The Travel Letters of Alexander Campbell . . .

IN JAIL IN GLASGOW

This is out tenth and final installment in our study of Alexander Campbell’s travel letters. There is far too much yet to cover for us to do more than to consider some of the highlights; but these latter travels, covering roughly the last 15 years of his life, are in some ways the most revealing in that they reflect the mind of one who is critically evaluating the past as well as creatively living in the present.

Last time around we had brought Alexander back to Bethany in snow and ice after a long journey into Illinois and Missouri. A year or so afterwards, on April 22, 1847, he left for his longest journey of all, a trip abroad to the land of his fathers in Great Britain and Ireland. Along with numerous pieces of correspondence that he prepared while on this trip, he wrote 16 long letters to his eldest daughter, Clarinda, who was in fact the youngest daughter of his first wife, Margaret. These were passed on to co-editor W. K. Pendleton, and were distributed to readers of the Millennial Harbinger while Campbell was still abroad. These, along with information provided by his biographer, Robert Richardson, will be the chief source for this installment.

Alexander sometimes showed signs of being in no hurry. Though a fast steamer was by then available, he chose to sail to Liverpool on the Siddons, believing that the added luxuries of a slow sailing vessel would allow for some needed rest. By the time he embarked from New York he had already been gone from home almost a month, visiting and preaching along the way in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York.

In his first letter to Clarinda he tells her what to expect from the letters he planned to send each week, and they well reflect the lively interests of his entire life as well as in Europe: men and things, works of God and man, wonders and beauties of nature and art, customs and manners of saints and sinners, ways of both church and the world, books, sermons he both gives and hears. In other words, he was interested in everything.

At this time Ireland was suffering from a famine, and such notable of her children as Maria Edgeworth were asking for help from humanitarians in America, one of her letters appearing in the Millennial Harbinger. Alexander, like Paul of old. gathered funds from eastern churches, as well as from the congregation in Bethany, for the poor saints in Ireland. The St. Paul’s street church in New York contributed 75 dollars “in British gold” into his care.

While yet in New York he had some interesting visitors to his quarters: a distinguished Roman Catholic prelate who had seceded from the Pope and with no place to go in Protestantism since he chose to be nonsectarian; a Canadian consul who was as devoted to the simplicity of Christianity as anyone Campbell had ever seen in the world of business and politics. Even more interesting was a visit with Robert Owen, whom Campbell had debated years before in Cincinnati. It provided an occasion for Campbell to tell his daughter that “of all my opponents in debate, the infidel Robert Owen was the most candid, fair, and gentlemanly disputant I have yet met with, and a saint in morality, compared with some of my opponents.”

Sailing with him was James Henshall, who accompanied him all the way, himself preaching to many audiences along with Mr. Campbell. As they sailed out of New York, passing alongside Staten Island, Alexander pointed out the port where he had first set foot upon American soil some 38 years before. Friends in New York bade them adieu on board the Siddons, and then stood at the port waving to them until they could be seen no more. One of them wrote to Mrs. Campbell back in Bethany of her husband’s departure, describing how their eyes were fixed upon the ship, then upon the sails, until there was but a speck on the vast horizon, and how finally that speck was swallowed up by the ocean.

Along with money for the distraught in Ireland, Mr. Campbell bore with him numerous documents and letters to be delivered to various ones in the Old World. One such was a letter from Henry Clay, which the statesman volunteered to send along as a means of introducing Campbell to various British dignitaries. Campbell used it in gaining audience with the American ambassador in London, through whom he was introduced to both the House of Lords and the House of Commons. He was able to hear Lord Brougham orate upon the floor, a man he had longed admired for his persuasive powers.

While on the high seas for 33 days he wrote to Clarinda in great detail of his visit to Trinity Church in New York, assuring her that he would feel much more at home worshiping in some upper room than “amidst such idle and unmeaning pageantry.” He also wrote extensively of the sea that was bearing him to his old home, of the shoal of whales that sometimes exhibited themselves, the grampus and the porpoise, and mollusca. He wrote of the ocean bottom and its 8,000 species of fish then known to man, pointing out that God placed the terrain upon one vast ocean, and that below the water was an ocean of fire.

