The great Civil War, which divided the nation and the states, families and households, struck the First Independent Church like a hurricane. In a sense, the Scripture was fulfilled as to the smiting of the shepherd and the scattering of the flock. The result was to be a distinct lessening of John Chambers's influence upon the city of Philadelphia, at least, and his relegation to a comparatively limited sphere of influence. One of his alumni writes: "If he had been in sympathy with the North in the Civil War, I believe he would have attained a national reputation. As events turned out, his Southern affiliations and sympathy displaced him somewhat from his niche of peculiar influence in Philadelphia, and relegated him to a work of lessening circumference". The biographer would gladly pass over the whole subject, but true history requires that a just statement of the facts should be given. Whatever be the judgment, all acknowledge that John Chambers acted with a good conscience. Deo Vindice.
Despite his passionate love of liberty and his democratic sympathies, he had imbibed in Baltimore and held in Pennsylvania the general ideas of the South concerning slavery. This "institution" was considered as orthodoxy itself. It was defended from the pulpit and set forth as divinely ordained. Mr. Chambers sincerely believed that the black man must ever be "a servant of servants unto his brethren". His passionate appeals to the supremacy of the Constitution as against the "higher law", and his hearty profession of admiration for the law-abiding citizen were all on the side of upholding and protecting slavery as an American "institu[114]tion" to be sacredly safe-guarded. Just before the war, when calling at our home and finding the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin" lying upon the sofa and bearing evidences of being well perused, he condemned the reading of such a "vile" work in no measured terms.
By nature a sincere man of peace and in practical life a consummate peacemaker, our pastor professed great abhorrence of war. Nevertheless, these denunciations of slaughter and his oft-expressed horror of "brethren imbruing their hands in each other's blood", were discounted in the minds of those who knew his bitter denunciations of all things British and monarchial, and remembered his keen interest in the Mexican war. Some hostile critic of our national policy with Mexico, on seeing the Philadelphia recruits marching away to serve under General Scott, called them "dough faces". Mr. Chambers heard of this and, on the contrary, praising warmly the bold soldier boys of 1846 said that "if the body of the man who had called such soldiers 'dough faces' were made into bread, there wouldn't be a dog in Philadelphia that would eat a pound of it".
The slow coming events cast long and great shadows which rapidly shortened as the year 1861 drew near. The situation was critical and the political sky was fast gathering blackness. In politics John Chambers was a strong Democrat, sympathizing strongly with the president, James Buchanan, "Pennsylvania's favorite son", with whom he was personally acquainted, as well as with his niece, Harriet Lane, of whose decease I read in July, 1903. He spent several summers with the president at Bedford Springs, was often a guest at Wheatland, and at Washington was known at the White House, and once, at least, opened the House of Representatives with prayer.
It is certain that our pastor suffered greatly in his mind over the thought of a disruption of the union. Thanksgiv[115]ing day was the elect season at which preachers discussed political themes, and Dr. Chambers's sermon of November 24, 1859, was printed in a pamphlet.
I remember the occasion as if it were yesterday. His rendering of the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy was with such impressive power that to this day I feel as if no other chapter ought to be read on similar occasions. He also read the second chapter of First Timothy, after which he offered his fervent prayer. As I peruse again the printed discourse I can hear his ringing voice and see the superb and graceful gestures. This was his opening sentence:
"I have announced to you my purpose to relieve my heart of a burden that has long oppressed me. As an American citizen, an American minister of the Gospel, I love this Bible; and the God of the Bible. My country, its constitution, and its laws, I love. As a man of peace I have a heart for the nation.... I love it as a unit. I am ready to live by it as a unit; and am ready to put the blood of my heart fresh upon its altar rather than see it anything else than a unit". He then went on to dwell on the worth of the union to ourselves and the world of mankind, and upon the jealousy which European nations, especially the monarchies, and more particularly England, had of us. Their hope of "triumphing over this Western continent was by triumphing over us".
He then dwelt upon the importance, solemnity and value of an oath, declaring that one of the most alarming signs of the times was the utter indifference to the value of an oath.
