“John Brown is immortal”: Charles Spurgeon, the American press, and the ordeal of slavery

ABSTRACT

The American popularity of the English evangelist Charles Spurgeon was short-circuited by the burgeoning crisis over slavery and secession. Some scholars have noted his antislavery views, but few have even commented on the controversy over his antislavery stance, or fully examined the American context of his controversial opinions in the turbulent months between John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in October 1859 and Abraham Lincoln’s nomination for president in May 1860. Spurgeon’s reputation in the U.S. was particularly damaged by a letter published in early 1860 in which he praised Brown, making Spurgeon a major target of white southern anger.

KEYWORDS:

• Slavery
• civil war
• Charles Spurgeon
• John Brown

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 “The Modern Whitfield”: Sermons of the Rev. C.H. Spurgeon, of London, with an Introduction and Sketch of His Life, ed. E. L. Magoon (New York, 1856), xxvi.

2 Kruppa, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, 225–8; Rose, “Spurgeon and the Slavery Controversy,” 20–8.

3 Murphy, “The British Example,” 622–3; Helg, Slave No More, 261–6, 268, 273.

4 Drummond, Spurgeon, 154; Charles Spurgeon, “The Ascension of Christ,” Mar. 26, 1871, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, XVII (London, 1872), 178; Charles Spurgeon, “The Story of a Runaway Slave.”

5 “Personal,” Home Journal 40, no. 504 (Oct. 6, 1855): 3; Longaker, Rhetoric and the Republic, 73–4; Shaw, The Sublime, 10.

6 The Autobiography of Charles Spurgeon (New York: Fleming G. Revell, 1899), 2: 104.

7 “Critical Notices,” North American Review 83, no. 2 (Oct. 1, 1856): 544.

8 “Sermons of the Rev. C.H. Spurgeon, of London,” North American Review 86, no. 178 (Jan. 1858): 275; “Personal,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, Aug. 21, 1858.

9 Connors, National Identity in Great Britain and British North America, 1815-1851, 13.

10 Charles Spurgeon, “The Resurrection of the Dead,” Feb. 17, 1856.

11 “English Correspondence,” Boston Recorder, Feb. 17, 1859, 1; Hutchinson and Wolffe, A Short History of Global Evangelicalism, 90.

12 “English Correspondence,” Boston Recorder, Feb. 17, 1859, 1; National Era, Mar. 10, 1859; “Slavery in the United States,” The Liberator, May 20, 1859; “Summary,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, Sept. 17, 1859; “Spurgeon’s Anti-Slavery Mission to America,” National Era, Nov. 3, 1859; Autobiography of Charles Spurgeon, 2: 345.

13 Phillips, Looming Civil War, especially 80–115; Rossbach, Ambivalent Conspirators; Marrin, A Volcano Beneath the Snow; Gilpin, John Brown Lives!; McGlone, John Brown’s War Against Slavery; Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist.

14 “Sermon by Henry Ward Beecher,” National Era, Nov. 24, 1859; Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood, 318–19.

15 “Spurgeon on Slavery,” Liberator, Feb. 17, 1860; “Mr. Spurgeon’s Power,” Independent, Mar. 22, 1860.

16 “Spurgeon on Slavery,” Liberator, Feb. 17, 1860; Etcheson, “John Brown, Terrorist?” 29–48.

17 Irons, Origins of Proslavery Christianity, 171–2; Davis, Inhuman Bondage, 263–64; American Anti-Slavery Society, The Anti-Slavery History of the John-Brown Year (New York, 1861), 195.

18 “Spurgeon a John Brown Man,” New Orleans Daily Crescent, Feb. 7, 1860; George John Stevenson, The American Evangelist: A Sketch of the Life of the Rev. H.D. Northrop (London, 1860), 17.

19 “A Southern Opinion of the Rev. Mr. Spurgeon,” New York Herald, Mar. 1, 1860; “Mr. Spurgeon’s Labors,” Independent, May 31, 1860; “Rev. Mr. Spurgeon,” North-Carolinian, Feb. 18, 1860; “Spurgeon Speaks His Mind about a ‘Man-Stealing People,’” Arkansas True Democrat, Feb. 29, 1860; “Spurgeon on Slavery,” Bossier Banner, Feb. 24, 1860; Blum, War is All Hell, 25–6.

20 “Spurgeon at the South,” Independent, Mar. 8, 1860.

21 “Just So,” Newbern Weekly Progress, Feb. 28, 1860; [Mann S. Valentine], The Mock Auction: Ossawatomie Sold, A Mock Heroic Poem (Richmond, 1860), 257. On mock auction literature, see Goettsch, “The World is But One Vast Mock Auction,” 109–26.

22 “Espionage of the South,” Liberator, May 4, 1860; Noll, 38.

23 Sermons of the Rev. C.H. Spurgeon of London, 3d ser. (New York, 1857), 442.

24 “Espionage of the South,” Liberator, May 4, 1860; “Mr. Spurgeon on Slavery,” Christian Watchman and Reflector, Mar. 22, 1860; “A Southern View,” Liberator, July 6, 1860.

25 “Relations of the Negro Race to Civilization,” DeBow’s Review 3, no. 6 (June 1860): 638.

26 Charles Spurgeon, “The Scales of Judgment,” June 12, 1859.

27 Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men, 250–1.

28 Karp, This Vast Southern Empire, 236–8; Doyle, The Cause of All Nations, 144–9; Jones, Blue and Gray Diplomacy, 11–13; Blackett, Divided Hearts, 54, 224–5; Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, 65–6, 530.

29 Carlile, C.H. Spurgeon, 160; Drescher, “Servile Insurrection and John Brown’s Body in Europe,” 515–17.

30 Pike, The Life and Work of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, 1: 323–4.

31 Pike, 1: 324; John Andrew Jackson, The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina (London, 1862), 32, 45. Jackson, “Spurgeon and Jackson, or, the White Preacher and the Black Slave Lecturer,” (1865?), quoted in Murray, Advocates of Freedom, 217, 233; “Letters to the Editor,” Dundee Courier, June 17, 1864; “Slavery in America,” Montrose, Arbroath and Brechin Review, May 20, 1864.

32 Thomas L. Johnson, Twenty-Eight Years a Slave, or the Story of My Life in Three Continents (Bournemouth, Eng., 1909), 69–70, at Documenting the American South. Randall, “The World is Our Parish,” 66; Breimaier, Tethered to the Cross, 222–4.

33 “Parson Spurgeon Sold to the Abolitionists,” San Antonio Ledger and Texan, Mar. 31, 1860; “Another Book Burning in Montgomery,” Arkansas True Democrat, Apr. 7, 1860; “More Incendiary Documents,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, June 30, 1860.

34 “Burning of Spurgeon’s Sermons,” Richmond Enquirer, July 6, 1860; “Mr. Spurgeon’s Sermons,” New York Times, July 9, 1860; Kleven, “Did Spurgeon Really Say That?”

35 Charles Spurgeon, “The Peacemaker,” Dec. 8, 1861. Letter from Rev. C.H. Spurgeon,” Christian Watchman & Reflector, Jan. 9, 1862; Charles Francis Adams to William Seward, Jan. 22, 1863, in Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Part I (Washington, DC., 1864), 80. On the Trent affair, see Doyle, The Cause of All Nations, 48–9.

36 J.L. Underwood, The Women of the Confederacy (New York, 1906), 57–8.

 

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Thomas Kidd

Thomas S. Kidd is Research Professor of Church History at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri.