Life and Letters of Rev. Aratus Kent Introduction

The occasion of the controversy with Chapin was the movement by the New School Presbyterian Church (which referred to itself as the “Constitutional Presbyterian Church”) to establish its own Theological Seminary in the Northwest. Kent called the proposition “no child of mine.” Probably because so many of his closest friends and old time associates were supporters of the plan, he did not feel willing to divorce himself entirely from it. Local pride may also have played a role, for Kent allowed that “Perhaps Galena is as good a point all things considered as any other” for the new seminary’s location.^212[212] He did decline to be named the financial agent.^213[213] The stipulation that the Seminary would not commence until it had $30,000 in capital reflects Kent’s fiscal conservatism, but may also have been Kent’s subtle way of decreasing the probability of success. He displayed less conservatism when the Rockford enterprise was begun on a shoestring. Kent also believed that the seminary should not be part of a college, probably to protect the fledgling institutions at Beloit and Rockford from damaging competition. The following letter to the Secretaries of the A.H.M.S. was perhaps not the child of Kent, but it was in his hand.^214[214]

The subject upon which we address you, is that of a Theological Seminary proposed to be located in this city, under the auspices of the Constitutional Presbyterian Church. The subject is not altogether a new one. It has for some time past been under serious and prayerful consideration by some of the friends of Christ's kingdom, both at the West and at the East. Fully persuaded as we are in our own minds, of the expediency, necessity, and feasibility, of establishing such an Institution we are unwilling to put forth any positive efforts for the accomplishment of the object, until we shall have asked counsel of those at a distance, in whose wisdom and judgment we can confide, and whose paramount regard for the Church of Christ we cannot question.

With a map of our country before you; you will at once observe that this vast region of the Northwest is, to some extent, an isolated district, separated from the East by distance and our inland seas, and from the more central Southern portions of our country, by distance also, and non-commercial intercourse. This region embraces Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and what is soon to be the Territory of Nebraska. Scattered over this vast territory, is already a population amounting to about two millions of souls. This number is rapidly increasing. Especially is there an increasing tide of population pouring into the fertile and healthy region of the Upper Mississippi. Missouri, Minnesota and Iowa will soon number their Millions of people. Illinois has already a million.

Now, that this wide-spread territory of the Northwest, and its teeming population, should be supplied with an adequate ministry from the East, is, in our opinion, out of the question. Indeed, Such a supply cannot even now be had. Many of our most thriving villages and most populous agricultural districts, are without a Presbyterian or Congregational ministry, nor can our young men go to the East for theological instruction. The distance and the expense are alike too great. Had we a Theological Seminary here at the present time, it is believed that young men would be found in it, many of whom must relinquish the hope of entering the sacred office, by reason of the want of such an Institution. We are furthermore persuaded, that other things being equal, it is far better that the men who are to labor in this Western field, should be trained upon Western ground. The reasons for this are obvious.

As has been intimated already, it is proposed that this Seminary shall be founded and conducted under the auspices of the Constitutional Presbyterian Church. We are fully persuaded that while this branch of the Church is unimpeachable in the soundness of its faith, its polity is most happily adapted to the prevailing qualities of Western mind and Western society, and that under its energetic and plastic influence, the most salutary and desirable type will be given the ecclesiastical character of this region. By the foregoing observations, we do not mean that the Seminary shall be purely and exclusively of a denominational character. We mean simply this, that while in matters of Church polity, the largest freedom of opinion shall be allowed, the Institution shall be under the immediate supervision of the Presbyteries of the Northwest, its Board of Trustees being chosen from those Presbyteries, and that its Professors shall be connected with the Constitutional General Assembly.

The location proposed for this Institution is the city of Galena. The advantages of this location are numerous and obvious. Galena, including its suburbs, already numbers more than six thousand inhabitants. It is destined unquestionably to be the largest city of the Northwest, Chicago excepted. It is to be the great depot of the Upper Mississippi. It is a healthy city. It is central to the region proposed to be supplied with a ministry by the Seminary in question. It is central also to a vast and fertile agricultural region, to whose sons we are to look for the future ministers of the Northwest, and for missionaries to the territories lying still farther West. It is very soon to be connected by rail-road with Chicago, and eventually with the head-waters of the Missouri. It is the principal port of the Upper Mississippi, and at every point of the compass is connected with thousands of miles of water communication. The expense of living here, is as cheap as in any other city of the Union. This city is already possessed of great wealth, and that wealth is on the increase. It is central to the mining region, where thousands arc to be employed in the production of lead, and among whom the students of the Seminary might be usefully employed as transient missionaries. Indeed, with a map of the Northwest before you, you cannot fail to see at once the advantages of this location for such an Institution as that proposed.

