Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler Part 17

The convention in its results was full of encouragement and joy.

Insignificant as had been our beginning two years before, here were twenty churches and more than one thousand members ready to cooperate together and plant the cause in this infant Territory. This meeting also introduced us to many new acquaintances. Eld. S. G. Brown, of Emporia, had been diligently employed planting churches along the Neosho River from Emporia to Leroy. Bro. Ephraim Philips, at Leroy, also at that time became known to us. Bro. Philips, after some years, returned to Pennsylvania, and there went into the oil business with his brother; the brothers were successful, and afterwards distinguished themselves by a generous and Christian liberality. Bro.

Crocker also, before his death, had won a large place in the hearts of his brethren. Elder Wm, Gans, at that time of Lanesfield, but afterwards of Olathe, will long be remembered with earnest affection; and it was at this time that he became known to us.

For reasons that we have already mentioned, the General Missionary Society had done nothing for us, but seeing that we were fighting a brave battle, and that we were keeping the peace with each other, they felt themselves moved to help us. Eld. D. S. Burnett was at this time employed preaching in Western Missouri, and was deputed by the Missionary Board to visit G. W. Hutchinson at Lawrence, who was winning golden opinions as an eminently successful evangelist. Bro. H.

was not at home, but was away holding a protracted meeting, and Bro.

Burnett therefore called on his wife. Mrs. Hutchinson was a pious, refined, and educated New England woman, who had married her husband after he had become known as the most successful evangelist in the "Old Christian Order" in the New England States. She had with pain seen him turned aside from his chosen work by hard necessities, and was now greatly rejoiced to see him once more a preacher. Bro. B. was an accomplished gentleman, whose polished and cultivated manners sometimes laid him open to the charge of a proud and aristocratic exclusiveness; but this Yankee lady herself knew how to queen it, and stood before him with no sense of inferiority. She frankly said to him that herself and husband were abolitionists, but that they knew the value of peace, and would do what could be done, in good conscience, to make peace and keep it. Bro. Burnett evidently went away from Lawrence with a good opinion of this family of Yankee abolitionists, and Bro. H. was immediately accepted as a missionary of the General Missionary Society. He used quietly to indicate to me that, as touching this interview, his wife was a better general than himself, and that it was lucky for him that he was not at home.

And so we two became missionaries, sustained by two different, and, in one particular, antagonistic missionary societies. Of course we did not quarrel; why should we? If I was sometimes charged with abolitionism, was not this man blacker than myself? We often traveled together, and held protracted meetings under the same tent. I had for a lifetime studied this plea which we make for a return to primitive and apostolic Christianity, and it was, therefore, my business to press upon the people the duty to yield a loyal obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ as our only Lawgiver and King, and thus to renounce all human leaders.h.i.+p and the authority of all human opinions; and it became the business of Bro. Hutchinson to win the people by his magnetic power, and fill them with his own enthusiasm, and thus induce them to act on the convictions that had been already formed in their hearts.

I take on myself to say there never have been two more diligent evangelists than were Bro. Hutchinson and myself in the year that followed the Big Springs Convention. Looking over the whole ground, I am able to see that in that year was laid the foundation for that abiding prosperity that has distinguished our effort down to the present time.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

There had come to the Big Springs Convention two brethren--Father Gillespie and his son, William Gillespie, living at St. George, on the Kansas River, fifty miles above Topeka and about eight miles below Manhattan. These brethren came to tell us that here were two settlements of brethren waiting to be organized into churches; and Bro. Hutchinson and myself both visited them during the ensuing autumn. A military road ran up the Kansas River from Fort Leavenworth to Fort Riley, pa.s.sing through the village of St. George, But if I were to go to St. George by this route, I would lose thirty miles of travel, and I therefore determined to start directly west from my place of residence. But, in doing so, I would have to cross the Pottawatomie Indian Reserve, on which for forty miles there was not the habitation of a white man. Stopping over night with Bro. J. W.

Williams, on the eastern border of the Reserve, I started betimes to St. George, traveling to the west. But night came on, and I had not reached the line of white settlements. I picketed my horse on the prairie, made a pillow of my saddle, and slept until morning. The night was warm and pleasant, and I did not suffer with the cold, and in the morning I was ready betimes to ride on to the residence of Bro.

Gillespie. He was so glad to see me. It was worth a journey of one hundred miles to get such a welcome. And then there was Sister Gillespie, and a house full of young Gillespies, and they were all so glad to see me.

