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Moncure Conway (1832-1907) was a Virginian who started his career as a proslavery Methodist preacher. In the following passage from his Autobiography, he describes his encounter with liberal Quakers around Sandy Spring, Maryland, in the early 1850s.
These Friends were antislavery in a slave state, and both this witness and their quiet faith set Conway off on a searching process of personal and religious change. Soon Conway left the Methodist church and its hellfire-and-damnation theology, and he later returned to the South as a Unitarian minister. But his new antislavery views, though far from the most radical, resulted in his being exiled from his native region. I found this memoir fascinating and charming. I hope you will too.
There was a flourishing settlement of Hicksite Quakers at Sandy Spring [Maryland], near Brookville, but I never met one of them, nor knew anything about them. “Hicksite” was a meaningless word to me. “Uncle Roger,” their preacher, was spoken of throughout Montgomery County as the best and wisest of men, and I desired to meet him. When I afterwards learned that “Hicksite” was equivalent to “unorthodox,” it was easy to understand why none of them should seek the acquaintance of a Methodist minister.
The Quakers assembled on first and fourth days, and happening one Wednesday to pass their meeting-house, I entered, impelled by curiosity. Most of those present were in Quaker dress, which I did not find unbecoming for the ladies, perhaps because the wearers were refined and some of them pretty. After a half-hour’s silence a venerable man of very striking appearance, over six feet in height and his long head full of force, arose, laid aside his hat, and in a low voice, in strange contrast with his great figure, uttered these words:
“Walk in the light while ye are children of the light, lest darkness come upon you.” Not a word more. He resumed his seat and hat, and after a few minutes silence shook hands with the person next him; then all shook hands and the meeting ended.
I rode briskly to my appointment, and went on with my usual duties. But this, my first Quaker experience, had to be digested. The old gentleman, with his Solomonic face (it was Roger Brooke), who had broken the silence with but one text, had given that text, by its very insulation and modification, a mystical suggestiveness. . . .
Roger Brooke belonged to the same family as that of Roger Brooke Taney, then Chief Justice of the United States. His advice, opinion, arbitration, were sought for in all that region. Despite anti-slavery and rationalistic convictions, he leavened all Montgomery County with tolerance.
One morning, as I was riding off from the Quaker meeting, a youth overtook me and said uncle Roger wished to speak to me. I turned and approached the old gentleman’s carriole. He said, “I have seen thee at one or two of our meetings. If thee can find it convenient to go home with us to dinner, we shall be glad to have thee.” The faces of his wife and daughter-in-law beamed their welcome, and I accepted the invitation. The old mansion, “Brooke Grove,” contained antique furniture, and the neatness bespoke good housekeeping. So also did the dinner, for these Maryland Quakers knew the importance of good living to high thinking.
There was nothing sanctimonious about this home of the leading Quaker. Uncle Roger had a delicate humour, and the ladies beauty and wit. The bonnet and shawl laid aside, there appeared the perfectly fitting “mouse-colour” gown of rich material, with unfigured lace folded over the neck, and at a fancy ball it might be thought somewhat coquettish.
They were fairly acquainted with current literature, and though not yet introduced to Emerson, were already readers of Carlyle. I gained more information about the country, about the interesting characters, about people in my own congregations, than I had picked up in my circuit-riding.
After dinner uncle Roger and I were sitting alone on the veranda, taking our smoke he with his old-fashioned pipe, and he mentioned that one of his granddaughters had rallied him on having altered a Scripture text in the meeting. “In the simplicity of my heart I said what came to me, and answered her that if it was not what is written in the Bible. I hope it is none the less true.” I afterwards learned that he had added in his reply, “Perhaps it was the New Testament writer who did not get the words quite right.”
I asked him what was the difference between “Hicksite” and “orthodox” Quakers; but he turned it off with an anecdote of one of his neighbours who, when asked the same question, had replied, “Well, you see, the orthodox Quakers will insist that the Devil has horns, while we say the Devil is an ass.” I spoke of the Methodist ministers being like the Quakers, “called by the Spirit” to preach, and he said, with a smile, “But when you go to an appointment, what if the Spirit doesn’t move you to say anything?”
