William McKendree : a biographical study

Introduction

An adequate subject and a capable and dedicated pen are the necessary conditions for making a purposeful book, one that in itself has power to live and accomplish the end of its writing. The wide religious fellowship to which the present volume is particularly addressed will, without debate, allow that in it these conditions have been met. Such a presentation as it makes of the apostolic career with which it deals has long been a desideratum in the thought life of the Church. It will not be denied that the biographical studies of the early leadership of Methodism in this country have, until more recent years, been found in writings whose terms, while commendably sympathetic and true to the vitalities involved, are not all that is demanded by both the religious and philosophical inquisitiveness of our times. It is to effect this new setting of old truths and to revive the too plainly waning appreciation of heroic precedents that this volume and others in the series of which it is a unit have been written. A privileged perusal of these pages while they were yet in ante-publication processes has suggested to the writer of this introductory sketch the possibilities with which they are charged.

Without so much as touching upon the question of inspiration — a matter that must remain inviolate in all reverent thinking — the Book of the Acts is properly thought of in connection with the authorship of St. Luke. While it is impossible to imagine what the apostolic story had been coming from another hand than his, it is quite allowable and reverent to plus its inspiration with the personality and viewpoint of its author. The viewpoint is, in fact, always an integer of first importance, for it is the channel through which the capabilities and fitness of the biographer's personality find expression. Changed conditions and the emergence of a new historical viewpoint have ripened the conviction that our Methodist biography needs a new and more natural setting. The classics of personal history which we have so long used and revered will continue to have their place in our denominational bibliography; but they must, more and more, fall to the exclusive use of students and specialists and give place in the hands of the general reader to fresher and apter recitals of their narratives.

These conclusions involve the doctrine of the continued activity of individual life. The souls of the worthies of the past not only continue to walk the earth, but their deeds have a continuity of force and vitality which requires anew to be made manifest and anew declared. Doctrines of essential belief and institutions reach the point of fixity both as to fact and as to the forms in' which they are expressed. But life has in it no such finality; it is itself a continuous expression of doctrine and institutional truth. In this the life which has entered into history and that which is in the process of living are alike. Biography has this advantage over history, except where history itself is only a species of biography.

The earlier history of American Methodism is easily and naturally divisible into three periods, each period

Introduction. 3

represented by a name that must survive as long as the Wesleyan movement has a record or a representative on this continent. Asbury, McKendree, and Soule are the trio of mighty names in which close the details of a record as heroic and as potent for destiny as any written in the uninspired annals of the race. It would be a profitless task to determine which of these was the greatest or which accomplished the greatest end in his living. They rather make a unity in the history which they wrought. The story of one cannot be told without reciting material facts in the lives of the other two. Their services covered well the years of a century, but the witness of the first overlaps the witness of the others so as to give a view of the three standing in the same line of vision.

Providence fulfilled itself and fulfilled the ethnic and spiritual needs of life on this continent in the selection of these three men to lead the fortunes of the greatest religious movement which the continent has known. The first, an Englishman, with the religious prejudice of Anglicanism, was a type of one of the dominant elements in early racial America; the second, a Virginian, embodied the acquired instinct of religious freedom and the political aspirations characteristic of the colonists and their offspring; while the third, a New Englander, mingled Puritan predilections with atavistic Norman qualities and represented the best-developed type of later American life. Here was the whole religious and social life of the continent rolled into the three patriarchs of early Methodism; and these, in their turn, were by Providence rolled into a unity of thought and action reaching through practically a century of time.

The privilege of treating at this day of the deeds of the second of this triad of early American Methodist leadership is one to be coveted for the reason that it furnishes the vantage for a backward and a forward sweep of vision. It will be a pleasure to discover how this volume has improved its opportunity. John Morley has, in his life of Gladstone, written a philosophical history of England in the latter half of the nineteenth century. He could not escape this chance, being true to his subject. The modern bishop of the Church, in sketching the career of his illustrious predecessor, has, in various connections, effectively laid bare the secret vitalities of that body of constitutional and administrative life known as historic Methodism. The value of this service can be better calculated and will be better understood after a generation has tried the contents of this volume.

The aim of the present revival of study in Methodist biography has been not only to certainly find the sources and trace the course of authority in our ecclesiasticism, but more particularly to find the fountains and inspirational causes of that exceptional spiritual life which so long characterized Methodism and effectively to commend it to the generations of to-day.

