BY ELDER JOHN BOGGS.
BY ELDER JOHN BOGGS.
Although our dear departed brother, Elder Pardee Butler, was never classed with the Garrisonian Abolitionists, he began his ministerial life when the demands of the South were being felt in all the North, both in church and State. If slavery could not be advocated by the Northern conscience it must at least be ignored by all candidates for popular favor. It had divided some of the most popular religious denominations; and was the most exciting subject of discussion known to the religious world at the middle of the present century. Among the Disciples of Christ the slavery question was peculiarly perplexing, as there was a large per cent, of the membership who were actual slaveholders, and the leaders among us, although publicly committed against "slavery in the abstract," were endeavoring to soften the hard features of slavery in the Southern States by arguing that the relation of master and slave was not sinfulper se, as it was recognized and regulated both in the Jewish and Christian scriptures.
Bro. Butler was ordained as a minister of the gospel of Christ, among the. Disciples, at Sullivan, Ohio, some time in the year 1844, by A. B. Green and J. H. Jones, at that time two of the most efficient evangelists in Northern Ohio He had a good conscience, which passed judgment upon his actions in accordance with the great law of love inculcated by the Lord himself and his apostles, and he did not allow the application of any "hot iron" so as to sear it. Although he did not come in direct antagonism with the pro-slavery power while he labored in the gospel ministry east of the Missouri River, yet it is evident that the slavery question was a most important factor in making up his decision to leave his field of labor in the Military Tract in Illinois, where he gave up present usefulness and ministerial blessedness for a prospective missionary field and a humble home for his family. He had spent four years there in active ministerial labor; and in the second number of his "Personal Recollections" he calls them "the golden days of my life!"
That the hand of God directed the footsteps of Pardee Butler to Kansas just at the time he went there, and to the place where he took a homestead and improved it, and lived on it with his family for a third of a century, no one who believes in an overruling providence can for a moment doubt. At the risk of his life, and at the cost of great privation in his own person, and that of his wife and children, he unfurled the blood-stained banner of the cross, and never allowed it to trail beneath his feet through the long years of "border ruffianism," and the dark days of detraction and misrepresentation. He was the man for the hour; while on the one hand he was not forgetful of the obligations resting upon him to his family—he laid the foundation for a happy home—on the other hand, he was always ready, both in season and out of season, at home and abroad, to preach the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world. To him more than to any other human instrumentality is the brotherhood of Christ's disciples indebted for the early introduction of Christianity in the now grand State of Kansas; and his name will be honorably and lovingly remembered by all the good and the true, who shall learn of his unselfish life and his untiring devotion to the cause of the Master.
In the summer of 1858, after he had been in the new Territory over three years, Bro. Butler, in theLuminary, writes as follows: "To teach, discipline, and perfect the churches we have already organized; to gather into churches the lost sheep of the house of Israel, scattered over this great wilderness of sin; to watch over those who are still purposing to tempt its dangers, and to lay broad and deep the foundations of a future operation and co-operation, that shall ultimate in spreading the gospel from pole to pole, and across the great sea to the farthest domicile of man—this is the purpose which we set before us." This brief quotation shows the broadness and completeness of the work, as contemplated by him, and which is now going forward to its accomplishment as never before; and to his almost alone labors at first the work in Kansas can be legitimately traced.
During this year a Territorial Board was formed, and Bro. Butler was appointed as their evangelist; and a correspondence was had between him and the corresponding secretary of the General Missionary Society in reference to affording aid to the Kansas Board to help sustain him in his evangelical labors. It was conducted in the most friendly manner and in a true Christian spirit, until the slavery question came to the front and prevented the accomplishment of what was hoped for on the one hand, and contemplated on the other. The following extract from Bro. Butler's third letter will present the issue in the briefest manner possible:
DEAR SIR:—You say in letter before me, "It must, therefore, be distinctly understood that if we embark in a missionary enterprise in Kansas, this question of slavery and anti-slavery must be ignored." I respond: This reformation is pledged before heaven and earth, and under covenants the most solemn and binding into which men can enter, to guarantee freedom of thought and speech to our brotherhood-i—not indeed on subjects purely abstract, speculative and inoperative, but on Bible questions—questions which involve the well-being of humanity. This matter of slavery is a Bible question—a question of justice between man and man—of mercy and humanity. It is what Jesus would call one of the weightier matters of the law, and demands, therefore, a large place in our investigations.