Uncle Roger had something else on his mind to talk to me about. He inquired my impression of the Quaker neighborhood generally. I said he was the first Quaker I had met, but the assembly I had seen in their meeting had made an impression on me of intelligence and refinement. For the rest, their houses were pretty and their farms bore witness to better culture than those in other parts of the county. “That I believe is generally conceded to us,” he answered; “and how does thee explain this speriority of our farms?”
I suggested that it was probably due to their means and to the length of time their farms had been under culture. The venerable man was silent for a minute, then fixed on me his shrewd eyes and said, “Has it ever occurred to thee that it may be becauseof our paying wages to all who work for us?”
For the first time I found myself face to face with an avowed abolitionist! My interest in politics had lessened, but I remained a Southerner, and this economic arraignment of slavery came with some shock. He saw this and turned from the subject to talk of their educational work, advising me to visit Fairhill, the Friends school for young ladies.
II
The principal of the school was William Henry Farquhar, and on my first visit there I heard from him an admirable lecture in his course on History. He had adopted the novel method of beginning his course with the present day and travelling back ward. He had begun with the World’s Fair, and got as far as Napoleon I. subject of the lecture I heard. It was masterly. And the whole school — the lovely girls in their tidy Quaker dresses, their sweet voices and manners, the elegance and order everywhere filled me with wonder. By this garden of beauty and culture I had been passing for six months, never imagining the scene within.
Fair Hill Friends Board School, circa 1850 [More information on the Fair Hill Friends School]
The lecture closed the morning exercises, and I had an opportunity for addressing the pupils. I was not an intruder, but taken there by Mrs. Charles Farquhar, daughter of Roger Brooke and sister-in-law of the principal, so I did not have the excuse that it would not be “in season” to try and save some of these sweet sinners from the flames of hell.
It was the obvious duty of the Methodist preacher . . . to cry: “O ye fair maids of Fair Hill, this whited sepulchre of unbelief — not one of you aware of your depravity, nor regenerate through the blessed blood shed [by Jesus] — your brilliant teacher is luring you to hell! Those soft eyes of yours will be lifted in torment, those rosebud mouths call for a drop of water to cool your parched tongues; all your affection, gentleness, and virtues are but filthy rags, unless you believe in the Trinity, the blood atonement, and in the innate corruption of every heart in this room!”
But when th[is] junior preacher [wa]s made, the susceptible youth [wa]s not unmade. According to Lucian, Cupid was reproached by his mother Venus for permitting the Muses to remain single, and invisibly went to their abode with his arrows; but when he discovered the beautiful arts with which the Muses were occupied, he had not the heart to disturb them, and softly crept away. This pagan parable of a little god’s momentary godlessness may partly suggest why no gospel arrows were shot that day in Fairhill school; but [if I] had to rewrite Lucian’s tale I should add that Cupid went off himself stuck all over with arrows from the Muses eyes.
However, Cupid had nothing to do with the softly feathered and imperceptible arrows that were going into my Methodism from the Quakers, in their homes even more than in this school. I found myself introduced to a circle of refined and cultivated ladies whose homes were cheerful, whose charities were constant, whose manners were attractive, whose virtues were recognised by their most orthodox neighbours; yet what I was preaching as the essentials of Christianity were unknown among them.
These beautiful homes were formed without terror of hell, without any cries of “what shall we do to be saved??” How had these lovely maidens and young men been trained to every virtue, to domestic affections and happiness? I never discussed theology with them; but their lives, their beautiful spirit, their homes, did away with my moral fears, and as the dogmas paled, creedless freedom began to flush with warm life. These good and sweet women, who said no word against my dogmas, unconsciously to themselves or me, charmed me away from the dogmatic habitat.
Anna Farquhar, a Sandy Spring Quakeress, circa 1850
When I [later] left the [Methodist ministry and church], the Quakers were given by many Methodists the discredit of having undermined my faith, but their only contribution to my new faith was in enabling me to judge the unorthodox tree by its fruits of culture and character. If theology were ever discussed by them, it was I who introduced the subject. They had no proselytising spirit.
