Gilded Age Reform and Education for Women

The Gilded Age (1865-c. 1900) brought a tremendous amount of change to American culture and society, including issues directly related to women. Based on the popular idea that they were morally superior to men, some women argued they were therefore better qualified to help cure society's ills. Reform in the mid-nineteenth century had allowed more women to venture outside the home. Nearing the end of the century, that trend only grew. Education in general, especially academic opportunities for women, also expanded during this time. In 1870, there were a total of 160 high schools in the entire country. In 1882, that number had grown to eight hundred high schools. By 1900, there were six thousand. Also, the number of female college students grew from "eleven thousand in 1879 to eighty-five thousand in 1900."[1] Without these trends, Meta Chestnutt's academic career in the 1880s is hard to imagine.

Note

[1] Gayle V. Fischer, "Women," in Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Paul Finkelman (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001), 3:402-03.

E. G. Sewell's Typological Interpretation of the Tabernacle, 1889

In an 1889 article titled "Information Wanted," E. G. Sewell responded to a question from "Wm. Jackson, Elk River Mills, Limestone county, Ala." Sewell wrote that "the tabernacle itself is understood to be typical of the church of God on earth, and of heaven." He further detailed that the Holy Place represented the church, and that the Most Holy Place was "typical of heaven itself." He also suggested that the candlestick represented the word of God, the table of shewbread pointed to the Lord's Supper, the altar of incense stood for prayer, and the brazen laver signified baptism. Here, Sewell commented that while the New Testament called on baptized believers to pray, the various Protestant denominations "in their prayer system of conversion" placed prayer before baptism. Sewell also suggested that the divine presence of the Lord in the tabernacle "is understood to be typical of the Holy Spirit, which filled the spiritual house, the body of Christ . . . and which dwells in the church, in Christians."[1]

Note

[1] E. G. Sewell, "Information Wanted," Gospel Advocate, October 2, 1889, 631.

News of Sand Creek in Eastern North Carolina

Across the nation, Americans heard about and condemned the crime at Sand Creek. The outcry could be heard in eastern North Carolina, where in 1865 Meta Chestnutt was a toddler. For example, a piece in the Newbern Daily Times, published in nearby Craven County, called it "the Chivington massacre."[1] An article titled "The Indians" in the Daily North Carolina Times in August 1865 spoke of "the massacre of the Cheyennes by Colonel Chivington."[2] An editorial piece in the very same issue of the paper pointed to the Christianized character of Americans and what at least some thought at the time:

The best statistics in possession of the Indian Office at Washington shows the number of tribes now extant in the States and Territories of the Government to be seventy-eight, numbering in population three hundred and fourteen thousand six hundred and twenty-two in the aggregate.

This furnishes a ruinous commentary upon the doctrine that 'all men are free and equal,' or else augurs a fearful accountability for the Anglo-Saxon race in America, at the final day of accounts. They are either not free and equal with the white man, or else the white man has committed great sin, for if equal they should now number several millions instead of only a third of one million.[3]

This was certainly not the only perspective on Indians reported in North Carolina newspapers in 1865. But it was one.

Notes

[1] Newbern Daily Times, May 12, 1865, 1.

[2] "The Indians," Daily North Carolina Times, August. 5, 1865, 2.

[3] Daily North Carolina Times, August. 5, 1865, 2.

The Origins and Character of Grant's Peace Policy

The lyrics of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," written by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe in November 1861, make clear that the Civil War was, among other things, a religiously-charged event.[1] Yet, once the war had ended, America's reforming spirit was still alive. Its interests now turned toward justice for American Indians. More than anything else, news of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre sparked public interest in real change. It symbolized a long series of American misdeeds. Acknowledging those misdeeds meant a new demand for national repentance. As Francis Paul Prucha describes the reaction, America experienced "an upsurge of Christian sentiment demanding Christian justice for the Indians that would be proper to a Christian nation."[2] The practical answer has been called "Grant's peace policy." But its ideas antedated the Grant Administration (1869-77), and lasted till the end of the century. It was, essentially, "a state of mind" according to which an old, inhumane, and ineffective system would be replaced by new one characterized by "kindness and justice."[3]

Notes

[1] Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 1:479, refers to the Civil War as "a great Christian crusade."

[2] Ibid., 480.

[3] Ibid.

Religious Aspects of the Post-Civil War Peace Policy

After the war, the powerful reform impulses stemming from the Second Great Awakening were no longer directed against slavery. At least some of the old interest in reshaping American society for the betterment of humanity and the glory of God was now focused on the Indian "problem."[1] In that era, the Protestant establishment and the party of Lincoln saw a good deal of cooperation, and this can be heard in the summary of the Peace Policy by Columbus Delano, Grant's Secretary of the Interior. The policy, said Delano, set out to place Indians on reservations where they could be taught "such pursuits as are incident to civilization, through the aid of the Christian organizations of the country now engaged in this work, cooperating with the Federal Government." A central part of the policy was to 

establish schools, and through the instrumentality of the Christian organizations, acting in harmony with the Government, . . . to build churches and organize Sabbath schools, whereby these savages may be taught a better way of life than they have heretofore pursued, and be made to understand and appreciate the comforts and benefits of Christian civilization, and thus be prepared ultimately to assume the duties and privileges of citizenship.[2]  

Notes

[1] Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 166. Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (New York: Harper & Row. 1957) makes the case that antebellum evangelicals did not disdain reform movements. On the contrary, mid-nineteenth century evangelists were in the vanguard of reformers who railed against slavery and other aspects of American society they deemed ungodly. In fact, they laid the foundation upon which the post-war Social Gospel was built.