The brethren here in Kansas have made no such stipulations with me They have left me to my own discretion in preaching the gospel to sinners, and teaching the saints according to the Bible. They have shown themselves too magnanimous to impose on my conscience a restriction which their own manhood would forbid, under similar circumstances, that they should suffer to be imposed on themselves.
For myself, I will be no party, now or hereafter, to such an arrangement as that contemplated in your letter now before me. I would not make this "Reformation of the nineteenth century" a withered and blasted trunk, scattered by the lightnings of heaven, because it took part with the rich and powerful against the poor and oppressed, and because we have been recreant to those maxims of free discussion which we have so ostentatiously heralded to the world as our cherished principles.
In explanation of the first letter received by Bro. Butler from the corresponding secretary, a second one was sent, from which it is necessary to make the following extracts:
I reply, that nothing has been said against teaching a master his duties according to the Bible, nor (what is just as important) against teaching servants their duties to their masters, according to the Bible—according to the instructions given to evangelists—I. Tim. vi. 1-4. My remarks, as the whole letter will show, had reference to the question of slaveryin Kansas. The forms it takes on there are very different from the duties masters owe their servants according to the Bible. It is whether a slaveholder is necessarily a sinner, unfit for membership in the Christian Church—a blood-thirsty oppressor, whose money is the "price of blood," and would "pollute" the treasury of the Lord, etc. etc. And, on the other hand, whether American slavery is a divine institution, the perfection of society for the African race, and essential to their happiness—while all Abolitionists are fit only for the madhouse or the penitentiary. These and such like are theformsthe question of slavery assumes in Kansas, as well as in many of the free States, where there are no "masters and servants" in that sense to be taught their duties, in reference to which it was said the question must be entirely ignored. And we can not consent that on one side or the other such pleas shall be made under the sanction of the American Christian Missionary Society.
I did not then, nor do I now, suppose that if you were employed by the A. C. M. S. to preach the gospel in Kansas, it would fall to your lot to furnish instructions to many masters and servants. If in any churches you may raise up in Kansas—evidently destined to be free—you find masters and slaves, of course it will be your duty to instruct them both "according to the Bible." But to furnish such instruction, and to go through Kansas lecturing on anti-slavery, or mixing up any pro-slavery or any anti-slavery theories and dogmas with the gospel, or to plant churches with the express understanding that no "master" shall be allowed to have membership in it, are very different things. And I had this very matter in view when I wrote to you, for I had some-how heard that the church of which you were a member was about to take just such a stand, and I wanted to have it distinctly understood that so far as action under the direction of the A. C. M. S. was concerned, all such ultraisms must be ignored. . . . You felt anxious to have help to preach the gospel in Kansas. I felt anxious to assist you. I saw danger in the way, growing out of the fact that I represent a society whose membership is in the South as well as in the North, and that some factious ultraists are constantly on the watch to sow the seeds of discord. I knew the state of things in Kansas as bearing on the slavery question. I knew something, too, of your treatment there, and of your feelings. I saw that if you were employed to preach there, an effort would be made to herald it, as in Bro. Beardslee's Case, as an anti-slavery triumph. This would be unjust to us. And as the practical question of master and slave does not exist there to any extent, I spoke of ignoring the question altogether. If you still insist on the right to urge that question, and take part in the controversy raging in Kansas,under the patronage of the A. C. M. S., I have only to say it is outside the objects contemplated in our constitution. But if you wish simply to preach the gospel and instruct converts in a knowledge of Christian duties, "according to the Scriptures," there was certainly no occasion for your second letter to be written.
To the foregoing a rejoinder was written by Bro. Butler, which closed the correspondence with the A. C. M. S., and from which the following extracts are taken, that the readers may understand his position correctly:
I reply, 1. In your former letter I find no reference to theformsthe agitation of this question assumes in Kansas. I presume you had not a copy of that letter before you when you wrote this one. But you do allude to "forms" the agitation of this question had assumed in Cincinnati, and in reference to Bro. Beardslee and the Jamaica mission. I was also instructed that "our missionaries" must not be ensnared into such utterances as theLuminarycan publish to the world, to add fuel to the flame. The utterances against which I was guardedseemedto be in Cincinnati rather than in Kansas. I had already published a piece indicative of my views in theNorthwestern Christian Magazine, and that appeared to be the obnoxious "utterance." 2. You are misinformed relative to the "forms" the agitation of this question assumes in Kansas. The question, Shall slaveholders be received as church members? has hardly been debated at all. 3. Neither myself nor any person associated with me has at time proposed to organize a church to exclude slaveholders. 4. Slaveholders have been members of our churches from the first day until now. How, then, could I understand you as referring to anything else than to my own published Cincinnati utterances?
