In this abrupt and unauthorized manner Jackson carried the Word of God and the salvation of Jesus Christ to darkest Alaska, and it was a curious fact that for the first seven definitive years of his mission he received not a penny of aid from the Presbyterian church, which was outraged by his insolent behavior. He paid the huge expenses of the Alaskan experiment, one of the most successful in American missionary efforts, solely from the funds turned over to him by adoring women whom he visited each winter on hortatory expeditions. At a time when he was accomplishing miracles in the frozen north, he spent half of each year back in various states imploring women's groups for help, or in Washington hectoring Congress for better laws and more money for Alaska.
He became the close personal friend of almost everyone in government who was destined for spectacular promotion, especially those who were Republican or Presbyterian, which was how he attached himself early to the coattails of Senator Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, who was both, and who, when he became President, would look to Jackson for counsel as to what should be done in Alaska. At a mere five feet two, with the stubby legs of a child, this Presbyterian minister had transformed himself into a giant.
WHEN DR. JACKSON ARRIVED IN ALASKA, ILLEGALLY, HIS opponents said, he put his tremendous ingenuity to work, and achieved two brilliant successes: he persuaded his friends in Congress to grant him the resounding title of General Agent for Education for Alaska, which carried no salary and for the early years no government funds, but which did empower him to have impressive calling cards made which he used to bully anyone opposing his plans; and he hectored the Treasury Department into assigning him free passage aboard any of its revenue cutters that were sailing to any point that he wished to visit in the execution of his duties. With these' assurances in his pocket and with the continued financial support of the women's clubs back home, he was prepared to set forth on his life's work: the humanization and education of Alaska.
In these beginning years Jackson led a frenetic life. During the spring and summer months he jumped aboard any available cutter to explore the arctic seas, engage in battle against alcohol, arrest malefactors, help dispense law, visit Siberia, plan the development of Alaska, and with his own money provide many of the services which the government should have funded. Then, for the six months of fall and winter, he would be back in Washington or New York or Boston, lobbying and lecturing on the future of Alaska. During one typical twelve-month period he traveled 37,624 miles, and a fellow clergyman guessed that in that time he had given not less than two hundred lectures on behalf of Alaskan education: 'Sheldon's ready to launch into a lecture if he can find an audience of six.'
But whenever he was on the verge of achieving some improvement, he found himself frustrated by the fact that the United States still refused to provide Alaska with any kind of government or adequate tax base, and in his frustration he would roar back to Washington, breathing fire, to bombard Congress. It was there, with his traditional foresight, that he formed his close acquaintanceship with the promising senator from Indiana, Benjamin Harrison, grandson of the ninth President. The senator listened to his pleas for a law that would enable Alaska to govern itself, became convinced by Jackson's moral force, and in 1883 began to work in the Senate for such a law.
In 1884, spurred vigorously by Jackson, Senator Harrison finally maneuvered through Congress an Organic Act, giving Alaska a civil government of sorts, with one judge, one district attorney, one clerk of court, one marshal four deputies to bring law and order to an area of more than five hundred thousand square miles. It was pathetically inadequate, but a step in the right direction.
Jackson, of course, had hoped for self-governing territorial status, but Congress would not concede this, for it would have implied that sooner or later the territory would become a state, as all the other emerging sections of the United States were doing, and that, ranted the lawmakers, was preposterous: 'That icebox will never have enough people to become a state.'
'Self-government? Hell, the entire area has only nineteen hundred people, I mean white people of course.'
'If the Army don't govern it, the Navy should.'
But not even Jackson appreciated the almost fatal inadequacy of the bill he and Harrison had helped pass; he learned, however, when he returned that spring to Sitka, for he had not been in his summer home two hours before he was visited by an irate Carl Caldwell, the former lawyer from Oregon and now a leading citizen of Alaska: 'What did you allow Congress to do, Dr. Jackson?'
'We didn't allow it. Harrison and I forced it.'
'But the Oregon bit? That nullified everything.'
