Category: Galusha Anderson

Galusha Anderson: Preacher and Educator – part 2

by

Frederick L. Anderson, Author

Elbridge R. Anderson, Publisher

1933

Go to Part 1

Introduction: What follows is a biography written in 1933 by the son of Galusha Anderson, a minister who spent the Civil War years in the volatile, divided city of St. Louis, Missouri. In a city of often ambiguous loyalties, Galusha Anderson was one of the devoutly loyal Unionists and one of the most committed abolitionists. In 1908 he wrote “The Story of a Border City During the Civil War,” his remembrances of the war years in St. Louis. The book is one of the most valuable records of these years in the city, with many of the major players in the events of the war years appearing in its pages. The perspective is very decidedly Union with Galusha Anderson giving no quarter to the opposition’s viewpoint. But he is a fine writer with a lively, very readable style, and a fine eye for detail. His view of events is uniquely his own and shaped by his own biases so the critical reader must balance the accounts of “The Story of a Border City During the War” with other reading. This is one of the reasons for the particular selection of texts offered in the Missouri Civil War Reader, Volume I, to provide that balance.

The biographical narrative on these web pages, written by Frederick Lincoln Anderson, born in St. Louis in 1862, offers an interesting background perspective on Galusha Anderson, the person, that he didn’t include in his own book. His background as an abolitionist, the tragic loss of his first family shortly after arriving in St. Louis, and additional events in St. Louis, help round out the character of Reverend Galusha Anderson.

The text of “Galusha Anderson: Preacher and Educator” by Frederick L. Anderson is copyrighted material not in the public domain. It may not be copied, reproduced, or distributed without permission. Contact George L. Thurlow for information.

Thanks to Mr. Thurlow for making this account of his great-grandfather possible on these pages. –D. H. Rule

Bio of Galusha Anderson

Pages on Civil War St. Louis excerpted from “The Story of a Border City During the War”:

Charcoals and Claybanks

Home Guard

Missouri Oath of Loyalty 1865

Go to Part 1

GALUSHA ANDERSON

COLLEGE PRESIDENCIES

Then my father in February, 1878, was asked to accept the presidency of the University of Chicago, that institution, founded twenty years before, had reached its lowest point. “Its creditors were clamorous, its current expenses unmet, its professors unpaid. A huge mortgage debt of $200,000.00 rested on its property, on which no interest had ever been received. General opprobrium was visited upon it. The press of the city was unwilling to give it a respectful mention. The disastrous controversies and intricate dishonesties of years had made it a term of reproach.” In this crisis the trustees turned to my father, the most prominent Baptist minister in Chicago, to lead the forlorn hope and save the University. The task appealed to his chivalry, courage, and faith in God and in himself. He believed the promises made by the trustees, and feeling that the call was of God, as I have no doubt it was, he thought that it was “his duty to enter on this arduous and difficult work.”

He left the largest, pleasantest and most fruitful of his pastorates and a salary of $ 5,000.00 to embark upon a sea of troubles at $3,000.00 a year. This was guaranteed him by three or four of the trustees, but they paid it in full only for the first quarter and none at all after the first year of the seven years’ war. For the last six years, as he himself expressed it, “The President of the University had no stated salary; he skirmished for it.” The actual facts were worse than he had supposed. The University reported $160,000.00 of assets. On examination these proved worth $1,500.00. An endowment of $500.00 was discovered. The University had no credit. My father’s first experience was ordering coal. No one would sell the University coal, for which it then owed $1,000.00. The first thing he had to do was to go out and raise the $1,000.00; after that the University could get coal. Every year the President himself raised from $6,000.00 to $10,000.00 for current expenses. When he resigned, there were no unpaid bills of his contracting and he had paid $20,000.00 –practically all of the old bills. he carried a subscription book in his pocket, made a business of buttonholing the business men of Chicago, and he got the money. He wrote, “It is hard and repulsive work. Sometimes it seems that I can no longer endure it.” For current expenses, the mortgage debt, and endowment he begged unceasingly and in every quarter. Some of his letters to possible donors give us insights into his feelings. He writes, “This is the hardest work I ever tried to do.” He declines to speak at the May Anniversaries. “My ship is in a terrible storm and I cannot leave her.” “I am like a man at the pumps; I must pump or drown.” He writes to his father-in-law, “I never yet failed in any enterprise in which I engaged, and I cannot make up my mind to fail in this. I have lots of plans to work out yet before I say die. I am just getting my teeth in. That it is a tough, ugly job no one can doubt for a moment, but it is a very important one and must not be abandoned.” He wrote Dr. Bright, “I am sometimes, not to say often, at my wit’s end, but I feel determined and gritty. And as I see no light on the right hand or on the left, before or behind, I look straight up and the heavens are full of light.” A year after he had begun, Mr. N. K. Fairbank, the President of the Trustees and his good friend, advised him to quit since “his treatment by the Trustees had been far from generous.” This my father admitted, but wrote, “Since a great educational task has been committed to me, I do not think that I ought to abandon it so long as there is a vestige of hope.” These sentences give the mental background of the long struggle.

The University had good buildings, somewhat run-down, a student body of about 150 on the average, and a fine faculty, some of whom later became college presidents. They were heroes all, working enthusiastically for small pay out of sheer loyalty. When they learned my father’s policy of never paying; himself a cent of his month’s salary till the last teacher was paid in full, they rallied around him with a warmth and affection seldom equalled. Rarely has a President been more popular with students and Faculty. He taught Psychology, Ethics, Logic and International Law and often a term of English History. Every morning he walked or rode two miles with me to the University, taught and attended to his administrative duties there and disappeared about ten for his downtown office and his begging. Free evenings and often midnight hours, as well as the time on trains and horse cars, he devoted to the subjects he taught. But it was a good school and he did high-grade teaching. As he said in leaving it, “The University has done more on less money in the last seven years than any institution in the United States.”

He tried everything after the Chicago Baptists left him in the lurch at the start. He went to California and besought the big Bonanza kings to endow the University. He became well acquainted with Flood, Fair, Lucky Baldwin, old Senator Jones, the Nevada silver king, and Leland Stanford. They received and entertained him finely. He spent much time in their homes. He was a new sort to them and they rather liked to be considered possible patrons of learning. But they did not give him anything. Still Leland Stanford most seriously considered his proposition, and it was my father who planted in his mind the seed thought which later grew into Leland Stanford, Jr., University.

Then he tried the brethren in the East. He got nothing except rebuffs in Boston, but the New York Baptists were kinder. They helped considerably on current expenses, not much for the debt, but they promised that if Chicago would raise the debt, they would contribute liberally to endowments. They felt that otherwise they would be sinking their money in a hole. Again and again he felt that of Baptists he alone saw the importance of the task. He once semi-humorously called himself the President of the University that “nobody on earth cares for,” which was not quite true, for the Faculty and Oscar Barrett and his fidus Achates, Dr. Justin Smith of the Standard, and, in the East, Dr. Bright, did care.

He became convinced that if Chicago did not pay the debt, no one would and so he began to cultivate the great Chicago millionaires, and to preach to them in season and out of season the value of higher education, until finally even the magnates who smelled of the Stock Yards began to think; that possibly there was something worth thinking about besides hogs. The more he met these men, the better they liked him in spite of his begging. He lifted the University to a new level in their thinking. The newspapers began to speak respectfully and then sympathetically and finally in praise of him and his work. He was admitted to some fine clubs and inner circles, and made a host of friends and admirers entirely outside the Baptist constituency. These people gave him the bulk of the money for current expenses.