The plan contemplated for the establishment of the Seminary is this: To raise ten thousand dollars on the field designed more immediately to be benefited by it, for the purchase of the necessary grounds, and for the erection of suitable buildings. We have encouragement to believe this can be done. The grounds and buildings being thus provided for, it is proposed to raise twenty thousand dollars elsewhere, for the endowment of two professorships. It is further proposed that the Seminary shall not go into operation until the thirty thousand dollars shall have been actually realized and appropriated as above. In this way, all embarrassment from debt will be forestalled.

Such is a brief outline of the plan proposed for the establishment of a School of the Prophets for the North. west. To us it appears not only exceedingly desirable, but a matter of inevitable necessity, that such an Institution should be founded either at this city or at some other point, for the region of the Upper Mississippi, and for the regions beyond. Our Seminary at Cincinnati, from its remoteness, and its geographic location, cannot meet the wants of this field. It is less accessible to us than New York or Andover. Moreover, the students going from that Seminary, are wanted for Ohio, Indiana, and the Southern States. The Northwest alone is not provided for. Aside from Lane Seminary, we have no theological school West of the Alleghenies.

Now, sir, with the map of this country before you, we ask you to give the subject of this communication your prayerful and candid consideration. In proposing it, we assure you we are not actuated by motives of mere local benefit. We look simply to the future welfare of this vast region, so soon to be the dwelling place of millions of men. Do you, all things considered, think it advisable to make an effort for the establishment of such an Institution as that above contemplated, and at this city? Do you think the plan a feasible one ? And shall it have your hearty co-operation? An answer at your earliest convenience is solicited.

Yours in the bonds of the Gospel,

S. G. SPEES,

A. KENT,

E. D. NEILL,

W. C. BOSTWICK,

C. S. HEMPSTEAD,

H. NEWELL,

GEO. W. CAMPBELL,

JAMES SPARE,

WM. H. BRADLEY.

The Galena Theological Seminary never got from paper to reality. Nothing in Kent’s correspondence indicates that he was disappointed.

Perhaps more important than all his organizational and philanthropic efforts, Kent served as a stellar role model. The son of one of Kent’s associates recorded the following observations in his diary: “Mr. Kent[was] here today. Mr. Kent is a good man. He seems to show a regard and feeling in every one. He is perfectly plain spoken and open hearted. He treats me with much respect and fatherly (it might be called) feeling. I like such a character. Nothing stuck up. Nothing impulsive, with true heartedness. All goodness. Such as draws the hearts of the young to one. Ask God may I be such a one.”^215[215]

In at least one way, Aratus Kent’s involvement in higher education was no different than any other parent’s: “My Lewis and Mary [two of his adopted children] were waiting my return for money to go back, the one to Beloit Col. and the other to Rockford. Sem.”^216[216]

 

Aratus Kent, The A.H.M.S., and the Slavery Issue in Northern Illinois

Personally for Aratus Kent, slavery was a most vexing issue. His eulogizers, many years after his death, recalled Kent as an ardent anti-slavery man.”Father Kent was very much opposed to Slavery in the Northwest. There were slaves in Galena in the early days. Their shacks still stand. The records of the Presbyterian minutes abound with Father Kent’s deep and profound aversion to slavery. He preached against it wherever opportunity afforded. Any who practices it “should not be invited to our pulpits for the fellowship of our chgurches.’ He said in 1849 that “the holding and treating of human beings as chattels is a sin directly opposed to the gospel and to the Law and Prophets as interpreted by our Lord Jesus Christ.’”^217[217] Sadly, none of Kent’s sermons demonstrating his “deep and profound aversion” survive.

Ironically, one of Illinois’ leading abolitionist journalists, Hooper Warren, arrived in Galena almost the same time as Aratus Kent in 1829. Kent and Warren did not find in each other kindred spirits, though Warren was later a close associate of the great Baptist Missionary John Mason Peck.

Galena was in many ways more akin to Cairo than Chicago during the decades that preceeded the Civil War. The settlement of Galena took place via the Mississippi, making its cultural connections decidedly southern, pointing toward St. Louis and Kentucky. There were 175 “colored people” out of a total population was 5600 living in Galena in the late 40’s.^221[221] In 1840, Jo Daviess County had a white population of 6386 and 125 “colored” persons. In 1845 the numbers were 12,220 and 205.^222[222] Chicago in 1844 had a total population of 7580, of whom only 65 were blacks.^223[223]

Negro slavery existed in the mines for some years. Many of the early miners were from slave-holding states, and brought their slaves with them. In 1823, when Captain Harris arrived, there were from 100 to 150 blacks there. Under the ordinance of 1787, slavery was forever prohibited in the Northwestern Territory, but Illinois sought to evade this organic law by the enactment of statutes by which these slaves could be held as “indentured” or “registered servants.” These statutes were known as the Black Laws. As late as March 10, 1829, the commissioners of Jo Daviess County ordered a tax of one half per cent to be levied and collected on “town lots, slaves, indentured or registered servants,.” etc. (Slavery existed in the mines until after this date, and was not abolished until about 1840.)