As respects slavery, the whole power of the master and the obligation of the servant is found in the proper meaning of the words of such precepts as these "Masters, render unto your servants that which is just and equal;" "servants, obey your masters," etc. All within such limits is the doctrine which is according to godliness—all beyond, whether on the part of the master or the slave, and which is attempted to be foisted into the church as a part of the apostolic doctrine, is schismatical, and essentially fills up the picture drawn by Paul: "If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; he is proud, knowing nothing'—from such withdraw thyself." In these precepts no right is given to the masters to buy and sell, to traffic in slaves; no right to enslave the children, and the children's children of his servants; no right to hold them in a relentless bondage which knows no limit but the grave, and in which the heritage transmitted by the slave to his children, is a heritage of bondage to all generations.
On the 26th of August, 1858, the same season that the foregoing correspondence took place, Bro. Butler wrote to the editor of theChristian Luminarythe following letter, which is given entire, as showing the exact position which he occupied ministerially at that time:
OCENA, ATCHISON CO., KAN., Aug. 26, 1858.
DEAR SIR:—Three churches—one meeting at Leavenworth City, another at Mount Pleasant, Atchison county, and a third at Pardee, same county—have formed an organization for the purpose of propagating the gospel in Kansas. For four months I have been in the employ of these churches. My first business was to travel over the Territory and ascertain where we have brethren in sufficient numbers to make it expedient to organize churches. To that end I have traveled over that portion of the Territory north of the Kansas River, and embraced in the counties of Leavenworth, Atchison, Doniphan, Jefferson, and Calhoun; also, to some extent south of the Kansas River.
I will not say that this has been the pleasantest labor of my life. A long and wearisome ride across wide prairies, under a burning sun, has often been followed by a fruitless effort to excite interest enough to justify established preaching. I would not convey the idea that this region is not full of promise to the missionary, notwithstanding I am fully persuaded that we are not to expect suchimmediateresults as have followed my own labors elsewhere. We must first sow, and then, in due time, we shall reap, if we faint not.
The M. E. Church reports 120 preachers in Kansas and Nebraska; the U. B. Church, 9, sustained in part by contributions from abroad. The Missionary Baptists make good their right to the name they have chosen, by sustaining four missionaries. I confess it is a matter of profound humiliation to me that the demonstration that ours is primitive apostolic Christianity, is found in the fact that we can afford but one missionary in Kansas, and that to his support not one dime has been contributed from abroad. The brethren in the Territory, under an unexampled pecuniary pressure, and out of their deep poverty, have done all that has been done. Two new churches have been organized—one at Big Springs, Douglas county, numbering twenty-eight members; the other at Cedar Creek, Jefferson county, of eleven members. We have also the nucleus of a congregation at Atchison, and another at Elk City, Calhoun county. Thus we have in this part of Kansas the foundation laid for eight churches, all of which are steadily increasing in numbers; and the brethren composing them, in all the elements of future growth, and in moral and in religious excellence, are at par value with the brotherhood in any of our States or Territories.
If the older churches, blessed with such abundant means, would aid us in this hour of our need, it is my opinion they would be no poorer on earth and much richer in heaven. But whether they aid us or not, I trust we shall hold our own, and ultimately prove that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. We have a number of young preachers, who are giving promise of future usefulness. Very truly, your brother,
PARDEE BUTLER.
P. S.—Five persons in this congregation, and one at Big Springs have been recently added by baptism; also two from other denominations.
On the 1st day of July, 1859, Bro. Butler made a very interesting report of his labors, and especially of his tour in several of the free States—mostly where he had labored in the gospel before his removal to Kansas. As the document is too long for publication entire in this volume, only the more important extracts can be given. The first two paragraphs being only a fuller statement of what is already written, the first extract will show the voluntary indorsement of Bro. Butler by the churches for which he had been laboring, as follows:
WHEREAS, Bro. Butler has faithfully and diligently performed the labor assigned him as our evangelist; therefore,
Resolved, I. That we do most heartily approve of his labors and general course of conduct during his term of service. 2. That the officers of this Board be directed to procure the services of Bro. Butler, or some other suitable person, to solicit aid in the States for this society.
Bro. Humber, as president of the Board, did not call it together to complete the arrangement contemplated. On my own part, I felt unwilling to importune him. I went on my tour, therefore, simply under the indorsement and approval of my own congregation. I left home December 16, 1858, and returned May 12, 1859. I visited the Military Tract of Illinois, Northeast Iowa, Southwest Michigan, Central and Eastern Indiana, and Northern Ohio. The amount of money realized was $365; expenses, $110, leaving a balance on hand of $255, as the first installment of the fund of our begun mission.
