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Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made by James D. McCabe, Jr.

J >> James D. McCabe, Jr. >> Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made




It was the last reason, no doubt, that decided our preacher. Men of his
stamp were needed west of the Ohio. Kentucky was becoming too old a
State for him, and he felt that his true field of labor was still on the
frontier, and thither he turned his steps. Setting out first on
horseback to seek an eligible location, he reached Sangamon County,
Illinois, where he bought a claim on Richland Creek. He then returned to
Kentucky and wound up his affairs there, obtained a regular transfer
from the Kentucky Conference to the Indiana Conference, which then
controlled Illinois, and in October, 1824, set out for his new home in
Sangamon County. A great affliction overtook him on the way, in the
death of his third daughter, who was killed by the falling of a tree
upon their camp. The affliction was made more grievous by the heartless
refusal of the people in the vicinity to render them any aid. "We were
in great distress," he says, "and no one even to pity our condition....
I discovered that the tree had sprung up, and did not press the child;
and we drew her out from under it, and carefully laid her in our feed
trough, and moved on about twenty miles to an acquaintance's in Hamilton
County, Illinois, where we buried her."

Leaving that lonely little grave behind them, they hurried on to their
new home. Springfield, the capital of the State, was but a small
collection of shanties and log huts, and Sangamon County was the extreme
frontier. It was the most northern county of Illinois, and just beyond
it lay the unbroken Indian country. Numbers of Indians roamed through
the Sangamon River bottom, and spent their winters there. It was as wild
and unsettled a region as our preacher could have desired, and one which
gave him a fine field for the exercise of his peculiar abilities. Mr.
Cartwright was promptly received into the Indiana Conference, and he
lost no time in looking about him. He at once established his family in
their new home, and then set about his work. The work was hard, and
money was scarce. The first year he traveled the Sangamon Circuit he
received forty dollars, and the next year sixty dollars, which he says
was a great improvement in his financial affairs. He was successful from
the first, and in the two years referred to added one hundred and sixty
persons to the Methodist Church in this thinly settled district. For
forty-six years he has labored in this region, adding many souls to the
kingdom of God.

Arduous as his labors had been in the Kentucky Conference, they now
increased very greatly. He had a larger amount of territory to travel
over, people were more scattered, and the dangers to be encountered were
greater. In 1827, he was made presiding elder, and given the Illinois
District, then a very extensive region, and in 1828 Galena charge was
added to this district. The district thus enlarged extended from the
mouth of the Ohio River to Galena, the entire length of the present
State of Illinois, and over this immense distance our preacher was
obliged to travel four times in the year. The journeys were made either
on horseback or in an old-fashioned sulky or one-seat gig. There were
miles of lonely prairie and many rapid streams to cross, and roads,
bridges, or ferry-boats were almost unknown. Yet Peter Cartwright was
not the man to be deterred by obstacles. When he set out on his official
journeys, he allowed nothing that it was possible to overcome to prevent
him from keeping his appointments. In crossing the prairies, he would
guide himself by the points of timber, for there were no roads over
these vast plains. Oftentimes the streams to be crossed were swollen,
and then he would swim his horse across them, or ride along the shore
until he found a tree fallen over the current. Stripping himself, he
would carry his clothes and riding equipments to the opposite bank, and
then, returning, mount his horse and swim him across the river. Dressing
again, he would continue his journey, and perhaps repeat the proceeding
several times during the day. When overtaken by night, he would seek a
place in some grove, and, lighting a fire with his tinder-box and steel,
tie up his horse, and, throwing himself on the ground, sleep as
peacefully as on a bed of down. Sometimes night would come on before he
had crossed the prairie or made his way to the timber point he was
aiming for, and then he would sit down on the ground, in the darkness
and alone, and, holding his horse by the bridle, await the return of
light to enable him to see his landmark. Sometimes he would find a
little log-hut with a settler's family in it, and he says it was "a
great treat" to come upon one of these lonely cabins and enjoy the
privilege of a night's lodging. If the family were Methodists, there was
sure to be preaching that night; and if they were strangers to that
church, our preacher set to work at once to convert them. He labored
faithfully, faring hard, and braving dangers from which his city
brethren would have shrunk appalled. He carried the Gospel and the
Methodist Episcopal Church into all parts of the great State of
Illinois, and even into Iowa and the Indian country.