There was in 1878 living in Galena a venerable old black man, Swanzy Adams, born a slave, in Virginia, in April, 1796, who moved to Kentucky, and thence, in April, 1827, to Fever River, as the slave of James A. Duncan, on the old steamer “Shamrock.” His master “hired him” to Captain Comstock, for whom he worked as a miner. He subsequently bought himself for $1,500 (although he quaintly claimed that he had paid too much for himself: “good boys like me could be bought in Kentuck for $350”). “Old Swanzy,” as he is familiarly called, was the last survivor in Galena of the slaves held under the Black Laws of Illinois.^224[224]

Aratus Kent’s own brother, Germanicus, another prominant Northern Illinois pioneer, was the founder of Rockford and a member of the Illinois legislature. He also brought a slave with him when he came to Northern Illinois via Virginia (where he returned a few years later).

So Aratus Kent was surrounded by forces at least sympathetic to the “peculiar institution.” In addition, his affiliation with the nationally oriented A.H.M.S. required a certain tolerance, regardless of what his own personal convictions might have been.

The Illinois Legislature, at its first session after the admission of the State, re-enacted, with all their severity the “Black Laws” which had been in force in the territory. Those laws were originally largely copied from the slave codes of the states of Kentucky and Virginia, and under these a black person, free or slave, was practically without protection. If free, unless he could present a certificate of freedom from a court of record, he was liable to arrest and imprisonment, and to be sold to service by the sheriff of the county for a period of one year. If he sought employment he was in constant danger of being kidnapped by the desperadoes who infested the country, and sold “down the river.”^225[225]

Blacks in Illinois did not enjoy the legal presumption of freedom until Abraham Lincoln successfully appealed the case of Cromwell vs. Bailey to the Illinois Supreme Court in 1839. This decision held, contrary to the established rule in many southern states, that the presumption in Illinois was that a black was free and not subject to sale. Not until 1845 in Jarrot vs. Jarrot did the Illinois Supreme Court finally recognize the tenets of Article VI of the Ordinance of 1787. This decison effectively “repealed” Illinois’ infamous “Black Laws”.^226[226]

The statute referred to is the one under which American Home Missionary Owen Lovejoy was indicted at the May term, 1843, of the circuit court of Bureau county, and tried before a jury. Lovejoy was acquitted on the seventh day of October of the same year.

Owen Lovejoy was the Congregational minister at Princeton, Illinois. Like many Home Missionaries, he was a “conductor” on the underground railroad. The indictment contained two counts. The first count charged him with harboring a Negro slave named Agnes; the second with harboring a Negro slave named Nancy. Owing to the prominence of the defendant, the trial excited great interest throughout the State and the nation, and, as Mr. Lovejoy was viewed as a abolitionist. The acquittal of Mr. Lovejoy was considered a great triumph by the anti-slavery forces .

Prior to the trial a pro-slavery man approached Prosecutor Fridley and offered him a handsome fee if he would “send that abolition preacher to the penitentiary.” Mr. Fridley declined the fee, as it was his official duty to prosecute the case, and remarked to the zealous pro-slavery men that “the prosecution of Lovejoy was a good deal more likely to result in sending him to Congress than to the penitentiary,” a remark that proved prophetic.

Aratus Kent was not the only person credited with more anti-salvery zeal than he actually possessed. With the rapid growth of abolitionist sentiment during the pre-Civil War decade, a record of association with the antislavery movement in its earlier and less popular phases came to be considered a mark of distinction by many Northerners. Much of the bitterness and hostility toward Abolitionists which characterized the 1830’s had by that time disappeared, and in their place the popular mind had granted a somewhat heroic character to the early antislavery crusaders.

As sectional tensions heightened yearly after 1850 and as the antislavery movement attained political expression through the Republican Party, the once-hated Abolitionists began to achieve a measure of respect as spokesmen of the future. No individual personifies this historical rationalization than another Illinois missionary, John Mason Peck. With the help of journalist Hooper Warren, Peck tried to paint himself as a life long ardent abolitionist. In reality, Peck, like Kent, was a moderate on the slavery issue until such a moderate stance became unfashionable. Peck had stood with the conservatives in opposition to Elijah P. Lovejoy and other Abolitionists during the height of the controversy in the mid 1830's.^227[227] Unlike Peck, Kent was never so hypocritical as to claim for himself something that he had not been.