When every one else failed him, he conceived the idea of paying the debt himself. To that end, he went into silver mines. He made some money and lost more. Then he became the President of two electric light companies. These succeeded better. Just as he was leaving Chicago, he managed to realize on his holdings in electric light and got enough to pay all his debts and go to Salem with $1,000.00 in his pocket. During the seven years’ fight he had put into the University all his savings and had sometimes been as much as $3,000.00 in debt due to unpaid salary, but electric light took care of all this, though it did not pay the University debt.

l have told the inside history first to give the personal background, The initial public act of my father’s administration was an attack on the debt of $200,000.00, secured by a mortgage given by the Trustees of the University in 1876 to the Union Mutual Life Insurance Company of Portland, Maine. Much of this debt was compound interest. The actual loan was $109,000.00 and the debtor was really bankrupt. The Company was finally induced to compromise for $100,000.00, and a very active campaign was made for it. But 1878 belonged to the “hard times,” and with all his energy and persistence, the President raised only $25,000.00. A continuance of the offer of $100,000.00 for another year was asked, but was refused, and all propositions of compromise were brusquely rejected, and the creditor even refused to foreclose. In these circumstances, at my father’s suggestion, the University regents, not trustees but representatives of the State of Illinois, brought suit to discover the validity of a mortgage on property which in the deed of gift was forever dedicated to educational purposes. This action had not the slightest purpose of repudiation, but was meant to force the creditor to compromise or at least foreclose and to disclose in court the exact legal and business status. The bill was drawn under the direction of one of the regents, Mr. I. N. Arnold, one of Chicago’s leading lawyers and a citizen of unblemished reputation for the highest integrity and on the advice of Hon. Joseph L. Bailey, afterwards Chief Justice of Illinois, a leading Baptist and a most consistent Christian.

This suit, brought in the State courts, forced the hand of the Insurance Company, and it immediately brought suit for foreclosure in the United States Court. This was resisted by the University on the grounds of the inalienability of the property and the excessive compound interest demanded in the bill. This again was only an attempt to get a reasonable adjustment, which the Insurance Company President for personal reasons well known to the University opposed. These cases dragged their slow length along for several years in the Courts, until finally the regents’ suit failed and the Federal judge gave the decision in favor of the Insurance Company. In this suit in the Federal Court, one of the counsel for the University was Melville W. Fuller, afterwards Chief Justice of the United States, who was such a friend of the University and of my father, so convinced of the soundness of the legal contention of the defendant and of the justice of its cause that he served without pay. Mr. Fuller’s advice after the decision was to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, and it must be noted that, if the appeal had been made, the Chief Justice of the United States could not have sat on the case, as he had already expressed an opinion in favor of the University.

But this appeal was never asked although my father heartily favored it. During this litigation, the cry that the University was repudiating its obligation was raised by the Insurance Company and its lawyers and the basest motives were ascribed to my father and his coadjutors. This cry, strange to say, was taken up by some Baptist brethren in the East, and was supported by the editors of the Watchman and the National Baptist of Philadelphia. In both papers, my father carried on a long and painful controversy. He was the soul of honor and honesty and nothing in his public life ever hurt him like this charge, especially as he knew himself to be perfectly innocent. His last sentence on the subject in the Watchman was, “I sleep well, a good conscience makes a very comfortable bedfellow.” Some Chicago papers, probably paid by the Insurance Company, joined in the man hunt. Even the Chicago Methodist organ reviled my father and all his friends. But most of the Chicago papers, the Western Baptists unanimously, the Chicago business men, and Dr. Bright of the Examiner and Dr. Justin A. Smith of the Standard stood by the University President through thick and thin. It was a great comfort to him that such a pure soul, such a sensitive spirit, such a clear mind as that of Justin A. Smith supported him without any ifs or buts.

But nevertheless the leading Chicago Baptist ministers, Lorimer, Lawrence and Henson, were finally frightened by the bitterness of the controversy, and under the leadership of Dr. Lorimer, by a majority of one vote, the Trustees voted not to appeal the suit to the United States Supreme Court, and this this was approved by a narrow majority in a very lively mass-meeting of Baptists. The results were that the University property was taken under foreclosure, and the University buildings subsequently pulled down, that my father resigned in May, 1885, and Dr. Lorimer was elected acting President of the University, that he raised no money and resigned at the end of the year, that the University, after going on for two years in hired rooms under the direction of the Faculty, finally expired in 1887.

Was this Chicago Presidency a failure? At the time of his resignation my father and nearly everybody else thought so. It had been a long, hard, gallant fight against overwhelming odds, and without the aid of the reinforcements, which, though persistently requested and long awaited, never appeared. So the soldier at last laid down his arms and surrendered the fort, defeated but not dishonored. But God’s thoughts are long thoughts, and looking back now, we see that it was a really advantageous battle in a long war, which was finally crowned by victory. We need not speak of the excellent educational work done in the University and the noble characters formed and molded there under my father’s influence. We know now that his holding of the fort, so much longer than any one expected he could, disarranged and defeated well-formed plans for a great agnostic University of Chicago, that he held on long enough to make the new Christian University of Chicago a possibility and finally a reality. During seven weary years, he sowed the seed of a real interest in higher education in the minds of the moneyed men of Chicago. And some of these men, who had become my father’s friends, were the first to contribute liberally to the new University. Mr. Cobb built its Cobb Hall; Mr. Kent, who had always helped largely on current expenses, built Kent Theater; George C. Walker put up the Natural Science Building; Mrs. Annie Hitchcock, Hitchcock Hall; Mrs. Beecher, Beecher and Green Halls; and Miss Helen Culver, who had received her millions from her uncle, Mr. Hull, with the expressed wish that they might be used for higher education, built Hull Court. It is probable that my father’s long and frequent talks with Mr. Rockefeller about the old University prepared his mind for the propositions of the founders of the new University. Mr. Rockefeller was my father’s fast friend and a liberal giver to current expenses.

Had the struggle for the old University been given up after one year in 1879, as many advised, the new University would probably never have existed. God raised my father up to fill the gap.

But in an account of his public services, mention must be made of his political activities in Chicago. In the Blaine-Cleveland campaign of 1884, the Democrats controlled the election machinery in the city, reduced the number of polling places in the Republican wards, and placed the polling places in the down-town Democratic wards in dark alleys and rough saloons, to scare away respectable voters. My father took the initiative to remedy this situation and headed a Citizens Committee of One Hundred to do it. They put great electric lamps in the dark alleys till they were as light as day, they organized Republican bands to occupy the rough saloons, they brought the Republican voters in hundreds to each of the polls before the voting hour, and saved the State to Blaine 18,000 majority. In this election, there was great fraud in the use of tissue ballots, but this Committee sent the rascals, including the leading Democratic boss of Chicago, Joe Mackin, to State’s Prison. Thither they also sent the corrupt County Commissioners of Cook County in which Chicago is situated. And, as if time hung idly on his hands, my father exposed the corrupt ring which had long dominated the suburb in which he lived, Hyde Park, and soundly defeated them in a very bitter and nasty political campaign. The best men of Chicago rallied almost unanimously to him in these contests and he had some political victories to assuage the sting and mortification of what seemed to him his educational debacle.

