Davis, soldier missionary : a biography of Rev. Jerome D. Davis, D.D., Lieut-Colonel of volunteers and for thirty-nine years a missionary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Japan

Front matter

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A BIOGRAPHY OF REV. JEROME D. DAVIS, D.D., LIEUT- COLONEL OF VOLUNTEERS AND FOR THIRTY-NINE YEARS A MISSIONARY OF THE AMERICAN BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS IN JAPAN

BY J. MERLE DAVIS, M.A., B.D.

Foreword

Sir Sidney Lee, in his ‘‘ Principles of Biography,” states that the test of the worthiness of a life for perpetuation is, “ did this man render a unique service, which, had he not lived, would not have been performed?”

The test is a difficult one for a son to make for his father, and, in this case, has been left to those who knew him best as fellow-missionary, as well as to world-wide critics of missions.

Shortly after his death, Dr. Davis’ closest colleagues, notably, Dr. D. L. Learned and Dr. D. C. Greene, urged that his biography should be written. Secretary James L. Barton, of the American Board, and Dr. John R. Mott, of the International Committee of Young Men’s Christian Associations, reinforced this opinion with their judgment that the story of my father’s life should be told, as constituting an essential link in the development of the Kingdom of God in Japan, and they have steadily encouraged me in my task.

Special acknowledgment is due to the secretaries of the American Board for placing at my disposal its library and archives with the thirty-nine years of my father’s correspondence with the Board; to his comrades of the Fifty-second Illinois Vol. Inf. regiment, for their generous response in material bearing upon his military life; to his college and seminary classmates, for intimate pictures of his student life; to his missionary colleagues and Japanese friends and pupils, whose characterizations of him in varied relationships have placed me permanently in their debt; to the International Committee, for its kindness in allowing me special facilities for visiting the battle-fields of Shiloh and Corinth, and for granting the necessary time

FOREWORD for writing; to Drs. Learned and Cary and Professor Lombard, of Kyoto, whose intimate acquaintance with my father and his work have rendered them invaluable critics and counsellors; and, finally, to my wife, whose steady encouragement and help have been large factors in the successful completion of the work.

My father’s full diary, with valuable collections of letters and manuscripts bearing upon the history of the Doshisha, the American Board Mission in Japan and the Kumi-ai . (Congregational) Church, has been freely used as the backbone of the story.

I have tried to depict my father’s part in the dramatic history of the early years, by letting him tell his own story - of the controversies and troublous problems in which he not infrequently played a leading part. On the other hand, I have, so far as possible, presented an impartial statement of facts, irrespective of his prejudices and beliefs, which, with the added light of half a generation, reveal certain vexatious questions of relationship in a juster form.

My father’s military record has been given a full treatment, because of the vital connection which this phase of his preparation had with his acceptability to the Japanese and with fitting him for meeting his most difficult tasks.

The work has been accomplished at odd moments, in _the midst of constant distractions and the press of many other duties, but such difficulties as have been met with have been far outweighed by the privilege of making a detailed study of my father’s life, —its sources of power, its valleys of defeat and its heights of victory.

If these pages reveal to others something of the charm of his manhood, the strength of his faith, the springs of his martial achievement and his spiritual power, so as to impel them to similar ideals of service, the highest wish of the writer will have been attained.

Contents

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Chapter II The Forging Of The Blade

TT» years following the mother’s death were heavy years in the Davis home. The father’s third marriage was not a success and the family was gradually involved in debt. This period of unhappy home conditions and family trouble supplied the influences that led to Jerome’s conversion. He was not yet fourteen, but his environment was rapidly maturing him. ‘“ Until I was thirteen I had no very serious religious impressions. After my mother’s death I gave up the habit of prayer. That fall everything looked dark and the difficulties in our home reached a climax. My mind was filled with gloomy thoughts and I was impressed with the fact that I could find happiness only in Christ. I seemed to hear an inner voice saying, ‘Unless you become a Christian now, you never will.’ But I resisted again and again and each time the conviction returned, sometimes so vividly that I could not sleep. At length, in November, our father took the little sister away to live with an aunt and was absent three days. It was one of those cold, rainy days that I was alone in the barn, husking corn, when these convictions came to me with astonishing power; again I resisted and again and again they returned, each time stronger than before, until I felt that unless I yielded then I should be forever lost. At last with a force of will the strongest that I had ever put forth, I compelled myself to kneel down and ask God to forgive me and Christ to save me. This brought relief. Up to this time I had not said a word to any one about my feelings, and no one had spoken to me for years about being a Christian. When my father 9 returned I told him and he was quite overcome with emotion.

