CHAPTER IX.
THE GREAT REVIVAL
In the summer of 1801, Cane Ridge became a storm-center of the greatreligious agitation which at that time was sweeping over the WesternStates.
In the spring of that year, Barton Stone, leaving his Bourbon Countychurches for a time, had gone to southern Kentucky to attend a meetingconducted by McGready, McGee, and other noted revivalists, upon theedge of a barren tract in Logan County where multitudes encamped, andwhere worship was in progress in some parts of the grounds during theentire meeting, which lasted over a week.
This southern Kentucky revival was followed by others of a like naturethroughout other portions of the State, and like a wind-driven firethrough the dried grass of a prairie was the effect of such meetings.In the prevalence of this excitement, sectarianism, abashed, shrankaway, and the people, irrespective of creed, united in the services.
It was decided to hold a camp-meeting at Cane Ridge. The woodland slopesurrounding the meeting-house was cleared of its thick undergrowth fora space of several hundred yards, and three-fourths of this space wassoon covered with long rows of log seats with broad aisles between therows. In front, a spacious platform was erected, and over all was aroof of loose boughs supported by posts.
The meeting began Thursday night before the third Sunday in August.Before sunrise on that Thursday, the roads were thronged withcarriages, wagons, ox-carts, horseback riders, and persons on foot, allmoving toward the woodland rendezvous. Many came from distant parts ofKentucky; many from the neighboring States. A Revolutionary officer,skilled in estimating large encampments, declared that the crowdnumbered between twenty-five and thirty thousand people.
Enthusiasm gathered intensity with each succeeding hour. There was nofixed time for intermission. Each family cooked, ate, slept at any timeits members chose, and returned to the services, which began at sunriseand continued until long after midnight. Sometimes several preacherswere each exhorting a large audience in different parts of the groundat the same time, while singing, shouting, praying and groaning werethe constant accompaniment of the fervid, chantlike exhortations.
At night the vast encampment, illuminated by scores of bear-greaselamps, hundreds of rush-lights, and thousands of tallow dips, presenteda spectacle of weird sublimity. In the improvised auditorium lightssuspended from overhanging boughs fell upon a concourse of earnestworshipers whose voices, rising in the solemn melody of a hymn, mingledwith the fervid petitions of the preacher, the shouts of the newlyconverted, the sobs and shrieks of the newly convicted. Pine knots setin sockets upon the rostrum revealed in unearthly radiance the face ofsome impassioned speaker, silhouetting his form with startlingdistinctness against a background of forest. In the shadowy depthsbeyond the rostrum could faintly be seen, by the light of smolderingcampfires, the long, ghostly line of tents and wagons, and here andthere the fitful gleam of torches, like giant fireflies in thesurrounding gloom. Enclosing all this was a black and seeminglyillimitable expanse, from which could be heard the occasional hoot ofan owl or the baying of a hound, mingled with the unceasing voice ofthe trees, now rising almost to a scream, now softly sighing, nowwailing as in a dying agony.
In an environment of such great natural solemnity, and under the spellof tense religious fervor, it was not strange that the very atmosphereseemed surcharged with a mystical and awful force, and that many of thecampers were soon the victims of those singular "manifestations"called, in the parlance of the times, "the falling exercise," "thejerks," "the trance," and "the ecstasy." The various phases of thisstrange disorder attacked indiscriminately the credulous and thecritical, the fervid and the frivolous, the religious and thereprobate. A strong man, while quietly attending to the exposition ofsome text; a young girl, while listening with blanching lips andquickening pulses to the impassioned appeal of the exhorter; or acareless onlooker, while laughing and jesting, might suddenly beaffected by this terrifying malady. Some scoffer might perhaps at onemoment be sneering or denouncing the demonstrations as demoniac, andthe next be attacked with great violence. Nor were the campers aloneaffected. New arrivals, while yet upon the outskirts of the encampment,were sometimes seized with violent and inexplicable sensations. The airseemed charged with an irresistible electrical force.
Many farmers of the neighborhood attended the meeting, taking advantageof the comparatively leisure season between summer harvesting and fallwheat-sowing. Mason Rogers was among this number, his wife declaringthat "the hull thing would likely fall through ef Mason warn't thar toholp lead the singin'. Ez fer me," she said cheerfully to her children,"I'll stay to home most o' the time to cook things fer you-all ter eatup thar et the camp. Some day when I kin spar' time, I'll be ovah toheah the preachin', an' ter see whut's goin' on. You kin go, too,Susan, ef you want to, seein' ez you air 'titled to a leetleplay-spaill arter wuckin' so spry all summah. You kin find a place tosleep with Betsy in Gilcrest's tent, or with Molly an' Ann Trabue. Ireckon yer pap an' Henry an' Abner kin git a shakedown in some uv thewagon-beds, or else on the groun'; 'twon't hurt 'em this dry weathah.No, Tommy, nary step do you go; you an' Buddy's gwintah stay rightheah. Camp-meetin's hain't no place fer brats. Maybe, though, ef you'regood, I'll tek you ovah with me some day; or I'll let you go 'long withRache an' Tom some mawnin', when they tek the baskets uv vi'tuls furthe folks to eat."