The First Quarter of the Century: Logan County and Kentucky

It was a rude population that filled up the region that intervened between the pioneer outposts and the older civilized settlements. Drunkenness, gambling, profanity, fighting, and duelling prevailed, and no modern mining camp ever presented a more detestable "reign of terror" than did the frontier settlements of the wild West of that era. One locality is thus described by Peter Cartwright, the celebrated pioneer preacher: "Logan County, Kentucky, when my father moved to it (1793), was called `Rogues' Harbor.' Here many refugees from almost all parts of the Union fled to escape punishment or justice; for, although there was law, yet it could not be executed, and it was a desperate state of society. Murderers, horsethieves, highway-robbers, and counterfeiters fled here, until they combined and actually formed a majority." A battle with guns, pistols, dirks, knives, and clubs took place between the "Rogues" and the "Regulators." The latter were defeated, and villainy reigned supreme.

On the wickedness of Kentucky there suddenly fell, in the early years of the century, an epidemic of religious conversion so remarkable in character as to call for some attention at our hands. Many of its peculiar features had never before been seen, and none of them have ever appeared since in like intensity. This "awakening" of the people began in 1799, in Logan County, Kentucky, the home of wickedness above described. Several ardent sensational preachers, of the Presbyterian denomination, roused a strong revival spirit in their congregations, which spread widely through the adjoining country. But it was in the summer of 1800 that the "revival" broke out in the fulness of its intensity. It was in a measure due to a new feature of missionary work, the "camp-meeting." A religious encampment was organized under the trees of the forest, to which people flocked in thousands, while the impassioned appeals of the excitable preachers produced an extraordinary effect. Thousands were convicted of sin, while the camp-meeting idea spread rapidly throughout the whole region, and nearly all the population flocked to these emotional assemblies.

The effect upon those thus "convicted" was of a remarkable character. The wild cries and supplications, the flowing tears and wringing of hands, were followed by a "falling exercise," in which the excited participants fell prostrate to the earth and lay as if dead, displaying an abnormal muscular rigidity. During 1801 the revival grew more extensive and striking in its effects. "All who have left us any account of the scene agree that language is inadequate to describe it. It was sublime, grand, `awful.' The noise was `like the roar of Niagara. The vast sea of human beings was agitated as if by a storm.' The tide of emotion seemed to roll over them like tumultuous waves. Sometimes hundreds were swept down almost at once, `like the trees of the forest under the blast of the wild tornado.'.. Of the people, some were singing, others praying, others crying aloud for mercy, others still `shouting most vociferously;' while hardened men, who with horrid imprecations rushed furiously into the praying circles, were smitten down as if by an invisible hand, and lay powerless, or racked by `fearful spasms, till their companions beholding them were palsied with terror.' At times the scene was surpassingly terrible, and the boldest heart was unmanned. The infidel forgot his philosophy, and trembled till he sank to his knees or fell to the earth. `At one time,' says a spectator, `I saw at least five hundred swept down in a moment, as if a battery of a thousand guns had been opened upon them; and then immediately followed shrieks and shouts that rent the very heavens. My hair rose upon my head, my whole frame trembled, the blood ran cold in my veins, and I fled for the woods.'" (Gillett's "History of the Presbyterian Church," vol. ii. p. 167.)

As time went on, the muscular convulsions attending these "conversions" became more varied and extraordinary. "There was the falling, the jerking, the rolling, the running, the dancing, and the barking exercise. Individuals were seized by these, often in spite of studied resistance, and sometimes almost while the jest or open blasphemy was upon their lips. Dreams and visions, the holy laugh and the holy kiss, helped forward the enthusiasm of the occasion or the grotesqueness of the scene." (Ibid., vol. ii. p. 170.)

Those affected with the "jerks" were flung about as if hurled from a catapult; arms, head, legs, jerking as if they would be torn from the body; bodies flung against trees or bounding from the ground; hands torn from their grasp upon the branches of the forest; the whole muscular organism of the body seemingly divorced from its ordinary duty, and possessed by a frenzy. In the "holy laugh" the devotees would burst into uncontrollable fits of hysterical laughter. The other "exercises" presented similar indications of muscular convulsion, acting under the influence of emotional mania. Hundreds of conversions took place, affecting often the most hardened sinners of the community. It cannot be said that these "conversions" were always, or even generally, permanent. Many of the converts returned, sooner or later, to their original wickedness. Yet the general tone of the community was improved, and Kentucky ceased to be the harbor of the unregenerate to the extent to which it had been several years before.