“The next Thursday at the church prayer meeting, I timidly stood up and told my determination and asked their prayers, but I did not find a settled joy at once. I expected a great and instantaneous change, which did not come. Then, too, I sometimes yielded to my quick temper, when everything would turn dark and I would fear that I was not a Christian and after much discouragement I would go to Christ again and find peace and pardon. Finally, I decided that I would do my duty as a Christian, anyway, saved or unsaved, and leave the result with God, and then I began to find a settled peace.”’

These months of religious struggle were the determining experience of his life. In giving himself to God he loyally yielded his whole life. If he were God’s child, then he must work for Him; the relationship was as clear and the obligation as binding as in the case of his earthly parent. Every fibre of his intense and conscientious nature responded to the demands of this new relationship, to which he began to adjust himself, and the aim of his life, ““ How can I make my life count for the most for God and for men,’ was born. These words reveal the dynamic power that impelled his life for fifty-nine years, and to which, more than all other influences, may be attributed his success.

Before uniting with the Groton Church, Jerome visited _ the pastor, Rev. S. T. Kidder, who talked and prayed with him regarding the step he proposed to take. One February afternoon, as the spring twilight was deepening on Groton Church Hill, a knock came at the door of the room where the deacons were met with the pastor to discuss candidates for baptism. ‘The door was pushed open and for a moment, an awkward, homespun clad figure stood outlined against the western sky. With cap held in fingers that trembled, Jerome stated that he was a candidate for admission to the Church.

THE FORGING OF THE BLADE 11

At that time child members were rare and it was a question whether the admission of a boy scarcely in his “‘teens’’ should be permitted. However, he had reasoned out his position and his clear answers to their questionings convinced the deacons of the genuineness and grasp of the boy’s belief.

“TI shall never forget that Spring Sabbath, six months after my decision, when I went up alone in the middle aisle of the church, with a row of boys in the gallery looking down at me, as I publicly assented to the creed and entered into covenant with the Church,” With the row of boys in the gallery he now found less and less in common; the family troubles, his natural taste for study and his rather extraordinary step of church membership tended to isolate him from the lads who overran the countryside with their pranks. However, Jerome had the capacity for making and keeping friends, and as opportunities for play offered themselves he entered heartily into them; but more than is the case with the average boy, he was able to hold himself steadily to hard mental and physical tasks, with eyes fixed upon his chosen goal of efficiency and service. This enabled him to endure drudgery while other boys were playing and loafing.

He inherited a sensitive, affectionate nature from his mother, and after her death was led to hide his emotions and to develop a stoicism of face and demeanor that concealed the currents of feeling that often surged in his heart. These years of conflict with environment are responsible for the habit of repression, expressed in set jaw and reserve of manner which clung to him and against which he struggled in later years.

In the winter of 1853, matters in the home reached a climax where a separation became inevitable. Hope Davis sold his farm and turned toward the western frontier, as his forefathers had three times done before him, to begin life under more favorable conditions in northern Illinois.

Upon the close of the Blackhawk Indian War, the Fox River Valley had been settled by groups of New England pioneers, and to one of these new communities in the northeastern corner of the state, the family made its way. The journey from central New York to northern Illinois occupied four days and nights and was Jerome’s first glimpse of a steam railroad or of the outside world. Of it he recorded, ‘‘ Chicago is a city of 50,000 people and is undergoing the state of being lifted out of the mud. The sidewalks are constantly going up and down stairs, as some buildings are not yet lifted at all and others have been raised ten feet.”

Dundee, a village of six hundred inhabitants, was typical of the new settlements of the Middle West. A neighborliness, amounting almost to intimacy, pervaded the community. Many of the settlers had been friends in the East before migrating, while the hardships of the pioneer, the stimulus of overcoming the difficulties of a new country and the joy of helping to lay the foundations of a commonwealth, shared in alike by every household, tended to create an atmosphere charged with patriotism, energy and intellectual and physical incentive. The spirit of alertness, of achievement and of perseverance was in the air, and sluggish must have been the blood of him who failed to respond.

Under such stimulating conditions it did not take the newcomers long to feel at home. They soon fitted into an honest share of the life of the town; the father cultivated his farm: the sons worked at the carpentry trade and taught school. The first memory of an old resident of Dundee of Jerome Davis was seeing him build a barn behind his father’s house. He was handy with tools, with a knack for construction, and as carpenter, mason’s appren-

THE FORGING OF THE BLADE 13 tice and bricklayer he found plenty to do. When the farm work was heavy he worked in the hay-field or walked behind the plow, and for years, in the absence of a housekeeper, he did his share of the plain cooking and washing for the family. He stood loyally beside his father, to whom he gave all his earnings until the farm was paid for.

There was a small Congregational Church in Dundee, with which the family united. Jerome was the only young man in the Church, and for years father and son were alone among the men of the community in their attendance at the weekly prayer-meeting.

A picture of the motherless family is left by one who was associated with him in later years: ‘‘ Every Sabbath I saw a short, dark, somber looking man preceding his children into the church. He always sat at the end of the pew. They were very grave people. He was a deacon in the little church. His prayers were precise and dreary. Augusta was a fair, timid girl who was neatly and carefully dressed. Jerome had the air of a humble, timid, earnest boy, who at every opportunity offered would rise to testify for Christ—hesitant in speech, but so deep, tender, reverent, that all loved, admired and honored him.

When sixteen years old he was chosen Church Clerk, and in that capacity had to take part in the trial of the minister for attempting to spread Unitarian doctrines in the parish. Thus early in his career was Jerome Davis placed on the defensive in matters of faith: a forecast of that wider arena in which he was to stand in defence of the fundamentals of his belief.

About this time, Jerome’s aunt, Mrs. Wilder, or ‘“ Aunt Mercy,” as she was known to the family, nursed him through a serious attack of pneumonia, saved his life and laid the basis of a life-long affection between them. A council of physicians had given him up after a struggle of many weeks. Mrs. Wilder, undaunted at the situation, took command, steeped a quantity of smart-weed, packed the patient in the pungent mess and in a few hours had him conscious and on the road to recovery.

As in New York, so in Illinois, the winters brought an opportunity for study in the village school, which provided better facilities than those he had yet enjoyed. A classmate writes, ‘‘I remember him as a good boy in school and always studious. He later attained the dignity of the back seat, the place reserved for the older boys and girls. We noticed his methodical ways. He was rather tall and -slightly built, with a somewhat serious face and reserve of manner that did not invite careless advances, but there was a merry twinkle in his eye and a brisk manner of speech and action that won him friends. He was a trifle shy and ill at ease with ladies and certainly did not star at the local parties. Determination, reliability and worth were written all over him.”

The winter session of the village school was a poor substitute for the college preparation which he craved. If he was to carry out his great aim of efficient service he must - have a college training, but loyalty to his father and the family required that he place his time and earnings at their disposal.

The dilemma seemed incapable of solution if he were to be true to both calls of duty. He faced the situation squarely and while continuing to give his wages to his father, prepared himself for college by the slow process of winter and evening study. ‘‘ Many a time did I shed tears as I saw other young men able to go to Elgin Academy, while I had to work. When I was seventeen I bought a copy of Virgil with a Latin Grammar, Reader and Lexicon, and that winter recited once a week to the lady who taught our village school. This was the only help that I had in Latin before entering college. The next fall I bought some Greek books and began that study, but

THE FORGING OF THE BLADE 15 never had the privilege of asking any one a question in Greek until I entered college. That same autumn I passed an examination to teach a District School during the following winter.

“I had never been away from home and was lonely. I boarded around. The family which sent the largest number of children to the school had a steady fare of saleratus biscuit, fried pork and potatoes, boiled with the skins on, which I ate three times a day for five weeks. I dug away at my Latin and Greek, mornings and evenings and during the noon hour, when able, and walked home to Dundee every Friday evening.

“IT opened school each morning with a brief Bible reading and prayer. Two weeks before the end of the term some of the big boys, several of whom were older than I, covered the walls of the school room with caricatures of the pious stripling who was trying to teach them. It was hard to bear, but the term was so nearly ended that I pocketed my feelings and finished without a collision.”

One who was later a comrade with him under Sherman, on the “ March to the Sea,’’ wrote shortly before Dr. Davis’ death: ‘“‘ Col. Davis. That name carries me. back to the little school in Barrington: I a school boy; you the teacher. Those were the happiest days of my life, without a care or sorrow and all the pranks that boys delight in. I well remember the thrashing you gave me for jumping on the hay in Bucklin’s barn when you had forbidden it. That was the only one you ever gave me. The scene shifts: I a private and you the Colonel of my regiment. I was sick in the field hospital before Atlanta. You came to see me. I was not only sick in body, but would have given worlds to go home. You cheered me right away by your kindness and I was better.”