'Now wait,' Jackson said defensively. 'Congress refused to give us territorial status.
Best we could get was that we should be governed by the same local laws as Oregon.'
At this, Caldwell leaped from his chair: 'If it was the laws of Oregon, it would be all right. What you gave us are the ancient laws of the territory of Oregon. It became a state in 1859. You're taking us back to the way Oregon was in 1858,' and when he spelled out the monstrous limitations this placed on Alaska, Jackson sat with mouth agape: 'We can't have jury trials in Alaska because Oregon territorial law said that to be eligible, jury members must be taxpayers.'
'Sensible rule,' Jackson said. 'Provides responsible men for jury duty.'
'But we have no taxes in Alaska; therefore, no juries.' When Jackson gasped, he continued:
'Many of the best laws in Oregon Territory related to counties, but we can't have any of those laws because we have no counties.'
'That's ridiculous,' the missionary who fathered the law grumbled, but Caldwell was far from finished with his critique: 'No one can buy land here, because Oregon's law made no provision for a land law. Worse, for the same reason, the great Homestead Act which has settled the West can't be used here to give settlers free land. But what really strangles us is that we can have no local legislature because Oregon in those days didn't have one.' On and on he went, sometimes showing Jackson chapter and line of the antiquated law, so that by the time he was finished, Jackson realized that with his help Congress had returned Alaska to a straitjacket; he saw that he would have to fight most of his battles all over again, and he began that night to flood Congress with new letters of advice and his women supporters with new appeals for funds, because when he engaged in battle, there was no truce, no surrender.
But it was not until the new officers authorized by the Organic Act of 1884 arrived in Sitka to take control of Alaska that he realized the jeopardy he was in, because President Chester Arthur, under almost unendurable pressures from office seekers, had appointed some of the most despicable rascals available at the time, and from the moment they arrived in Sitka they determined to get rid of the troublesome little missionary about whom miners, fishermen and rumrunners complained.
Ringleader of Jackson's enemies was the district attorney, a notorious drunk. His marshal was little better, but it was the federal judge, a man of enormous power, who was the real disaster. Ward McAllister, Jr., was the incompetent nephew of the man with the same name who served as social dictator of New York. All had received their appointments to good paying jobs through the political pull of their friends and without regard to their competency, which was nil.
They had not assumed their offices long when, with the connivance of the district attorney and Judge McAllister, they issued in secret an indictment for the arrest of Jackson, then waited till a maximum number of local citizens were at the dock to see the departure of a steamer on which Jackson was to sail. At the last possible moment Deputy Marshal Sullivan went aboard with handcuffs to arrest the little missionary and haul him off to jail.
In the next weeks Jackson suffered indignities he could not have imagined, but in the end he was rescued by a most improbable source of justice. President Arthur, responsible for these infamous appointments, left office, and almost immediately after the Democratic reformer Grover Cleveland assumed the presidency, he canceled the Arthur appointments, r
eplacing them with more standard politicians, who served Alaska well. One of the first things the new team did was quash the indictment of Sheldon Jackson, who nevertheless continued to believe that the nation was served best when Republicans were in power.
It was about this time that Jackson participated in one of the most farseeing acts of Alaskan history, one that was rarely if ever duplicated in other newly settled frontiers. Communicating with the leaders of other American churches, he proposed a mutually enforced division of Alaska into a dozen or so religious spheres of influence, each the preserve of one denomination into which proselytizing missionaries from other sects would not intrude. What he proposed was a grand religious truce, and primarily because his reputation as a man of integrity was so widely recognized, leaders of the other groups adopted his suggestion.
As he explained it to the people of Sitka: 'Because the Presbyterians were first on the scene, we get Sitka. But since this is the easiest part, we're also taking the most difficult, Barrow in the extreme north.' Modestly he added: 'It'll be the northernmost mission in the world.' When he spelled out other terms of the agreement, he sounded like some follower of Jesus in the Book of Acts apportioning the missionary responsibilities of the infant Christian church: 'Our good friends the Baptists are taking Kodiak Island and lands nearby. The Aleutian Islands, where much work needs to be done, to the Methodists.