Abraham Lincoln, speaking in Galena in 1852, appreciated the work of Fathjer Kent. Charles Thomas, then a boy at his father’s house in Galena, heard Lincoln say to Rev. Aratus Kent, “We owe our recent victory to you, sir. The influence of you missionaries has been of great political value in our state.” Later, when Mr. Lincoln was President, Mr. Thomas called on him at Wahington and in the course of the conversation President Lincoln said to Mr. Thomas, “Do you remember a statement I once made to Mr. Kent at your father’s house?” “Yes,” said Mr. Thomas. “Well, I say now,” said Mr. Lincoln, “that to the labors of Home Missionaries like Mr. Kent, and other men like him, who started and fostered church and college in the Northwest, we owe the saving of the Northwest to the Union and the saving of the Union itself.”

Perhaps Lincoln included Rev. Elijah Lovejoy in his “other men like him” phrase, but he did not mention him by name. Curiously, few of the Home Missionaries mentioned the November 7, 1837 murder of their brother minister. Kent was no exception. Rev. Theron Baldwin, the Principle of the Montecello Female Academy in Upper Alton, wrote that the “mobites...had done more injury than Br. Lovejoy could have done by the publication of his paper for centuries.”^228[228] This hardly constituted a resounding endorsement of Lovejoy’s position on slavery.

Kent’s sometime partners in revivals, Rev. Asa Turner of Quincy and Rev. David Nelson were out spoken anti-slavery men, and as a result, Rev. Nelson’s college just east of Quincy was torched by a Missouri mob in 1843.^229[229] Two other A.H.M.S. missionaries, Samuel Wright and John Cross, were arrested for their alleged participation in the Underground Railroad, but their cases were nol prossed.^230[230]

The A.H.M.Society’s work in the South and among the slave holding Cherokess Indians quickly became a liability to the Society in Illinois. One of the Missionaries who resigned his commission was Oliver Emerson, of Iowa Territory.^231[231] Kent thought he had run accross this man, and did not hold a high opinion of him.^232[232] However, others thought Rev. Emerson a “lame but tireless...Apostle Paul.” Taken in the context of the lameness, Emerson’s request for horse and carriage does not seem as self indulgent as Kent painted it.

It is almost a year since I received a line from you respecting Mr. Emerson (whether it is the same as that man whose letter is published in the Home Miss. for Jan., I have no means of knowing but I suppose it is. He told me of another man of the same name who came out to Iowa, but he was then an open Baptist, who, I was informed, has since become Presbyterian.) I feel quite dissatisfied with him. And I will relate what has given me the dissatisfaction. He borrowed 10 dollars of me when he first came on, he has never come nigh me again, though he has been near Galena and I believe in town. I mentioned the circumstance to recently to Brother Dixon of Platteville. He had borrowed 10 dollars of him. He is but ill able to spare money to such men. He called on Brother Neill upon my introduction (about 12 miles out) and told such a pitiful tale that he promised and afterwards gave him a valuable horse, then Emerson had the meanness to say that he wished he had money to buy a carriage also for he did not know how much riding he might have to do and he wanted to be very choice of that horse! Putting these things together, and comparing them with what Brother Wright said who was in Lane Seminary with him, I have no expectation of any good report and I am afraid to have him enjoying your patronage ... I do not wish to burden you but I thought you ought to have the light you can get That Brother Wright is a Missionary near Knoxville, Ill. He could give you information about him while at Lane.^233[233]

Out of this growing dissatisfaction sprung the American Missionary Association in 1846. Treasurer of this new organization was one of the ubiquitous Tappan brothers, who happened to be a close friend of the Rev. Charles Grandison Finney, noted evangelist and a Professor at the new Oberlin College (an institution that also enjoyed Tappan largess.) Oberlin was created from an abolitionist splinter group broken off from the more conservative Lane Theological Smeinary in Cincinnatti. The “Oberlinites” were another group Kent instinctively distrusted, probably more over theological issues than on the slavery issue. None the less the wedge was being driven deeper between Kent and a growing number of his missionaries. Kent wrote to Dr. Badger:

“Dear Sir I have just heard a rumor that your minister Calvin Gray is an open and strong advocate of the Oberlin Theology. If this is so I think that Christian candor should have constrained him to avow it as his as his letters recommendatory gave no hint of it and I thought it necessary to give you notice of the fact that such a rumor was afloat lest you should be induced in my recommendation to commit yourself further than you would...”^235[235]

Kent went on to have a long and stormy relationship with “Brother Gray,” but he relented on his early opposition to Gray after a meeting with him:

I wrote you as I thought I ought in regard to Br. Gray. Since that I have conversed with him and with Br. Eddy whose installation at Mineral Point I attended last week.

Br Gray satisfied me that though he dissented from the course professed by ministers and presbyters, yet he did not wish to advocate the peculiarities of Oberlin Theol. And he left the impression on my mind that he had now no inclination to agitate that subject. And it appears to me wrong to drive him from us by refusing him the aid he seeks.^236[236]