The next winter Jerome had a school in a more desirable neighborhood, and later, when twenty years old, he became the master of the Carpentersville School, a mile from Dundee, where he taught for one year.

These four years of school teaching played a happy part in his development. They kept him in contact with educational ideals, gave opportunities for pursuing his classical education, provided an income with which he could aid his father, and developed the love of teaching which characterized his later educational work. The mixing with various conditions and classes of people and the dealing with human nature in varied relationships supplied a hitherto missing element in his training.

There came to the reticent youth during this period a knowledge of men and their limitations and a degree of self-control that later, under different and trying circumstances, were crystallized into leadership.

Chapter III Beloit College

ORE than with most men, his twenty-first birth- M day marked a new era in the life of Jerome Davis.

Up to this time his earnings had been given to his father, who had now paid for the farm and was in more comfortable circumstances. Hereafter his time and money were his own. He continued to teach until summer and in September, 1858, with sixty dollars and a set of college text-books as his only possession, he entered the freshman class of Lawrence University at Appleton, Wisconsin.

His first choice had been Beloit College, then the leading institution in the Northwest, but the offer of a scholarship from a relative at Lawrence University decided him in favor of the newer school.

The two terms he spent at Appleton did not satisfy him. The college was very young, not yet fully organized and indifferently manned. At the end of the winter term, in 1859, he left Lawrence University and went to Beloit.

Beloit College had been founded twelve years before by a group of New England educators, who had with unusual success transferred New England scholarship and culture to southern Wisconsin. The school had already attracted to its faculty that coterie of brilliant scholars and noble personalities which has been responsible in such large measure for its high educational standards and large output of efficient graduates. President Chapin and Professors Blaisdell, Emerson and Porter were teachers who were not satisfied to merely interpret the classics and sciences to their pupils, but whose kindling personalities remade men and interpreted life to them upon a grander scale than they had yet dreamed.

The warm greeting given him by President Chapin, on arriving in Beloit, and the kindly offices extended to him by president and teachers, won Jerome’s heart and knit him at the outset to the life of the college. He found the Beloit requirements higher than those at Lawrence and this, with the difficulty of changing courses in mid-year, necessitated the period of adjustment. However, he caught up with his class the following autumn and struck a pace that brought him rapidly to the front. A classmate says of him, “‘ He was ‘facile princeps’ in his class work. He seemed to have just a little more in him than the rest of us to make excellent work, though I think he never did it for that reason. But he would work things out, and, as they say, ‘then some.’’’ Professor William Porter refers to this same trait, ‘‘He was not a brilliant student, but had the capacity for intense application combined with great thoroughness. He was extremely conscientious, almost painfully so, but a student upon whom you could absolutely depend to do genuine work. His loyalty to the faculty has never been excelled in Beloit.”” He had a natural aptitude for mathematics and the time saved in preparing these lessons he put upon the classics, in which he had had inadequate preparation, and upon which he concentrated all of his energy.

He received some aid from the Education Society, but had to rely upon himself for most of his support. “TI sawed wood, worked in gardens at ten cents an hour and took care of a horse. During the winter I cared for four recitation rooms, sweeping and dusting them and carrying the coal up and the ashes down two flights of stairs and building the fires. To do this I had to get up every morning at four o’clock and work until breakfast time.” The first college exercise, chapel prayers, called the students

BELOIT COLLEGE 19 together at six o'clock, after which, while it was still dark, ““we Sophomores used to make our way across the unlighted, snow-covered campus to hear Professor Emerson interpret Herodotus by the light of a lamp.’”’ There was no hardship in this program to a boy who had for years been longing for such opportunities, and he records of these days that they were among the happiest of his life.

During the spring of his sophomore year he taught two hours a day in the preparatory department and in this way relieved the strain of physical labor that had hitherto absorbed considerable time and strength.

The religious spirit at Beloit was deep and manifest in many ways in the student life as well as in the regulations of the school. Jerome entered enthusiastically into the Missionary Society and the activities of the Christian Union, the forerunner of the Young Men’s Christian Association, and was usually at the class or college prayer-meetings. Chapel prayers were held twice a day and each student was required to be present, while attendance at church and at the Sabbath afternoon chapel service was also expected of all the men.