[2] Columbus Delano, Secretary of the Interior, Annual Report, in Executive Documents, 1873-74, vol. 4 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1874), iii-iv, as quoted in Berkhofer, White Man's Indian, 169.

Sand Creek: The Immediate Aftermath

Upon hearing the news of Sand Creek, citizens of Denver celebrated. When Chivington and his troops returned they were hailed as heroes. But in the months that followed, those who testified before a U.S. military commission, the House of Representatives, and the Senate were not so flattering. One Congressional report concluded that Chivington had planned and carried out "a foul and dastardly massacre which would have disgraced the veriest savage among those who were the victims of his cruelty." The soldiers had "indulged in acts of barbarity of the most revolting character; such, it is to be hoped, as never before disgraced the acts of men claiming to be civilized."[1] The reports, quoted and summarized in newspapers and magazines, made the Sand Creek Massacre a powerful symbol "of what was wrong with United States treatment of the Indians, which reformers would never let fade away."[2] Once the Civil War had come to an end and the nation had buried President Lincoln, most Americans were ready for a major change in U.S. Indian policy.

Notes

[1] Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father, 1:460.

[2] Ibid., 1:461.

The Sand Creek Massacre

The discovery of gold in the Territory of Colorado in 1858 attracted thousands of prospectors and miners whom settlers called "Pike's Peakers." The sudden influx and blatant encroachment of such a large number of whites during the early 1860s irritated and troubled Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders. It also widened the gap between Indians who favored peace and those who favored war. Meanwhile, Governor John Evans was aware of events unfolding in Minnesota and Dakota Territory. When Indian leaders in eastern Colorado refused to cede land, Evans viewed their decision as veiled hostility. When the governor decreed that all Indians were to remain in their villages, Arapahos and Cheyennes mostly complied. Still, anxiety among Evans's constituents about a growing alliance of hostile Indians, all evidence in Colorado to the contrary, made preemptive war seem attractive. Cheyenne leader Black Kettle, an advocate of peace, clearly understood the stakes and did what he could to calm white fears. But by the late summer of 1864, there was nothing more he might have done. Colorado had already called up a special Third Cavalry whose members would serve for just one hundred days and whose only mission was to fight Indians. Their commanding officer was the former Methodist minister Colonel John M. Chivington, "the Fighting Parson" (pictured here). Given the relatively peaceful conditions in Colorado, Chivington's first challenge was to find something to do. As weeks turned into months, and with the end of a hundred days drawing closer, the local press ridiculed the idle Third Cavalry and their commander. With pressure growing, Chivington brought his troops to Fort Lyon in southeastern Colorado, from which he staged an attack.[1] 

In the early morning of November 29, 1864, the Third Cavalry and new enlistees of the First Cavalry, seven hundred men in all, charged into Black Kettle's camp at Sand Creek. The night before, five hundred Cheyenne men, women, and children had fallen asleep, confident they were safe. Yet they were attacked without warning and without mercy. Upon spotting the approaching troops, Black Kettle quickly raised an American flag and a white flag at his tent. White Antelope, another peace chief, "stood with his arms folded in a peaceful gesture as the whites advanced, but to no avail."[2] He was shot down in the opening volley. The panicked Cheyennes scattered and looked for cover, while cavalrymen killed men, women, and children, sometimes scalping and mutilating the victims. By the end of the day, between one hundred and fifty and two hundred Cheyennes, most of them women and children, lay dead in the valley of Sand Creek. The residents of Denver celebrated and the Rocky Mountain News announced, "Colorado soldiers have again covered themselves with glory."[3]

Notes

[1] Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 1:457-59; Robert Utley, The Indian Frontier, 1846-1890, rev. ed. (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2003), 85-92; Roger L. Nichols, American Indians in U.S. History (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 134-35.

[2] Prucha, The Great Father, 1:459.

[3] Ibid. Prucha estimates the number of victims at "about one hundred and fifty." Utley, The Indian Frontier, 92, says "some two hundred."

