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The Burned-over District
The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850
Whitney R. Cross
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The Burned-over District
The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850
Whitney R. Cross
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"Burned-over District was a name applied to a small region, during a limited period of history, to indicate a particular phase of development. It described the religious character of western New York during the first half of the nineteenth century. Time, subject, and area have thus all combined to confine the scope of this book. The study has nevertheless seemed rewarding, mainly because its implications transcend all three limitations."The meaning expands in a geographical sense because this one area provides a case history in the westward transit of New England culture. Likewise, it is representative as a sample of the change from youth to maturity in a single section affected by continuing westward movement. The subject of religion has broader significance in this period and locality than might at first appear. This section was the storm center, and religious forces were the driving propellants of social movements important for the whole country in that generation. As far as time goes, this book is an illustration of the way in which the minds of one era help to form the destinies of succeeding generations. Neither the causes of the Civil War nor the origins of national prohibition, to cite only two prominent examples, can be thoroughly understood without reference to the Burned-over District."—from the Preface
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BOOK V
Harvest: 1830-1845
There is nothing to which the minds of good men, when once passed the bounds of sound discretion, and launched on the ocean of feeling and experiment, may not come…nothing so terrible and unmanageable as the fire and whirlwind of human passion, when once kindled by misguided zeal.…For, in every church, there is wood, hay, and stubble which will be sure to take fire on the wrong side.…New-England of the West shall be burnt over…as in some parts of New-England it was done 80 years ago.—LYMAN BEECHER TO NATHANIEL BEMAN, Letters of Beecher and Nettleton (1828), 96–98
Chapter 13. A MORAL REFORMATION
THE temperance movement was larger in every dimension than Burned-over District ultraism. It began much earlier and has not yet ended. During the 1830’s it attained national scope in far more genuine manner than did most other reforms of the day, while in western New York alone it commanded support grounded on a range of motives extending well beyond the field of radical religion. Yet in the one decade the larger crusade yielded to the more limited phenomenon and for the time assumed the style of ultraism. At this stage, and for this very reason, the suppression of alcoholic beverages became a more vital and exclusive concern with its proponents than at any other time. During the same moment, also, the campaign both gained its widest following in upstate New York and accepted a larger proportion of direction and management from that region than from any other. And having imbibed the ultraist draught, the temperance movement, like its companion radicalisms, suffered the morning-after consequences.
The prolonged affiliation between temperance and revival religion which preceded their final union in the Rochester awakening of 1831 had already made drunkenness a severe obstacle to a Christian reputation. During the next few years the growing enthusiasm altered the prevalent attitude in two ways: use of intoxicants became a sin instead of a mere departure from decency and expediency, and the existence of intemperance in American society came to be considered the major hindrance to that revival of spirituality which was to introduce the early millennium. The one consideration made the regenerate soul fear for himself, lest in some ill-considered ramification of daily living he participate indirectly in evil. On the second score, would-be saints felt an intensified concern for the habits of the unregenerate, lest God abandon or postpone the Advent. These two co-ordinate propositions drove their advocates to fantastically absolute views.1
Wine, beer, and cider, moderately used, did not intoxicate and had until now not been included in the pledge. But temperance societies which devoted monthly meetings to discussing whether anything could restrain “the depravity of man, except the sanctions of the Holy Scriptures,” must needs take a different stand. Some men failed to partake moderately of these lighter beverages, and he who did “anything whereby thy brother stumbleth”2 was culpable. Further, if alcohol was a specifically sinful compound, the slighter quantity could not change the fundamental nature. The most trifling departure from righteousness would be infinite on judgment day and in the meantime would encourage progressively wider deviations into error. By the same reasoning, if alcohol was evil because it frustrated the Lord’s design for the human body, other drugs like tea, coffee, and tobacco must be equally wrong.
Well might the true saint ask of one less rigorously logical, “Do you drink wine, yet, my dear Sir? And has it not hurt you, + our cause? To stop the mouth of our Enemies, + for my own good, I left off using Tobacco nearly a year ago, after chewing between 45 + 50 years.” Josiah Bissell, the Pioneer Line ultraist, had even before the 1831 revival “got beyond Temperance to the Cold Water Society—no Tea, Coffee or any other slops.” Charles Finney, though never himself the most radical of reformers, complained that “five times” as much money went for these various intemperances as “for every effort to save the world.” He and many others agreed with the New York Evangelist that such devotion to principle constituted “a triumph of conscience over the lower desires” and expected to see “revivals follow in the train of every great struggle by which conscience gains a triumph over passion, and truth becomes ascendant.”3
The ultraist might himself never touch even wine, except at Communion, and yet sin because he manufactured or sold liquors, rented to a grog shop, or marketed his crops without knowing their destination. Western New York farmers soon learned “the immorality of furnishing grain,” grapes, and apples for the liquor trade. One might err again by trading with a store, inn, or canal line, or by attending public occasions which encouraged debauchery. One should reprove associates who came “under the influence.” Women particularly could exert their virtuous powers by refusing the attentions of men who proved to be less than circumspect.4
These radical prohibitionist concepts spread through the Burned-over District speedily during the early thirties, and just after the middle of the decade they captured the national temperance organization also. Itinerant preachers utilized the various sins of intemperance as excuses for protracted meetings, and lecturers who centered upon social rather than religious reform utilized the same techniques with much the same ideological content. From both camps came leaders and followers who increasingly focused on the alcoholic question as the greatest, if not the single vital one of the day. Losing sight of others, they magnified this one objective until it assumed in their minds exclusive proportions.