Personal experience has always been the true expositive force in the history of religion. This force was the characteristic manifestation of early Methodism, which formulated no new doctrine and, at its beginning, contemplated no ecclesiastical departure. It is always to be remembered, too, that Methodism took its con-

Introduction. 5

fession out of the body of an older symbol; but it is also to be remembered that it mightily interpreted old doctrines and old formulas in the lives and testimony of its adherents. In this it completed both the letter and the spirit of the Reformation of the sixteenth century, which was a correction of doctrine rather than a revival of spiritual life. Justification by faith as a doctrinal formula described the ultimate advance of Luther's teachings, while the witness of the Spirit as a vital experience described the goal of the Wesleyan revival.

The necessity for constantly reverting to this experience as a precedent for all Christian living, and also the possibility of continually expanding it in the hope of uncovering new incentives to seek it and new avenues of approach to it, are additional reasons for these latest essays in Methodist biography. The reader is confidently advised that the author of this new biography of the first native American bishop has not failed to cultivate this possibility.

A new and valid reason for the present writing is the relation of the subject to the past fortunes and future hopes of that branch of Methodism whose habitat is in the lands so industriously cultivated by this first American -patriarch ; and, indeed, the other two mighty ones referred to are not less legitimately claimed in this relationship. Not only is the earliest spring of historic Methodism traceable to these zones, but here, and under the superintendency of these men, were its earliest victories planned and achieved. The time has come, therefore, to set all these things in the light of a narrative which shall be both unequivocal as to these claims and also just and discriminating in favor of other relationships in the wider house of Methodism. In a word, this new series of biographies especially seeks to present a catholic story of the days of genesis and heroism, one that shall live on and, while teaching the equities of history, shall minister to its unities in a future of possibilities already at our door. It is not to acquit myself of a service of friendship nor to discharge a conventional office, but rather to speak out of the fullness of appreciation and as the result of critical measurement, that I ascribe to this volume the quality of justness, discrimination, and catholicity in all these matters. I count it a great happiness to have been accorded the privilege of inditing this foreword and of commending this volume to the perusal and study of all our people.

Atlanta, Ga., July 20, 19 14.

CHAPTER I. Parentage, Birth, and Early Life

William McKendree, the first native American bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was born in King William County, Va., forty miles northeast of the city of Richmond, July 6, 1757. He was the eldest of the eight children of John and Mary Mc- Kendree, an intelligent, self-respecting, and Godfearing couple, who belonged to what is sometimes condescendingly called "the middle class of Virginians." If anything at all has been preserved concerning his remoter progenitors, it has wholly escaped my research. The family name, however, shows that they were of Scotch origin, though, as was the case with thousands of others of the same blood, they probably reached America by way of the north of Ireland. These transplanted Scotchmen are a masterful race. Wherever they have gone they have left an indelible mark. What they have contributed to the life and growth of the United States in particular can scarcely be overestimated.

John McKendree does not appear to have been, except in the matter of his moral and religious probity, a very uncommon man. He was one of the undistinguished multitude of faithful souls whose names, though not known in the earth, are written in heaven. By vocation he was a planter, owning his own lands io Life of William McKendree.

and a few domestic servants, and making always a comfortable subsistence; but never accumulating any considerable fortune, nor achieving social or political eminence. Bishop Paine describes him as follows: "With strong domestic affections, and without any desire for notoriety, he led a humble, industrious, and religious life." Removing in 1764 to James City County, and again in 1770 to Greenville County, he finally, in 1810, migrated with his youngest son, Dr. James Mc- Kendree, and three other of his children to Sumner County, in the then young State of Tennessee. From this last of his earthly homes, which was the free gift of the generous and large-hearted Rev. James Gwin — a good farm of three hundred acres — he passed to his heavenly home on his eighty-eighth birthday, October, 1810.

Mary McKendree, whose maiden name, strangely enough, is not known, was a woman of great strength and gentleness of character. In every respect she was fit to be the mother of her famous son. Becoming an invalid in 1769, she was confined to her room till her death, twenty years later. But even under so great a disability she continued the wise management of her household affairs and looked well to the rearing of her children. The exquisite sweetness of her temper, to which there is abundant testimony, left an impression on their minds which neither time nor change could ever obliterate.

Speaking of the McKendrees in general, Bishop Paine says that one of their most marked characteristics was their strong family love. In the course of years they became widely scattered in Virginia, Ten-

Parentage, Birth, and Early Life. II

nessee, Alabama, and South Carolina; but they never lost their intense affection for one another. Bishop Asbury in a notable passage in his Journal tells how he and Bishop McKendree once became the guests of the latter's younger brother, Thomas, in South Carolina, and dwells on the glad welcome and "the noble feast" which they received.