Of all the churches in which I sought a hearing only one, the church at Bedford, Ohio, gave me the cold shoulder. In response to my request for the privilege of delivering a lecture before them, in development of our wants and condition in Kansas, they responded that they considered it "political," and they had resolved that their house should not be used for political lectures!.... In all the localities visited by me, I found the masses of the people with such convictions as will constrain them to treat slavery in the United States as a moral evil, and to patronize only such societies as assume toward it a similar position. It is asked: What have we to do with slavery? I reply: We, as Christians, should have nothing to do with it. But we in Kansas are placed under compulsion to have something to do with it. We have slaveholders in our churches; and if the time should come when there will be no slaves in Kansas, still we have something to do with it, for within one day's ride of us in Platte county, Mo., is the largest body of slaveholders in that State. Discipline is special to each congregation, but that sense of justice which always stands as the basis of discipline, is common to all the churches of one communion. This public opinion is created by a mutual interchange of sentiment—the books we read and the preachers we hear. For years past slaveholders have ceased to hear those suspected of abolitionism or to read their writings. I will bear very long with error where mutual discussion and free interchange of sentiment promise ultimately to bring all to be of the same mind. Am I told that the safety of slave property requires that Abolitionists should not be heard in the slave States? I reply: The more shame to those who perpetuate an institution that demands for its security the tyranny of such proscription; and that the human soul of the black man should be so cruelly dwarfed and robbed of his manhood. . . . Such are the not very flattering impressions made on my mind during a five months' tour in Northern Ohio, after an absence of nine years. There must and will be a reform; it has become a public necessity. Temporizers are proverbially short-sighted. God gives only to the pure-hearted the divine privilege of foreseeing the coming of those beneficent revolutions, which exalt and dignify humanity. Ambitious and selfish men are left to go blindly on and fall into their own pit. At present there will be chaos I The people will not follow those who have been accustomed to lead, notwithstanding those leaders will have power greatly to embarrass the action of those who do not follow them. We have three pressing wants: 1. Asustainedpaper that will not bow the knee to the image of this modern Baal. Such a paper we have, but it should not be concealed, that it must pass through a fiery ordeal, and can only be sustained by the timely efforts of its friends. 2. We need a convention made up of men who regard slavery as a moral evil, and are disposed to make their own consciences the rule of their action. 3. We need a missionary fund, which shall be placed in such hands that it shall not be prostituted to the vile purpose of bribing men into silence on the subject of slavery.
I am not commissioned specially to speak for theLuminary, nor to prophesy concerning any convention which may hereafter assemble. I only speak for myself. Let it then be candidly admitted that the fund which I have been able to collect is a rather unpromising beginning, and that it does not augur that this mission will be well sustained. I remark, then, I never was adequately sustained. I have been a frontier and a pioneer preacher, and have shared the fortunes of such men. To keep myself in the field I have labored very hard, I have toiled by day, and have subjected my family to the necessity of such labor, privation, and close economy as, perhaps, calls for rebuke instead of praise. The churches at Davenport, Long Grove, De Witt, Marion, and Highland Grove, in Iowa; and Camp Point, Mt. Sterling, and Rushville, in Illinois, can be addressed as to my former manner of life. I would speak modestly of myself; and have not obtruded these matters before the brethren until rudely assailed as though I never made any sacrifices. I do not complain, and what I have said is offered, as evidence, in some sort, that money appropriated to this mission will not be squandered.
In this connection it is thought proper to insert a single quotation from a letter which appeared in theReview, a paper which published editorially, the most unscrupulous slanders in reference to Bro. Butler's work in Kansas, which letter was written by Bro. S. A. Marshall, of Leavenworth—both an M. D. and a preacher, and than whom no more honorable gentleman ever lived in that city. His testimony is incidental, and therefore so much the stronger:
The brethren of the four churches named have tried to co-operate together to sustain Bro. Pardee Butler as home missionary for a little while. He is an able evangelist and generally beloved: and being on the ground and well acquainted with the country, and the manners and customs of the people, could be obtained at much less expense, and perhaps be as useful and acceptable to the people as any other available evangelist.