When he was about to leave Chicago, the Nominating Committee of the Vassar Trustees unanimously recommended him to their Board for the vacant Presidency. After a long and exceedingly disgraceful fight on him by a little clique whom he had offended in college, he was defeated on the grounds that he had tried to repudiate the debts of the University. The files of the Examiner for 1885 tell the whole unvarnished tale.

After a brief period of refreshment in the Salem pastorate, my father undertook his second college presidency, going to Denison University, Granville, Ohio, January 1, 1887, on the unanimous invitation of the Trustees. Here he quickly put things in order. He built the oak steps up the hill, improved the roads, properly lighted the buildings, and brought a new spirit of liberty and discipline to the institution. He catalogued the library and made it accessible to the young women of Shepardson College. He reorganized the institution, making Granville College and Shepardson College constituent parts of Denison University, with mutual privileges, and separating the preparatory department from the College under the name of Granville Academy. He attracted many excellent teachers and the student body rapidly grew in numbers. But after two and a half years, the health of his family required a change of climate and he accepted in 1890 the call to teach Homiletics and Pastoral Duties in the Baptist Union Theological Seminary at Morgan Park, which two years afterwards became the Divinity School of the new University of Chicago. We should say in passing that his going to Denison six months before Dr. Anderson’s resignation at Rochester deprived him of the Presidency of the University of Rochester, a consummation which had been long desired by President Anderson and the University Trustees.

His college presidencies filled ten years of his life, and showed his great executive talents. He was an excellent teacher, he had a large, sane and healthful influence on the young men and women in college, he dealt firmly, wisely and kindly in cases of discipline, he always bound his faculty to him with the warmest ties, he knew how to manage Boards of Trustees so as to secure their cordial assent to his policies and to make them friends. He clearly analyzed situations, knew just what he wanted, and went right on to get it. It was open diplomacy, and yet there was often a dash of natural shrewdness in it. My father was fundamentally a practical man.

PROFESSOR OF HOMILETICS

Twenty-one years my father occupied the Homiletical Chair, seven years in Newton, 1866-1873, and fourteen years in Chicago, 1890-1904. In addition, during his Second Church pastorate, and afterwards during his Chicago University Presidency, he taught Homiletics as a side issue at the Baptist Theological Seminary. He also taught the subject three years in the Gordon School, now Gordon College, in Boston. To this work he gave the largest fraction of his public life. I cannot say that it was his favorite occupation. He seemed to me to enjoy the pastorate, the College Presidency and the Homiletical Chair almost equally and never expressed any decided preference. Only one thing he disliked and that was begging. Yet he did a good deal of that not only in Chicago, but in St. Louis and Newton and at Denison. I think that my father would best have enjoyed the presidency of a good-sized college, like Brown.

When it comes to his work in Homiletics, my materials become scanty. My father was my pastor in Brooklyn and Chicago and I remember him well in the pulpit and the prayer-meeting. During the long struggle in the University of Chicago, he was my College President. I lived in the house with him and, young as I was, he made me one of his confidants, but I never entered his homiletical classroom. Many of his pupils could give a more intimate view of him in this capacity than I can.

In his view of the homiletical department, theory was of slight importance compared with practice. At the beginning of his service at Newton, he studied profoundly in the original and by the aid of the best commentaries, Aristotle on Rhetoric, and he often said that later writers had never added anything essential. He always refused to write a textbook on Homiletics, declaring that he had nothing new to say. He considered that one term was enough for theory, that the rest of the time should be devoted to the construction and criticism of sermons. His great labor, and incredible labor it was, was the criticism of sermons, a criticism thorough and minute, as the thousands of red-inked manuscripts returned to students can testify. This and the personal conference with students in elaboration of the criticism was the bulk of his task. Constructive Homiletics was his great course and many a preacher has been born there.

His criticism was always kindly, but it was thorough. Nothing slipshod or superficial was allowed to pass. He could be and often was severe. My only experience with him in Homiletics was during my seminary course in Morgan Park. My professor was an excellent preacher, and one of the most lovable of men, but he could not teach, in fact he was afraid of his classes. So I asked my father to give me a correspondence course. I shall never forget the first plan I sent him. By some inscrtable fate, I hit upon the obscure text, Rev. 22: ”11, “He that is filthy, let him be filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still.” He wrote in reply, “There is only one good thing about your sermon: it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. You do not know what your text means. Your introduction has nothing to do with your discourse. Your proposition is false. Your divisions do not flow out of your proposition and are not mutually exclusive. Your application is weak. Try again. Your affectionate Father,

Galusha Anderson.”

It is needless to say that, having been somewhat petted in the Seminary, this gave me a rather lively shock. Nothing ever did me more good.

My father always insisted on thorough exegesis of the text, sound definition, clear analysis and a real presentation of truth. As a teacher he was kind but firm, tenacious of his points, lucid in exposition, strong in analysis. From the students he insisted on accuracy and fulness of statement. He encouraged debate in which he was always happy and sensible. He relentlessly stuck to the subject under discussion, refused to be diverted, and usually managed to go through the assigned task in the assigned hour.

Until he came to Newton, sermons had been written and read there. He insisted on preaching without notes, and was one of the greatest, simplest and most philosophical teachers of extempore speaking in the country. His theory at this point seems to me unassailable. He also required written sermons for criticism, but all sermons delivered in the classroom or the chapel were delivered without paper. At Newton, he also taught elocution and with eminent sanity and success. There were no blackboards at Newton before his day. He had them installed against the grumbling protest of solve of the Trustees, and used them copiously. During his stay at Newton, he preached a great deal, took a large and active part in raising the endowment, which at his insistence was made double what was first proposed. In these years, he declined a call to the First Church of San Francisco and the Presidency of Shurtleff. Dr. Barnas Sears also, on his resignation at Brown, indicated my father as his choice for the succession there, but another got more votes.

At Chicago, he pursued the same course as in Newton, but amplified his teaching with courses on Ancient and Modern Preachers, and on Hymnology. Both at Newton and Chicago, he also taught Church Polity, on which he wrote a pamphlet. In later years at Chicago, his position grew more difficult, as he was not so liberal in his doctrinal views as the most of his colleagues. He finally retired on an old-age pension, though he sensed the fact that at seventy-two he still had ten good working years left.

EVENING

The evening of his life was long and peaceful. He preached a great deal but not so much as he desired. He was often called upon for set addresses. Two outstanding speeches should be mentioned. At the Chicago dinner at the Los Angeles Convention in 1915 he gave a remarkable prophecy of the outcome of the war, which has been almost literally fulfilled and deeply impressed all who heard. At the inauguration of President Barbour at Rochester, in his charge to the new President, he easily carried off the palm in two days of addresses. It was his last great public address and one of his very best. He rendered very valuable service on the Board of the Foreign Society, 1903-1909, and served on the Committee which took the initial steps for the union of Baptists and Free Baptists.

But the principal work of his old age was authorship. Already in his last year at Chicago, with the aid of Dr. Edgar Goodspeed, he had published the “Sermons of Asterius.” In  1908, he sent forth “The Story of a Border City During the Civil War,” an account of the fight for St. Louis, illumined by his personal experiences. A great deal of careful historical research lies behind this book, and it is greatly appreciated and much used by the professors of American History in the colleges of the country. Only Snead’s “Fight for Missouri” and Winston Churchill’s “Crisis” rank with it [all three of these important classics of Civil War St. Louis history are available on the Missouri Civil War Reader]. In 1910, he gathered some interesting anecdotes of his pastorates, already published in the Standard, in a little volume called “Hitherto Untold.” In 1911 he set forth the story of his country neighborhood in western New York under the title “When Neighbors Were Neighbors.” This was his most delightful and most successful book. It was widely circulated and sold for some years: The simple, objective, playful style and the oldtime life portrayed make it exceedingly attractive, especially to older men brought up in the country, and it has been highly valued by some eminent professors of American History.