The Episcopal church picks up the work already done decades ago by their cousin church, the Anglicans of Canada, along the upper Yukon. The Congregationalists have volunteered to accept a most difficult area, Cape Prince of Wales. And a fine church you may not know, the German Moravians of Pennsylvania, are going to take God's Word along the Kuskokwim River.'
In a later wave of ecumenical enthusiasm, other churches volunteered to become part of this grand arrangement: the Quakers of Philadelphia, always in the forefront where such work was to be done, received Kotzebue and a mining area near Juneau; Swedish Evangelists got Unalakleet; and the Roman Catholics received the vast areas about the mouth of the Yukon which had once been served by the Russian Orthodox missionaries.
It was an extraordinary example of ecumenism at its best, and much of the credit went to Jackson.
But verbal agreements, noble though they may be, and actual implementation are two vastly different things, and years passed before any of the major American churches implemented their promises. There were no Baptist missions, no Methodist, not even a Quaker. In despair, for he saw the natives of Alaska perishing because the Word of God was denied them, Jackson implored the major churches to get moving, but with no results. He went to Philadelphia to visit with the Quakers, whom he was sure he could persuade to move north, but he accomplished nothing, so in a kind of moral despair he spent a steaming hot night in August 1883 in the Quaker city drafting a letter to the Moravian church centered in nearby Bethlehem. He implored them to continue in Alaska the noble work they had begun with the Eskimos of Labrador, and once more he received for his labors nothing but silence.
But his letter must have had some effect on the stalwart Germans of Bethlehem, for during Jackson's visit to the United States in the following winter he received without any preliminary encouragement an invitation to visit Bethlehem and present his vision of Alaska's needs to the Moravians. Hastily boarding a train in Philadelphia, he journeyed north to the quaint and lovely old German city, where he delivered one of his most inspired orations, telling the audience: 'The Moravian church has always been in the forefront where missionary work is involved. It's your tradition, your soul. Now God's call reaches you one more time: "The Eskimos of Alaska are languishing for My Holy Word." Dare you say no?'
The solemn burghers who supervised the church agreed that night that they would send an exploratory mission to the Kuskokwim River by the end of 1885, and when the five young, devout farmers three men, two wives saw that great twin of the Yukon and the hunger among the people for medicine, education and Christianity, which they interpreted as the reason why white men prospered, the young missionaries wrote back to Bethlehem: 'We are needed,' and one of the finest groups of religious workers ever to reach Alaska followed in due course, and the logjam of indifference was broken. Quickly the Quakers took up their appointed areas, then the Baptists and the Methodists, and soon Alaska was dotted with those missions, often stuck away on remote sites, which would in time account for the civilizing of the Great Land.
ONE DAY WHEN JACKSON WAS AT WORK IN SITKA, THE new cutter Bear hove into the sound, and before it could be anchored, Jackson had made the decision which would determine so much Alaskan history: That's the kind of ship I'd like to sail in. By midday he had presented his authorization for passage to the first mate, who looked down his nose at the strange little man offering it and said: 'Captain'll have to clear this,' and for the first time the missionary was led into the quarters of Captain Mike Healy, who had begun to drink heavily the moment the Sear reached Sitka, and who now sat with his parrot on his shoulder.
Irritated by this unwarranted intrusion, he let loose a chain of his most violent oaths, glared at Jackson, and ended: 'Now what in hell do you want?'
Had the little missionary quailed before this onslaught, the possibility of any relationship between the two men might have died there, but Jackson was a truly fearless man, and drawing himself up to his most impressive posture, he shouted in his strongest oratorical voice: 'Captain Healy! I am a man of the cloth, and I do not allow such profanation of God's name in my presence. And I have also come to Alaska to stamp out the alcohol trade, and you, sir, are drunk.'
