Tag: Johnny Appleseed

On a Political Pastor

Peter Cartwright was a minister on the frontier of the United States in the early 1800s. Born in Virginia at the end of the 1700s, Cartwright became an ordained member of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1801 and moved west to help bring the frontier settlers to Christianity. The frontier at the time was where many poorer people moved, people who were less likely to be “churched” and familiar with biblical principles. Cartwright felt a strong calling to go preach on the edge of civilization (Kentucky, at the time) and work among these settlers. Thus, he was part of what historians call the Second Great Awakening, a time of religious revival in that part of the western settlers of the United States.

There was a major issue that Reverend Cartwright found in Kentucky, however. At that time, human slavery was still legal since this was the time before the American Civil War. And Cartwright found that he could not tolerate his parishioners owning other human beings. After several years in Kentucky where he married and had some children, he decided to move to a northern state where the practice of slavery was illegal. Thus, he and his family made the trip to Illinois.

Cartwright was part of that generation that came along as the Revolutionary War generation was dying out. He and his contemporaries felt a strong emotion of patriotism, and they began to think of the Founding Fathers as being practically ordained by God to have started the most Christian, the most holy, the most God-blessed nation on earth (a feeling that is shared today by many as well). He became a chaplain in the US Army during the War of 1812 and saw it as he duty as a citizen to run for office and serve his fellow Americans politically. And so, the frontier pastor became a politician as well.

He was a rare person for the day, however. As a Jacksonian Democrat, he was nonetheless an abolitionist. In Illinois, his popularity as a minister and his advocacy of the elimination of slavery saw him elected to the Illinois State Legislature in 1830 and 1832. He ran for governor once, but he was defeated. Meanwhile, he kept preaching on the frontier, bringing many people to Methodism over the years and the miles. Cartwright was instrumental in setting up several Methodist colleges in Illinois as well, and he served the state Methodist Convention for decades.

Then, the chance came in 1846 for him to run as a US Representative from Illinois. His opponent was a member of the Whig Party and a man who had little political experience. At first look, it would seem that Cartwright would win the election easily against a young and inexperienced Whig, but many people in the state began to tire of the pastor’s mixing of politics and religion. Also, while many people were becoming converted to Methodism, many others continued to enjoy such things as alcohol, specifically hard cider that was made from the many apple trees planted across the state a few years before by one Johnny Appleseed, no less. Cartwright’s insistence on abstinence from alcohol and his calls for laws prohibiting the making and selling of alcohol ultimately changed the election against him. He lost a close election, and that loss made him decide to never run for public office again.

And that’s interesting, because the Whig candidate who did win that election decided to make it his life’s work–next to the study of the law.

That young Whig and new Illinois representative was Abraham Lincoln.

On Apple Cider

As the United States ended its struggle over independence from Great Britain in the early 1800s, the young nation began another struggle. The country started coordinating the movement towards and settlement of the western territories. There were so many issues to consider: Native American displacement, land surveys, government organization, improving overland routes, infrastructure issues, and so much more.

We forget the vital role that alcohol played in the settlement of the American west in the years after the American revolution. Alcohol became one of the most traded items on the frontier of settlement. In fact, in many places along the frontier, alcohol served as the de facto currency.

In order to spur settlement, the United States government offered large tracts of free land in the west if the settlers could show that they were permanent residents on the land. So, towards that end, land claimants were required to grow fruit in order to show permanence and thus keep possession of their claim. Most settlers grew apples—not for eating but, rather, for cider making.

According to those who know these things, apples grown from seeds usually don’t produce fruit sweet enough for eating. Apparently, it takes about a decade for apple seeds to be large enough to start producing fruit, and that’s about how long land claimants needed to prove they were permanent settlers and, thus, receive the land grant for free.

The Smithsonian website notes that, “Cider provided those on the frontier with a safe, stable source of drink, and in a time and place where water could be full of dangerous bacteria, cider could be imbibed without worry.” One historian noted that a history of the settlement of what is now the Midwest must be seen through an almost alcoholic haze as a result of so much alcoholic apple cider.

In fact, many orchards left over from the frontier days dotted parts of western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana well into the 1920s that, during Prohibition, anti-liquor advocates took axes in hand and chopped down hundreds of apple trees for fear that the fruit—again, fruit never sweet enough for eating—would be used once again for making “that Demon Cider.”

All of this fruit being associated with alcohol certainly would have horrified any frontier folk who were of a religious bent, and many were. In fact, most historians point to a particular deeply religious man who, more than most, was responsible for the establishment of almost all the apple orchards across the Midwest during the frontier days. This man, everywhere he went, preached piety and austerity and thrift and hard work—and planted apple orchards. He would most likely be mortified to think that his life‘s work would be so closely associated with alcohol. His name was John Chapman.

You know him as Johnny Appleseed