The Plastic Hand of Patriotic and Christian Benevolence: The Work of the American Home Missionary Society in Illinois and Indiana, 1826-1837

The American Home Missionary Society represented an evangelical Protestant, interdenominational, voluntary effort to plant churches and related cultural institutions in developing communities on the American frontier. Growing out of the missionary, revivalistic, and social reform concerns of participants in the Second Great Awakening, the So�iety sought to perpetuate social reform, inculcate individual "virtue," fill the perceived void left by legal disestablishment, and, preeminently, gain converts to evangelical Christianity. In the first decade of its institutional life the American Home Missionary Society focused its attention on the frontier communities of the Old Northwest and the Mississippi Valley. During the 1820 1 s and 1830 1 s, the -recently admitted states of Illinois and Indiana occupied a potentially crucial position in the commercial and social development of the United States, and the American Home Missionary Society appeared to have the resources and internal unity to carry out its self-appointed mission in those states. However, denominational in-fighting and concurrent financial hardship in the aftermath of the Panic of 1837 undermined the strength of the Society. As constituent denominations asserted their independence, the founding principles of the Society were compromised and

In spite of a growing conviction that the "free states" were best suited to the shaping force of the  Andover graduates and prospective missionaries, a group of ·N e w E n g 1 a n d c 1 e r g y f o r m e d a c o m m i t t e e a n d · p 1 a n n e d a • he has ceased under heaven. A voice out of the fire c i� manded him to rest from his labours •• �.
To the editor of the��! Missionary, the seeking of converts and "promoting the spirit of entire and permanent consecration to God" superseded the "immediate collection The missionaries and their supporters seemed to draw sustenance from a rhetoric that expressed the hopes and fears of people who believed that they stood in daily relation to God and enjoyed providential favor.
In Second Great Awakening leaders and the subsequent "routinization of charisma" Donald Matthews (see note 13 above) also noted the importance of a "common world of experience" that was engendered by the revtvals and shared nationally by evangelicals. together towards a large drift of wood that hung some distance below. This, brother Hale with some difficulty succeeded in mounting and even then found the bridle around one arm. He extricated himself and the horses, by po we r f u 1 s tr u-g g 1 e sf 3 w h e e 1 e d a n d s w am o u t a t t h e place of entrance.
In the incoming correspondence of the American Home the physical beauty of the landscape were dangled before e a s t e r n e v a ., g e 1 i c a 1 s • B a 1 d w i n p a i n t e d a n i n v i t i n g v e r b a 1 picture of the DuPage River in northeastern Illinois: The prairie rises into gentle swells from either ~hore and the traveller approaches very near, before he even suspects its existence, when, to his surprise and delight, he discovers the silvery stream, a number of rods in width, flowing peacefully along through the wi~lows, grass, and flowers that crown its banks. I feel now that I am indeed "a stranger" on earth, ·and that mine is "a solitary pilgrimage in a weary land" ••• my thoughts often dwell upon that "rest which remains fo r the people of God." By seeing my beloved friends fall into the grave, I am admonished that I too am mortal and am thereby enabled to preach as " a dying man to fellow dying men" and my labours have not been in va in fo r the Lord. 2 3 That the incentive to continue is _ sued from personal tragedy revealed both the intensity of the missionaries' faith and the su. stenance that it afforded them. But to 37 the evangelical temperament, disease and death were also regarded as shifting manifestations of divine judgment.
For those within the evangelical fold, the death of family or friends could be interpreted as both a vehicle for "the loving-kindness" of God when one found oneself "in the furnace of affliction" and as an example of the deathbed consolations of the conversion experience.24 In contrast to these glorifications of grief, the visitation of disease and death upon an unchurched community provided the evangelical missionaries with harsh images of divine retribution. · On Oct ober 1, 1833 the Rev. Thomas Lippincott of Carroltown, Illinois thundered: In July 183 2 , the Lord visited the place with great power and glory; drew many rebels to the Saviour. In July 1833, He came again in awful majesty, but it was to sweep !� e inhabitants of our guilty town to the grave. m i s s i o n a r i e s a n d e n c o u r a g e s e t t 1 e m e n t b y e v a n g. e 1 i c a 1 C h r i s t i a n s , W i 1 1 i a m P u s_ e y , t h e r u 1 i n g e 1 d e r o f t h e F i r s t   the supreme good in prospect is to b e c o m e r i c h . W h a t h u m a n m e a n s 5~a n b r e a k t h i s apathy is yet difficult . to tell.

