Historians have an awesome responsibility. As a profession, we deal with the past of course. But it is a real past,
the real past, which was constructed, inhabited by real people (just like us). In telling their story then, historians have the task of both constructing an argument about the past, as well as doing justice to the past and the people we are writing about.
Today, I had a chance to really ponder those sentiments. Before heading downtown to teach, I stopped off at
Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. The final resting place of Hoosiers since the mid-1860s, those interned there include the politicians (governors, senators, vice presidents, and a president), the infamous (John Dillinger), powerful businessmen and community leaders, as well as average citizens. My purpose in driving through the cemetery grounds was to find a few graves of people I have studied and written about over the past few years. It was both intellectual curiosity as well as hoping to find a few new details for my current project.
What does this have to do with
The Mainline? Well, quite a bit actually, at least insofar as we are thinking of the Mainline in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see
Chapter 2). I am currently researching the life and times of Preston Davidson, a native Hoosier from a distinguished family in Indianapolis (his
maternal grandfather was governor of the state), who fought for the South during the Civil War. Indeed, his life is full of virtually every Civil War cliche one can think of, and in many ways he remained unreconstructed to the end of his life. What makes his story compelling in terms of
The Mainline, however, was more to do with his religious life. His paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister in Virginia. The Reverend Andrew Davidson was a church planter along Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, centered in and around Lexington. The Reverend Davidson was an Old School Presbyterian, a devout Calvinist, and could by all accounts deliver a powerful sermon. As such, he represents both a doctrinal divide within American Protestantism, the tensions involved in early nineteenth century America over slavery, and desire for evangelicals to find both acceptance and to help shape American culture (the Davidson family was a product and protector of Lexington's chief school of higher education, now known as
Washington and Lee University, for virtually all of the nineteenth century).
Two of the Reverend's sons were part of the "Virginia exodus" that helped settle Indiana. One, the Reverend Charles Baker Davidson, followed in his father's ministerial footsteps -- though exhibiting a denominational fluidity that seems much more modern than perhaps is often admitted. Baker joined the Methodist Church in Indiana, serving congregations in and around the Evansville area, and by the time of the Civil War, left that branch of Protestantism for the Episcopal Church. Preston's father, Alexander Davidson, became intrinsically linked to his father-in-law's political career and ambitions. But when it came to religion, Alexander exhibited more of the evangelical streak of his family: Helping to found Indianapolis's
Second Presbyterian Church, whose first pastor (who married Alexander and Catherine Noble) was
Henry Ward Beecher. Beecher introduced his sister, Harriet, to a former Noble family slave whom the governor had brought to Indiana after the deaths of his own parents. The former slave's name was Tom, and the Beechers often visited with him in his cabin on the Noble family farm.
To add a further layer, while Preston eventually enrolled in the then Washington College in Lexington (from which he went on to fight for the Confederacy alongside his cousins, other family members, and under the command of Lexington's famed Presbyterian warrior,
Stonewall Jackson), his first taste of higher education was in Indianapolis at North Western Christian University -- which is today known as
Butler University. The driving force behind the school was
Ovid Butler, who was a staunch free soiler and devout evangelical. This was the world that produced Preston Davidson, and as numerous scholars have argued, we cannot really grasp why the Civil War was fought, or why it lasted so long, unless we appreciate the role religion played in American life during the first half of the nineteenth century.
But the Noble-Davidson plot was not the only one I visited. I also tracked down the grave of the man who was the subject of my first book, the
Reverend Edward S. Shumaker. Not unlike Davidson, Shumaker was the product of the evangelical Midwest; though of the second half of the nineteenth century. And while anti-slavery had been the main reform of Shumaker's father's generation, for Edward, who became a Methodist minister, the chief reform was Prohibition. He became a champion for the dry crusade and eventually the leader of the Indiana branch of the Anti-Saloon League. Shumaker became more a political operative than minister, fought battles against wets, damps, and even amongst his fellow drys. Despite the ups and downs, thankfully for Shumaker, his death came before repeal of his beloved 18th Amendment.
Shumaker's story reminds us yet again of the power of evangelical Protestantism to shape American culture. To forget that, is to forget not just one of the chief reasons why Prohibition became a reality, but also why Protestants were so invested in such a reform -- combating societal evils was sometimes easier than dealing with doctrinal and theological issues.
To forget these types of stories, to neglect religious aspect of reforms, of life, and their impact on American culture, is to miss a huge part of our history. It also does something else: It downplays the potential that religion has to continue to shape that culture today. Ponder that, and for those whose graves I visited today:
Requiescat in pace