For the time, ultraist temperance campaigning produced results commensurate with the zeal devoted to it. Arthur Tappan’s conditional philanthropy hastened Presbyterian churches into line: he offered congregations under A.H.M.S. supervision twenty-five dollars each, up to a thousand-dollar total, for adopting “the temperance principle in the admission of persons to the communion,” and similar amounts to congregations which in addition “made the use, traffic, or manufacture of ardent spirits…a subject of discipline.” At least three townships under the eye of A.H.M.S. pastors drove all manufacturers and handlers of liquor beyond their limits. Presumably many churches, like the one in Naples, passed strong resolutions against intemperance, promising to exert “all our influence to restrain others from a habit so pernicious.” More slowly and in more moderate fashion on the whole, the Methodist conferences and Baptist associations took similar action.5
Propaganda for the cause flourished. The New York State Temperance Society, whose affiliates predominated in the Yankee counties of the western area, printed twelve million copies of tracts and periodicals by 1838, selling enough of them to make more than two-thirds of its expenses. The religious, literary, and agricultural journals co-operated, and more than one of them probably showed the true ultraist spirit by denying the presentation of divergent opinions. On moral questions only the “right” ought to be published. At least one grand jury added to the religious motivation of the campaign by blaming most of the cases on its docket to the evil fluid. The cholera epidemic of 1832 also furnished a capital argument, both on grounds of health and as a Heavenly visitation upon sinful communities. In a few localities attempts were made to elect boards of excise or trustees which would refuse to license dealers. By 1833 the state society could boast over 700 affiliates (50 per cent of the groups in the country), 12 signers of the pledge for every 100 citizens, 1200 nonalcoholic stores, and the closing of 133 out of 292 distilleries which had operated in 1830.6
Ultraists were so sanguine that their figures are justly suspect. It also seems quite possible, as opponents charged, that the reduced consumption of alcohol had been accomplished mainly by the abstinence of the already temperate, while hard drinkers, driven to stealthy habits, increased their consumption. One A.H.M.S. report almost suggested as much, noting that the local association had been effective “in reforming many Temperate families +…is already exerting an influence on some of the intemperate.”7
Even allowing for such reservations, however, the record indicates a thoroughly creditable, even a remarkable, accomplishment, once validity of the purpose is granted. Ultraism, working upon properly conditioned people, could definitely achieve results. No doubt the superior success of local New York and New England groups working on radical principles contributed to the adoption by the American Temperance Union of the teetotalist pledge. After 1836, instead of “total abstinence from intoxicating beverages,” the platform read, “total abstinence from all that can intoxicate.”8
But however successful it seemed in the mid-thirties, ultraist temperance was not destined to endure. The panic of 1837 hit the fortunes of its great philanthropists; and the ensuing depression, by puncturing the easy optimism of the preceding years, helped to introduce different methods of procedure. More serious, in all probability, were the multiplying challenges to the increasing radicalism of the reformers. Need honestly temperate men who aided the cause with money and influence but liked their beer and wine, be excommunicated as unregenerate sinners? Could the purpose be accomplished in any case without legal prohibition? If not, how could proper Christians preserve the purity of their aims in the turmoil of party politics? Should women join and participate in men’s societies? Must churches press this item of reform so consistently as to interfere with accustomed religious interests? Only small groups could preserve unanimity on these fundamental issues, and within three or four years of its peak, evangelistic temperance had disintegrated into a variety of factional quarrels.
The teetotalist pledge of 1836 alienated approximately 40 per cent of the state membership, many of them wealthy supporters. The remainder continued to argue the merits of that step more fervently than they pushed the crusade. In addition, many leaders bred to “one-ideaism” in temperance had now gone over to other reforms. Again, by 1838 most of the societies had turned to petitioning the legislature and, except for the brief flurry of Washingtonianism in the early forties, political action became the prevailing custom in the following decades. Some men had so adequately identified this one cause with their religious belief that it seemed the height of piety “to procure legislative help to finish up the…reformation.” But many found political action inconsistent with their faith, and others feared with some justice that the one idea would become confused and compromised when it entered politics.9
The greatest divider seems to have been the argument over Communion wine. In true ultraist fashion the radicals attempted to reach the logical end, the absolute truth, of their position. Having declared that “all use of spirits is sin,” they had for consistency’s sake to condemn the alcoholic beverage of the Eucharist. The reformers’ attempted dictation to the churches naturally roused resentment. Worse yet, the principle violated Scripture itself! The New York Evangelist sponsored the change, and the Free Baptists in 1841 adopted a denominational resolution against wine, but regular Baptists and most Presbyterians, even including Lewis Tappan, were shocked at this contradiction of the Bible. Those who, like Gerrit Smith, argued that, since they knew more about the evils of alcohol than did Jesus, they would sin in following His practice, had set foot on the road to skepticism. One of the sanest observers of the period thought no one could tell how far temperance might have advanced “had not the ultraism on the wine question, and the impious invasion of the eucharist produced lamentable discords”10 which could never be resolved.
The Burned-over District’s interest in temperance had been so deeply imbedded in the thirties that the area continued a degree of leadership in the legal experiments of the forties and fifties. After 1840, however, the subject ceased to be a religious issue.
Like the temperance reform, the antislavery movement permeated broad segments and areas in American society, and persisted from pre-Revolutionary times until the thirteenth amendment accomplished its objective. But the intensified demand for immediate emancipation, which drove North and South apart and prepared them to come to blows, arose in the 1830’s as a manifestation of religious ultraism. This demand could scarcely be called dangerous until it entered politics in the following decade, but the religious phase created its strength, sharpened sectional hostility, and pushed the issue into the political arena. The Burned-over District seized leadership in the abolition crusade, and the consequent influence of this region upon the enlarged antislavery agitation of the forties and fifties and upon the Civil War itself, constitutes the most important single contribution of western New York’s enthusiastic mo...