"Now, for example, the Constitution most positively and absolutely, in the plainest and most unmistakable manner provides that a fugitive from labor escaping from one state to another shall be delivered up. This is the Constitution. I am not to-day touching slavery right or wrong. I am[116] looking as a practical man at things as they are." Every citizen who winks at its evasion, "if he aids or abets the fugitive in his flight, he is before heaven a perjured man and the waters of the ocean could not wash out the stain."
The fugitive slave law had been often resisted in Philadelphia, as I remember well. In the same city, the first anti-slavery society had been formed, and within its present limits the first ecclesiastical protest ever raised against slavery was signed in the Mennonite meeting house in Germantown, where in summer I sometimes worshipped. The agitation of the abolitionists, and the burning down of Pennsylvania Hall were all matters of fresh memory to adult listeners in 1859.
"I now take up that question of questions—can this union be perpetuated? I answer 'yes'. Take the Bible for our rule and guide. Let it be the sheet anchor of our hope.... No tempest that crowned heads or despotic sceptres can invoke will ever throw our ship upon the lee shore or put out the light of this American union".
After a fling, by the way, at the divine right of kings, "a right which God gave in his wrath", he quoted the legend of Franklin's calling for prayer in the constitutional convention, noted the incident of Jesus and the tribute to C?sar, and then dwelt on the necessity of the adopted citizen, especially, keeping his oath. He intimated that those immigrants who did not like our constitution "had better pack up and go home.... The constitution and laws of this country are our C?sar and on us rests the solemn duty of obedience". He then passed to the duties of husbands and wives, of children to their parents, and to the duty of training the youth to speak with respect of rulers and laws. His final exhortation was to the sacred obligation to obey the constitution and the laws. He pointed out the danger[117] of the dissolution of the union, showing that the peril was great "unless our pulpits cease their clamor against the constitution and the laws". Ministers must not urge "the higher law (as they call it) of instinct, but preach God's revealed word, and cease, too, from declaring from the altar that it is better to put into a man's hand a rifle, a death weapon, rather than a mother's Bible". He urged that we cease the agitation and abuse, that arrays state against state, and that sectionalism be abandoned. The conclusion was made with tremendous effect. "If I were on the banks of the Potomac, standing by that vault at Mount Vernon, I would say it over the sacred dust of the immortal Washington, the man that would labor or would wish for the dissolution of the American union, let him be "anathema, maranatha".
But neither rhetoric, nor eloquence, nor professions of loyalty to the constitution could prevent secession, or that firing of the shot on Sumter which unified the North. The news of this overt act of hostility at once sharply divided the congregation, and a number of the very best men and women in the church, some of them Mr. Chambers's oldest and warmest supporters, withdrew into other churches, mostly Presbyterian, or united themselves with the Central Congregational Church, where they and their children and grandchildren form a notable element in that honored church. Others, like Anna Ross, the soldiers' friend, became actively identified with patriotic measures. The loss to the First Independent church was a rich gain to other churches. Four out of six of his elders, Daniel Steinmetz, Joseph B. Sheppard, Rudolph S. Walton, and John Yard, Jr., among his ablest laymen, withdrew into Presbyterian churches to help build them up with their talents, generosity, and consecration, or initiated new enterprises.[118] Others, though they did not take away their letters of membership, never again or rarely, worshipped in the church edifice. Probably the number thus lost to the congregation ran into the hundreds, but the break was because of conscience and conviction.
Nevertheless God was glorified and Christ honored even in farewells. The partings were in friendship. These were not personal quarrels, and the relations between man and man for Christ's sake were always maintained. John Chambers's own testimony on this point is clear. In 1875 he said "We did not dispute. They treated me and they have always treated me with the greatest respect and they were among our most useful men ... and we have been on the terms of the most perfect friendship since.... We did not have any trouble with each other—we parted in peace."
