Revival Meetings
Some
time ago while doing research in the Carl Elliot Regional Library in Jasper,
Al. I ran across the following article which I copied. I failed to record the name of the book or
author but it seems that I recall that it was a husband and wife who wrote the
book and it was an early history of the Methodist church in Alabama.
The revival meeting, like the camp meeting, was a common
occurrence on the frontier in early days.
A pioneer in the revival movement was the Cumberland Presbyterian Church
organized in 1810 when it broke away from the Presbyterian Church in Cumberland
County Kentucky. The leaders of the
revivalistic movement, being concerned for the vast numbers of pastorless
people on the frontier, were ordaining men who did not meet the traditional
educational standards of the parent church.
In 1809 Rev. Robert Donnell was
sent into the locality of Huntsville and, within six weeks after the Cumberland
Church was organized, he was received into the Presbytery. He organized the church in Huntsville and
apparently others. By April, 1812, a
delegate to a church meeting represented the Huntsville, Hermon, and Kelly Creek
Churches. Thereafter, the Presbyterianism
spread rapidly in North Alabama and in the 1820’s had missionaries in the Jones
Valley and Cahaba Districts.
Mrs. Anne Royall (1769-1864), who
wrote the description of the revival meeting in the Cumberland Presbyterian
Church at Moulton, was born in Maryland, but lived her young adult life in
Virginia. After the death of her
husband, a prominent Virginian, she traveled extensively in the South, spending
about five years in the Tennessee Valley of Alabama. Having used the bulk of the fortune her husband
left her (and his other relatives getting the rest), she was forced to work for
a living. She established an independent
newspaper in Washington and spoke out sharply on public issues; she was an
early “muckracker.” She wrote several
volumes, including Letters from Alabama
(Washington, 1830), 123-125 from which the revival account is taken.
Mrs. Royal had very strong likes
and dislikes, but her biographer called her “a tireless traveler, a shrewd
observer, a careful verifier of fact, and a strictly honest writer.” Unlike most accounts of revivals, Mrs.
Royall’s is factual. She did not approve
of much she saw but she described the revival without making light of it.
Moulton,
April 30th 1821
I placed myself in front of the
preacher (a great rough looking man) and the congregation sat some on fallen
timber, some on benches carried there for the purpose, some sat flat on the
ground, and many stood up—about 500 in all.
His text was, “he that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” The people must have been deaf indeed that
could not hear him. . . .He is one of the Cumberland Presbyterians. They are Calvinist, it is said, but do not
deem education a necessary qualification to preach the Gospel. But to the sermon. He began low, but soon bawled to
deafening. He spit in his hands, rubbed
them against each other, and then would smite them together, till he made the
woods ring. The people now began to
covault, and dance, and shout, till they fairly drowned the speaker. Many of the people, however, burst out into a
laugh. Seeing this, the preacher cried
out, pointing to them with his finger, “now look at them sinners there—You’ll
see how they will come tumbling down presently.—I’ll bring them down.” He now redoubled his strength; spit in his hands,
and smote them together, till he made the forest
resound, and took a fresh start; and
sure enough the sinners came tumbling down.
The scene that succeeded
baffles description. Principally [it
was] confined to women and children. The
young women had carefully taken out their combs from their hair and laid them
and their bonnets in a place of safety as though they were going to set in for
a fight, and it was much like a battle.
After tumbling on the ground, and kicking sometimes, the old women were
employed in keeping their clothes civil, and the young men (never saw an old
man go near them) would help them up, and taking them by the hand, by their assistance, and their own agility,
they would spring nearly a yard from the ground at every jump, one after
another, crying out glory, glory, as loud as their strength would admit; others
would be singing a lively tune to which they kept time—hundreds might be seen
and heard going on in this manner at once.
Others, again, exhausted by this jumping, would fall down, and here they
lay cross and pile, heads and points, yelling and screaming like the wild beast
in the forest, rolling on the ground, like hogs in a mire—very much like they
do at camp meetings in our country, but more shameless; their clothes were the
color of dirt; and like those who attended the camp meetings, they were all of
the lower class of people. I saw no
genteel person among them. . . .I am very sure a dozen words of common sense,
well applied, would convince those infatuated young women that they were acting
like fools. In fact, a fool is more
rational. Not one of those but would
think it a crying shame to dance.
The noise of the
preacher was effectually drowned at length, and a universal uproar succeeded louder
than ever. Whilst this was going on, I observed an old woman near me, sniveling
and turning up the whites of her eyes (she was a widow—all widows, old and
young covaulted) and often applying her handkerchief to her eyes, and throwing
herself into contortions, but it would not do, she could not raise the steam.
I pointed to one young woman,
with a red scarf, who had tired down several young men, and was still
covaulting, and seeing she jumped higher than the rest, I asked who she might
be. One of the gentlemen. . . .gave such
an account of her (men know these things) as would shock the modest ear. D—m her, she gets converted every meeting she
goes to. . ..”
The
preacher having spent all his ammunition, made a pause, and then called upon
all the sinners to approach and be prayed for.
Numbers went forward, all women and children (children of ten years old
get religion) and the priest began to pray; when a decent looking man
approached the stand, and took a female by the arm, and led her away. As he walked along, the preacher pointed to
him and said, “God strike that sinner down!”
The man turned around and in an angry tone said, “God has more sense
than to mind such a d—d fool as you are” and resumed his course. . . .The lady
was his wife.
Being
tired of such an abominable scene, I proposed returning home, and taking a near
cut through a slip of woodland, we surprised the red scarfed lady in a manner
that gave us no favorable opinion of her piety.
