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dings by "running for the bottle," a ribbon-decorated prize for the fastest rider, and by " great hilarity, jollity, and mirth." The only exceptions to this border hilarity were the few Quakers, who married without the inter- vention of clergymen, and conducted the ceremony with the "utmost solemnity and decorum."
When Winchester, the capital of the lower valley, was founded -there were two log cabins there in 1738, and the town was established in 1752 -the Dutch and Irish entered on a war of Guelphs and Ghibellines. The historian Kercheval paints the hostilities in glowing colors. On St. Patrick's Day the Dutch would form in grand procession and march through the streets, car- rying effigies of " the Saint and his wife Sheeley," the saint decorated with a necklace of Irish potatoes, and his spouse with an apron full of them. And on the day of " St. Michael, the patron of the Dutch," the Irishmen would retort by exhibiting an effigy of that saint with a necklace of sour-kraut; whence misunderstandings and bloody noses and cracked crowns for the consideration of the worshipful justices of Frederick, who have just begun to hold their sessions in the "log cabin court- house."
The lower Valley is full of these old traditions handed down from father to son. Another is here re- peated. It is said that an Irish laboring man and his wife came about 1767 to the house of Mr. Strode, a German landholder on the lower Opequon, and lived with him some years, during which time a son was born to them. Then they resolved to go further southward, and set off; but the children of the Strode family fol- lowed begging that they would leave the baby, who was a great favorite with them. When they stopped for a
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moment, and the child was laid on the grass, the Strode children snatched him up, and would have carried him off if they had not been prevented. The journey was then resumed, and the wanderers finally reached the Waxhaws in North Carolina. Here the boy grew up, and in due time made his mark, since he was Andrew Jackson, President of the United States. The tradition is possibly true. Jackson is said to have been doubtful about his birth-place, and a spring near the Strode house is still called " Jackson's Spring."
While the Germans and Irish were thus settling on the banks of the Potomac and the Opequon, the upper waters of the Shenandoah became the home of adven- turous explorers from tide-water Virginia. These were nearly without exception Scotch-Irish Presbyterians : men and women driven out of Ulster by the English per- secutions there ; and the pioneer was John Lewis, the founder of a distinguished family. Lewis belonged to a Huguenot family which had taken refuge in Ireland. He put to death an oppressive landlord there and es- caped to Virginia, where he obtained a great grant of land. It covered half of what is now the large county of Rockbridge ; and Lewis was to settle one family on every thousand acres. He brought over from Ireland and Scotland in 1737 about one hundred families ; and from these families descended some of the most emi- nent men of Virginia : among them Archibald Alexan- der, James McDowell, Andrew Lewis, and others. These " Scotch-Irish Presbyterians " were conscientious and law-abiding persons; Calvinists of the straightest sect, pious, earnest, grave of demeanor, not at all shar- ing the fox-hunting and horse-racing proclivities of the tide-water Virginians ; but bent on doing earnest work.
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They devoted themselves to agriculture, to erecting mills, to educating their children, to making their new homes comfortable, to all the arts of peace, and above and beyond all, to the firm establishment of their church. The "Stone Meeting-House " or Angusta Church, near Staunton, was one of the first erected in the valley. When war came, then or afterwards, there were no bet- ter soldiers in the Commonwealth ; for the list that be- gins with Andrew Lewis ends with Stonewall Jackson.
The upper and lower Valley were thus settled nearly at the same moment. The great principality of " Orange," that is to say, the tramontane world, was then divided into two counties : Frederick, toward the the Potomac, and Augusta, toward James river; that great " West Augusta," or Alleghanies, to which Wash- ington said that he meant to retreat if he was driven from the seaboard. This upper, or Augusta, region was the headquarters of the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian ele- ment ; and from the first these brave citizens were in- tent on seeuring all their rights. The Presbyterian Synod of Philadelphia petitioned the Governor of Vir- ginia (1738), that those of their denomination removing to the valley of Virginia might have "the free enjoy- ment of their civil and religious libertics; " and the writer of this petition, John Caldwell, grandfather of John Caldwell Calhoun of South Carolina, having re- ceived a courteous response, proceeded to settle Presby- terian families also in the counties of Prince Edward, Charlotte, and Campbell.