The life of an average Virginia family in the days of which I write was rather colorless and uneventful. More than a hundred and fifty years had elapsed since the first English settlers came to Jamestown. Pioneer conditions had largely passed away. Except on the Western frontiers, toward the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, Indian wars, with their excitements, were things of the past, though as late as 1770 Lord Dunmore sent his famous expedition under Andrew Lewis to Point Pleasant, on the Ohio River. Society, for the most part, had settled down to an easy and commonplace way of getting on. There were only a few towns, and they were small and insignificant. The great majority of the white people resided on their own farms and tilled the fields with their own hands. Negro slavery had become a fixed institution, but had taken on a gentler form than anywhere else in the world. Not one-fourth of the people were slaveholders. If riches did not abound, poverty was likewise rare.

There was much good social fellowship, which was always accompanied by an abundance of eating and often by entirely too much drinking. The word "neighbors" meant all .those living in a day's horseback ride of one another. They were much given to the interchange of hospitalities. It was customary to keep open house -both for friends and for strangers. Nobody but a churl turned a visitor away from his door. A traveler of decent appearance might pass from one side of the colony to the other and scarcely be taxed for a night's lodging.

Here and there lines of social cleavage were more or less distinctly drawn. In the Tidewater region especially and along the Upper Valley of the James a few great families, nearly all of which had crossed the ocean during Cromwell's time, exercised a sort of natural sway over their several communities. But in spite of all that has been said about the dominancy of these Cavaliers, the fact is that in the body and bulk of her citizenship and in the great currents of her life Virginia was and has always remained essentially democratic. The most of the men who followed George Washington and the most of those who followed Robert E. Lee were what in England would have been called yeomen. It is important to bear this in mind, as the contrary impression has been made by many writers, from one of whom I shall presently quote.

Educational opportunities in Virginia, except for the wealthy, were not good. In all America there were only three or four colleges, and in Virginia only one. Even ordinary schools were few and generally of inferior quality. Those who could afford it usually employed private tutors for their sons out of England. Mr. Dempster and Parson Ward, of Thackeray's great novel, are types each of a large class. Many young men besides Henry and George Warrington were sent across the sea to finish their studies and polish their

Parentage, Birth, and Early Life. 13

manners. Let us hope that the most of them fell into better company than those two brothers encountered. While many good private libraries could be found in the homes of the richer folk, it must be confessed that books were inaccessible to the masses. Of newspapers, which are now regarded as indispensable vehicles for the dissemination of intelligence, there were none at all; but of oral discussion, both in private circles and in public places, there was a great deal, and it wrought largely on the public mind.

Even George Washington grew up with a limited range of book knowledge; and it is not strange that William McKendree should have acquired still less. To the end of his life, though he learned to speak his mother tongue with precision and force, he would no doubt have been bothered by an examination in grammar, and he often took uncommon liberties with English orthography. Who his teachers were, we are nowhere told. One of them is handed down to us anonymously as "a vain man/' not much better, probably, than an Irish hedge-master. Seventy-five years ago there was a tradition still floating through the Church to the effect that McKendree was a dull, slow boy ; but his best biographer discredits it, and says: "While it may have comforted many a lazy and unpopular young preacher, it was probably without foundation in fact."

When McKendree was born, the first breath of discontent with the colonial policies of Great Britain had scarcely passed over the land. The most of the Virginia people still cherished a loving reverence for old England, called it "home," and gloried greatly in the fact that they themselves were men of English speech and blood. In all his wide domain King George had no more loyal subjects than they. Any slightest suggestion of rebellion or revolution would have been cried down by them as a piece of treasonable folly. But events were shaping themselves beyond the knowledge or will of men. There is an element in the growth of nations that operates as inevitably, yet often as invisibly, as gravitation — the element of Divine purpose. In her season of apparent repose and inactivity Virginia was quietly nursing the strength which she would sorely need in the coming contest for freedom, a contest in which she bore so conspicuous and glorious a part.