In 1832, the first Illinois Conference met in the town of Jacksonville,
and Mr. Cartwright attended it. He had now been a traveling preacher for
twenty-eight years, and, as he felt himself sorely in need of rest, he
asked and obtained a superannuated relation for one year. On the same
day, Bishop Soule, who presided at the Conference, came to him to ask
his advice with reference to the Quincy District. It was very important,
but the bishop could not find a presiding elder willing to take charge
of it, as it was an almost unbroken wilderness. The bishop was in sore
distress, as he feared that he would be obliged to merge it into another
district. The spirit of the backwoods preacher at once took fire, and,
declaring that so important a field ought not to be neglected, he
expressed his willingness to relinquish his superannuated relation and
accept the charge. The bishop took him at his word and appointed him to
the district, which he served faithfully. His adventures in traveling
from place to place to fill his appointments are intensely interesting,
and I would gladly reproduce them here did the limits of this chapter
permit.

It required no small amount of courage to perform the various duties of
a backwoods preacher, and in this quality our preacher was not
deficient. He was frequently called upon to exercise it in his camp
meetings. These assemblies never failed to gather large crowds from all
parts of the surrounding country, and among others came numerous
rowdies, whose delight it was to annoy the preachers and worshipers in
every conceivable way. Cartwright put up with the annoyance as long as
he could, and then determined to put a stop to it. He believed in
fighting the devil with fire, and put down many a disturbance. The
following is the way he went about it:

"Our last quarterly meeting was a camp meeting. We had a great many
tents and a large turnout for a new country, and, perhaps, there never
was a greater collection of rabble and rowdies. They came drunk and
armed with dirks, clubs, knives, and horsewhips, and swore they would
break up the meeting. After interrupting us very much on Saturday night,
they collected on Sunday morning, determined on a general riot. At eight
o'clock I was appointed to preach. About the time I was half through my
discourse, two very fine-dressed young men marched into the congregation
with loaded horsewhips, and hats on, and rose up and stood in the midst
of the ladies, and began to laugh and talk. They were near the stand,
and I requested them to desist and get off the seats; but they cursed me
and told me to mind my own business, and said they would not get down. I
stopped trying to preach, and called for a magistrate. There were two at
hand, but I saw they were both afraid. I ordered them to take these two
men into custody, but they said they could not do it. I told them as I
left the stand to command me to take them, and I would do it at the risk
of my life. I advanced toward them. They ordered me to stand off, but I
advanced. One of them made a pass at my head, but I closed in with him
and jerked him off the seat. A regular scuffle ensued. The congregation
by this time were all in commotion. I heard the magistrates giving
general orders, commanding all friends of order to aid in suppressing
the riot. In the scuffle I threw my prisoner down, and held him fast;
he tried his best to get loose. I told him to be quiet, or I would
pound his chest well. The mob rose and rushed to the rescue of the two
prisoners, for they had taken the other young man also. An old, drunken
magistrate came up to me, and ordered me to let my prisoner go. I told
him I should not. He swore if I did not he would knock me down. I told
him to crack away. Then one of my friends, at my request, took hold of
my prisoner, and the drunken justice made a pass at me; but I parried
the stroke, and, seizing him by the collar and the hair of the head, and
fetching him a sudden jerk forward, brought him to the ground and jumped
on him. I told him to be quiet, or I would pound him well. The mob then
rushed to the scene; they knocked down seven magistrates, several
preachers, and others. I gave up my drunken prisoner to another, and
threw myself in front of the friends of order. Just at this moment, the
ringleader of the mob and I met; he made three passes at me, intending
to knock me down. The last time he struck at me, by the force of his own
effort he threw the side of his face toward me. It seemed at that moment
I had not power to resist temptation, and I struck a sudden blow in the
burr of the ear and dropped him to the earth. Just at this moment, the
friends of order rushed by hundreds on the mob, knocking them down in
every direction."

Once, while crossing a river on a ferry-boat, he overheard a man cursing
Peter Cartwright and threatening dire vengeance against him, and
boasting that he could "whip any preacher the Lord ever made." This
roused our preacher's ire, and accosting the man, he told him he was
Peter Cartwright, and that if he wanted to whip him he must do so then.
The fellow became confused, and said he did not believe him.