"Have you had your breakfast?"

"No."

"Well, where did you lodge?"

This was a poser. I attempted to pa.s.s the question by; but nothing would do, and I had to confess I slept under the canopy of heaven.

"O, dear! O, dear!" And had it come to this that their preacher had to sleep on the prairie! This was a family of hospitable Kentuckians, who were born to a love of music, and the old gentleman was a fiddler, and next to his Bible he loved his fiddle. Of course, we had a grand, good time, and were all filled with joy; and this was the beginning of the churches on the upper waters of the Kansas River. Twelve miles above St. George was Ashland, where we found Bro. N. B. White, father to A.

J. White, who has. .h.i.therto been pastor of the church at Leavenworth City; but since has been acting as district evangelist. Bro. N. B.

White came from Carthage, Ky., and long remained a faithful and indefatigable preacher. In my experience as an evangelist, I have known many men of superior Christian excellence; but never one man of more singleness and integrity of heart; never one man that had a clearer conception of the ultimate purposes and results of Christianity; never a man whose life was more unselfish and self-sacrificing. Being of an intensely nervous and high-strung organization, and doing his work in a mixed population that would have taxed the patience of Job in its management, it is no wonder that Bro.

White was sometimes misunderstood, and, like all reformers, was made to feel that he was living before his time.

Thus pa.s.sed in abundant labors the year 1860, and the time drew on for our yearly meeting, which had been appointed to be held at Prairie City in September, 1861. The brethren came together with real enthusiasm. During the past year the number of Disciples had been multiplied, and the cause had been greatly strengthened. It had been a year of constant ingathering. New churches reported themselves at this meeting, and brethren whom we had never known before. As evidence of what was being accomplished I will copy a note which I find appended to the minutes of the Prairie City meeting:

The following letter was received from a church meeting in Monroe towns.h.i.+p, Anderson County, said church being of the "Old Christian Order":

_To the Elders of the State Meeting at Prairie City_:

We, the Church of G.o.d meeting at North Pottawatomie, do recommend to your honorable body, Bro. Samuel Anderson, as our pastor. We also represent our church as in good standing and in full fellows.h.i.+p, numbering twenty-eight members.

Bro. Anderson, the bearer of the above letter, came before the Convention and said: "It does yet appear to me that a man's sins are forgiven as soon as he believes; but I do not think that for this cause there ought to be a schism between us. I am willing to unite with you in exhorting men to obey all the commands of the gospel, and in seeking to unite all Christians on the one foundation."

But there appeared one cloud in our horizon, one cause to hinder the perfect success of this, our second yearly meeting. The country was full of rumors of war, and there seemed impending a great national conflict. Bro. Hutchinson had been for one year an eminently successful evangelist; but now he went into the Union army as an army chaplain, and thus his work among us ceased. And now the war was upon us; we were predestined to see dark days, and the hearts of the people were full of forebodings of evil. Many of our young men went into the army, and for two years the produce raised by the farmers brought almost nothing, and many of our preachers retired from their work. And then there appeared in the land wolves in sheep's clothing--thieves wearing the disguise of loyalty to the "old flag," and who held themselves self-elected to punish "rebel sympathizers," and in the estimation of this gentry the best evidence that could be had that a man was a rebel sympathizer was, that he owned a good span of horses.

It is said, "There is no great loss without some small gain," and these evil days gave opportunity to some of us who owed a debt of grat.i.tude for kindness rendered to us when we were in sore straits, to pay back this debt by demanding justice on behalf of loyal citizens of Kansas, whose only offense was that they had been born in the South.

It is the purpose of this series of articles to tell how two peoples, the one from the South and the other from the North--the one the sons of the Puritans, and the other the children of the younger sons of the old English cavaliers--came together and settled in one Territory; how they were divided by the question of American slavery, and how they strove in an antagonism as fierce as that which once subsisted between the Saxon and Norman in Old England; how they peacefully settled their controversy, and in one-third of a century have grown into an eminently peaceful, prosperous, enterprising and well-ordered commonwealth, that stands conspicuous as an ill.u.s.tration and proof of the excellence of our national inst.i.tutions. We are also to tell how that, out of the furnace fires of such a strife, a community of churches grew up that have for their purpose a restoration of primitive and apostolic Christianity, and the unity of all Christians under a supreme loyalty, to the Lord Jesus Christ as our only Leader and Lawgiver, and as the great Author of our American civilization. We are also to tell how the discipline of such a strife has created a people of such heroic temper, that this has been the first government among the nations to grapple with the saloon power in a final and decisive battle, which has banished it beyond the boundaries of the State, and has branded it as an enemy to Christian homes, an enemy to our Christian civilization, and an enemy to the welfare of the whole human race. Other States have paltered with the evil by means of feeble and frivolous legislation, but Kansas has grappled the monster by the throat by incorporating Prohibition into its fundamental law.