In harmony with the suggestion made by Bro. Butler in his report, for a convention of our brethren who look upon slavery as a moral evil, call was made for such a meeting to convene in the city of Indianapolis on the 1st day of November, 1859. About six hundred signatures were attached to the call, including many of the most intelligent and influential members of our churches in the North. After much misrepresentation and denunciation, the convention was held in the Christian chapel in Indianapolis; a constitution for a missionary society adopted and the necessary officers appointed. Many of the churches gave it a most hearty endorsement. It was deemed expedient that Bro. Butler, before returning to Kansas, should visit as many churches as practicable. Accordingly, he wrote to theLuminaryunder date of December 26, 1859, from Springville, Ind., as follows:
I have thought best, before returning to Kansas, to make a short visit to this part of Indiana, where, according to report, almost all the brethren are opposed to our recent missionary movement. In twenty-three days I have preached thirty-two discourses. For the mission we raised, cash, $55; pledges, $43. Three have been added by baptism, and one from the Presbyterians who had formerly been immersed. Some of our preaching brethren in this part of the State conclude to take the advice of Gamaliel: "And now I say unto you, refrain from these men, and let them alone; for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to naught; but if it be of God, ye can not overthrow it; lest happily ye be found even to fight against God." In the cause of a common piety and a common humanity.
Bro. Butler returned to Kansas, and resumed his labors wherever a door of entrance was opened to him. Angry clouds thickened across the political and religious horizon, until, shortly, the storm broke forth in unwonted fury, and swept away from the national statute book every vestige of American slavery. For a quarter of a century longer he continued in the service of the Master, laboring successfully in every department of the ministerial work—evangelical, pastoral, and in the advocacy of all moral reforms, and especially as a leader in the warfare waged against the saloon interest in Kansas. He lived to see his adopted State take an advanced position in the legal prohibition movement, slavery in the United States abolished, and the cause of Bible Christianity flourishing as it had never done before. He commanded the respect of all who knew him, and was regarded as one of the chief founders of the church. His presence at all the Christian conventions in and out of the State was always hailed with tokens of gladness. Still he was aware that there were individual members, and even some churches that never forgave him for the active part he took against the extension of slavery, and his indictments against it as a moral evil—a sin against God and man. Fifty years of his eventful life were consecrated to the service of the Master and the good of humanity. He died with the ministerial harness on. At the time of the sad casualty which proved to be fatal, he had arrangements for continued work in the churches, both at home and abroad. He finished his course with joy, for he knew there was laid up for him in heaven a crown of righteousness. He labored assiduously in life, and now enjoys the sweet rest which remains for the people of God.
BY ELD. J. B. MCCLEERY.
BY ELD. J. B. MCCLEERY.
ANALYSIS OF CHARACTER.
ANALYSIS OF CHARACTER.
1. An indomitable will.2. A sublime courage.3. A never-satisfied hungering and thirst for knowledge.4. An intense love for truth, and hatred of shams.5. A tireless worker.6. An advanced thinker.
In presenting this analysis it is by no means thought to be complete. There are many phases of his well-known character left untouched, because this chapter would become a book, if all were presented in detail. We touch upon these more salient ones, as presenting the well-known outlines of his later life, and trust the picture will find faithful recognition among his host of admirers.
Those who have known him ever since the past Territorial days of Kansas, will concede that, for the accomplishment of a purpose unto which he had once deliberately put his hand, no man ever breathed the fresh air of these broad prairies who followed the trail with more determination and keen, intelligent acquaintance with all bearings, overcoming difficulties, meeting objections, accepting temporary defeat (philosophically), but never relinquishing his purpose until victory crowned his effort, or failure was absolutely inevitable, than he.
Suited to this was a courage as heroic as Leonidas' and sublime as Paul's. The stormy days of the fifties and sixties gave evidence of the physical side of this quality, and his entire life, of the moral. He "feared no foe in shining armor," and rather courted than avoided a passage at arms dialectic. Eminently a man of peace, and loving the pursuits that make for it, he would see no principle of right unjustly assailed without girding himself for the conflict, and standing where the blows fell thickest.
Coming to this unknown country at an age when the ordinary mind takes firmest grasp of all intellectual things, and being thus deprived of that mental food necessary to satisfy and make strong, there was ever after a hungering for the things he did not have, that would not be satisfied. I remember talking with him once, while sitting on his lumber wagon, resting his team in the cotton-wood bottoms east of Atchison, and he bewailed as much as a man of his fiber could, the fate that compelled him to toil day and night while his soul was starving for that intellectual food which lay all around him, but which he did not have time to gather and devour. This, however, was not abnormal; for, even to the day of his death, he was a devoted disciple, sitting at the feet of every true Gamaliel.