With this book, he felt his literary labors at an end, but urged by my mother and myself, in 1915 he collected what he considered his best papers in “Science and Prayer and Other Papers,” and in 1917, the last year of his life, he laboriously selected the best of my mother’s poems, wrote her biography with tears, and published the book as a memorial to her. He finished with it only a month before he. fell sick. . . . So he worked on to the end. The last meeting of any kind which he ever attended was the meeting of the C. C. Club in January, 1918, after preaching twice in Lexington the day before, and in the City Club of Boston he suffered the initial and deadly chill which presaged his long, painful and fatal illness.

THE MAN

My father received from his parents a priceless heritage, more to be desired than gold or rubies, the result of generations of pure, godly living, viz.: a frame of oak, an iron nerve, a serene spirit, a gracious presence, and a sound common-sense. When I recall him, sturdy, rugged strength is my first thought, a strength on which men learned to rely and in the shadow of which the weak and helpless found a sure and kindly refuge. No one knew that refuge better than I, and when I saw him in the dawn of that beautiful summer morning peacefully breathe out his life, the whole earthly background of my own living suddenly disappeared.

The root of this strength of his was an indomitable will, for, after all, the will is the man. He was usually slow in making up his mind, but, his mind once made up, he was slower still to change. Inflexible purpose, unswerving determination, tireless perseverance are the words to describe, it. All this involved a glorious courage, and that finest kind of patience, which is courage long drawn out. Dangers could not daunt him. He did not turn aside when he heard that there were lions in the way, difficulties were only a challenge to his resourcefulness and, as he loved to call it, his stick-to-it-iveness. In all his long career, he never failed but once, and that we see now was a triumph of character, and a triumph in fact. When he took up a thing, he carried it through to the end, and men knew he would and trusted him on that account. This meant thoroughness. He hated sloppy, half-baked performances. On taking the Chair of Homiletics on Newton Hill, he prepared himself for the task by reading all the great works on rhetoric in their original languages, beginning with Aristotle, and he often told me that after reading Aristotle, he did not learn much from the rest. Once at twelve years of age, a very immature and half-formed boy, I went to my father about eight in the evening with a lesson, which I had found impossible, in a subject with which he was unfamiliar. Bitterly I rued it. He would not let the lesson or me go till both he and I had absolutely mastered it to the last detail. It was after midnight when we at last went to bed. I had not only learned that particular subject so that I shall never forget it, but that night 1 learned my father too.

It is now almost superfluous to say that he was a tireless worker. His superb constitution and great nervous energy made work and plenty of it a joy to him: He was always busy in his thorough way, but rarely hurried. He accomplished a vast deal because he was always at it. In the long evening of his life, he still devoted himself to literary labor, and the result was the books, which have made his name known far and wide. On the back of the title page of his last book stands the quotation, “At eve hold not thy hand.”

Still he was not an obstinate man. To be sure, he would not change his ideas and purposes merely to accommodate others, and they sometimes complained. But when the situation changed, he was quick to recognize it, and changed to suit it, and was ever ready to compromise on non-essentials. The only time he was really beaten, he knew it and quit, but generally when his friends and opponents said that he was beaten, he prepared another campaign, which clinched the victory. He was the shrewdest and most persistent fighter in a good cause that I have ever known. He was the most independent of men in thinking and action, little swayed by fashions in opinion or by the conservatism of his environment. He did his own thinking, and did not follow the leadership of others unless he had maturely considered and approved it. He was a leader himself. A few months after their marriage, my mother said, “You must.” He looked at her with a smile and a twinkle in his eye, and said, “Did you say ‘must’ to me? I do not know what ‘must’ means.” She never said it again. He was open to all appeals to reason, but the appeal to fear or compulsion always had the opposite of the desired effect. Threats only made him shut his mouth the more firmly and strengthened his resolution. He carried his sovereignty under his own hat. His self-respect was perfect and few ever attempted to invade it. He never could be forced against his will.

My father had a strong will, but he had a great heart, too. Though outwardly he always showed the calm of strength, and never was carried away by his emotions, he was a man of deep and tender feeling. As some one said, he was a great lover. He was never in the slightest sentimental. I never saw him until over eighty-four shed a tear, but he had in him a wellspring of the truest and purest sentiment, and this grew with the years.

He was at his best in the family circle. He loved his home, his wife, his children. He was a most affectionate husband, a tender and loving father. He had a remarkably even, cheery, sweet disposition. He was never irritable or fussy. Generous and considerate to a fault, he had an unselfishness, which never obtruded itself as such, which just made life easy, nobody knew just why. And he was the center of the home. Many brilliant circles knew him as a prince of story tellers, but he reserved his most delightful conversational treats for the home. When of an evening he began with reminiscence, anecdote and tale, punctuating them all with hearty laughter, there was no better entertainment in town. Even in the most dreadful hours of his life, his delicious humor never failed him. Indeed, like Abraham Lincoln, he took refuge in it. He was very fond of little children and they loved him. Though he never learned to take care of himself, he was one of the best sick nurses I ever knew. That strong, wholesome spirit seemed to irradiate health and cheer. And he depended on his home. Strong as he was, he needed its sympathy and support, and in later years, after my mother died, was quite wretched without it.

To such a man the deepest sorrows were the loss of loved ones. In his early manhood he buried in one grave two beautiful boys, and fourteen months afterwards in another single grave their mother and brother. Nothing was left him; his all was swept away. This was his Gethsemane, where he learned to say not with the lips, but with the heart, “Thy will be done.” A few months before his death he told me the whole story for the first time in detail, and I could see that while the dreadful wound of sixty years before was healed, it still pained. This terrible affliction made him wonderfully sympathetic with the bereaved, none of them could feel that he was more deeply afflicted than his pastor had been. None knew better what to do or say in the house of mourning than he.

Later he married my mother, and when, after fifty-five years of wedded life, she left him one evening, his sense of loss and loneliness was overwhelming. He found solace only in his work and in his faith. The last night of his life his thoughts were full of her, and he kept repeating, “I am coming, Mary. I am coming soon.”

My father was a great lover of nature. He delighted in his garden, especially his roses, and was an expert in raising sweet corn. He delighted in travel when once he was started, and he had set foot on every continent except South America, and on the soil of every American State. He gloried in the beauties unfolded by nature, whether at the North Cape or in the Lebanons, at Winnepesaukee or in the Yosemite. He was a lover of art and especially of the best music. He could not be kept away from the great annual rendition of the Messiah in Symphony Hall. He was there his last December as usual.