These details will show what races of men settled the fertile Valley of Virginia : German and Dutch Luther- ans, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, and a few Friends or Quakers. One infusion has not been noticed, a small
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colony of English families from tide-water Virginia, who settled around Greenway Court, the home of Lord Fair- fax. This old nobleman, who had emigrated to Virginia in consequence, it is said, of a love disappointment, conveyed to Colonel Robert Carter (1730), sixty-three thousand acres of land: a mere corner of that great " Northern Neck " which he had inherited. On this tract, around the present village of Millwood, settled numerous friends and relatives of the proprietor, bring- ing with them the traits of the lowland; - the cordial sentiments, the love of social intercourse, and the attach- ment to the English Church, which characterized the race. The surrounding region was attractive. An Eng- lish traveler visiting it spoke of its " beautiful prospects and sylvan scenes, transparent streams, and majestic woods ; " and declared that " many princes would give half their dominions for what the residents possessed : health, content, and tranquillity of mind." An Ameri- can writer called the region the " Virginia Arcady ; " and to this smiling country the lowlanders brought their families and servants ; erected their "Old Chapel " Church, which still nestles down under its sycamores ; and here their descendants still remain.
Of the strange and moving incidents which befell these old first settlers in the Valley, and on the far Vir- ginia border, it is impossible to speak in this place. They were intruders and must fight ; and in the histo- ries of the frontier we have the picture of their daily lives. They fall by unseen bullets fired from the woods ; the stockades shake under the blind rush of the dusky assailants ; the flames of burning cabins light up the marches ; wives and children are tomahawked or carried off to be tortured ; - this is what is going on, all along
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the Virginia border, in the midst of outcries and the crack of rifles, nearly to the end of the century ; for when the American Revolution comes, the old comba- tants are still fighting. Some of this life may pass be- fore us ; it is possible to present only an indication of it in a general narrative. The full details may be found in the work of Kercheval, the old Froissart of the Val- ley
A last coup d'œil shows us now, about the middle of the century, in Virginia, two strongly contrasted socie- tics. On the tidewater rivers a race of planters called " Tuckahoes," living on large estates, dressing richly, riding in coaches and attending the Church of England ; past the mountains hardy settlers called " Cohees," clear- ing the land, building houses and churches, and making a new Virginia in the wilderness ; 1 and still further toward the Alleghanies hardy frontiersmen who liave set their feet on the very outposts of civilization. Be- tween these Virginians of the Tidewater and the Tra- montane there is only a general resemblance; and in the manner of living of the two extremes, none whatever. While the planter of the seaboard is asleep in his cur- tained bed, the frontiersman is already half-way up the mountain, looking keenly for the deer or bear that is to supply his family with food. As the one enters his fine coach to go and bow low at some fine entertain- ment, the other falls asleep in his cabin, his arm around wife and child; more than content if the night passes without the savage war-whoop. Thus the lives of the
The origin of the terms Tuckahoe and Cohee is unknown. The first is the name of a marsh-root and of a creek near Richmond. Cohee is said to have been applied to the mountaineers from their frequent use of the phrase "Quoth he," contracted to "Quo' he."
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Lowlanders and the Tramontese are wholly unlike. But both are types of the same race under different circum- stances of training and environment.
Spotswood ceased to govern Virginia in 1722, and was followed by Governor Hugh Drysdale, one of the great obscure who is lost to memory. We are only in- formed that he was a smiling gentleman who beamed on everybody, and wrote to England that the " benign influence of liis auspicious sovereign was conspicuous in a general harmony and content among all ranks of persons." Colonel Robert Carter, President of the Council, succeeded Drysdale, and in the next year (1727) appeared Governor William Gooch, a worthy man, who for twenty-two years presided over Virginia. During this time Virginia prospered and few events of interest occurred - a happy comment upon the his- tory of a country. A force of Virginians, commanded by Gooch, took part in the expedition against Cartha- gena; and Captain Lawrence Washington, brother of Washington, accompanied the troops. He formed a friendship with Admiral Vernon, commanding the Eng- lish force, and on his return called his country-house " Mount Vernon." One other incident of the time was the project of Colonel William Byrd to establish two new cities, " one at Shoccoes to be called Rich- mond, and the other at the point of Appomattox to be called Petersburg." The master of Westover explains that these localities are "naturally intended for marts," and adds : " Thus we did not build castles only, but cities in the air." They were soon substantial castles. The Colonel "lays the foundation " in 1733, and in April, 1737, we read of the "town called Richmond, with streets sixty-five feet wide, in a pleasant and healthy
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situation, a little below the Falls." This notable cir- cumstance -to be followed in 1742 by the formal in- corporation of the new town - was accompanied by another circumstance still more important. The invi- tation to all people to come and live at Richmond was given in the columns of the first Virginia news- paper.