"I tell you," said Cartwright, sternly, "I am the man. Now, sir, you
have to whip me, as you threatened, or quit cursing me, or I will put
you in the river and baptize you in the name of the devil, for you
surely belong to him." "This," says Cartwright, "settled him."

Once, having gone into the woods with a young man who had sworn he would
whip him, he sprained his foot slightly in getting over a fence, and
involuntarily placed his hand to his side. "My redoubtable antagonist,"
says he, "had got on the fence, and, looking down at me, said, 'D----
you, you are feeling for a dirk, are you?'

"As quick as thought it occurred to me how to get clear of a whipping.

"'Yes,' said I, 'and I will give you the benefit of all the dirks I
have,' and advanced rapidly toward him.

"He sprang back on the other side of the fence from me; I jumped over
after him, and a regular foot race followed."

"It may be asked," says the old man, naively, "what I would have done if
this fellow had gone with me to the woods. This is hard to answer, for
it was a part of my creed to love every body, but to fear no one, and I
did not permit myself to believe that any man could whip me until it was
tried, and I did not permit myself to premeditate expedients in such
cases. I should no doubt have proposed to him to have prayer first, and
then followed the openings of Providence."

Mr. Cartwright was from the beginning of his ministry an ardent advocate
of temperance, and, long before the first temperance society was
organized in the country, he waged a fierce war against dram-drinking.
This fearless advocate of temperance came very near getting drunk once.
He had stopped with a fellow preacher at a tavern kept by an Otterbein
Methodist, who, thinking to play them a trick, put whisky into the new
cider which he offered them. Cartwright drank sparingly of the beverage,
though he considered it harmless, but, "with all my forbearance," he
says, "presently I began to feel light-headed. I instantly ordered our
horses, fearing we were snapped for once.... When we had rode about a
mile, being in the rear, I saw Brother Walker was nodding at a mighty
rate. I suddenly rode up to Brother Walker and cried out, 'Wake up! wake
up!' He roused up, his eyes watering freely. 'I believe,' said I, 'we
are both drunk. Let us turn out of the road and lie down and take a nap
till we get sober,' But we rode on without stopping. We were not drunk,
but we both evidently felt it flying to our heads."

In 1826 Mr. Cartwright was elected to the Legislature of the State, and
at the expiration of his first term was reflected from Sangamon County.
He was induced to accept this position because of his desire to aid in
preventing the introduction of slavery into the State. He had no liking
for political strife, however, and was disgusted with the dishonesty
which he saw around him. "I say," he declares, "without any desire to
speak evil of the rulers of the people, I found a great deal of
corruption in our Legislature, and I found that almost every measure had
to be carried by a corrupt bargain and sale which should cause every
honest man to blush for his country."

He was full of a quaint humor, which seemed to burst out from every line
of his features, and twinkle merrily in his bright eyes. Often in the
midst of his most exciting revivals he could not resist the desire to
fasten his dry jokes upon one of his converts. No man loved a joke
better, or was quicker to make a good use of it. He was traveling one
day on his circuit, and stopped for the night at a cabin in which he
found a man and woman. Suspecting that all was not right, he questioned
the woman, and drew from her the confession that the man was her lover.
Her husband, she said, was away, and would not return for two days, and
she had received this man in his absence.



[Illustration: CARTWRIGHT CALLING UP THE DEVIL.]

Cartwright then began to remonstrate with the guilty pair upon their
conduct, and while he was speaking to them the husband's voice was heard
in the yard. In an agony of terror the woman implored Cartwright to
assist her in getting her lover out of the way, and our preacher, upon
receiving from each a solemn promise of reformation, agreed to do so.
There was standing by the chimney a large barrel of raw cotton, and as
there was no time to get the man out of the house, Cartwright put him
into the barrel and piled the cotton over him.

The husband entered, and Cartwright soon engaged him in conversation.
The man said he had often heard of Peter Cartwright, and that it was the
common opinion in that part of the country that among his other
wonderful gifts our preacher had the power to call up the devil.

"That's the easiest thing in the world to do," said Cartwright. "Would
you like to see it?"