It is a little off the track of my theme, but I cannot forbear to reproduce here from Senator Cabot Lodge's "Life >f Washington" a passage which, barring the undue emphasis put on the aristocratic spirit of the colony, is both true and illuminating: "There was nothing languishing or effeminate about the Virginia planter. He was a robust man, quite ready to fight or to work when the time came, and well fitted to deal with affairs when he was needed. He was a freehanded, hospitable, generous being, not much given to study or thought, but thoroughly public-spirited and keenly alive to the interests of Virginia. Above all things else, he was an aristocrat set apart by the dark line of race, color, and hereditary servitude, as proud as the proudest Austrian with his endless quarterings, as sturdy and vigorous as an English yeoman, and as jealous of his rights and privileges as any baron who stood by John at Runnymede. To this aristocracy, careless and indolent, given to rough

Parentage, Birth, and Early Life. 15

pleasures, and indifferent to the finer and higher sides of life, the call came, as it comes to all men sooner or later ; and in response they gave their country soldiers, statesmen, and jurists of the highest order and fit for the great work they were asked to do. We must go back to Athens to find another instance of a society so small in numbers and yet capable of such an outburst of ability and force. They were of sound English stock with a slight admixture of Huguenot, the best blood of France ; and although for a century and a half they had seemed to stagnate in the New World, they were strong and faithful and effective beyond the measure of ordinary races when the hour of peril and trial was at hand."

It was such a civilization as this, speaking generally, that constituted the background of McKendree's life. In all that the word can mean, he was a true Virginian, though he never paraded the fact. Before he had quite passed his eighteenth year, the War of the Revolution broke out. In less than a generation Virginia had entirely changed front. In spite of her ancient loyalty she was the first of all the colonies, in the "Resolves" proposed by Patrick Henry in 1765, to proclaim undying resistance to the unjust exactions of the British Crown and Parliament; and she now threw herself with the greatest spirit into the armed conflict, rejoicing that the supreme leadership in this great emergency had been bestowed upon her favorite son.

Before the war ended, McKendree joined the army. The exact date of his enlistment is in doubt; but the fact is beyond dispute that he rose to the rank of adjutant, and was present in that capacity when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, bein'g then twentyfour years of age. The probabilities are that he saw, all told, about two or three years' service. The experience that he thus acquired in dealing with men proved of large value to him in coming years. To the end of his life there was something of the soldier and the commander in his character. He was in his prime the captain of the itinerant hosts, and rode at the front as one not unused to such a place. But it was only on the rarest occasions, and then with great modesty, that he ever referred to his military career. Nor did he even in extreme old age apply for a pension. He was incapable of putting a market value on his patriotism. Bishop Robert Paine, who was on terms of the closest intimacy with him for many years, acting as his amanuensis, traveling thousands of miles in his company, and passing over many of the Revolutionary battle fields, says that he never once heard him allude to his own part in the struggle: "In him the soldier of civil liberty was merged into the nobler character of a true and valiant soldier of the Cross. Having done his duty to his country in an emergency, he was contented, and never boasted of the fact." Still, it is a matter of record that when on a certain occasion in 1807 a company of roughs, led by a Major Somebody, undertook to break up one of his camp meetings on the frontier of Illinois, he announced from the pulpit that he and some of his companions had fought for their country and could not be intimidated or overawed by a show of violence. The hint proved effective, and the roughs retired.

CHAPTER II. Genesis of Religious Experience

It is proper to say here what ought perhaps to have been said before, that the state of religion in Virginia during and immediately after the Revolutionary War was exceedingly low. The Church of England, it is true, had been from the beginning established by law, but it had never been profoundly loved by the people as a whole. In its most prosperous estate it had ninetysix parishes served by ninety-three ministers. By a policy which seems strange indeed, and which would not now be possible, it had never had a resident bishop. The Bishop of London, to whose diocese the colony belonged, and who exercised a sort of absent jurisdiction, was represented on the ground by a commissary. For fifty years the Rev. Dr. John Blair, a Scotchman of ability and character, to whom Virginia owes a greater debt than she can ever pay, had filled that sub-Episcopal post. However it may be with Churches that hold to a non-Episcopal form of government, it is at least true that an Episcopal Church without a bishop in presence and authority is something of an anomaly and cannot develop in an orderly and healthy fashion.

When the fighting began, in 1776, a great many of the clergy forsook their flocks and fled to England. It is not at all uncharitable to say that, as far as the most of them were concerned, their room was better than their company. Their departure was, at any rate, no great loss to the cause of good religion or good citizenship. Leaving out exceptional cases, they were, both in the matter of character and in the matter of competency, far from measuring up to any proper standard, and would not be tolerated to-day in any Church in America. The Episcopal Church in Virginia would now exclude them without a moment's hesitation. Not a few of them were given to drinking, gambling, cock-fighting, horse-racing, and many other such improprieties. Not many of them showed any deep sense of concern for the honor of their office or for the souls of their flocks. With such ministers it was certain that the laity would not furnish many shining illustrations of the graces of Christianity. Dr. Hawks, the historian of the Church, says that "between the two classes there was a mutual action and reaction of evil ; each probably contributed to make the other worse."

