Baptists, “Friends to Humanity.”—Their Anti-slavery position.—Mr. Clark joins them.—Manner of his reception.—His Views of African Slavery.—Views of African Colonization.—Made Life-member of a Colonization Society.—Circulars on Slavery.—Personal behavior.—Conversational Gifts.—Writes Family Records.

A class of Baptists had commenced organizing churches, first in Illinois and then in Missouri, denominated, as a kind of distinction from other Baptists, as “Friends to Humanity.” They were frequently called emancipators by others. They were opposed to slavery, and being desirous of operating in a quiet and peaceful manner against the commerce in human beings, this class adopted rules by which they were to be governed in the admission of slave-holders into the churches. The organization originated in Kentucky, in 1807, and made a division in a small association in Illinois in 1809. They would not receive persons to membership “whose practice appeared friendly to perpetual slavery;” that is, those who justified the holding of human beings as property, on the same grounds of right as they claimed their horses or other kinds of property. They did admit to membership in the churches of Christ slave-holders under the following exceptions.

1. Persons holding young slaves, and recording a deed of emancipation at such an age as the church should agree to.

2. Persons who had purchased slaves in their ignorance, and who are willing the church should decide when they shall be free.

3. Women who have no legal power to liberate slaves.

4. Those that held slaves who from age, debility, insanity, or idiotcy were unfit for emancipation. And they add, “some other cases which we would wish the churches to judge of, agreeable to the principles of humanity.”

These Baptists differed widely from modern abolitionists of the Northern States and England, at least in the following particulars.

1. They never adopted the dogma that slave-holding is a “sin per se,”—a sin in itself, irrespective of all the circumstances in which the parties might be providentially placed. Hence they could consistently buy slaves and prepare them for freedom; or contribute funds to enable slaves to purchase themselves, with a clear conscience.

2. They never aided fugitive slaves to escape from their masters, or secreted them, in violation of the constitution and laws of the land.

3. They never interfered in any objectionable way, with the legal and political rights of slave-holders. They preached the gospel in an acceptable and successful manner among slave-holders.

4. They aimed to do good both to master and servant, in a quiet, lawful and peaceable mode.

5. They endeavored to consult the true interests of all parties concerned.

6. They ever upheld the constitution and laws of the country in a peaceful way. Some of this class were chosen to official stations in both the territory and state of Illinois, and took the oath to support the constitution and laws of the United States without quibbling and evasion.

Their general faith and practice corresponded with the principles of Baptists in general Union.

Mr. Clark had gradually become a Baptist in all respects. For eight or ten years after he had been baptized in the manner already described, he remained in an independent position. With the exception of his visits to the lower country, the larger portion of his time he spent on the western side of the Mississippi, with occasional visits to his Illinois friends. The members that remained of the society he organized near Bellefontaine in Illinois, had attached themselves to other churches,—some to the Baptists, and others to the Methodist Episcopal church. Those about the Spanish pond and Coldwater settlements in St. Louis county gradually became Baptists, and regarded him as their pastor and spiritual guide. For some years he watched the course of his old friends, the Lemens’ and others of that class. He felt deeply interested in their anti-slavery position. Their quiet, unobtrusive method of managing the perplexing question of slavery corresponded with his own views and experience. The father, his old friend and associate, had become an ordained minister, and two of his sons, who had studied under Mr. Clark, were now heads of families, and joint pastors of Cantine, (now Bethel) church, and, with their compeers in the ministry, were performing much itinerant service in the destitute settlements. Benjamin, the eldest son of Captain Joseph Ogle, was an ordained minister in this connection of Baptists. Father Clark and these brethren had always enjoyed fraternal intercourse, though no formal church connection had been formed. His manners were so inoffensive, his labors in the ministry were so disinterested and unremitting, his views were so scriptural, and his daily conduct so fully exemplified a life of faith on the Son of God, that no one thought of calling in question his regular standing in the ministry. He might have lived and died without reproach, and enjoyed the confidence of all good men in the same isolated position he had occupied from 1796. But his sound judgment guided him, and the impressions received in prayer prompted him to unite with others in a formal association. He was fearful he might set an example for erratic preachers to follow.

This class of Baptists held an annual meeting within the bounds of their churches on each returning autumn, though they had not assumed the form of a regular association. Such a meeting Mr. Clark attended, with some of the brethren from Coldwater, and proposed union and coÖperation. Not from any necessity of knowing more of his character, but as a precedent for subsequent cases he was examined on his Christian experience, views of doctrine, and practice. The result being highly satisfactory, he was received by the hand of fellowship being given by all the brethren present, while an appropriate hymn was sung.