The man hesitated for awhile, and then expressed his readiness to
witness the performance.

"Very well," said Cartwright; "take your stand by your wife, and don't
move or speak. I'll let the door open to give him a chance to get out,
or he may carry the roof away."

So saying, he opened the door, and, taking a handful of cotton, held it
in the fire and lighted it. Then plunging it into the barrel of raw
cotton, he shouted lustily, "Devil, rise!" In an instant the barrel was
wrapped in flames, and the lover, in utter dismay, leaped out and rushed
from the house. The husband was greatly terrified, and ever afterward
avowed himself a believer in Cartwright's intimacy with "Old Scratch,"
for had he not had ocular proof of it?

Riding out of Springfield one day, he saw a wagon some distance ahead of
him containing a young lady and two young men. As he came near them they
recognized him, though he was totally unacquainted with them, and began
to sing camp-meeting hymns with great animation. In a little while the
young lady began to shout, and said, "Glory to God! Glory to God!" and
the driver cried out, "Amen! Glory to God!"

"My first impressions," says Mr. Cartwright, "were, that they had been
across the Sangamon River to a camp meeting that I knew was in progress
there, and had obtained religion, and were happy. As I drew a little
nearer, the young lady began to sing and shout again. The young man who
was not driving fell down, and cried aloud for mercy; the other two,
shouting at the top of their voices, cried out, 'Glory to God! another
sinner down.' Then they fell to exhorting the young man that was down,
saying, 'Pray on, brother; pray on, brother; you'll soon get religion.'
Presently up jumped the young man that was down, and shouted aloud,
saying, 'God has blessed my soul. Halleluiah! halleluiah! Glory to
God!'"

Thinking that these were genuine penitents, Cartwright rode rapidly
toward them, intending to join in their rejoicings; but as he drew near
them, he detected certain unmistakable evidences that they were shamming
religious fervor merely for the purpose of annoying him. He then
endeavored to get rid of them, but as they were all going the same
direction, the party in the wagon managed to remain near him by driving
fast when he tried to pass them, and falling back when he drew up to let
them go ahead. "I thought," says our preacher, "I would ride up and
horsewhip both of these young men; and if the woman had not been in
company, I think I should have done so; but I forebore."

In a little while the road plunged into a troublesome morass. Around the
worst part of this swamp wound a bridle path, by which Mr. Cartwright
determined to escape his tormentors, who would be compelled to take the
road straight through the swamp. The party in the wagon saw his object,
and forgetting prudence in their eagerness to keep up with him, whipped
their horses violently. The horses bounded off at full speed, and the
wagon was whirled through the swamp at a furious rate. When nearly
across, one of the wheels struck a large stump, and over went the wagon.
"Fearing it would turn entirely over and catch them under," says Mr.
Cartwright, "the two young men took a leap into the mud, and when they
lighted they sunk up to the middle. The young lady was dressed in white,
and as the wagon went over, she sprang as far as she could, and lighted
on all fours; her hands sunk into the mud up to her arm-pits, her mouth
and the whole of her face immersed in the muddy water, and she certainly
would have strangled if the young men had not relieved her. As they
helped her up and out, I had wheeled my horse to see the fun. I rode up
to the edge of the mud, stopped my horse, reared in my stirrups, and
shouted, at the top of my voice, 'Glory to God! Glory to God!
Halleluiah! another sinner down! Glory to God! Halleluiah! Glory!
Halleluiah!'

"If ever mortals felt mean, these youngsters did; and well they might,
for they had carried on all this sport to make light of religion, and to
insult a minister, a total stranger to them. When I became tired of
shouting over them, I said to them:

"'Now, you poor, dirty, mean sinners, take this as a just judgment of
God upon you for your meanness, and repent of your dreadful wickedness;
and let this be the last time that you attempt to insult a preacher; for
if you repeat your abominable sport and persecutions, the next time God
will serve you worse, and the devil will get you.'

"They felt so badly that they never uttered one word of reply."