The Minnesota Sioux War of 1862

Around the time Meta Chestnutt was born in 1863, several early stories of the so-called "Indian wars" made their way east, horrifying many American citizens. In Minnesota during the summer of 1862, hungry and desperate Dakota Sioux Indians, frustrated by callous treatment from the U.S. government, killed hundreds of white settlers. Governor Alexander Ramsey quickly summoned the state militia. But before the fighting came to an end that year perhaps a thousand on each side had been killed. In the aftermath, U.S. military courts issued a death sentence to 303 Indians. President Lincoln insisted on a review of the legal proceedings in each case, and finally issued a pardon to most of the condemned. Still, when the army hanged thirty-eight men on December 26, 1862 at Mankato, Minnesota, it was the largest mass execution in American history. Sporadic warfare between the two sides spilled over into Dakota Territory to the west and dragged on during the years that followed.[1]

Note

[1] Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 1:437-447; Robert Utley, The Indian Frontier, 1846-1890, rev. ed. (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2003), 76-81; Roger L. Nichols, American Indians in U.S. History (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 133-34. For a map detailing the Sioux wars from 1862 to 1868, see Utley, 119.

Thomas Moore's "The Lake of the Dismal Swamp"

Nothing in Moore's introduction or in the poem itself demands that the "maid" is an Indian. However, it might be said that Moore suggests as much since the maid "paddles her white canoe," while her beloved, in order to search for her, hollows "a boat of the birchen bark."[1] Whatever Moore's intent regarding the ethnic identity of the two--assuming he had an intent--a distinction between them certainly is part of the poem's reception in America. Evidence for this derives from, of all things, an Indian phantom.

In a monograph titled Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-Century America, historian Molly McGarry reports that in 1853, Powhatan, the great Algonquian leader of tidewater Virginia during the early seventeenth century, spoke through "a thirteen-year-old medium in Lebanon, New Hampshire."[2] McGarry notes that Spiritualists would sometimes conjure the apparition of a famous historical figure. As one would expect, the expertise or unique experience of that person served as the basis for his or her message to people of the present. When the spectral figure was an American Indian, the message was often "much more ambiguous and, indeed, haunting."[3] In such cases, the apparition typically would cast blame on whites for the disappearance of Indians. Sometimes these indictments were followed by notes of resignation and reports of the happiness of Indians in the afterlife.[4] When in 1853 Powhatan spoke through the teenager in New Hampshire, he not only seemed familiar with Moore's poem, but also designated the ethnicity of the maid:

There are but few left to lament the departure of a once powerful race, none to sit by the council fire, to seek friendship or to plot revenge. No daring footsteps now climb the hills and precipices of our native land. And where is now the Indian maiden, who roamed through the glens and valleys, or skimmed o'er the lake in her swift canoe?[5]

In all likelihood, then, Meta Chestnutt did not imagine, but rather received this part of her interpretation of "The Lake of the Dismal Swamp."

Notes

[1] "A Ballad. The Lake of the Dismal Swamp," appears in Thomas Moore, Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (Philadelphia: John Watts, 1806), 33-35.

[2] Molly McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 66.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 69.

[5] "An Indian Spirit's Speech," Spiritual Telegraph 1 (1853): 20-21, as quoted in McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past, 68. See notes 1 and 7 on 197-98.

Baptists and Disciples in North Carolina, 1840s-90s

Beginning in the late 1840s and culminating in the '70s, the Churches of Christ in North Carolina and certain leaders among liberal Baptist churches in the state set out to promote the unity of all believers through greater cooperation.[1] At the 1849 meeting of the Disciples held at Kinston that year, the delegates appointed John P. Dunn and Josephus Latham, both considered "irenic" ministers, to attend the next gathering of the Chowan Baptist Association. The same meeting of the Disciples was attended by Dr. S. J. Wheeler, a leader among the Baptists of the region. Wheeler announced plans for the opening of a Baptist girls' school. The news was welcomed by the Disciple delegates who recommended patronage of the school, offered to supply two trustees, and invited Wheeler to solicit support among Disciple congregations. In 1854, John T. Walsh, a Disciple itinerant minister, preached for many of the Baptist churches in the Chowan Association by their invitation. Yet nothing like complete merger ever occurred. Not all Baptist leaders favored these developments. Staff writers for the Biblical Recorder, an arm of the Baptists in North Carolina, published several articles criticizing the Disciples. Walsh fired back in the pages of his monthly magazine.[2]

The relationship between Disciples and Union Baptists in North Carolina presents a different picture. Between the late 1850s and early '90s, Disciple beliefs completely took over most Union Baptist congregations. In 1858, ten counties in eastern North Carolina were home to a total of fifty Union Baptist congregations with 4,300 members. By 1892, only thirteen of those churches survived with 442 members. The majority of the congregations and individuals lost by the Union Baptists had been absorbed by the Disciples.[3] And most of the Union Baptist ministers defected to the Disciples. Among them was Isaac L. Chestnutt, Meta's older brother.[4]

Notes

[1] Charles Crossfield Ware, North Carolina Disciples of Christ (St. Louis, MO: Christian Board of Publication, 1927), 98. Ware explains that at the time, members of these congregations were called Disciples of Christ, while congregations were called Churches of Christ.

[2] Ibid., 98-100.

[3] Ibid., 101-02.

[4] Ibid., 106.