His views on African slavery gradually acquired firmness and consistency. We have traced his convictions on this subject to his exquisite sense of human rights, his innate principles of natural liberty, his sympathies with afflicted and oppressed humanity, his own deprivation of liberty by the British press-gang, and his imprisonment for nineteen months by the Spaniards in Havana. In a personal acquaintance of fifteen years, and the examination of various fugitive papers, we find no confusion of thought, and no lack of just conceptions of the subject. His intercourse with slave-holders was ever courteous and kind. He never obtruded his opinions where no good impressions could be made, nor in any way disguised his sentiments before any person. His frankness and candor were so well known, that all classes had entire confidence in his motives and mode of treating this subject.

When the subject of the colonization of free colored persons in Africa was brought to his mind by the formation of the American Colonization Society, he hailed it as an omen of good. He understood the strong objections to the emancipation of slaves remaining amongst us. He understood well the prejudices against the peculiarities of the African race, as one of the barriers to amalgamation with white people, and amidst the gloom that surrounded the hopeless bondage of that race, he saw one luminous spot in the moral hemisphere. The star of hope appeared to him to arise in Africa. The finger of providence pointed in that direction, and he abounded in faith and prayer for success in the enterprise. He was not so visionary as to imagine there would be no defects in its management, or no drawbacks in the colonization movement. He well understood it was an object not to be accomplished in one generation, and that its influence upon emancipation must be gradual and indirect. He desired to have an influence produced in the minds of slave-holders towards the moral and religious interests of the slaves.

So long known and so well understood were his anti-slavery principles, and his interest in the colonization scheme as the means of removing one of the most formidable obstructions to emancipation, that the ladies of Lofton’s prairie, then in Greene, (now Jersey) county, Illinois, one of his monthly preaching stations, paid him the compliment of making him a life member of the county auxiliary society.55 Mr. Clark wrote several circulars for the annual association of Baptists, to which he belonged, on the subject of Slavery, which were published in their minutes. They were dictated by a courteous and christian-like spirit, plain, pointed, impressive and efficacious.

After he joined the Baptists, his labors were the same as before, except in a wider range of traveling, and more extended christian intercourse. No time was wasted in idleness or frivolous pursuits. Always cheerful, always the same devout, praying man. There were two or three families in Missouri, as Upper Louisiana was called from the period of the organization of the territory in 1812, where he made his home. All his earthly wants were cheerfully provided for by his friends. Certain mothers in Israel vied with each other in providing his annual supply of clothing; the domestic manufacture of their own wheels and looms. The cloth was the same as was then worn by the farmers of the country, but was kept by the wearer in a neat and tidy manner. He did not live to enter on the era of this frontier, when dress, equipages, furniture, and houses, as in the old states, were used for the special benefit of other people’s eyes. Nor at that period would rank, or social position be detected by the dress a man or woman wore.

Mr. Clark was noted for refinement and simplicity. His personal appearance and dress were noticed for neatness. His habits, of which he scarcely appeared conscious, were those of the gentleman. Though he used tobacco, he never acquired the filthy practice, still very common in this country by rude and ill-mannered young men, of spitting about the fire place, stove, and furniture. If he had occasion to discharge the saliva, he invariably stepped to the door, though it might have been in a log cabin. He used the bath frequently by resorting to some retired spot in the creek or river. For many years, and until the close of life, he bathed his feet in cold water at all seasons of the year. We have known him walk a quarter of a mile, in extreme cold weather in the winter, to a spring or creek that he might lave his feet and wade in the cold water. Long practice made this habit a luxury.56 In all his personal intercourse, and manner of address, one could perceive not only good breeding, but a nice sense of propriety. His visits in families were no less effective in moral cultivation, than his public preaching, though that was impressive and interesting, and the instruction given highly scriptural and evangelical. He possessed a gift not very common, and probably little cultivated by ministers, in introducing the subject of personal religion, in a pleasant, conversational way.

A stranger, on witnessing his mode, would have seen nothing ministerial, dignified, or professional. There was no change in the tones of his voice, and effort made to introduce a subject not relished by the party. There was no affectation of concern for others, no cant, nothing in style or mode that differed from his conversation on ordinary topics. Young persons, unused to be addressed on such a subject, soon found themselves in the presence of a familiar friend. No man could make a more touching appeal to the mother of a young family, and while he awakened her maternal feelings to the moral and eternal welfare of her offspring, he scarcely failed impressing on her own conscience concern for her personal salvation.

It was a pleasure to him, and a gratification to the families he visited, to write out the family record in his peculiarly neat and correct chirography, in the household Bible. And when a new Bible was purchased, its possessors waited many weeks, and even months, until Father Clark, as every one familiarly called him, visited them and made the record. These Bibles are preserved to this day, and may be found among the descendants of the pioneer families, dispersed as they are over a wide extent of territory. The first immigrants to Iowa, and several families who went to Oregon, carried these copies as choice memorials of a much venerated man.

For the last fifteen years of his life there was so much uniformity in his labors, that were we to follow out this period in detail, it would be but a repetition of the same things from year to year. Such incidents as are necessary to spin out the thread of the narrative and finish the portraiture of this good man, will be crowded into the concluding chapter.