the fidelity of the church in resistance to public
wrong was its action in the matter of the dealing of the State of
Georgia and the national government toward the Georgia Indians. This is
no place for the details of the shameful story of perfidy and
oppression. It is well told by Helen Hunt Jackson in the melancholy
pages of "A Century of Dishonor." The wrongs inflicted on the Cherokee
nation were deepened by every conceivable aggravation.

"In the whole history of our government's dealings with the
Indian tribes there is no record so black as the record of its
perfidy to this nation. There will come a time in the remote
future when to the student of American history it will seem
well-nigh incredible. From the beginning of the century they
had been steadily advancing in civilization. As far back as
1800 they had begun the manufacture of cotton cloth, and in
1820 there was scarcely a family in that part of the nation
living east of the Mississippi but what understood the use of
the card and spinning-wheel. Every family had its farm under
cultivation. The territory was laid off into districts, with a
council-house, a judge, and a marshal in each district. A
national committee and council were the supreme authority in
the nation. Schools were flourishing in all the villages.
Printing-presses were at work.... They were enthusiastic in
their efforts to establish and perfect their own system of
jurisprudence. Missions of several sects were established in
their country, and a large number of them had professed
Christianity and were leading exemplary lives. There is no
instance in all history of a race of people passing in so
short a space of time from the barbarous stage to the
agricultural and civilized."[265:1]

We do well to give authentic details of the condition of the Cherokee
nation in the early part of the century, for the advanced happy and
peaceful civilization of this people was one of the fairest fruits of
American Christianity working upon exceptionally noble race-qualities in
the recipients of it. An agent of the War Department in 1825 made
official report to the Department on the rare beauty of the Cherokee
country, secured to them by the most sacred pledges with which it was
possible for the national government to bind itself, and covered by the
inhabitants, through their industry and thrift, with flocks and herds,
with farms and villages; and goes on to speak of the Indians themselves:

"The natives carry on considerable trade with the adjoining
States; some of them export cotton in boats down the Tennessee
to the Mississippi, and down that river to New Orleans. Apple
and peach orchards are quite common, and gardens are
cultivated and much attention paid to them. Butter and cheese
are seen on Cherokee tables. There are many public roads in
the nation, and houses of entertainment kept by natives.
Numerous and flourishing villages are seen in every section of
the country. Cotton and woolen cloths are manufactured;
blankets of various dimensions, manufactured by Cherokee
hands, are very common. Almost every family in the nation
grows cotton for its own consumption. Industry and commercial
enterprise are extending themselves in every part. Nearly all
the merchants in the nation are native Cherokees. Agricultural
pursuits engage the chief attention of the people. Different
branches in mechanics are pursued. The population is rapidly
increasing.... The Christian religion is the religion of the
nation. Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and Moravians are
the most numerous sects. Some of the most influential
characters are members of the church and live consistently
with their professions. The whole nation is penetrated with
gratitude for the aid it has received from the United States
government and from different religious societies. Schools are
increasing every year; learning is encouraged and rewarded;
the young class acquire the English and those of mature age
the Cherokee system of learning."[266:1]