This was " The Virginia Gazette," which had just made its appearance (August, 1736). It was a small, dingy sheet, containing a few items of foreign news; the advertisements of the Williamsburg shopkeepers ; notices of the arrival and departure of ships ; a few chance particulars relating to persons or events in the colony ; and poetical "effusions," celebrating the charms of Myrtilla, Florella, or other belles of the period. Thus, " his Majesty's ancient and great Colony and Dominion of Virginia " had at last its newspaper ; and if any event occurred of great interest or importance, the planters of the York or James were certain to hear of it in a week or two, though the incident had taken place as far off as the Blue Ridge or Valley. As to anything like free discussion of the government, that was not the fashion of the times, in newspapers ; and the " Virginia Gazette " confined itself to the work of disseminating news. It was convenient, and continued to be printed ; many files have been preserved ; and its faded old col- umns present an interesting view of the manners and customs of the Virginians of the eighteenth century.
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THE NEW LIGHTS.
XXIV.
THE NEW LIGHTS.
THE time had arrived now when the "New Light Stir" was to agitate America, and arouse society from its lethargy. The human mind for a long time seemed to have gone to sleep, in matters of religion. Suddenly a rude shock awoke it. Whitefield, the great English reformer, came with his impassioned eloquence, and men thrilled under the voice of the master. He roughly shook the drowsy church-goers, dozing in their high- backed pews, and they rose with a start at the earnest appeal.
In Virginia, as elsewhere, toward the middle of the eighteenth century, religion and piety had grown to be conventional. The gangrene of society was living for the life that now is, and depending on religious observ- ances as a sufficient performance of religious duty. This vicious state of things was not peculiar to Church of England Virginia. It was seen as well in Calvin- istic New England ; and everywhere it assumed the same singular phase. Men were earnestly attached to their church and religion : they would fight for it, and, if necessary, die for it ; but living in accordance with its precepts was quite a different thing. It must be said that the lust of the senses and the pride of life entered largely into the character of those old Virginians and other Americans. To eat, and drink, and enjoy them- selves ; to ride in their coaches, reign on their great estates, and get through life pleasantly and prosper- ously, was, in their eyes, nearly the whole duty of
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man. Undoubtedly there were numbers of excellent persons who detected the flaw in this agreeable philos- ophy, and saw that there was something else to do : to love God and live for their fellow-men, as well as for themselves. But, with many, religion had become mere ceremonial, - attendance at the parish church, and outward respect for the Bible and the Prayer Book.
Unfortunately some of the clergy were little better than the people. To an inquiry of the Bishop of Lon- don in 1719, their convention answered that " no mem- ber had any personal knowledge of the irregularity of any clergyman's life in this colony ;" but as Bishop Mcade laments, that phrase "personal knowledge " was probably a mere evasion. There is little reason to doubt that very serious "irregularities" did exist in the lives of many ministers. They played cards, and hunted the fox, and indulged in drink ; and what was even worse, they had small love for their neighbors, the Dissenters. It is true that the Dissenters cordial- ly returned this dislike and were quite as rancorous; but that was nothing to the purpose. The Church of England clergyman denounced the New Light preacher as a disturber, and the New Light preacher denounced the clergyman as a disgrace to his cloth. Often the clergy acted in a most unclerical manner. They quar- reled with their vestries, and one of them made a per- sonal assault on a high dignitary at a vestry-meeting, pulled off his wig, and prcached on the next Sunday from the text, " And I contended with them and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair." 1
1 This incident is related by Bishop Meade in his Old Churches of Virginia.
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THE NEW LIGHTS.