Startled by the little gamecock, Healy began to say 'You're right, Reverend ...when his parrot came forth with a few choice curses of its own, whereupon Healy cuffed him so that his feathers seemed to fly as he fled to the safety of his perch: 'Shut up, you!' He then turned his attention to his visitor: 'What does your paper say?'
'It's from the Treasury Department and it says that I'm to have free passage aboard your ship as long as I am in pursuit of my duties.'
'And what are your duties?'
'The bringing of God's Word to the Eskimos. The education of the children of Alaska.
And the stamping out of the liquor traffic.'
To Jackson's amazement, Mike Healy, whose life had been saved by education, rose unsteadily, reached for his hand, and pledged a support which would last for twenty years: 'I'm for everything you're for, Reverend. Education saves souls, and strong liquor is the curse of the Alaskan native.'
'You seem to be well cursed yourself, Captain.'
'In my private life. As captain of this ship, one of my major duties, stamp out the trafficking in hooch.'
'And what is hooch?'
'Rotgut, booze, John Barleycorn. It kills Eskimos. It wipes out entire villages.'
He fell back in his chair, reached for a glass which Jackson had not seen before, and finished his drink. Then he looked up with a roguish smile and said: 'Bring your gear aboard. We sail for Kodiak and Siberia at four.' And thus the partnership between these two unlikely men was initiated.
Healy was six feet two, five years younger and twenty years more powerful; Jackson was exactly a foot shorter, so that the top of his head came to Healy's windpipe.
Healy was a believing Roman Catholic, with brothers and sisters occupying important roles in that religion; Jackson was a devout Presbyterian who, like John Knox before him, railed against Catholics. Healy was a Georgia Negro who legally should have been a slave; Jackson was the product of that social and religious ferment which had swept the rural area of upper New York State Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Joseph Smith, to whom the secrets of Mormonism were revealed, sprang from the same source and he believed that Negroes, Indians and Eskimos were humans who deserved God's love but not social equality with white men. Healy was a man devoted to a profane vocabulary and booze; Jackson was a man of rectitude who felt it his duty to lecture miscreants and save them from their folly. Their differences were tremendous, and they were never h
esitant about displaying them.
But they had three beliefs in common, and it overrode all these differences: they both believed that Alaska could be governed if one found men of good will to make the effort; they were prepared to volunteer for that duty; and both sought justice for the natives.
Their first cruise together sealed their friendship, because whatever difficulty they ran into, they seemed to perceive instantly its moral overtones, and to a startling degree, each approved of what the other recommended. Now it was no longer Captain Healy of some grubby revenue cutter dispensing rude justice along the shores of the seas; it was the noble ship Bear steaming into harbor, its engine puffing smoke, with a distinguished ship's captain aboard, supported by a self-appointed doctor of divinity. They formed a majestic pair, two giants moving into an area that had been pestered by midgets, and after the first visit of this Bear to a new village, the authority of Healy and Jackson was established.
On this first trip together they straightened things out at Kodiak, provided stores to the Russian garrison at Petropavlovsk, delivered and enforced a set of judgments along the Siberian coast, and wound up at Cape Navarin, whose settlers streamed out in canoes once they learned that Captain Healy was back, for they remembered the gifts with which he had been so generous on his last trip. It was here that Healy took Jackson ashore to inspect the reindeer herds upon which these Siberians lived so bountifully, but the missionary did not at first appreciate the significance of the visit, for he had not yet seen Alaskan Eskimos starving for lack of winter food.
'Reindeer!' Healy cried. 'You load the Bear with them, a good wind offshore, and two days later you land them in Alaska.'
'Would that be possible?'
'We could do it right now if we had the authority, and the money to pay these people for their surplus.' The two Americans became so excited by the prospect of utilizing Siberian experience to save Alaskan lives that they assembled the herders of Cape Navarin, and Healy harangued them about the possibility of a trans-Bering trade in reindeer, and when he told them what they would receive in return, they became so enthusiastic that Healy told Jackson: 'When you get to Washington, see if funds are available.'