But, above all, we are to press upon the attention of the people the imminence of that danger that is threatening us, and that embodies within itself all other perils that hang over the nation. We are threatened to be overwhelmed by a foreign and alien emigration that brings with it the anarchy of atheism and the unAmerican and the anti-American traditions of a paganized Christianity. We have now fifteen millions of foreign-born citizens and of their children of the first generation in the United States. The Rev. Josiah Strong estimates that in twelve years their number will be forty-three millions; and a great part of this population is now, and shall hereafter be, under the control of Jesuit priests, that seek to maintain in the hearts of these millions loyalty to a foreign prince, resident in Rome, as superior to and more binding on their consciences than is that allegiance which they owe to the United States.

The city of New York has eighty persons in every one hundred of its population that are either foreign born or else the children of foreign born parents. Boston has sixty-three; Chicago has eighty-seven; St. Louis has seventy-eight; Cincinnati, sixty; San Francisco, seventy-eight, and Detroit and Milwaukee have each eighty-four citizens in every one hundred of their population that are either foreign born or else the children of foreign born parents. A nation is dominated by its cities, as England is dominated by London; as France is dominated by Paris, and Germany by Berlin; and our great cities have already become foreign cities, controlled by a foreign vote, and dominated by a foreign public opinion. Here in Kansas, in cities where there is a dominant element of foreign born citizens, we have to invoke the power of the State to compel obedience to our temperance laws on the part of this alien and un-American population; otherwise they overawe the city government and rebel against the laws.

Self-evident it is that the presence of such a population is a threat against our social and domestic life, against our government, and against the Christian religion. But the presence of such an evil calls for union among ourselves. Poland was dismembered and ceased to exist among the nations, because of intestine strifes and divisions among its n.o.bility, who were its governing cla.s.s; and in the presence of such a danger menacing the American people it would be a madness unspeakable in us to keep up among ourselves either our religious feuds and bickerings, or the animosities heretofore existing between the North and South.

We must be one people, or this nation will surely perish. And this oneness is not to be brought about by the utterance of feeble plat.i.tudes, nor by the hypocritical profession of a good-will we do not feel; we must follow the guidance of that Book of all books that G.o.d has given us, by exhibiting that robust and manly courage that looks the truth and the whole truth squarely in the face. After making all necessary discount and rebate because of faults and infirmities, there is enough yet remaining of solid and essential excellence in the citizens of every State in this nation that they can afford to have the honest truth told about themselves. Is the sun less glorious because there are spots on the sun? Is the moon less beautiful because the man in the moon does not wear a handsome face?

On the late Fourth of July there was a rallying of the clans of the veterans--the men in blue and the men in gray--on the field of Gettysburg, to commemorate the battle they fought twenty-five years before, and to do honor to the bravery displayed by each man in fighting for what he honestly thought to be the right. This was as it should be. But there ought to be the celebration of another battle--it ought to be, even though it may never occur--that should never be forgotten. In that battle there was no dreadful carnage as on the battlefield of Gettysburg; there were no desperate charges made by cavalry and infantry; there was no heroic courage displayed under the pitiless peltings of a deadly hail of shot and sh.e.l.l; there were no great generals of national reputation in command, but humble men unknown to fame, in the final result came together, and with honest speech said, "We will shake hands and be friends. We will let bygones be by gones, and see what can be done by a united effort to promote the welfare of all."

Now we insist that Kansas is worthy of more honor than Gettysburg. But as in this wicked world the best men do not get the highest honor, nor the best deeds the highest praise, we will be content to bide our time, knowing that the Lord does not forget, and that he will speak a good word for us at the great judgment day.

Kansas led the nation in the abolition of American slavery; Kansas ought a second time to lead the nation in a universal amnesty, so that there shall be nothing to hinder that we shall preach the gospel to the devotees of the mother of Babylon, and to the millions of G.o.dless, Christless heathen that are thrown upon our hands, thus making them good Christians that they may be good American citizens.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

In 1862 our yearly meeting was held at Emporia, and in 1863 at Ottumwa. These meetings were little better than failures. Yearly district meetings were kept up in Northeastern Kansas, in which more vigor was manifested.