This was the melancholy condition of things about the middle of the century. The Virginia Church had not fulfilled the promise of its earlier years. It had once been a churchi of vital piety, and had numbered among its clergymen some of the loveliest characters that have ever honored their sacred office. The first minister in the colony, Robert Hunt, had been an ex- emplary person, a man of irreproachable life, and a true follower of the Prince of Peace. Even the rough sol- dier-writers exclaim, " His soul, questionless, is with God !" and speak of him as "an lionest, religious and courageous divine, during whose life our factions were oft qualified, and our wants and greatest extremi- ties so comforted that they seemed easy in comparison of what we endured after his memorable death." Then followed Mr. Bucke, who came in the Sea-Venture, Mr. Wickham, and others, all excellent men; and the list in the first years wound up with that pure " Apostle of Virginia," Mr. Whitaker, who gave up his " warm nest " in England to come and convert the Indians.
These good men and their successors had founded churches - that at Jamestown, the one at Henrico, the old Smithfield Church dating, it is said, back to 1632; the Bruton and Blandford churches at Williamsburg and Petersburg, and many others. These venerable edifices were still filled with worshipers on the peaceful Sabbath mornings ; but the attendance of too many was merely formal; and the new generation of ministers had not inherited the piety and self-sacrifice of the Hunts and Whitakers. They had much to complain of, it is true, and the vestries were hard masters. The pas- tor came on trial often and the vestry would not keep him if they did not choose to do so; thus his tenure
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was doubtful and anxious, and good men would not come from England under such circumstances. But wherever the right might be, the wrong thing was there. The planter and his family came in their coach, and the parson read his homily ; and then all went back to their week-day pursuits but slightly edified. It was very much of a Drowsyland, and a trumpet blast was necessary to arouse the sleepers.
He who now (1740) sounded the great summons to a more evangelic faith and a purer life, was a young man of twenty-six, who had come from England, - George Whitefield. At Oxford, which he had entered at eight- een, he had contracted a friendship with another stu- dent, John Wesley ; and moved by strong feeling, the two young men had formed a religious association, to which their fellow students gave the jeering name of the " Methodist " association. Whitefield and his friends accepted it and went forth on their life-work. He was ordained a deacon and was soon famous as a preacher. At twenty-two he preached with such effect that he was said to have driven " fifteen persons mad." One year afterwards he crossed the Atlantic and visited in Georgia his friend Wesley, who had gone thither, at the invitation of General Oglethorpe, to convert the In- dians.1 On his return to England his labors began in earnest. Immense crowds assembled in the open air
1 Of this visit of Whitefield an incident is related which seems to show that he was not opposed to slavery. Having a sum of money presented to him at the city of Charleston, he purchased a plantation and slaves with it for the support of the " Orphan House." This and the existence still of a bill of sale for a slave, bearing the signature of the famous Jonathan Edwards, indicates the absence of any belief at that time, with some good men, that human bondage was forbidden by the Scriptures.
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to listen to his preaching ; and men's hearts burned within them at the trumpet-like appeals of. the young Timothy to flee from the wrath to come. "Metho- dism " was thus launched. It was the protest of evan- gelical against formal Christianity. What it taught was that each human being must labor to work out his own salvation; that his salvation or damnation depended upon his acceptance or rejection of the workings of the Holy Spirit ; that the grace of God in Christ is univer- sal ; and that no one is held guilty of Adam's sin until he resolutely rejects this grace of Christ. Thus, in doc- trine these new " Methodists " differed but little from the English Church, of which they were offshoots. The two sacraments were baptism by sprinkling; and the Lord's Supper taken kneeling. Infants were eligible to the first ; professing Christians and penitent seekers of salvation to the last. In its inception and afterwards Methodism was a missionary movement in the pale of the Church, not looking to a separate polity or a sepa- rate theology. The breath of life was to be breathed into the skeleton of the old system ; and it was to live again, not changed, but purified and restored to its primitive vigor. Whitefield set forth the old apostolic faith ; traveled in the old pathis ; and flowers sprung up be- neath his feet. Love was his watchword; his Society of Methodists, 'as he himself said, was " No other than a company of men having the form and seeking the power of Godliness, united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other to work out their salvation."