Our preacher was determined that his work should be recognized, and as
he and his fellow traveling ministers had done a good work on the
frontier, he was in no humor to relish the accounts of the religious
condition of the West, which the missionaries from the East spread
through the older States in their letters home. "They would come," says
he, "with a tolerable education, and a smattering knowledge of the old
Calvinistic system of theology. They were generally tolerably well
furnished with old manuscript sermons, that had been preached, or
written, perhaps a hundred years before. Some of these sermons they had
memorized, but in general they read them to the people. This way of
reading sermons was out of fashion altogether in this Western world, and
of course they produced no effect among the people. The great mass of
our Western people wanted a preacher that could mount a stump or a
block, or stand in the bed of a wagon, and, without note or manuscript,
quote, expound, and apply the word of God to the hearts and consciences
of the people. The result of the efforts of these Eastern missionaries
was not very flattering; and although the Methodist preachers were in
reality the pioneer heralds of the cross through the entire West, and
although they had raised up numerous societies every five miles, and
notwithstanding we had hundreds of traveling and local preachers,
accredited and useful ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ, yet these
newly-fledged missionaries would write back to the old States hardly any
thing else but wailings and lamentations over the moral wastes and
destitute condition of the West."

The indignation of our preacher was fully shared by the people of the
West, who considered themselves as good Christians; as their New England
brethren, and the people of Quincy called a meeting, irrespective of
denomination, and pledged themselves to give Peter Cartwright one
thousand dollars per annum, and pay his traveling expenses, if he would
"go as a missionary to the New England States, and enlighten them on
this and other subjects, of which they were profoundly ignorant."
Circumstances beyond his control prevented his acceptance of this offer.
"How gladly and willingly would I have undertaken this labor of love,"
says he, "and gloried in enlightening them down East, that they might
keep their home-manufactured clergy at home, or give them some honorable
employ, better suited to their genius than that of reading old musty and
worm-eaten sermons."

Our preacher did visit New England in 1852, not as a missionary,
however, but as a delegate to the General Conference which met that year
in Boston. His fame had preceded him, and he was one of the marked men
of that body. Every one had heard some quaint story of his devotion to
his cause, his fearlessness, or his eccentricities, and crowds came out
to hear him preach. But our backwoods preacher was ill at ease. The
magnificence of the city, and the prim decorum of the Boston churches,
subdued him, and he could not preach with the fire and freedom of the
frontier log chapel. The crowds that came to hear him were disappointed,
and more than once they told him so.

"Is this Peter Cartwright, from Illinois, the old Western pioneer?" they
asked him once.

He answered them, "I am the very man."

"Well," said several of them, "brother, we are much disappointed; you
have fallen very much under our expectations, we expected to hear a much
greater sermon than that you preached to-day."

It was a regular Bostonian greeting, and it not only mortified and
disheartened the old pioneer, but it irritated him. "I tell you," says
he, "they roused me, and provoked what little religious patience I
had.... I left them abruptly, and in very gloomy mood retreated to my
lodgings, but took very little rest in sleep that night. I constantly
asked myself this question: Is it so, that I can not preach? or what is
the matter? I underwent a tremendous crucifixion in feeling."

The result was that he came to the conclusion that he _could_ preach,
and that the people of Boston had not "sense enough to know a good
sermon when they heard it." A little later old Father Taylor, that good
genius of the Boston Bethel, a man after Cartwright's own heart, came to
him and asked him to preach for him, and this, after hesitating, our
preacher agreed to do, upon the condition that he should be allowed to
conduct the services in regular Western style.

"In the meantime," says he, "I had learned from different sources that
the grand reason of my falling under the expectations of the
congregations I had addressed was substantially this: almost all those
curious incidents that had gained currency throughout the country
concerning Methodist preachers had been located on me, and that when the
congregations came to hear me, they expected little else but a bundle of
eccentricities and singularities, and when they did not realize
according to their anticipations, they were disappointed, and that this
was the reason they were disappointed. So on the Sabbath, when I came to
the Bethel, we had a good congregation, and after telling them that
Brother Taylor had given me the liberty to preach to them after the
Western fashion, I took my text, and after a few common-place remarks, I
commenced giving them some Western anecdotes, which had a thrilling
effect on the congregation, and excited them immoderately--I can not say
religiously; but I thought if ever I saw animal excitement, it was then
and there. This broke the charm. During my stay, after this, I could
pass anywhere for Peter Cartwright, the old pioneer of the West. I am
not sure that after this I fell under the expectations of my
congregations among them."

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