Several of the passengers became seasick, including Henshaw, who had to spend two days in bed. This gave Campbell pause to tell Clarinda that he had not spent a single day in bed for the last forty years of his life! Not only did he keep fit all the way to Liverpool, but he was ready when the captain of the ship asked him to address the passengers each Lord’s day. The sea was sometimes so rough that he had to tie his chair to the dining table when doing his writing, lest he be tossed against the wall.

Once in England, he met speaking appointments first of all in Chester, Wales, and Liverpool. In Liverpool 2500 heard him speak on the Holy Spirit. He wrote at length about these places. their people, culture and history, revealing himself to be a most observant person. He told Clarinda of one Dr. Henry Cole, who back in the days of Bloody Mary, Queen of Scots, was commissioned by the queen to bear papers to Dublin authorizing persecution of the poor Irish Protestants. On his way he spent the night in Chester. The hostess of the inn, hearing the doctor comment on the nature of the papers in his box, managed to purloin them, replacing them with a deck of cards with the joker face up. Once in the presence of the Lord Deputy and the privy Council in Dublin, he was obviously most embarrassed upon the presentation of the box. Summoned to retrace his steps and receive proper authorization from the queen, it was all in vain, the queen in the meantime breathing her last.

He also tells his daughter about the wealth of the Marquis of Westminster, which even then totaled more than two and a half million dollars. Visiting his palace, he tells of the 800 acres of pleasure grounds, lakes, and fishponds, with swans and deer and 22 varieties of English trees.

He justifies the lengthy descriptions of the Marquis’ wealth on the ground that it shows the littleness of human greatness. With all this wealth, Campbell observed, the Marquis cannot make a speech in the House of Lords. Nor does such wealth confer nobility of mind or produce or increase piety. “This world, then, in all its wealth and honors, never makes any man better, but generally makes him worse.”

On and on the letters go. In Nottingham he visited the home of the celebrated Lord Byron (“greatly gifted but unhappy”). In Shrewsbury he walked along the banks of the Severn, “decidedly the most beautiful walk I have yet seen in England,” and he tells Clarinda that Edward I resided there in 1277 and that it was a favorite retreat of Charles I. In Leicester he not only gave two addresses, but visited the Abbey where Cardinal Wolsey begged for a spot to be buried after living a life of luxury in the presence of the king who finally deserted him. Campbell was pleased to stand at the very spot where Wolsey pronounced the humiliating confession: “Had I served my God with half the zeal I have served my King, he would not thus have deserted my gray hairs.”

In Leicester he also called at the home of Lady Jane Grey, who became Queen of England for ten days, only then to die at the shrine of Bloody Mary in the Tower of London. As he walked the gardens of her home he recalled Lady Jane’s love of Plato and her refined learning and manners, as well as her unambitious and unassuming mind, thinking it melancholy that her end should be so tragic.

In London he delivered 15 discourses in seven different places, and he became so exhausted with such labors that he stole away to rest in Paris for several days, complaining that his French was not good enough to understand the people, talking as rapidly as they did. In London’s Hall of Debate he spoke on Has God Ever Spoken to Man? before an audience of skeptics. following which there was such an uproar of controversy that he finally took his hat and left. By midnight the skeptics settled down enough to pass a resolution thanking Mr. Campbell for his presentation.

He found Londoners indisposed to listen except at night, so he took advantage of daylight hours to visit places of renown, especially the great palaces of England, which he describes in great detail in his letters. The glory of Britain called forth his respect for Queen Victoria, whom he describes as “the most politically honored and admired woman in the world.” He spent an entire day at Windsor palace, describing it as “one of the most magnificent in the world.”