My father was always the friend and lover of the poor, the lowly, the oppressed. Those who had no helper found help in him. His heart grew quickly indignant at injustice and wrong. He had not a particle of race or class prejudice. He was himself a common man, a farmer’s boy sprung from the soil, and he was always proud of it. He was as good as anybody and everybody was as good as he was. This was his true Americanism, his deep democracy. Though he was a college president and professor most of his life, he never grew away from the common people, or developed the slightest scholastic pride. Though profoundly versed in his specialties, my father was always the practical man of affairs rather than the scholar. He loved his kind. He easily moved among men of all classes and races and treated all alike. Contempt for those beneath him in the social scale was wholly foreign to his nature, and condescension too. His father had been one of the first Abolitionists and voted for James G. Birney in 1844. My father’s heart bled for the Negro slaves, sold like cattle in the slave pens of St. Louis, and he was always the sincere friend of the Negro race. Looking over his old papers the other day, I noted also his rather elaborate study of the Chinese problem in California and his long-continued efforts in behalf of justice to them. He was always interested in Foreign Missions, but during and after his service on the Foreign Society Board in his seventies, the burden of the heathen world seemed rolled upon his spirit and I never knew him to pray for anything so earnestly and comprehensively as he did for our mission lands, and especially for Africa. Finally, he began lying awake nights thinking and praying about mission problems, until I found it necessary to urge him to resign front the Board. It is needless to add that he was generous with his money, almost to a fault, but in obedience to his Lord, he never let his left hand know what his right hand was doing. Few, therefore, knew of this trait in his character.

THE CHRISTIAN

Much of what I have described sprang from his life in Christ, and now I wish particularly to describe that. His father was a good Baptist deacon, his grandfather a good Presbyterian elder and his mother had been soundly converted some years before he was born. He had an inheritance of religion and he listened to very excellent preaching in his boyhood from Elder Zenas Coleman at the old Sweden and Bergen Church. He had long been seriously thinking on the subject of personal religion, when, at the age of twelve, one afternoon in his father’s barn, he kneeled down alone and gave himself to the service of Christ. He soon joyfully confessed this devotion of himself to the Savior in baptism, and always thereafter firmly believed in child conversion. So far as I ever heard he never had any period of backsliding but grew normally as a Christian, early taking up work for the conversion of others and public testimony for Christ. In early years he had a strong ambition to be a lawyer and statesman, but before graduation from college he became convinced that God wanted him in the ministry and he gladly followed the divine leading.

His Christian life was remarkably steady. I began to know him pretty intimately when he was about forty-five, and though it is heretical to say it, I never saw any growth in grace in him. He seemed to me as good and pure and devoted then as at eighty-five, no more, no less. Indeed his Christianity never seemed anything added to his character. It was his character, if I may so speak. He was fundamentally and through and through Christian. His Christianity was therefore perfectly natural, and it was perfectly natural for him to think and speak of it to any one. His sturdy commonsense and delightful sanity governed his religious life. I never heard one word which tended to asceticism or fanaticism, or any morbid or extravagant emotionalism. In thought he never went to extremes, but, taking the middle road, he kept making progress with the times even during his seventies and eighties. It was remarkable to see a man of eighty receptive to new religious ideas.

But, though all this is true, his religion was deep and warm and glowed with a steady fire of devotion. He loved God and his Son, Jesus Christ, the Church, and especially “the brethren.” I never saw any one so in earnest with his religion. It was the one great business of life to him. He was not much given to loud professions or long prayers, but he had a genius for doing, loving and helping. After his retirement from active life at seventy-two for some time I could not understand his zeal till it dawned upon me that he had made up his mind never again, unless actually under the doctor’s care, to refuse a call to preach or do any other service, nay he counted such opportunities as though they were priceless. His text must have been, “I must work the works of Him who sent me while it is day; the night cometh when no man can work.”

In fact his power as a preacher did not fail at all in old age in my estimation. Two or three years before his death he preached in the Newton Centre pulpit the best sermon I ever heard from him, and the last. I can see him yet as he stood erect, gracious and commanding before us. The first sentence enlisted the attention of all and he kept it rapt till the end. Fresh in treatment, bright in style, pellucidly clear; it led us on with deepening conviction and feeling to its noble climax.

He had his dearest wish. He worked in harness till the last. The day before he took to his bed with his long, last illness he preached twice at Lexington on a zero day, filling the pulpit of his grandson, Mr. Thurlow, who was working in France. He did it for Christ, and he did it as his share of war work for his country, without compensation, the last labor of love. We made one mistake at his funeral–the American flag should have draped his casket. No one ever loved it more devotedly or had fought more bravely for it. Rightly did the Veterans of the Civil War elect him an Honorary member and send representatives to his burial.

In ending this brief sketch, I should fail in a sacred duty, did I not repeat at his own behest the last connected words he spoke to me, two or three days before his departure to the better country, “Tell the brethren that there is no hope for any man except in the mercy of God as revealed in Jesus Christ; a man must rest in that alone. I would not now have a scintilla of hope, if I did not trust in Christ.” The better a man is the surer he is that that is the only way.

Noble man of God, good and faithful servant of Jesus Christ, brave soldier of the right, may we all share your spirit, which was the spirit of Christ!

Galusha Anderson: Preacher and Educator

by

Frederick L. Anderson, Author

Elbridge R. Anderson, Publisher

1933

Introduction: What follows is a biography written in 1933 by the son of Galusha Anderson, a minister who spent the Civil War years in the volatile, divided city of St. Louis, Missouri. In a city of often ambiguous loyalties, Galusha Anderson was one of the devoutly loyal Unionists and one of the most committed abolitionists. In 1908 he wrote “The Story of a Border City During the Civil War,” his remembrances of the war years in St. Louis. The book is one of the most valuable records of these years in the city, with many of the major players in the events of the war years appearing in its pages. The perspective is very decidedly Union with Galusha Anderson giving no quarter to the opposition’s viewpoint. But he is a fine writer with a lively, very readable style, and a fine eye for detail. His view of events is uniquely his own and shaped by his own biases so the critical reader must balance the accounts of “The Story of a Border City During the War” with other reading. This is one of the reasons for the particular selection of texts offered in the Missouri Civil War Reader, Volume I, to provide that balance.

The biographical narrative on these web pages, written by Frederick Lincoln Anderson, born in St. Louis in 1862, offers an interesting background perspective on Galusha Anderson, the person, that he didn’t include in his own book. His background as an abolitionist, the tragic loss of his first family shortly after arriving in St. Louis, and additional events in St. Louis, help round out the character of Reverend Galusha Anderson.

The text of “Galusha Anderson: Preacher and Educator” by Frederick L. Anderson is copyrighted material not in the public domain. It may not be copied, reproduced, or distributed without permission. Contact George L. Thurlow for information.

