Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler

by Pardee Butler

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. A sustained paper 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 the Luminary, 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 the Review, 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 the Luminary under 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.