An intense lover of truth, and a like hater of shams, he analyzed mercilessly; not for the sake of opposing, but in search of kernels and the source of things. If he found the tree was bearing, or destined to bear evil fruit, he would do his utmost that there should be left of it neither root nor branch. Accepting good in every presented form, if he suspected evil in the garb of good, there was no waiting for a more opportune time than the then present, for such stripping and exposure as his vigorous logic, sarcasm, wit, pathos, and personal presence could produce. Humble, and exceedingly retiring in ordinary, when the truth was assailed, or wolves in sheeps' clothing appeared, he became a lion, fierce and towering; and woe betake the man or system that then became the object of his righteous wrath. Such torrents of invective as fell from his tongue; such flashes as gleamed from his gray eagle-eyes; such scorn as glowed in his thin, pallid lips, made every one tremble—an avalanche that swept all before it.
To toil, of some character or other, he seemed to be destined. For no sooner did he find a little rest from the field or herd, than all his Hurculean energy was thrown into some cherished and waiting mental project. His life is an example of the statement that "genius is the result of labor." Neither did he travel in thought alone upon the surface of things. There were subjects, the philosophy of which no contemporary understood better; and upon the social and organic relations of the religious reformation with which he always stood identified, he was twenty years ahead of his confreres. He was a veritable Elijah in many things, but he was never known to flee from the face of his enemies.
His was a mighty nature; the soul of honor and the embodiment of truth.
There are two features of his Kansas life, which marked the man, that I wish to portray, viz: Histemperancework, and hisreligiouswork. These were not in any sense divorced, as though they were not always righteously allied; but, as all know, the prohibition question holds a prominent place in the history of this proud young queen, with her "ad astra per aspera," and from the time she was admitted to a place among the sisterhood of States, up to the date that the comparatively little majority of 8,000 votes placed her squarely in opposition to the saloon, with all its interests and iniquities, he labored, watched, and prayed, for such a consummation. In this, as in his religious conceptions, he was always in the advance, running new lines and opening broad highways, and inviting fields for the less sturdy but oncoming multitude. As he had battled to prevent this, his adopted State, from being desecrated by the blot of human slavery, so now he voted, preached, lectured, wrote, that it might be delivered from the body and soul destroying curse of the rum power.
I have before me his temperance scrap-book, beginning with the proposed amendment to the State Constitution, March 8, 1879, and coming up to the time of his death, in which I find fifty-five newspaper articles written by him, of from one to three columns in length, presenting, in his own terse, humorous, glowing, vigorous, convincing way, all sides of this chameleon-hued question; now analyzing the amendment and the laws to enforce it, turning aside here to answer the cavil of some carping critic, then to demolish and bury some blatant political defender of the whisky element; arraigning the Governor, Senate and House of Representatives for their gingerly treatment of the great question, and sending a trumpet-call to the honest, brave, and sincere temperance workers, both men and women, urging them to greater vigilance and closer compact. These, with numerous short and pithy articles, added to all his sermons and lectures on the subject, occupying a much larger space and far more time, will give an idea of the labor of heart and brain bestowed upon this one question, during this one decade. We have room in this chapter for only one short article from his pen, as an example of the many, indicating how he felt, thought, and wrote during those stirring years. The title of the article is, "The Prohibition of the Liquor Traffic, The Constitutional Amendment in Kansas." He says:
This is, perhaps, the first case in which any government in the world has incorporated into its constitution a clause prohibiting forever the sale of intoxicating drinks as a beverage. This is a struggle in which the churches, the preachers, and the Sunday-schools are arrayed in mortal antagonism to the saloons and saloon-keepers. Both parties are instinctively conscious that this is a contest in which the issue is to kill or be killed. No truce or peace is possible. 'I will put enmity between thy seed and her seed.' The people are drawn into one or the other of these parties by a sort of elective affinity. One class goes with the churches and the Sunday-schools; another gravitates to the drinking-house. The one class are swayed and controlled by the law of love—"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself;" the other by the principle that governed Cain—"Am I my brother's keeper?" "Who cares?" "Let every man look out for himself?" "If a man chooses to make a beast of himself, it is none of my business."
One of the peculiar things connected with this movement is the fact that by far the most determined and effective opposition to this law comes from foreign-born and naturalized citizens. They have, so to speak, monopolized the liquor traffic; they are bound together by a kind of free masonry, and with small regard to whom they vote with, Democrats or Republicans, they give the whole weight of their political influence in favor of free liquor.
With here and there a notable exception, the Roman Catholic Church throws its influence on the same side; hence its church fairs are carnivals of drunkenness.