From London he went to Bambury, where he delivered three discourses at the Baptist Church. Then to Manchester and to Wigan; then to Huddersfield and Halifax. He spoke to large audiences all along, some days having as many as 3,000 auditors. He proceeded to Scotland, speaking at New Castle and Sunderland on the way.

At Berwick-upon-Tweed he addressed his first Scottish audience in a Church of Scotland, and he was heard with profound attention. It had been 38 years since he had left this land for the New World, being at that time a recent student at the university in Glasgow. In this, his twelfth letter home, he tells Clarinda that while speaking in the Scottish church he had never had such unhampered and unrestricted freedom. It must have been very surprising to her when upon reading her father’s fourteenth letter, she found that it was written from inside a Glasgow jail!

He was in jail because of a suit filed against him for defamation of character by one James Robertson, a Baptist minister who was active in Scotland’s anti-slavery society. A committee of the society called on Alexander once he arrived in Scotland to ascertain his views on slavery, since he was a prominent citizen of the slave state of Virginia. Not realizing who the men were and unaware of their intentions, he proceeded to express his disapproval of the antics of anti-slavery societies in both Britain and America.

The society proceeded to attack the Virginian with unrelenting vigor, even to posting placards in prominent places where Campbell was to speak. “Citizens of Edinburgh — Beware,” the signs would read, “The Rev. Alexander Campbell of Virginia, United States of America, has been a slaveholder himself and is still a defender of man-stealers!”

All this stirred excitement, with people more eager to hear Alexander Campbell than ever. But he continued with his lectures, promising to give one lecture in which he would fully explain his position on slavery, though he was quick to label the attack on him both false and libelous. Later in the conflict he wrote to Edinburgh Journal from Aberdeen that he would be pleased to accept the anti-slavery society’s challenge to debate the slavery issue with anyone they chose, including James Robertson, so long as he was not the Rev. James Robertson who was publicly censored and excluded from the Baptist Church for violating the fifth commandment in reference to his own Mother.

He went on to lecture in Glasgow and Lanark, but while planning to go on into Ireland, he was arrested by the sheriff of Lanark and was not allowed to leave the country. Mr. Robertson was suing him for damages to the tune of 5,000 pounds. This was reduced to only 200 pounds, and Alexander was offered the necessary bond by friends, but still he chose to go to jail because “I thought it might be of great value to the cause of my Master if I should give myself into the hands of my persecutors.” Mr. Robertson’s attorney feared the consequence of Campbell’s incarceration and offered to let him go on to Ireland and meet his appointments if he would promise to return on the day of the hearing. This Campbell would not do, refusing to honor the warrant. So he went to jail.

This displeased the Glasgow brethren, his refusing their offer for security and unnecessarily going to jail. But Campbell believed he was being persecuted for righteousness’ sake and did not want to escape it.

But he was hardly destined for a hard time of it, not even in jail. Several sisters doted over him, sprucing up his cell so as to make it more like a hotel than a prison, and waiting upon him daily for all his needs. And he was visited by friends incessantly, there being as many as eleven in his cell at one time. This went on for ten days, at which time the judge found the warrant against him illegal and he was dismissed.

Among Campbell’s weaknesses was a touch of stubbornness, and if his enemies resorted to dirty pool, he knew how to respond in kind. It is, after all, rather serious to accuse a man of incest with his own Mother. Such was rumored of one Rev. James Robertson which Campbell picked up while in Dundee, but there was no certainty of its truth; and if so, no assurance that his antagonist was the same man. In any event, if in writing to the Edinburgh newspaper he had omitted this reference, the matter would have passed more peacefully.

At this very time Mr. Campbell was suffering a loss back in Bethany far beyond what any prison could do to him. His eleven year old son, Wickliffe, drowned while swimming in Buffalo creek, leaving his Mother grief-stricken almost beyond repair.