About the only thing in regard to which these leaders in Israel showed any great activity was in seeking to repress all forms of dissent. Though not quite so bad in this respect as the New England Puritans, they were still bad enough in all conscience. The testimony of Dr. Hawks is as explicit as words could make it, and it is fully confirmed by many good authorities. Parsons whose daily lives were a shame and a scandal poured out the full measure of ecclesiastical censure and wrath upon Quakers, Presbyterians, and Baptists who were guilty of no offense except that they would not conform to the usages of the Church of England. These good people were dragged before petty magistrates, insulted, fined, beaten, and imprisoned. The

Baptists, who made their first appearance in the colony as early as 17 14 and became very active after 1740, bore the brunt of the persecution, and stood steadfast as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. Nothing restrained such acts of violence as those just mentioned except a growing public opinion against them. It is not strange that the successors and descendants of those courageous early Baptists have carefully preserved the keys and bolts of the jails in which so many noble men were confined and from the grated windows of which they preached to the curious multitudes that thronged upon the outside. "Soul liberty" is a great inheritance, especially when purchased at the cost of suffering and shame on the part of one's ancestors. To any one that knows the historic traits of the Presbyterians, who also began their work about 1740, it is hardly necessary to say that they too stood their ground.

In a letter written in 1764 James Madison, then a youth of fine intelligence and aspiring spirit, says: "Pride, ignorance, and knavery prevail among the priesthood, and vice and wickedness among the laity. This is bad enough, but it is not the worst I have to tell you. That diabolical, hell-conceived principle* of persecution rages among some ; and to their eternal infamy the clergy furnish their full quota of imps for such purposes. There are at this time in the adjacent county five or six well-meaning men in close jail for publishing their religious sentiments, which in the main are very orthodox." One of the three things that Thomas Jefferson ordered to be carved on his tombstone was the fact that Virginia in 1785, under his leadership, enacted a statute for religious freedom. On such an achievement he had full right to congratulate himself. Massachusetts did not take the same step till far along in the nineteenth century.

But there is another side to this dismal picture. The Church was not wholly nor irreclaimably bad. It never is so. All sweeping criticisms must be taken, therefore, with a large grain of salt. There is a fine passage in Isaac Taylor's "Nilus" which is pertinent in this connection: "Dark ages or bright ages, and through times of sluggish movement, and through times of progress and energy, and while the visible course of the world's affairs is prosperous, and while it is tempestuous, and let Church historians make a good report or let them make an ill report of a century, still it is always true that a host of souls unreported of in any chronicle or census, even a great multitude of human spirits, is in training for their places in a kingdom that is not of this world." Men like Devereaux Jarratt and Archibald McRoberts in the pulpit, though few in number, were a sign of remaining vitality in the Establishment. In the dissenting bodies, moreover, which by the close of the Revolution embraced more than half the people, there were many faithful ministers and more than seven thousand laymen who had not bowed the knee to Baal. Here and there in every part of the colony humble homes could be found in which the light of true piety continued to shine. The McKendrees were no doubt included in this class. They were communicants in the Established Church and attended regularly on its ordinances. ^.11 the indications are that their lives were pure and wholesome. The parents were of exemplary morality, and the children escaped contamination from the evil influences by which they were surrounded. Such a family is a sort of saving salt anywhere. A few such would have saved even Sodom.

In the meantime a new force was entering the colony. The Methodist movement, which began to take on an organized form in England in 1739, had now crossed the Atlantic, eager for new conquests in the Western world. As early as 1766 it had planted itself, through the instrumentality of Philip Embury and some other humble folk of Irish birth but German ancestry, in the city of New York, and probably a little earlier by the enterprise and zeal of Robert Strawbridge, an unmixed Irishman, in the colony of Maryland. The first itinerant Methodist to enter Virginia was likewise from the Emerald Isle, though born in England. His name was Robert Williams, and he appeared in 1772. Bishop McTyeire says that "he had not an embarrassingly high respect for the Church and clergy," and seems to have thought none the less of him for the fact. But Wesley was a little bit afraid of his hard-headedness, and Asbury never quite recognized his full worth. He labored only three years in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Virginia before being overtaken by death, in 1775. But in that brief period he laid indestructible foundations. When he passed on, he left an organized Church behind him in the last-mentioned field. A sentence from Bishop McTyeire may well be reproduced at this point: "When the undiscovered grave is found in which Robert Williams sleeps, no monument that can be raised over it will be too high or too honorable." Surely all will agree that this judgment is just. Blessed is the man that is first in a great enterprise.