Thanks to Mr. Thurlow for making this account of his great-grandfather possible on these pages. –D. H. Rule

Bio of Galusha Anderson

Pages on Civil War St. Louis excerpted from “The Story of a Border City During the War”:

Charcoals and Claybanks

Home Guard

Missouri Oath of Loyalty 1865

Go to Part 2

GALUSHA ANDERSON

Date	Age	Event
1832		Born March 7, in Clarendon, Orleans County, N. Y.; son of Seneca and Lucy Webb Anderson
1844	12	Converted and baptized.
1851	19	Graduated from Alfred Academy.
1854	22	Graduated from University of Rochester.
1856	24	Graduated from Rochester Theological Seminary.Married Selina Dorr of Dansville, N.Y. Pastor of Baptist Church of Janesville, Wis.
1857	25	Martin Dorr Anderson born.
1858	26	Pastor of Second Baptist Church, St. Louis.William McPherson Anderson born.
1859	27	William and Martin Anderson died January 1 and 3.
1860	28	His wife, Selina Dorr, and John Anderson, his infant son, died March 8 and 10.
1861	29	Married Mary Eleanor Roberts, April 23.
1862	30	Frederick Lincoln Anderson born.
1863	31	Trip to England.
1864	32	Elbridge Roberts Anderson born.
1866	34	Resigned pastorate in St. Louis.Thomas J. Calvert, adopted son, died. Professor of Homiletics and Pastoral Duties in Newton Theological Institution.
1867	35	Lucy Caroline Anderson born.
1868	36	May, 1868-August, 1869, a year in Europe and
1869	37	Palestine to recover his health.
1871	39	Mary Freeman Anderson born.
1873	41	Resigned at Newton.Pastor Strong Place Church, Brooklyn, N. Y.
1876	44	Resigned at Brooklyn. His wife very ill.Pastor Second Baptist Church, Chicago. Norman Kendall Anderson born.
1878	46	Resigned at Second Church.President of the University of Chicago.
1885	53	Resigned Presidency of University of Chicago.Pastor First Baptist Church, Salem, Mass.
1887	55	President of Denison University, Granville, Ohio.
1890	58	Professor of Homiletics at Baptist Union Theological Seminary, Morgan Park, Ill.
1892	60	Transferred to Divinity School of University of Chicago.Vacation in England, Scotland and Norway.
1904	72	Emeritus Professor, University of Chicago.Published “Ancient Sermons for Modern Times” (Asterius). Resided thenceforth principally in Newton Centre, Mass., with some winters in Florida and California and summers in New Hampshire.
1908	76	“Border City During the Civil War” (St. Louis).
1910	78	“Hitherto Untold”
1911	79	“When Neighbors Were Neighbors” (stories of his boyhood and home)
1915	83	“Science and Prayer and Other Papers”
1916	84	His wife, Mary Eleanor Roberts, died June 11, at Winnetka, Ill.
1917	85	Published her “Poems and Biography”
1918	86	Died July 20, at 5:30 A.M., at the home of his son, Elbridge R. Anderson, at Wenham, Mass.

GALUSHA ANDERSON

EDUCATION

GALUSHA ANDERSON was the son of a western New York farmer. He graduated at Alfred Academy in Allegheny, County in 1851, at the newly-founded University of Rochester in 1854, and at the Rochester Theological Seminary in 1854. He was one of the leading men in college and seminary, one of those students whose future seemed to the professors likely to be brilliant. A deep and permanent impression was made on him by that truly great educator, Martin B. Anderson, President of the University, and also by A. C. Kendrick, Ezekiel G. Robinson and Thomas J. Conant. As my father had more of a practical than a metaphysical cast of mind, President Anderson, no relative of his, had by far the greatest influence with him. The President was his beau ideal, and from the day of my father’s graduation his intimate and trusted friend. No other man in all my father’s career exercised such molding power on his character. When my father graduated from the seminary, he was a very handsome young man of twenty-four, perfectly sound in body, with a well-trained analytic mind and the highest scholarly ideals, bouyant, hopeful, courageous, sure of himself, an indefatigable worker, and a Christian devoted unreservedly to Christ and his work in the world. Under the tutelage of the two greatest Baptist educators of the time, princes among men, he had acquired a breadth and liberality of mind and taste which he never lost.

PASTORATES

While the whole world lay before him where to choose, two calls came, one to the prominent, well-established First Church of Auburn, N. Y., at $ 1,800.00 a year, and the other to the smaller, more distant church at Janesville, Wisconsin, at $800.00. With little hesitation, against the advice of nearly all his friends, he accepted the latter call, married and moved to Wisconsin.

His first service was a prayer-meeting. It was a dark, rainy night, and the run-down church greeted its new leader with an attendance of seven women and one man. But in a few weeks all was changed. The energy, sympathy and manliness of the young pastor, together with superior preaching, quickly attracted the people. The house was packed at every Sunday service, the Sunday school and the prayer-meeting suddenly took on new life, and soon a gracious revival of religion broke out in the church and the community. Many of the more intelligent and well-to-do began attending the Baptist Church, and the wife of the Governor of the State, Mrs. Barlow, was converted and with many other happy candidates was baptized in the Rock River. The whole two years of the pastorate were marked by mutual love and uninterrupted spiritual and material progress. My father made lifelong friends in Janesville who were a continual blessing to him. He built up the church so solidly that it has ever since been one of the strong Baptist churches of Wisconsin. As he himself said after years of retrospection, he was “successful beyond his most sanguine expectations.”

This happy work ended when, in the fall of 1858, he left to become the pastor of the Second Baptist Church of St. Louis at a salary of $3,000.00. St. Louis was then, as now, the greatest city in the Mississippi Valley, and the largest in the United States west of the great river. His church was at that time the largest Baptist Church west of the Mississippi and probably the largest Baptist Church west of Cincinnati.

He immediately plunged into the work. He carefully kept up his biblical and theological studies and his general reading, but his afternoons and evenings were full of pastoral and denominational labor. He was the faithful friend of the sick and the poor. He always attended the Sabbath School before church and usually taught a Bible class. He preached at 10.30. In later years, he added a Bible class at 2.30. He often preached at missions, colored churches, or union services at 4,00, and then preached again in the evening at 7.00. In addition to the prayer-meeting, he gave an expository lecture weekly on Wednesday evenings. One of his great features was his monthly sermon to the Sabbath School children, taking the place of the usual morning sermon, and popular alike with the children and the adults.

He was deeply interested in City Missions. He constantly visited and strengthened the Jefferson Mission of the church, until it had 400 pupils, a good house, and regular preaching. He revived the dying Fourth Church, cleaned out the secessionists, put in a new pastor, built them a new house, and set them on their way rejoicing. He got a new house built for the Third Church, and started them on the road to their present prosperity. He brought substantial help to the German and Negro Baptist Churches and made them strong. Under his leadership the men of his church in one year raised as much as $12,000.00 for City Missions. All this involved great and taxing labor and many weary and discouraging days, but he won at list. He put the Baptists of St. Louis on their feet. In addition to all this, he was the faithful friend of Shurtleff College and aided in raising its endowment.

But the Civil War was the determining factor in this pastorate. Missouri was a slave state and a border state and St. Louis was its great city, the prize for which the Confederates strove again and again. The fight to hold St. Louis and to keep Missouri in the Union was bitter and often desperate. Sharp and bloody battles were fought on her soil, and were not always won by the Union forces. The people of the city and the state were divided into two hostile camps, continually plotting to secure the advantage in the great contest.

My father was a western New Yorker, “the meanest kind of Yankee,” as a St. Louis neighbor told him. His father had voted for John P. Hale, the original free soiler, for President in 1852, and my father, like him, was an enthusiastic antislavery man. He protected a fugitive slave in his house in Janesville, and was cognizant of the Underground Railroad and its stations in Wisconsin. Yet at first in St. Louis, he restrained his feelings, but voted for Lincoln with 5,000 other Missourians in 1860.