And now the writer began to feel the pressure of hard necessities. For five years I had kept myself in the field on a salary utterly inadequate to my needs, and had been gradually running into debt, and these debts had to be paid. In antic.i.p.ation of the future wants of my children, I had invested my available means in land; but as this land was not improved, it yielded me no return. In the distress that came on the people in those days, one means of making money presented itself, and many availed themselves of it. Gold had been discovered at Pike's Peak, and thitherward had flocked a great mult.i.tude of people.

There were no railroads, and all supplies had to be carried across the plains in freighting wagons. This business was carried on by the roughest cla.s.s of a rough and frontier population; still, it was an honest business, and honest men might lawfully engage in it, provided they had the hardihood to face the dangers and exposures of such a life.

During the years 1862, 1863 and 1864, I went into this business with a small freighting outfit. This certainly was not just the thing for a preacher to do, but necessity knows no law. In the spring of 1862, Bro. James Butcher was going to Denver with a freighting train, and he with myself agreed to go in the same train for mutual convenience.

The President, Abraham Lincoln, had ordered a draft, and many young men in Missouri had found themselves in a sore strait. In the South were their kindred, and they felt that they could not and would not fight against their own flesh and blood; and to avoid this they determined to flee to the gold mines in the mountains, where every man did what was right in his own eyes--and so they came to Atchison or Leavenworth and engaged to drive these freighting teams to Denver.

Many of them were sons of rich fathers, well educated, and had never engaged in manual labor, much less in such menial work as this, and when these proud and high-spirited fellows felt what an ign.o.ble life they had been reduced to, the reader may well believe they did not feel good-natured over it. And now, when these young gentlemen came to understand that they were to be a.s.sociated with a man that was reported to be the representative of the hated Yankees, who had made war on the people of the South, and set free their slaves, they bitterly attacked me in wordy warfare. Of course I defended myself.

And so day after day, in the intervals while our cattle were grazing, we debated every question relative to slavery that has been debated within the last fifty years. Their hearts were bitter; they were pa.s.sionately excited, and would often end the talk, which they themselves had begun, With noisy profanity. They seemed to think they had this advantage of me, that they could swear and I could not.

We were now traveling up the valley of the Platte River. It was the month of June. The weather had become rainy and there were frequent showers. One night we had corralled our train on an almost dead level bottom, and I was sure, from the appearance of the heavens, that we should have a storm. Bro. Butcher had been taken sick and had returned home, and, except myself, there were none to think or care what was coming; and yet it was plain to be seen that the air was thick and sultry, and the heavens overcast with clouds, and that everything betokened a tempest. Our canvas-covered wagons had been so crowded with merchandise that we could not get into them, and we had slept on blankets on the ground; but here on this dead level bottom, in case of a heavy rain, we would be drowned out by the flooding of the ground. I dragged under my wagon a number of ox-yokes, and with these and some strips of boards I made a platform, and on this I laid a narrow pallet, and crept under the wagon, where I would be sheltered from the rain by the wagon-bed above me. During the night there fell frequent showers, and the boys were soon drowned out from their pallets on the ground. They were tired and sleepy; they were homesick and in bad temper at their mean and unaccustomed surroundings, and were inclined to hold the Yankees responsible for it all, and they began to curse and swear in rough and bitter speech. Then there came on the most awful thunder storm I ever witnessed. Vivid flashes of lightning kept the whole heavens illuminated with a blaze of light, while a thousand electric lights would not so have turned night into day around our corral of train-wagons. Cras.h.i.+ng peals of thunder were in the air, and the bolts seemed to descend to the earth around us. Then there came down a flood of rain that was as if a water spout had burst above our heads. I looked out from my narrow bed, and could see the boys gathered in groups, standing leaning against their wagons, soaked to the skin, and their faces white with ghastly paleness; but not a word was spoken. They had forgotten to swear. Then there was a lull in the storm, which subsided into a drizzling cold rain, and I went to sleep.

When morning came we were a sorry looking lot. The boys were soaked, and chilled, and _blue_, and dreadfully homesick. Words would not tell what these poor fellows would have given if they could have been where they could have been coddled and petted by their mothers and sisters.