Whitefield came to America twice and great crowds followed him. He avoided church edifices for the most
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part and spoke in the open air ; and on Boston Common twenty thousand people thrilled at his strange eloquence. Coming to Williamsburg (1740), he preached to multi- tudes there, and a great excitement followed. The peo- ple were weary of the deadness in the Church of Eng- land, but as yet there was no organized dissent. Early in the century some Baptists, holding to the doctrine of immersion, had come to southeastern Virginia, and gotten into trouble with the authorities for repudiating baptism by sprinkling or pouring; but in the great move- ment now at hand the Presbyterians took the initiative. A number of respectable persons, opposed to the Eng- lish Church, assembled in Hanover at the house of John Morris, a citizen of that county ; adopted the Westmin- ster Confession, the embodiment of the Calvinistic the- ology ; and soon an ardent congregation collected and was persecuted by the authorities for non-compliance with the Act enjoining attendance at " church." Op- position only stimulated the efforts of the friends of the movement, as it always does. William Robinson, an English Presbyterian, came and preached in Hanover, the cradle of tidewater Presbyterianism ; then others followed him, "denouncing the delinquency of the par- ish ministers with unsparing invective; " and a witness swore that one of the New Light preachers "uttered blasphemous expressions in his sermons." The result was sudden denunciation and persecution by the civil authorities. They declared that " certain false teachers had lately crept into this government who, professing themselves ministers under the pretended influence of new light, extraordinary impulse and such like satirical [sic ] and enthusiastic knowledge, lead the innocent and ignorant people into all kinds of delusion." The relig.
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THE NEW LIGHTS.
ious professions of these New Lights are "the results of Jesuitical policy" only ; John Roan is presented for "reflecting upon and vilifying the established relig- ion; " and Thomas Watkins suffers the same harass- ment for the outrageous fling at the clergy : "Your churches and chapels are no better than the Syna- gogues of Satan."
So far had sounded the wonderful eloquence of White- field. It had shaken and awakened. Under that thun- der the dry bones stirred ; and the stir was going to be followed once more by a good wholesome persecution of people who presumed to think for themselves in religion, as before in the old times under Sir William Berkeley. A sudden commotion is the result of the New Light preaching. The irruption of Methodism, which is vir- tual dissent, arouses all the denominations. The Bap- tists and Presbyterians make their protest and excite the masses. The preachers of the former faith will be characterized as "illiterate, with an impassioned man- ner, vehement gesticulation, and a singular tone of. voice," at which their hearers " give way to tears, trem- bling, screams, and acclamations." They will " sing hymns while on the way to prison, and address crowds congregated before the windows of the jails ; " and they and the Presbyterians will lay the foundations of relig- ious freedom.
The great awakening of the time is rending asunder even dissenting communions. Whitefield's coming splits the Presbyterian Church into the " New Side " and the " Old Side," the Pennsylvanian Presbytery adhering to the Old, and the New York Presbytery to the New. It is the New Side which is going to establish itself in Virginia; and the Old Side, Philadelphia Synod, dis
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owns the " uncharitable and unchristian conduct" of those of their communion in Virginia who talk about the churches and chapels of the English Church as " synagogues of Satan." But the New Side Presby- terians persist in spite of proclamations and persecu- tions, and soon they find a tower of strength in the great and pure apostle Samuel Davies.
If Francis Makemie was the first licensed minister of the Presbyterian faith (1699), Samuel Davies was the founder of the Church, in Virginia. He was not inimical to the Methodist movement, and afterwards said that the English and Scottish Methodists were the most pious of all the people in those countries. From the time of his coming, when, as he declared, there were "not ten avowed dissenters within one hundred miles of him," this great and good man was the head and front of dissent in Virginia. Born in the State of Delaware, then a part of Pennsylvania, he had studied divinity until his frame grew enfeebled ; but there was nothing feeble in the acute and burning brain which inhabited this frail tene- ment. Patrick Henry said of him that he was "the greatest orator he had ever heard ; " and he met and nearly overthrew Attorney-General Randolph in a great discussion of the construction of the act of toleration. He was a man to preach the faith before princes, and preached it everywhere. Hc succeeded in procuring from the Attorney-General in England a decision that the Act of Toleration was the law of Virginia ; and the consequent licensing of the dissenting churches, after an oath of allegiance, and a subscription to certain of the articles. When he came to Virginia at twenty-three the Presbyterian Church did not exist. In three years there were churches in Caroline, Louisa, and Gooch
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