As soon as Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated, my father, alone among St. Louis ministers, began to pray for him in the public services as he had for Mr. Buchanan. This brought forth vigorous protests from the Southern contingent in the church membership, but they were of no avail with the unyielding pastor. Seven days after Fort Sumter surrendered, my father took his stand in a city seething with secessionist intrigues and without a single supporter among his ministerial brethren. He preached on the “Duty of Loyalty to the Government,” and closed by singing, “My Country, ’tis of thee.” In that sermon he said, “There are those here who have assumed the task of dictating what this pulpit shall say. They belong to a class of men who suppose that when a man becomes a minister, he ceases to be a man, to be a citizen, to have an opinion, that he gives his conscience and judgment up to the pew holders, that he speaks, like the puppet on the stage, when some one in the pews pulls the wires. I do not belong to that class of ministers. When I became a Christian minister, I was not conscious of laying aside my manhood. Permit me to say to all such dictators that I shall not bow down to them nor serve them.” Again, “You may differ with me in judgment upon this question, you have your opinions and the right freely to express them and 1 shall have mine. There is no sufficient reason for this rebellion and revolution. It is the most wicked and condemnable of any recorded in the history of nations. The anarchy, conflict and bloodshed, which it has brought upon us, must rest on the heads of those who, without just cause, have inaugurated and carried it forward.” That was a crucial morning in my father’s life, and in the history of the Second Church and of the State of Missouri. The Southern members of the church, slamming the pew doors, marched out in anger. They never came back, nor were they ever asked to do so. Some who requested letters were granted them. The others were excluded.

The results were important. The secessionists of the city, who had been having it all their own way, realized that a leader of the Union sentiment had appeared and all friends of the United States took heart and rallied around him. The final result was that the Second Church became the great Union Church of St. Louis; the great Union generals, who commanded in St. Louis, Halleck, Sumner, Lyon, Hancock, and Scofield, often attended it with their subordinate officers; the new immigration from the North at the close of the war inevitably gravitated to it, and the future of the church for over fifty years was made by that one sermon.

The immediate result was that threats of assassination were freely made, plots were laid to kill my father, secessionist roughs broke the windows of the church during the next Sunday evening service with bricks. Another minister, named Anderson and curiously enough himself a rebel sympathizer, was attacked and seriously wounded by mistake for my father. One of my father’s deacons was shot through the head and killed. The leading opposition daily newspaper advertised that the Devil would preach at the corner of Sixth and Locust Streets (location of the Second Church). But he wrote in his journal for no eye save his own, “None of these things move me. I am in God’s hands and it is my business to speak His truth and leave the consequences to Him. If my poor life is demanded for the sake of establishing an untrammeled pulpit, it could not better be offered up. This unholy rebellion shall receive nothing but condemnation from my lips. May God help me to do my duty.”

His public answer to these threats was his sermon on the “Sanctity of an Oath,” preached June I5, 1861, in which he denounced the oath-breaking all around him as perjury and firmly maintained his position. The reply of the secessionists to that sermon was taken in a raid on their headquarters. A rebel army was approaching St. Louis and, in hope of speedy victory, their sympathizers in the city had drawn up a list of one hundred Union men whom they would immediately arrest if the city was taken. Ninety names were written in black ink. These men were to be given the favor of a trial. The first ten, whose names were written in red ink, however, headed by Frank Blair, were to be seized and hung to lampposts without ceremony. My father stood third on that first list. I think that he was prouder of that recognition than of any other honor that ever came to him. In imagination and memory he cherished it as a decoration, as the red badge of courage and loyalty.

He was one of the leaders of the Union cause in Missouri, loved and honored by all patriotic men. Nicolay and Hay in their “Life of Lincoln” name him as one of five men who kept Missouri in the Union. How much he had to do personally with the taking of the arsenal, and with the bringing of the Constitutional Convention to St. Louis, the decisive act in the whole drama, I cannot discover. But the implications of his words are that he was not only privy to these important plans, but had a subordinate part in them. He was a member of the Home Guard. He drilled and carried a gun when the Union men manned the earthworks against the oncoming rebels.

General Quimby, who was sent by the Government to clean up Arkansas and Louisiana in 1862, offered him a place on his staff with the rank of Colonel, but he thought that he could do more for the cause in St. Louis and declined. Here he often sounded the trumpet note which heartened and inspired the whole loyal population. Mention should be made of his careful and yet passionate testimony against rebellion and slavery in his Thanksgiving Sermon of 1862. He always believed in the ultimate victory of the Federal cause, even in the darkest days, though sometimes in the earlier months he doubted the continuance of the loyalty of Missouri. This courage and optimism were contagious and extremely valuable. They put hope and heart into all good Union men. Their highest expression is found in his Thanksgiving Sermon of 1864, after a dark summer, when even brave men began to despair and to wonder if the war must not end in compromise.

Here is the peroration of that sermon, whose topic was “Peace and the Sword.” “There are those, however, who cry out for peace. Who does not desire it? Have we not had enough of internal strife? Has not enough blood been shed? Yes, a thousandfold more than ought to have flowed. Have we not had enough of lamentation and tears? Let the Rachels, who weep for their children and refuse to be comforted, answer. He has a stone for a heart, who looking on the desolation of war, does not sigh for peace. But peace at what price? At the price of truth? Shall we give up the principle that good government must be obeyed for the sake of peace? Shall we tamely yield the truth that all men are equal in God’s sight and have a right to the products of their own labor? Shall we timidly assent to the tyrannical doctrine that the normal condition of a portion of our race is slavery? We cannot purchase peace at so great a cost. God giving us strength, we never will. Let our wives be widows and our children orphans; let them beg their bread from door to door; let them die without care in almshouses, and be buried uncoffined in the potter’s field; yea, let a conflagration sweep over our land and an earthquake sink it before we yield one rood of our territory to those who, without cause, lifted up the red hand of rebellion against the Government of our fathers in the interest of slavery. And why all this? Because the truth for which we contend is worth more than your life or mine or more than the lives of a generation of men. When peace shall be obtained that is based in righteousness, which flows forth from justice established and exalted in the midst of the nation which grants to all classes of men their inalienable rights, we will sing pæans of joy over it. But if we are to have a peace based on a compromise with iniquity, which will be as deceptive as apples of Sodom, involving our children in disasters more dire than those which have befallen us, every lover of truth and justice and good government will hang his head and in shame shed bitter tears. O God, save us in mercy from such a peace. Give us anything rather than it. Grant us eighty years of war like that waged by the Netherlanders, rather than pour into our cup such an insidious curse…. This is no time for fear or faltering. We must quit ourselves like men, like Christian freemen. Christ, the Prince of Peace, anticipated such conflicts, and his words, corning across the centuries, shall cheer us till the last blow is struck, truth vindicated, and righteousness immovably established.”

Probably the greatest thing my father ever did was his contribution towards keeping Missouri in the Union. It had a mighty influence in keeping Kentucky, West Virginia and Maryland there. It cheered and strengthened Abraham Lincoln, who watched this struggle with observant eye and anxious heart. It encouraged the whole North. It put 109,000 men into the Union armies. It is quite possible that this great military force added to the Federal Army really decided a conflict that often trembled in the balance; and equally it disheartened and weakened the enemies of the United States.

But in addition to these activities, the war imposed on my father many extra burdens. Besides ministering to his own large congregation, he cared for the refugees, who poured into St. Louis by the thousands before the advance of the rebel armies, and for the Union and rebel wounded and sick. Almost every day he visited the great Sisters’ Hospital until he was given the entire charge of the religious work in the Fifth Street Hospital. He took charge of preaching to the soldiers in one of the camps. He served on the Christian Commission, which carried through the great Sanitary Fair among other things, and finally he took his part in establishing negro schools throughout the city. More than this, he carried on a campaign in behalf of the loyal Baptists out in the state, organized and became President of the loyal Baptist State Convention, and established a loyal denominational paper.