The two extremes of our American society do also largely join in this clamor for free liquor. "The upper ten thousand," those that arrogate to themselves that they are par excellence, theeliteof the nation—albeit that their assumed gentility is sometimes but a shoddy or shabby gentility—make the road from the top of society to the bottom, and from thence to hell, as short as possible, by assuming that it is aristocratic to tipple.
When from these so-called upper circles, we go down to the bottom of society, what shall we say of that great multitude of men and women, crushed into poverty, helplessness and ignorance, groping as the blind grope in darkness; and who find in the dram-shop a momentary oblivion to their miseries?
To these elements of opposition to prohibition we must add another class of men—the professional politicians. These, like the chameleon, take the color of every object they light on. To them the good Lord and the good devil are equally objects of respect, and possible worship; and, having all mental endowments accurately developed, except the endowment of conscience, they hold that all things are legitimate that bring grist to their mill. These will be good prohibitionists when prohibition dances in silver slippers; but now they do duty on the other side.
The above picture contains a very fair analysis of the elements of the vote in opposition to the prohibitory amendment, except that, perhaps, we ought to add the vote in opposition to a well-intended class of men who have no proclivity for liquor, and who, perhaps, could give no better reason for their vote but that they abhor innovations, and are content to do as their fathers and grandfathers did before them.
Notwithstanding, prohibition carried in the State by eight thousand majority. It is noteworthy that six counties, lying along the Missouri River, and having in or near them the cities of Atchison, Leavenworth, Wyandotte, White Cloud and Kansas City, and which also contain the largest foreign-born population in the State, gave heavy majorities against the amendment.
It is self-evident that if the execution of this law is left to the municipal authorities of the above-named cities, or to the officers elected in the above-named counties, then the saloon keepers and liquor dealers will, without let or hindrance, trample under foot both the constitution and laws. The proof of this lies in the fact that, in time past, the liquor dealers have ridden rough-shod over all laws enacted in the interest of temperance. For example, the law provided that they should not sell to boys under age; the law provided that they should not sell on the Lord's day. The law forbids bribing at elections; but the bribery of strong drink at elections, in the cities, has been just as common as the elections; and church members, and even preachers, who were candidates for office, have been blackmailed to get the money to buy the liquor. It will be asked, What, then, do we gain who live in these river counties, and in these cities, by the passage of this prohibitory law? We gain much.
1. Thus far these law-breaking liquor dealers have acted, in carrying on their business, under the shadow and protection of law. This protection is now withdrawn.
2. The government has hitherto been in partnership with liquor dealers in the infamous business of making drunkards. This partnership is now dissolved.
3. The appetite for strong drink is not a natural appetite. It is an appetite artificially created in children, boys and young men. It is not for the public welfare that it should be created at all. The scheme and plan of the popular saloon is to create this appetite, and to strengthen and foster it after it is created.
The whole business of the saloon looks in this direction. To this end are its flashing lights, its glittering decanters, its rainbow tints, its jolly good fellowship and boon companionship, and thebonhomieof the portly saloonkeeper. All these, in the purpose and intent for which they exist, mean the death of the body and the soul of the man that enters these gates that lead down to hell. The saloon is a serpent, with the serpent's fascinating beauty and power to charm, but with the serpent's deadly bite. "At the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder." Kansas has wisely ordained that it will not maintain by the public authority and at the public expense poisonous serpents to sting the people to death,
4. Men object: "The selling of liquor will go on, but you will drive the business into dark places and into the hands of disreputable men." To this temperance men reply: "That is just what we want. We wish to take away every vestige of respectability from the man that sells liquor. We intend that it shall be sold—if it must be sold at all—in dark cellars and in back alleys, and that the men that sell liquor shall take rank among the law-breaking and dangerous classes of society,"
5. The one potent charm and omnipotent argument that has served as a gift to blind the eyes and an opiate to lull to sleep the consciences of the municipal authorities of our cities has been the revenue they have derived from liquor license laws. For example, the city of Atchison has derived from this source a revenue of $10,000. This revenue was paid not alone by her own citizens, but by all men who were drawn to the city for purposes of business or pleasure and who could be induced to patronize the saloons. And this has been a perpetual menace to the safety of families living in the country who did business in the city. This revenue is gone. It is hopelessly and irrecoverably dried up. The Missouri river will turn and flow backward towards its source before this revenue, which is the price of blood, like the thirty pieces of silver for which Judas sold his Master, will ever come back again. After Jesus had cast a legion of demons out of the demoniac that dwelt among the tombs, this man was far more impressible with regard to motives addressed to his better nature than while he was possessed by these demons; so we may charitably hope that now, after ten thousand evil demons have been cast out of the hearts of the mayor and common council of the city of Atchison, these dignitaries will be more impressible with regard to motives of morality, humanity, and of the public welfare.