In the Sabbath afternoon talks President Chapin spoke from his heart and opened new worlds of thought and experience to his students. Forty years later Dr. Davis wrote, ‘‘ President Chapin’s presence was a benediction to me. I remember his Sabbath afternoon sermons in the chapel, on the life of Christ, as if they were of yesterday. The longer I live, the more I am impressed with the fact that men are like composite photographs, largely made by the men who influence them during the formative period of their lives. I am conscious that President Chapin and Professors Emerson, Porter and Blaisdell have moulded my life more than all other human influences combined, and among these men I owe a large debt of gratitude to President Chapin.”

His oldest brother’s conversion, for which he had long waited, seemed to him a direct answer to prayer. In the letter he now wrote to his father we get the first glimpse of his heart: ‘It must have been joyful news to you to hear that Isaac, like the long-lost prodigal, had returned to his Father’s house and was there seeking the bread of eternal life. As I read the news my eyes were wet with tears and my heart went up in gratitude to my heavenly Father who ordereth all things well. It has strengthened and encouraged me.”’

It was during this year that the question of life work was decided. ‘‘ For years the conviction had come repeatedly that I ought to preach the Gospel, but I did not believe that I was worthy and I did not want to do it. I fought against it, but found no rest until I decided to go ahead and get such an education as would fit me to preach the Gospel, leaving it to the future to decide just what I should do. I had made this decision some two years before entering college.’’ His first year at Beloit with the new vistas of life and service that the stimulating environment disclosed to him gave a final answer to this question which was never opened again.

During his second winter at college a class revolution occurred which was a severe test of moral fibre. It was the custom each year for the sophomores to ride across the country, twenty miles, to spend an evening with the senior class of the Ladies’ Seminary at Rockford, Illinois. The usual preparations had been made and the sleighs and dinner ordered, when the principal of the Rockford school requested of President Chapin that, owing to a special religious interest among the students, the party be postponed. The Beloit faculty informed the sophomores that they could not go to Rockford. At chapel prayers, the day before the proposed party, President Chapin made a clear statement, explaining the situation and asking for the

BELOIT COLLEGE 21 cooperation of the class with the faculty. After chapel an indignation meeting was held. “‘ The boys were all excited and inflammatory speeches were made. At last, all the class, except myself, had pledged themselves to go, if all would go. The whole class tried for two hours to make me go. They pleaded, they argued and some denounced me as a coward and a traitor to the class. I saw the injustice of giving the refusal so late, but I had signed a matriculation pledge in which I had promised to obey the rules of the college. I felt that I could honorably go only by severing my connection with the college, and this would probably defeat my plans for an education and for my life work. I could not do it. I endured the pressure until midnight and then went home and went to bed. The next day, because I did not go, three others remained, but all the rest of the class went to Rockford. On their return the faculty took strong measures and suspended them all for six weeks.”

The students of Beloit were soon to face far more momentous questions than those presented by college activities. With the opening of the year 1861, both North and South could no longer avoid the conclusion that the issues for which they stood were irreconcilable, that compromise was an impossibility and that the principles which either side interpreted as guaranteed them in the Constitution could only be established by the arbitrament of war. Beloit College felt the thrill of the impending conflict. The right of secession, the necessity for coercion, the attitude of Seward upon compromise and the conditions of the coming struggle were discussed in every meeting, at every table and on each occasion where the men came together. The campus was transformed into a drill field and the Manual of Arms was included in the daily schedule of a majority of the students.

A company was organized in the college, which Jerome

Davis joined. Here another test of mettle came, which in the light of his later record is interesting. “* After a few weeks of drill the man who had trained us and wanted to be captain made a long speech, while we stood in line, concluding with the request that all who would enlist and enter the army should take three steps to the front. I think I was the only one who remained standing still. Again I received the taunts of my fellows, but I did not feel that the emergency was then great enough to sacrifice preparation for life work and, perhaps, life itself.”

Upon the first call of President Lincoln for 75,000 men, Jerome’s older brother, John, who was in business in Minnesota, enlisted in the First Minnesota Vol. Inf. Regiment, and in May passed within twelve miles of Beloit on his way to the front.

Jerome was unaware of this at the time and did not see him again before his death at Gettysburg, two years later. He wrote to his brother, April 18th: “It is hard just now to withdraw my mind from the South and the battles that will soon be raging there, and I am ready, if there is any lack of help, to go down and fight. There is evidently a fearful struggle in store for us, but I hope that it will be the death of slavery.”’