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The Revolutionary War, like all
long-continued wars, was followed by a
period of moral unrestraint; tension
broken, a rebound followed. Dr.
Alexander, of Princeton, of the
Presbyterian church, and the Methodist
Bishop Asbury are in accord in the view
that in the period succeeding the War of
the Revolution, vital piety was at a low
ebb. The people were insensible to the
genuine spirit of religion, and "full of
the spirit of the world."1
A like condition obtained among the
people of Franklin who had derived from
the older sections, and who had removed
to the border in search of fortune. They
plunged whole-heartedly into a conflict
with the forces of nature. The reckless
hardihood bred by the war now found vent
in grim struggling with elemental forces
for the right to exist. Their spiritual
natures, if clamant at all, might wait
until tyrannous necessity relaxed its
hold. Men were compelled to think more
of the means of living than of the
meaning of life.
And with this border people another war
was unending. The red- men to the south
were ever-threatening and often
out-breaking foes. War-strain did not
cease. This condition was a challenge to
the churches. It was not unheeded.
The Presbyterian church had been first
in the field; and it now saw that there
was need of an augmented ministerial
force if the ground was to be held. From
Liberty Academy in the Valley of
Virginia Revs. Samuel Houston and Samuel
Carrick came to aid Samuel Doak in
spreading the gospel among the people;
and Rev.
Hezekiah Balch came across the mountains
from the stronghold of Presbyterianism,
Mecklenburg county, North Carolina, on
the same mission.
It is interesting to note that
contemporary with the declaration of
separate statehood in this region, there
was a demand for a new ecclesiastical
jurisdiction in the Presbyterian church.
Prior to 1785, the Presbytery of Hanover
was regarded by the Synod of New York
and Philadelphia as including the
settled parts of Tennessee and Kentucky.
In that year, Doak laid before the Synod
an application, signed by Balch,
Cummings and himself, that Abingdon
Presbytery be created; to be bounded on
the north by New River, and on the east
by the Appalachian mountains, the
southern and western limits left
unfixed. The request was granted, and
the first meeting of the new Presbytery
was appointed to be held in the bounds
of Franklin, at Salem church, Doak to
preside as moderator. The time fixed was
the first Tuesday in August, 1785. It is
not improbable that the idea of the new
ecclesiastical jurisdiction was
suggested to Doak by the establishment
of Franklin in which he was taking part
at this time. The planting of new
churches kept pace with the outward flow
of population; and when the State of
Franklin came to an end, there were more
than twenty churches of this
denomination established within the
limits of that State.
Two other denominations came to dispute,
and not without success, this undoubted
earlier supremacy of the church of the
Scotch-Irish settlers. That deep student
of American institutions and government,
James Bryce, has well characterized the
South as a region of "high religious
voltage"; commenting upon which,
Frederick J. Turner says the
characterization is especially
applicable to the Upland South, which
has always been responsive to emotion
and intensely democratic2
In In the efforts to cover so wide a
field with a corps of well-educated
ministers of the Presbyterian faith,
these few perforce were well nigh as
much itinerants as the circuit riders of
another church came to be. But as towns
were established and demanded the
continuous services of pastors, the
country districts and far-flung
settlements were left more and more to
the ministrations of the Methodist
circuit-riders and the Baptist preachers
who, with a zeal worthy of admiration,
preached a soul-stirring gospel that was
gladly heard by the common people of the
hill country.
The Baptists had come into the region
before the Methodists; and, as early as
1779, established a church at Buffalo
Ridge in Washington county, with Tidence
Lane as pastor. They were only one year
later than the Presbyterians in forming
a separate and independent association
in the new State. Holston Association
was organized October 30th, 1786, at the
Cherokee Meeting House, in Washington
county, Tidence Lane serving as
moderator and William Murphy as clerk.
The following churches were in the
Association: Kendrick's Creek (Double
Springs); Bent Creek (Whitesburg);
Beaver Creek; Greasy Cove (Unicoi
county); Cherokee Creek; North Fork of
Holston (near Kingsport); Lower French
Broad River (Dandridge).
In the original minute book, yet
preserved, is the "Plan of Association"
of this first Baptist association in
Franklin, and one of the earliest, if
not the first, west of the Alleghany
mountains:
1st. We hold it necessary to associate
together in council in order to give
counsel to the respective churches that
compose this Association, in order to
maintain our Christian fellowship.
