Saving the Republic
The Tract House in lower
Manhattan served as headquarters for Protestant organizations dedicated to
evangelizing white settlers. Here, they planned and mounted a massive campaign
to spread Protestant Christianity to new states and territories in the Mississippi
Valley. Their aim? A Bible for every family, a church and Sunday school in
every settlement, and the distribution of millions of printed tracts that would
excite religious feeling.
Activity at the Tract House
ran full tilt. By the late 1820s, a race to evangelize was on, spurred by both
faith and by fear. Faith that, with encouragement, migrating white families
would stay committed to Protestantism, thereby expanding its dominance. Fear
that skeptics, Catholics, and heretics would occupy the West before Protestants
could. Tract House supporters worried that without Protestant virtues and
values, the Republic would fail.
Participants in the
Mississippi Valley Initiative saw the religious destiny of the continent as
neither manifest nor guaranteed. It was up to individual Christians to hasten
what many believed was God’s will by spreading Protestantism throughout North
America and around the globe.
Protestants
distributing religious tracts, 1825
Patricia
D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society
“The religious and political
destiny of our nation is to be decided in the West.”
—Rev.
Lyman Beecher, A Plea for the West,
1835
Lyman Beecher & A Plea for the West
The Reverend Lyman Beecher
helped found the missionary societies that used the Tract House as home base.
The American Home Missionary Society and American Tract Society represented
just two of the interdenominational groups established in the 1820s to save the
West for Protestantism.
Wealthy New Yorkers funded
and built the Tract House in 1825. Designed by the architect John McComb—a
supporter of missionary efforts—it was located on Nassau Street in lower
Manhattan, near the American Bible Society. Its windows looked upon City
Hall—another McComb creation. Easy access to the newly opened Erie Canal
provided a route to the Mississippi Valley and wider grounds for evangelization.
Beecher’s impassioned 1830s
sermon “A Plea for the West,” shown here, issued a further call to arms.
Protestants of different denominations needed to settle their differences and
work together to combat a rising Catholicism.
“There are thousands of souls
here on the road to hell; sinners that never hear the sound of the Gospel or see
a Tract.”
—Mississippi
Valley missionary, 1831
Religious Publications
The American Tract Society
maintained a showroom for religious tracts on the ground floor of the Tract
House. The tracts—written for adults and for children—contained short essays
and stories that conveyed a wide variety of religious lessons.
Missionaries visited the
showroom to view and order publications. Tract Society agents delivered the
tracts to western locales. Rev. Franklin Vail reportedly distributed over 175,000
tracts to settlements along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in 1830.
Ministers and trained laymen
were still scarce in the West, so printed tracts and Bibles extended
evangelical outreach. American Protestants increasingly relied on print to
cultivate individual relationships with God through reading.
American Tract Society
Bread cast upon the waters, ca. 1820s
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society
Women in the Movement
“Accompany, O Lord, with Thy
blessing, the few Bibles and tracts sent to the West.” So wrote Joanna Graham
Bethune, who worked in the 1820s to provide a tract to every American family,
starting in New York City. In 1825, Bethune and her female colleagues collaborated
with their male counterparts to organize the American Tract Society and establish
the Tract House.
Protestant women were largely
excluded from the ministry and national leadership roles, but they powered the
evangelical movement. Women ran local missionary societies, raised large
amounts of money, published religious newspapers and magazines, and formed new
churches and Sunday schools.
American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society
Shall we give Bibles to three millions of American slaves?, 1847
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society
The Question of Slavery
Protestant organizations
played important roles in the movements to oppose slavery. But they disagreed
among themselves over when and how fiercely to act. This tract is an example.
The tract's authors
criticized the American Bible Society for not providing the Holy Scriptures to
enslaved African Americans. “The great body of slaves are still unsupplied. It
is a sin to withhold the Bible from any.” Leaders of the American Tract Society
were similarly criticized for prioritizing the support of southern slaveholders
over the moral imperative of providing tracts to the enslaved. Their stance
cost them members among more radical abolitionists.
American Tract Society
Twenty-two plain reasons for not being a Roman Catholic, ca. 1830s–1840s
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society
Protestants vs. Catholics
Lyman Beecher and other champions
of Protestantism feared a Catholic revival in the Mississippi Valley—once
French territory. The newly established Catholic dioceses and schools and
growing numbers of Catholic migrants, priests, and nuns seemed to augur a great
contest between Christian faiths.
Publications like this one
not only castigated Catholic theology and practices but also warned that
Catholicism's hierarchical structure threatened American self-government and
free institutions. “The field of battle is the American republic, and
especially the West,” Beecher wrote. “If our light continues, their darkness
passes away.”
American Tract Society
To the neglected of religion, ca. 1830s–1840s
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society
Neglect of Religion
This text addressed itself to
“the neglecter of religion.” As western settlers began shedding and changing their
religious affiliations and practices, missionary societies tried to stem the
tide.
Tracts titled “I Am An Infidel,” “Dying Testimony of Believers and
Unbelievers,” and “A Warning to Sabbath-Breakers” rolled off the printing
presses.
Protestant organizers perceived
a worsening situation in the West. “Every year serves to disclose the spiritual
wants of our new settlements,” one report cautioned. “Unless something be
attempted on behalf of our brethren in the interior, we must expect to see some
of the fairest portions of the country become a prey to infidelity and vice.”
Forty-six select Scripture narratives from the Old Testament;
embellished with engravings, for the use of Indian youth
, 1838
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society
American Bible Society
The Holy Bible, 1828
New-York-Historical Society
American Tract Society
To children, ca. 1830s–1840s
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society
American Tract Society
Milk for babes, or, A text and verse of a hymn for every day in the year, 19th century
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society