I thought of joining the Quaker Society, but Roger Brooke advised me not to do so. “Thee will find among us,” he said, “a good many prejudices, for instance, against music, of which thou art fond, and while thou art mentally growing would it be well to commit thyself to any organised society?” [* When Benjamin Hallowell, the eminent [Quaker] teacher in Alexandria, Va., came to reside at Sandy Spring, I had many interesting talks with him, but found that even his philosophical mind could not free itself from the prejudice against musical culture. The musical faculty, he admitted, had some uses, e.g. that mothers might sing lullabies. ]
III
How often have I had to ponder those words of Jesus, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Men do not forsake their God; He forsakes them. It is the God of the creeds that first forsakes us. More and more the dogmas come into collision with plain truth; every child’s clear eyes contradict the guilty phantasy of inherited depravity, every compassionate sentiment abhors the notions of hell, and salvation by human sacrifice. Yet our tender associations, our affections, are intertwined with these falsities, and we cling to them till they forsake us.
For more than a year I was like one flung from a foundered ship holding on to a raft till it went to pieces, then to a floating log till buffeted off to every stick, every straw. One after another the gods forsake us forsake our commonsense, our reason, our justice, our humanity.
In the autumn of my first ministerial year I had to take stock of what was left me that could honestly be preached in Methodist pulpits. About the Trinity I was not much concerned ; the morally repulsive dogmas and atrocities ascribed to the deity in the Bible became impossible.
What, then, was “salvation”? I heard from [Friend] Roger Brooke this sermon, “He shall save the people from their sins, not in them.” It is the briefest sermon I ever heard, but it gave me a Christianity for one year, for it was sustained by my affections. They were keen, and the thought of turning my old home in Falmouth into a house of mourning, and grieving the hearts of my friends in . . . congregations that so trusted me, appeared worse than death. My affections were at times rack and thumbscrew. . . .”
Conway soon left the Methodist church, became a Unitarian, and an abolitionist who strove to promote a peaceful solution to the problem of slavery. In 1856, this pilgrimage brought him to cross paths with Progressive Friends. As he wrote:
I find by a letter in the New York Tribune of May 29, dated at Longwood, Chester County, Pa., May 22, that on that day I addressed the Progressive friends at their annual meeting [at Longwood]. The letter says : “Lastly, I may mention a brave and manly speech upon slavery, by the Rev. Moncure D. Conway. Manifesting all possible charity toward the slave-holder, he nevertheless denounced the system, and pledged his endeavour against it in bold and refreshing terms.” I had indeed taken it as my special task to plead for a more sympathetic consideration among anti-slavery people for the slaveholders suffering under their heritage. I remember well that assembly of liberal Quakers and Unitarian rationalists out there in the beautiful grove, and the warmth with which eloquent Lucretia Mott responded to my speech. . . . But alas! about the very hour of May 22 (1856), when I was pleading for tenderness toward the slaveholders, one of their representatives was raining blows on the head of a foremost champion of freedom, Senator Sumner!
[In a Congressional debate a few days earlier, Charles Sumner, anti-slavery Senator from Massachusetts had delivered a long, angry speech about the “Crime Against Kansas.” In it he voiced special denunciation of the history and politicians of South Carolina. On May 22, two South Carolina Congressmen, Preston Brooks and Laurence Keitt, came into the Senate chamber, where Brooks proceeded to beat Sumner nearly to death with a gold-tipped cane, while Keitt held off would-be rescuers with a pistol. The attack was loudly protested in the north, and widely celebrated in the South. With Sumner hovering near death, and public opinion inflamed, Conway’s efforts at Longwood for understanding and conciliation were swept away like confetti in a whirlwind.]
Excerpts from, Moncure Conway Autobiography: Memories and Experiences, Vol. 1. Cassell & Co., Ltd. London, Paris, NY and Melbourne: 1904 The volume is online in full text, free, here. More about the Progressive Friends is in my book, Angels of Progress.