This event set the stage for an experience for Mr. Campbell that has led mystics to claim him as one of their own, including no less that Arthur Ford, of the Bishop Pike-Arthur Ford TV seance fame, who referred to Campbell in one of his books as having unusual psychic powers. The day Wickliffe drowned his father was terribly disturbed in his sleep over in Scotland, so much so that he mentioned it at breakfast to his hosts, expressing fear that some calamity had befallen his family in Bethany. Ford also refers to the occasion in Alexander’s youth when an old woman appeared to him in his room as he slept and foretold the impending shipwreck that would hinder his trip to America with his family to meet their father, but assuring him that we would eventually go to the New World after all, that he would address vast audiences and be married twice. All this came true.

Campbell was now 60 years old, which was older then than it is now. His travels were mostly behind him, though he still had almost two decades to live. Some think he was never quite the same following the loss of Wickliffe, but he went on to have many more unusual experiences. In 1850 he again visited Baltimore and Washington, addressing both houses of Congress in the Capitol; and the same year he addressed the Indiana constitutional convention in Indianapolis.

In 1851 he toured Missouri again, mainly because the disciples there promised to endow a chair at Bethany College if he would, and in 1853 he visited Illinois, working for the college as well as the church. But his extended tours were about over, except that in 1857 the main building of Bethany College burned to the ground, and he again hit the trail, with W. K. Pendleton at his side, to raise $50,000 for the erection of what is now Old Main. This carried him as far as New Orleans.

In 1858 he was again in Washington to address a Baptist Church, and this time he had President Buchanan and part of his cabinet in the audience. In 1860 he took Mrs. Campbell with him on a visit to churches in Ohio and Indiana, but by this time the clouds of civil war were forming, with Alexander, unlike many citizens, well aware that military conflict was almost certain.

When Fort Sumter was attacked on April 12, 1861, Alexander Campbell was on a speaking tour in Charlottesville, Virginia, having with him both Mrs. Campbell and the famous Isaac Errett. He immediately can celled all engagements and hurried home to Bethany, noticing along the way preparations being made for the bloody conflict.

He was now 74 with only four more years to live. His travels were over. He would make lavish plans to visit with friends far and wide, only to be told by his family that it would be imprudent. In his senility he would talk at length of his many journeys, including elaborate descriptions of places he had never been, including the Holy Land. Though now relieved of his duties at the college, he would nonetheless make preparations to attend his morning class, only to be reminded that he did not have to.

Now his hair and beard were silvery white. The war he so much opposed raged on. The circulation of Millennial Harbinger was reduced drastically due to its large readership in the South, with which there was no communication. Bethany College suffered so much that it almost had to close down.

The same month that they killed Lincoln, Mrs. Campbell took Alexander to Louisville to visit their daughter Virginia. Here God seemed to have given him one last vial of strength, for he addressed both the First and Second Christian Churches with a vigor that reminded his hearers of his prime years. But on the steamer back home up the Ohio he was unable to respond when two Presbyterian ministers came to him and asked that he address those on board.

Mrs. Campbell also took him to see his lifetime friend James Foster, who lived but a few hours from Bethany. Foster and Campbell had frolicked together as boys back in Ireland, and they were pioneers together on the American frontier. And for over a half century they were co-laborers in the cause of reformation, Foster being a member of the old Brush Run church and among the first to follow Campbell in being immersed. Campbell was 76 and Foster was 79.

When the two men met they embraced and wept, and after spending several hours of delightful conversation upon their favorite themes and fond recollections of a lifetime, they said goodbye for the last time.

He spoke at the Bethany church one more time, basing his remarks on Eph. 1, and Dr. Richardson says it was one of the most interesting and animated discourses of his life, dwelling in the most eloquent terms upon the blessings that are in Christ.

Then on March 4, 1866 he embarked upon the greatest journey of them all. Selina was at his bedside, assuring him that the Savior would accompany him through the valley of the shadow of death. His last words were, “That He will, that He will!”

What a series of travel letters that would be!

As G. D. Prentice, editor of the Louisville Journal, wrote of him: “Surely the life of a man thus excellent and gifted, is a part of the common treasure of society. In his essential character he belonged to no sect or party, but to the world.” — the Editor