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The poignancy and excitation of the "anxious" moment, when the si nner wavered between salvation and perdi tion, was projected onto the physical and moral wilderness of frontier society.
But the tension that compelled the grafting of churches and moral reform societies onto a blossoming nation was also somewh at artificially sustained. As the transportation network improved and settlers snatched up land and tossed up buildings, the missionari es found that · their anxieties were confirmed. As the land fulfill�d its promise, the American Home Missionary Society's diag nosis of social ills and religious malaise became a self fulfilling proph ecy that demanded redoubled efforts.
In the wake of the Revoluntionary era and the Second The scene was altogether overwhelming.
Two or three months before, he had left them in perfect health and the first item of intelligence from them during his absence, he received about one week before he reached Jacksonville ••• 'they are all dead'.
As he reached the spot where side by side were deposited those objects of his intense affection, he did literally bend under the load of anguish, but after a few struggles of feeling, he appeared to rise and triumph in God." Theron Baldwin, Jacksonville, Illinois, to Corresponding Secretary of the AHMS, AHMS Papers, reel 16.
24Reporting the death of his wife, Flavel Bascom, wrote: "Trials I had met before, and thought I had learned to bear them, but the man whose affectionate family is unbroken knows not what trials are. But God has been good to me, and I never felt under greater obligation to him for his loving kindness than in the furnace of affliction." Flavel Another of the hopeful subjects of this work is our principal physician, who has been very successful in his practice, although he has been heretofore very indifferent as to the interest of his soul.
His wife is a member of our church; and she has agonized in prayer for her husband and has found t~ft "praying breath has not been spent in vain." On January 6, 1836, Stuart wrote: Our organization is such as to place it in the power of every one to do something, by paying into the hands of a committee any article of produce.
Some paid corn, some wheat, some potatoes; one man four dozen brooms. Females contribute stockings, etc., subscriptions from one to twelve dollars.4 4 As the principal American Home Missionary Society a g e n t s i n I 1 1 i n o i s d u r i n g t h e 1 8 3 0 •. s , Th e r o n B a 1 d w i n a n d In my next tour I expect to hear from 4 0 to 60 [Sunday school students] repeat the twenty-third Psalm .••• Every chi ld who commits the ten. commandments becomes a preacher to the whole family ••• This exercise brings the children to meeting and creates an attachment to that kind friend [the missionary] who treats them as his friends. Their eagerness to obtain books [which the missionary distributes] makes them anxious for his next visit ••. the books are so beautiful, so entertaining and instructive, even to adults, that the missionary should count on every book thus given as an auxil ; a ry worth a dollar in furtherance of his object.
In Aratus Kent's perception the Sunday school     The band was organized on the principle that education and religion must go hand in hand to the world's conversion.
It had been noticed too that individual missionaries often went West, and by being compelled to labor single-handed, found themselves at last borne down by adverse influences and instead of maintaining an elevated standard as ministers, and lifting the c ommunity, they were cut off from the means of improvement and gradually sank down as intellectual men. The philosophy of this movement was to serve such a combination and set in motion such agencies as would enable them to    the Holy Spirit is not granted to give men any new powers or capability as moral agents but to convince them of sin and to make them willing to do what they before had �wer to do but would not.
[Wheelock was parapnrasing Nathaniel Taylor.] These and kindred doctrines I believe under God will prove the salvation of the Presbyterian Church--and, that the opposite system [the Old School] has been sitting like the n i g ht mare upon her v i ta 1 s , anti no m i a "s \ z i n g her professors, and prostrating her energy.
After the Old School majority of the Indianapolis presbytery found Wheelock guilty of heresy, the New School minority boycotted delibertations on the sentencing of the missionary. 5 3 Lacking a quorum, the hamstrung presbytery deferred to the Synod, which rebuked all of the involved parties for their reckless remarks and charges. James R.
Wheelock was mildly admonished for failing to use "good and acceptable words" in his ministry. 5 4 The work of the Presbyterian denomination and of the in the every proposition c o n t a i n e-d i n t h e C o n f e s s i o n o f F a i t h a n d t h e Catechism.
They were to be accepted only "for substance of doctrine." This statement was not altogether novel, but to this day it has never given me any satisfaction.
It has always seemed to me an indefensible violation of good faith for a m an f o rm al 1 y to a c c e pt a _ d o c tr i n a 1 s ta t em en t 119 which he can only make his own by doing violence to the obvious meaning of some of its phrases.58