The most striking manifestation of the sentiment hostile to the pastor was shown by some of the trustees, yet in a way not approved of by the congregation. There was possibly some ground for the apprehension felt by the trustees, as one of them told me, that Southern sympathizers might get control of the property of the "copperhead church." Therefore, a flagstaff was erected on the roof and the stars and stripes were unfurled, and for some months waved in the breeze from morning till sunset. I was passing down Chestnut street that very morning, just as the flag was run up and a few gentlemen standing on the tin roof gave three cheers. It was a surprise and not wholly a pleasant one to me. This procedure hurt Mr. Chambers's feelings, but he said little about it. Not a few others, including the biographer, thought that peculiar kind of patriotism was, in its manifestation, entirely unwarranted. At the next election, the trustees most prominent in the flag pole business[119] were quietly dropped. The excitement about the "copperhead church" died away, and the pole was taken down and disposed of, the flag ever remaining in honor.
On the other hand Mr. Chambers did some things which his friends deemed highly unwise. On one occasion, it is said, he paraded publicly with the Keystone Club, a prominent political organization, which had been influential in the nomination of James Buchanan. None of the young men of his church who enlisted in the union army received any encouragement from their pastor, who was never known in his public prayers to pray for the success of the national cause in arms, though always petitioning the throne of grace in behalf of the union of the States. One after another and sometimes groups of young patriots together would put on the national uniform, shoulder their muskets and march off to battle, quite frequently never to return again. On one occasion, being called on for public prayer in the large Wednesday night meeting, though but eighteen years of age (Mr. Chambers always encouraged his young men to pray publicly) I petitioned the Father of us all, as was my daily custom privately, and as some of the others of us did occasionally in public, for the success of the union arms in the field, and the defeat of the slave-holder's rebellion, and that "their covenant with death might be annulled and their agreement with hell not stand". I meant of course slavery and slavery only, but perhaps particular offence was taken by the pastor, because William Lloyd Garrison had in these words characterized the Constitution of the United States. Mr. Chambers was visibly displeased and afterwards referred to the prayer in terms of rebuke.
It was in the first year of the war, on Sunday, May 5, that either a company or a regiment, or portion of one—my diary says "part of the Scott Legion and the National[120] Guard" came to our church to worship before going to the front. I do not know just how or why the invitation was sent or accepted. Probably it was to draw out the exact sentiment of John Chambers. In any event the patriots ready to die for their country received no direct encouragement (except to maintain the constitution and laws of the country), but rather, as we all thought, discouragement, when the pastor told them he could not encourage them to go forth to shed their brother's blood.
When Robert Lee, with his Confederate veterans, invaded Pennsylvania, and was statesman as well as general enough to give battle on northern soil at Gettysburg, Philadelphia was in a white heat of excitement. Captain Griffiths, one of the handsomest men in the congregation, whose pew was directly in front of ours, received his death wound in this battle.
In June, 1863, I was in Baltimore visiting at my uncle's and trying to recuperate after an attack of chills and fever, resulting from spending a summer on the other side of the Delaware. (I am now thoroughly persuaded, by the way, of the efficiency of mosquito's as carriers of malarial poison). I had recovered, but on hearing that Lee's army had marched towards Pennsylvania, my native state, I immediately resolved to go home and enlist in the army. Riding into the city and through the barricades guarded by union soldiers, I took the train for Philadelphia, reaching my house on late Saturday night. Early Monday morning I enlisted in Company H of the Merchants' Regiment, 44th Pennsylvania Militia. Within a day or two I received uniform and arms and was on my way to Camp Curtin at Harrisburg, ready to march to the fords of the Potomac. Before leaving I called to see my former minister, John Chambers, to tell him what I was about to do, hoping to receive[121] his blessing. As yet Vicksburg seemed impregnable, and apparently Lee was to march victoriously through Pennsylvania. Mr. Chambers argued against the possibility of putting down the rebellion, and descanted upon the impregnability of the terrific fortifications at Vicksburg, which were able, as he thought, to bid defiance to any force that could be brought against them.
Our interview was ended by the entrance of his friend the Rev. Dr. William Swan Plumer, a handsome man of magnificent bearing, whose white beard swept his breast and whom I had more than once heard preach. He was a voluminous and popular writer, who had held pastorates in Richmond, Balti............