Meantime, temperance men look on the whole business of liquor license as an unspeakable madness. Regarded simply as a question of dollars and cents, they look on it as a horrible nightmare—a hallucination fallen on men nearly allied to that form of mental abberration which carries men to mad-houses and insane asylums, a strange and mysterious perversion of the human faculties. Regarded in its economical aspects, they hold that it would be just as good economy and as much the dictate of common sense, to obtain a revenue by licensing murder, theft, burglary, robbery, and harlotry, as it is to license the sale of intoxicating drinks as a beverage.
It will be seen, then, that prohibition incorporated into the constitution of Kansas, does not, by any means, give us the victory; it only places us in a position to fight a fair and equal battle hereafter. We are, like Israel, shouting triumphantly, "I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he drowned in the Red Sea."
But beyond us are parched and desert sands, poisonous serpents, savage wild beasts and mortal enemies. All these must be conquered before we finally rest in the happy Canaan.
It is now conceded by the best informed actors in this great drama or tragedy, that Pardee Butler, as much or more than any one man, made the prohibition movement in Kansas the marvelous success it is. The generation is yet to come that will rise up to do him rightful honor.
From '54 to '60 Pardee Butler was the Moses to the church in this wilderness, and for years following he was in some sense like Paul, "having the care of all the churches." But from the beginning he was the foremost man by virtue of natural and acquired ability, although a reluctant following was often given because of former habitudes and shibboleths, socially. There were other men in different localities who battled grandly for the truth and sowed the seed of the kingdom with firm and loyal hand: Brethren Yohe and Jackson, of Leavenworth, followed by the Bausermans, Joseph and Henry, Gans of Olathe, Brown of Emporia, White of Manhattan, and others equally worthy,—all pioneers in every good sense, and now all gone to their reward, with the exceptions of Brethren Yohe and the Bausermans. Without being formally chosen Pardee Butler was the recognized leader of these sanctified few, and no home where they entered was too humble, or field where they toiled too barren, for the light of his countenance to cheer, or the strength of his arm to be felt. In the polity and development of the church, as in other fields of moral and social struggle, he was far in advance of the time; and up to the day of his death, this was one of the great burdens that rested upon his heart.
The membership coming to the Territory, and which, of course, formed the nuclei of churches, was a heterogenous compound. In many respects there was no possible assimilation; but so far as the simple tenets of the primitive faith were concerned, there was little or no difference. But as to plurality of bishops in the congregation, their tenure and jurisdiction of office, the relations of comity between sister churches, the duties and powers of an evangelist, the laying on of hands in induction into authority, instrumental music in the congregation, the Sunday-school and its organization, the order of social worship, the mid-week meeting for prayer, and numerous other matters of scriptural life, there were as many shades of opinion as there were of dialects; and the tenacity with which they were maintained, those not familiar with the time and its environments can hardly hope to know. Yet upon all these and kindred questions, Bro. Butler had singularly clear-cut and advanced opinions. He has often said to me, "How very obtuse the churches seem to be on the plain teaching of Scripture. And the preachers are equally ignorant, or else they are willing to go limping and halting, when they could as well and better be easily marching and leading their sanctified hosts to marvelous victory."
He did not feel, or even make manifest, that he recognized his greatness in these directions only as he labored to bring the congregations and their officers up to his ideals.
In the first struggles to bring the scattered congregations into co-operative unity, he was the head and heart of the movement; and through all the varied successes and failures of those non-cohesive times and men, he never lost courage or intimated aught else than the success which now crowns the work.
I regarded him as the finest ecclesiastical historian among us, and because of his knowledge here, coupled with the philosophy that grew out of it, linked to the genius of Christianity itself, he was, by educational intuition, a missionary zealot.
Carey and the Judsons, and Barclay and Livingstone, with all others of like character, were what he termed "ripe fruit" from the Good Tree. He was to the churches in Kansas what these men and women were to the people among whom they labored. Visiting every outpost, gathering the straggling sheep into folds and striving to secure shepherds for them, stripping the fleecy garments from the wolves, uncovering the sophistries of the various polytheisms, immersing the converts and exhorting the saints, the thirty-five years he spent in Kansas were years of severest mental, moral and physical labor; and from which he asked no respite until God called him.
Truthfully this Scripture may be written as his epitaph: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth; Yea, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors and their works do follow them."