This country, enriched by the toil and thrift of its owners, the State
of Georgia resolved not merely to subjugate to its jurisdiction, but to
steal from its rightful and lawful owners, driving them away as outlaws.
As a sure expedient for securing popular consent to the intended infamy,
the farms of the Cherokees were parceled out to be drawn for in a
lottery, and the lottery tickets distributed among the white voters.
Thus fortified, the brave State of Georgia went to all lengths of
outrage. "Missionaries were arrested and sent to prison for preaching to
Cherokees; Cherokees were sentenced to death by Georgia courts and hung
by Georgia executioners." But the great crime could not be achieved
without the connivance, and at last the active consent, of the national
government. Should this consent be given? Never in American history has
the issue been more squarely drawn between the kingdom of Satan and the
kingdom of Christ. American Christianity was most conspicuously
represented in this conflict by an eminent layman, Jeremiah Evarts,
whose fame for this public service, and not for this alone, will in the
lapse of time outshine even that of his illustrious son. In a series of
articles in the "National Intelligencer," under the signature of
"William Penn," he cited the sixteen treaties in which the nation had
pledged its faith to defend the Cherokees in the possession of their
lands, and set the whole case before the people as well as the
government. But his voice was not solitary. From press and pulpit and
from the platforms of public meetings all over the country came
petitions, remonstrances, and indignant protests, reinforcing the
pathetic entreaties of the Cherokees themselves to be protected from the
cruelty that threatened to tear them from their homes. In Congress the
honor of leadership among many faithful and able advocates of right and
justice was conceded to Theodore Frelinghuysen, then in the prime of a
great career of Christian service. By the majority of one vote the bill
for the removal of the Cherokees passed the United States Senate. The
gates of hell triumphed for a time with a fatal exultation. The authors
and abettors of the great crime were confirmed in their delusion that
threats of disunion and rebellion could be relied on to carry any
desired point. But the mills of God went on grinding. Thirty years
later, when in the battle of Missionary Ridge the chivalry of Georgia
went down before the army that represented justice and freedom and the
authority of national law, the vanquished and retreating soldiers of a
lost cause could not be accused of superstition if they remembered that
the scene of their humiliating defeat had received its name from the
martyrdom of Christian missionaries at the hands of their fathers.

* * * * *

In earlier pages we have already traced the succession of bold protests
and organized labors on the part of church and clergy against the
institution of slavery.[268:1] If protest and argument against it seem
to be less frequent in the early years of the new century, it is only
because debate must needs languish when there is no antagonist. Slavery
had at that time no defenders in the church. No body of men in 1818 more
unmistakably represented the Christian citizenship of the whole country,
North, South, and West, outside of New England, than the General
Assembly of the then undivided Presbyterian Church. In that year the
Assembly set forth a full and unanimous expression of its sentiments on
the subject of slavery, addressed "to the churches and people under its
care." This monumental document is too long to be cited here in full.
The opening paragraphs of it exhibit the universally accepted sentiment
of American Christians of that time:

"We consider the voluntary enslaving of one part of the human
race by another as a gross violation of the most precious and
sacred rights of human nature; as utterly inconsistent with
the law of God, which requires us to love our neighbor as
ourselves; and as totally irreconcilable with the spirit and
principles of the gospel of Christ, which enjoin that 'all
things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye
even so to them.' Slavery creates a paradox in the moral
system. It exhibits rational, accountable, and immortal beings
in such circumstances as scarcely to leave them the power of
moral action. It exhibits them as dependent on the will of
others whether they shall receive religious instruction;
whether they shall know and worship the true God; whether they
shall enjoy the ordinances of the gospel; whether they shall
perform the duties and cherish the endearments of husbands and
wives, parents and children, neighbors and friends; whether
they shall preserve their chastity and purity or regard the
dictates of justice and humanity. Such are some of the
consequences of slavery--consequences not imaginary, but which
connect themselves with its very existence. The evils to which
the slave is _always_ exposed often take place in fact, and in
their worst degree and form; and where all of them do not take
place, as we rejoice to say that in many instances, through
the influence of the principles of humanity and religion on
the minds of masters, they do not, still the slave is deprived
of his natural right, degraded as a human being, and exposed
to the danger of passing into the hands of a master who may
inflict upon him all the hardships and injuries which
inhumanity and avarice may suggest.

"From this view of the consequences resulting from the
practice into which Christian people have most inconsistently
fallen of enslaving a portion of their _brethren_ of
mankind,--for 'God hath made of one blood all nations of men
to dwell on the face of the earth,'--it is manifestly the duty
of all Christians who enjoy the light of the present day, when
the inconsistency of slavery both with the dictates of
humanity and religion has been demonstrated and is generally
seen and acknowledged, to use their honest, earnest, and
unwearied endeavors to correct the errors of former times, and
as speedily as possible to efface this blot on our holy
religion and to obtain the complete abolition of slavery
throughout Christendom, and if possible throughout the world."

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