I saw that a warm cup of coffee and a substantial breakfast would do them good, and I hastened to have it provided. They came with alacrity at the call for breakfast, for they were hungry. When a good square meal had somewhat thawed them out, I said, "Boys, what made you quit swearing last night?" The one who was usually their spokesman, and who knew how to be a gentleman if he had a mind to be, said reverently, "We were afraid." From this time forward our debates over slavery and the Southern Confederacy were at an end, or if we had them it was in a friendly way. Given a fair chance, these boys were not so bad as they seemed.

In the summer of 1864 we had reached the "Cutoff," and were within eighty miles of Denver. It was late on Sat.u.r.day afternoon when we got to the Bijou Ranch. We were tired and our teams were tired, and we debated for some time whether we should drive ten miles further, where we would find better feed for our oxen. We did so, though it took us till midnight; and there we rested on Sunday. This was providential; for it was on this Sunday that the Cheyenne Indians made their memorable raid and plundered the trains, burned the ranches and stole the horses for three hundred miles along the Platte River. They attacked the Bijou Station that we had left on Sat.u.r.day, but they did not venture any nearer Denver; consequently we were safe. On our return we saw how the people had been murdered, the trains plundered and the ranches burned along our route; and it presented a terrible spectacle. A man named Butler was killed and scalped on the Little Blue River, and the people in Kansas got the word that it was myself.

Immediately on my return home I rode up to the church at Wolf Creek, in Doniphan county, where we had a district meeting appointed. It was to them as if I had come from the dead. I went home for dinner with my old friend, Bro. John Beeler. I noticed his little boy peering attentively at me; he climbed upon a bedstead close behind me, then, jumping down, he ran to his mother, and, pulling Sister Beeler by the ap.r.o.n, said, "Ma! Ma! The Indians did scalp Bro. Butler; I can see it on the top of his head." The reader must know that, like "Old Uncle Ned," I have no hair on the top of my head.

But, in spite of disasters and hards.h.i.+ps, and dark and stormy days, our churches continued to grow and prosper, and we kept up a vigorous and aggressive church organization. On Sept. 27, 1864, the churches of the State came together at their fifth annual State meeting at Tec.u.mseh, Shawnee county. Here the brethren organized a missionary society, fas.h.i.+oned after the plan of our General Missionary Society, and in which life directors.h.i.+ps, life members.h.i.+ps and annual members.h.i.+ps were obtained by the payment of a sum of money.

The writer of these Recollections will explain that the formation of this Society was not his work. He doubted whether the brethren were prepared for it. Nevertheless, he was willing to be governed by the majority. By resolution of the State meeting, the writer was requested to prepare for publication with the minutes of the meeting an address, of which the following is a copy:

ADDRESS TO THE CHRISTIAN BRETHREN OF THE STATE OF KANSAS.

_Beloved Brethren_: We present to you in these pages the details of the organization of the Christian Missionary Society of the State of Kansas. We hope for your approval and ask for your contributions.

The warrior may fight for his country on the battle field; the statesman may seek to develop its resources and improve its laws; the husbandman may make its fields heavy with their weight of golden grain; and those who love domestic life may seek to create in that place they call home a second paradise; but broader, deeper, more comprehensive and sweeter far, is the work of Christianity. It underlies all good, and is the only sure basis of progress.

For two thousand years China and j.a.pan have been without the Bible, and what they were then, that they are now. For two thousand years the millions of India have been left without G.o.d and without hope in the world, and they have only progressed into infinite degradations. The aboriginal inhabitants of America, left without the Bible, have only gone down deeper and deeper into a night as black as that which brooded over old chaos.

No Herschel counts the stars, numbers the planets, measures the length of their years and computes the number of their days, unless his observatory is illuminated by the rays of the Sun of Righteousness. No Luther thunders against priestcraft, shakes the thrones of tyrants, and wakes the nations to a new life and a new progress, save that Luther that finds a Bible in his cell. No Franklin calls down electricity from the clouds to carry messages across a continent swift as the lightning flashes through the sky, save that Franklin whose fathers brought the Bible with them from their native land, and prized it more than all the gold of Ophir. No mother country has had such reason to be proud of any colony that was ever planted on the face of this green earth, as Great Britain has had reason to be proud of her colonies in North America, and no colonies ever so loved the Bible. Judson, Howard, Wilberforce, and Florence Nightingale drew the inspiration of their benevolence from a dying Saviour's cross, and learned of him who, "though he was rich, yet for our sakes become poor, that we through his poverty might be rich."