2nd. Not as a legislative body to impose
laws or exercise any supremacy, each
church being an independent body.
3rd. We are not an association of
ministers, but of churches, each church
being represented by her own delegates,
freely chosen.
4th. Whereas, a church is constituted
externally by the parties entering into
mutual agreement in writing to maintain
the worship of God, according to the
Gospel order, and referring to the
articles of their faith; so churches by
their delegates constitute themselves an
Association by the confession of their
faith maintained to each other.
The independence and individualism
manifested in these articles accorded
with the spirit of the frontiersmen; and
has remained to the present time a
distinctive feature of the polity of the
denomination. A more rapid growth would
have resulted but for the anti-
missionary and non-progressive spirit of
the early Baptists. In 1788, according
to Morse's Geography, there were but ten
Baptist churches in Franklin, and those
of small membership, as against
twenty-three large Presbyterian
congregations.
Most of the Baptists were of the
Separate order; a few were Regulars, and
the tenets of all were essentially
Calvanistic.3
The ministers at this period were:
Tidence Lane from North Carolina;
William Murphy, Isaac Barton, Jonathan
Mulky, James Keel, John Frost and
Alexander Chambers, from Virginia. Most
of them continued to be permanent
residents of the country.
A Methodist circuit was formed in the
country the year preceding the formation
of the new State. In 1783 the Holston
circuit embraced a portion of Southwest
Virginia along with the
Holston-Nolachucky country. Rev.
Jeremiah Lambert was appointed to take
charge of it, and was the first
Methodist preacher in what is now
Tennessee. At the end of the first year
of his labors he reported a membership
of seventy-six. Rev. Henry Wills
succeeded him in 1784. In 1785, the year
in which American Methodism was placed
on an independent foundation, Wills was
presiding elder, and Richard Swift and
Michael Gilbert were the senior and
junior circuit riders. In 1787, the
circuit was divided into two, Holston
and Nolachucky circuits. Bishop Asbury
sent south to serve on the Nolachucky
circuit, a well-educated young man from
New Jersey, Rev. Thomas Ware, aged
twenty-eight years. Ware left an
interesting relation of his experience
among the frontiersmen, which appears in
another chapter. He was the first
preacher to visit and to minister to the
people south of the French Broad (in the
fall of 1787). The gospel of free grace
and free will met with a ready
acceptance, and Methodism grew rapidly.
It reached an element of the population
to which Calvanism did not appeal, and
vitalized the experience and rendered
less sombre the lives of many.4
Colaborers with Ware, under Rev. John
Tunnel as presiding elder, were Jeremiah
Mastin, Nathaniel Moore and Micajah
Tracey, circuit riders, and several
zealous "local preachers," some of whom
had preceded the itinerant preachers and
broken the bread of life to the settlers
in the cabins and woods.
Bishop Francis Asbury did not come to
the region until the spring of 1788, but
he had, on journeys through Virginia and
Carolina, conceived that a second great
epoch in American history would be the
conquest of the wilderness beyond the
Alleghanies and sensed the importance of
tincturing that conquest with religious
idealism; and he had urged young
ministers in the older States to accept
appointments on the frontier.
The Lutherans and the Quakers were yet
to send ministers into the country; and
the Episcopalians seemingly did not seek
an opportunity to reach out from their
stronghold on the seaboard and serve the
needs of the backwoodsmen.
The Moravians, in 1784, sent Rev. Martin
Schneider on a visit to the Overhill
Cherokees to ascertain the feasibility
of establishing a mission among the
Indians. He found few of the brethren in
Franklin, and it was no part of the plan
of his church to begin religious work in
the borders of that State.
There can be no disguising of the fact
that a considerable fraction of the
population felt little or no concern
about religion. In the nature of things,
some wild and turbulent characters were
drawn to the border and some of higher
type found vent in the adventurous
activities of border life, and in
breasting the blows of circumstance,
looking chiefly to the acquisition of
lands as reward for their aggressive
courage.
___________
1 Dr. Archibald Alexander in
Biblical Repository, April, 1848;
Asbury's Journal.
2 The Frontier in American
History, 167.
3 Benedict, Baptist Denominations,
790-4. The Holston and Watauga Baptists
came from the Sandy Creek church or
Association in North Carolina founded by
Stearns and his company of Separates or
New Lights from New England.
4 Price, Holston Methodism;
McFerrin, History of Methodism in
Tennessee. |
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