These labors at length broke down even his frame of oak, and he finally resigned in April, 1866, and took the Professorship of Homiletics at Newton. During his pastorate in St. Louis, he had become well known to the denomination and had received urgent calls to the First Church of Philadelphia, the Ninth Street Church of Cincinnati, the Second Church of Rochester, the Chair of Old Testament in Chicago, and the Associate Secretaryship of the Home Mission Society.

After seven years in the Newton professorship, which we will discuss under another head, my father was greatly perplexed by simultaneous calls to the First Church of Cambridge, the First Church of Rochester, and the Strong Place Church of Brooklyn. After long hesitation, he finally decided to go to Brooklyn and began a three years’ pastorate there in September, 1873, at a salary of $6,000.00. Here he found a church, which had been long ruled by an exclusive clique of would-be aristocrats, on the edge of one of the poorest districts in the city. The central thing in the pastorate was a successful contest against this clique and the transference of control to a group of younger successful business men, who were desirous of winning the common people of the neighborhood. Excellent audiences always greeted my father. Many were baptized, among them some who for many years were pillars of the church. An effective constructive work was done. But here my mother lingered at death’s door for months with cerebro-spinal meningitis, and the physicians assured my father that she could never recover her health on the seacoast.

He therefore in 1876 accepted a call to the Second Church of Chicago, which at that time was the largest white Baptist church in the country except Tremont Temple, a harmonious, simple-hearted, working church. This was the happiest period in my father’s career, except perhaps the pastorate at Janesville. He was now in his early maturity, forty-four years of age, had entirely reestablished his health, had great audiences, wide influence, was sincerely loved by his leading men, had the best of helpers in Aunt Lizzie Aiken, nomen semper vererandum, and a church which devoted itself to its Christian business gladly and wholeheartedly. There were no crises in this happy two years, but a steady, fruitful, growing work.

In February, 1878, my father was implored to help save the old University of Chicago, and thinking it his duty consented, much against the unanimous wish of his church. This Presidency of the University, which we shall describe later, was followed by his last pastorate, at the First Church of Salem. My father came to this brief pastorate of eighteen months, July, 1885-January 1, 1887, a weary, discouraged man, after what seemed to him his first and only great defeat. It was to him a haven of refuge and rest, where in the midst of genial surroundings, his spirit gradually revived. The hearty welcome which he received from the Boston brethren, after his hard usage in Chicago and in the Vassar affair, made him feel that he had not lost the esteem of his brethren. His election to the Foreign Board was especially gratifying to him. All this, of course, was subjective, known only to the family circle. Outwardly he was calm, genial, courageous. The Salem church recognized that a master hand was at the helm and the little city soon began to honor him. He built up excellent audiences. The Sunday School and prayer-meeting responded to his touch, and he gave himself with delight to the preaching of the gospel which he loved. But he was too big a man to spend his years in Salem, and in the fall of 1886, Denison University called him to its Presidency and Richard was himself again.

These five pastorates, all but one very short, occupied nearly seventeen years of my father’s life. They were a joy to him. He loved to proclaim the gospel and to shepherd the flock. As a pastor, he was diligent, faithful, sympathetic and sensible. He was equally at home in the houses of the poor and the rich. He was a good leader of the church, because he saw clearly, expounded his policies patiently and convincingly, was persistent in urging them, took a large part of the burden of them himself, and carried them through with conspicuous ability. He was a good administrator, broad in conception, careful in detail, forceful in execution. But my father’s glory was in the pulpit. He was a master of the art of preaching. This is high praise, but it will stand every legitimate test. He always had large audiences. Even when he began pastorates with practically empty houses, it was only a short time before they commenced to fill and soon were full. And the people were always interested and attentive. The common people heard him gladly, and the more scholarly were equally delighted. Although he never used any claptrap or indulged in sensationalism, he was a popular preacher in the best sense. And the highest tribute was that the people did not so much praise the sermon, but went out with hearts stirred to adoration, devotion and duty. Unlike many to which it is a pleasure to listen, my father’s printed sermons read as well as they sounded. Standing there upon the printed page, they are still clear, pungent and eloquent. This is an acid test.

Many of the best churches of our denomination coveted my father for his preaching and urgently called him. The Hyde Park Presbyterian Church of Chicago, which he served for over a year, offered to give up infant sprinkling, if he would be their pastor. The leading Universalist church in Chicago, Robert Collyer’s, was loath to let him go at the end of three months. He charmed Dr. Little’s church in Dorchester after he was eighty, and they asked him to be their stated supply. He was the preacher at the May Anniversaries in 1891, was often asked to preach at State Conventions, was a favorite at the University of Chicago, and when over eighty was preacher at Wellesley. One of the greatest comforts of his old age was that the historic First Church of Providence invited him to be their sole summer supply for his last two years, and during his last illness, he received a request to serve them in like manner for the third time.

Allow me to quote from a letter written in 1916 by a distinguished Congregational theological professor and author, who stole away from his own church while a Harvard student to hear my father at the Old Cambridge Church in the 70’s. “Your preaching has always remained in my mind as the greatest which I ever heard. Always uplifting and full of inspiration, it left me on the mountain tops of religious thought and feeling. Delivered without notes, the address was direct, simple, chaste and beautiful in diction, guided and borne on by a distinct current of definite, original and beautiful thought. And it was religion in its clearest, most essential and universal elements. More than any one thing, those addresses made my ideal of preaching and have been the model on which I have formed my own poor efforts…. Nor were my impressions of that preaching the results of immaturity and lack of knowledge of great men and great speaking. Years afterwards, when I entertained you at _____ and heard you preach all one Sunday, I hung entranced on every word. You were for me and you are now the unexcelled preacher, not only perfect in form, but unequalled in thought.” If we discount this somewhat extravagant encomium fifty per cent, we shall still be right in calling my father “A master of the art of preaching.”

And what was this preaching? Behind it was a forceful, well-balanced man of wide sympathies and deep and varied experiences, capable of great emotion which was always under admirable restraint. Great labor had been bestowed on the sermon and it had been carefully prepared for delivery, always without notes. My father lead an excellent voice, a clear enunciation and insisted on a conversational tone in preaching, speaking directly to the hearers. Sermons, to his mind, must always be conceived in the second and not in the third person. The language was simple and the exegesis carefully worked out and plainly presented. Definition was always a strong point. My father insisted that both he and the people should know exactly what he was talking about. The main thought or proposition was then clearly stated and more thoroughly analyzed, the points of the sermon sticking out conspicuously and therefore sticking in. Application of the truth presented was always a large part of the sermon, for my father was above all a practical preacher. He used all kinds of sermons, but expository, practical and historical sermons were his favorites, and he carefully avoided going too far into metaphysics or the technicalities of theology. He always preached as if the subject was of profound and perhaps decisive importance. President Strong wrote to him in 1903, “You know how to preach. That direct, incisive, sensible, sympathetic style especially befits the gospel message.”

The greatest sermon I ever heard my father preach was on “Eternal Life,” a new sermon for the Newton Centre Church in 1915. Of his published sermons I can hardly chose between “Peace and the Sword,” preached Thanksgiving Day, 1864, and “The Kingdom That Changed Rulers,” preached before the Baptist Young People’s Union in Providence in 1903.

Go to Galusha Anderson: Preacher and Educator PART 2