Book manuscript- (c) 2009 by William Sims Bainbridge

In 1870 Central contributed several members to a new Baptist church on Cranston Street, but William made up the loss through many adult baptisms in the winter of 1871 to 1872. The church would later call him “indefatigable in his labors to bring men into the kingdom and into the church.”¹⁸¹ In the first four years of William’s pastorship, the Central church gained a hundred and one members, including sixty-five baptisms, bringing its membership to fully 459 adults — not counting their unbaptized children — 147 men and 312 women.

William struck a dignified pose at the Providence Music Hall on May 30, 1872, in a speech that compared the American Civil War with the struggles of ancient Israel and found in the emancipation proclamation a new convenant with God.¹⁸² In an aside, he identified two political issues with which America still had to cope, the dispute between capital and labor and the issue of dishonesty by government officials. But he did not mention the issue that would dominate both church and community for the next two years: intemperance.

The following year, he published Weddings at the Parsonage, five hundred and forty-six lines of iambic pentameter extoling the glories of marriage and tabulating the myriad ways that nuptial bliss can be ruined. Pared to its essentials, the poem is a list of couples that come to the parsonage to be married, each with its own problem. The first is an older man and a girl of thirteen; the parson cries outrage, and a threat to call the police hurls the wicked cradle-robber back into the rainy evening. The man in the second couple is too poor to marry, a mere charcoal driver, although William cannot resist a chemical metaphor of true devotion, “black crystallized carbon may into diamond have changed anon.”¹⁸³ Another was a rash Massachusetts pair who had just met and crossed into Rhode Island for a quick wedding. A blind man and a deaf woman embodied the truth that opposites can often combine profitably, as William expressed scientifically: “Two positives or negatives repel, Nor in magnetic brotherhood can dwell, There must be opposition poles between, To make the metals lovingly demean.”¹⁸⁴ And one couple illustrated intemperance:

Better, far better seek the lion’s cage,

And bide therein his furious deadly rage;

Better take scorpion to your arms and heart,

And try avoid its lightening poisoned dart;

Better the fires of blazing Ætna wed,

And find a pillow on its molten bed,

Than marry any man who’s liquor’s slave,

Whose course is tending toward the drunkard’s grave.¹⁸⁵
The Temperance Crusade
Providence had experienced its first wave of anti-liquor agitation in the late 1820s, leading to the foundation of the Providence Association for the Promotion of Temperance. In 1832, eleven members of the Central church who had been doing a lucrative trade in liquor abandoned this business and the church became virtually a temperance society.¹⁸⁶ Some of the temperance sentiment came from religious evangelicals, but much came from middle-class “mechanics,” master craftsmen and proprietors of machine-intensive manufacturing operations who saw the ill effects of liquor on their skilled employees.

In 1852, Rhode Island temporarily adopted state-wide prohibition of alcohol. A limited prohibition law was in effect in Providence for a year, 1872-1873, but it was not enforced. By 1873, when the city saw nearly six thousand arrests for public drunkenness, William had joined the Executive Committee of the Rhode Island Temperance Union, an unwieldy group with a hundred members, more than a quarter of them clergymen.¹⁸⁷ On the last Wednesday in October, 1874, it adopted a firm resolution: “Alcoholic drinks are never beneficial, but are always injurious to men in health. That the moderate use of any of these drinks is dangerous to the individual, and of evil influence upon society, especially upon the young, and should therefore be avoided. Every man owes to society the influence of sound precepts, and a correct example in favor of the cause of temperance; therefore every one should pledge himself not to manufacture, sell, or use these injurious drinks, and should also abstain from aiding or abetting by the rental of buildings, or the use of other property, to promote the sale of these drinks. As a large part of the disease, pauperism and crime in the community is a direct result of intemperance, therefore, as good citizens, we should invoke the aid of the law, for the suppression of the traffic in these drinks, as we do for the suppression of other articles found to be injurious to the health, morals or happiness of the people.”¹⁸⁸

The Temperance Union held many rum-free parties and picnics on the seashore. To familiar melodies, such as “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp” and “John Brown’s Body,” they sang temperance songs. To the tune of the hymn “Old Hundred” they roared: “Lift high the temperance banner! Ay, proudly let it wave, to save the poor inebriate from a degraded grave.”¹⁸⁹ Members congratulated themselves for a new state prohibition law, “Thousands of saloons have been closed, hundreds of barkeepers and proprietors have abandoned the business, tens of thousands of people have taken the pledge of total abstinence from all intoxicating beverages, and the grog shop system has received a stunning blow from which it may not even hope to recover.”¹⁹⁰

The next year the gubernatorial and legislative campaign was won by “the most unscrupulous combination of forces ever known in this State,” as the Union’s secretary described them, “working hand in hand with rum-sellers, and all pledged to do the bidding of the rum power.”¹⁹¹ Two separate federal investigations proved vote-buying was commonplace in the state, the price of a vote ranging from two to five dollars in ordinary elections up to thirty-five dollars in hotly contested ones.¹⁹² Speaking for his colleagues, one liquor-dealer commented, “Don’t you suppose we can have such a law as we want? We own twenty-six men in that Senate; we bought them and paid for them.”¹⁹³ And they quickly purchased repeal of statewide prohibition.

At the 1875 annual meeting of the Rhode Island Temperance Union, William read a paper that so impressed the delegates they voted to print it in their annual report. He saw in the setbacks suffered by the Temperance Movement an opportunity to unify all its scattered organizations that so often worked at cross purposes. “A few days ago I was gathering autumn leaves in a neighboring forest. But the wild winds were stirring quite actively, and it seemed impossible for me to keep my little pile of leaves together. Yonder would go one handful, and yonder another, until in almost utter despair I stood for a few moments, leaning over with both hands pressing upon the peck or more of brown, red and yellow leaves that I had collected. I had a little basket but that was full; what should I do? Just then, under the grass and moss at my feet I felt a great hard stone, and as soon as I had dug it out and placed it upon my little pile, I had no longer any difficulty in keeping from being blown away by the untoward winds what I was gathering with so much interest and anticipation.”¹⁹⁴ The repeal of prohibition was like this stone, hard and cold but capable of holding together the disparate anti-liquor groups.

The Central church launched its own campaign against liquor, circulating a temperance pledge through the Sunday school, many of whose scholars were adults, and through the congregation. A general meeting of the church instructed William to prepare a sermon on the subject at his earliest convenience, which he gave on April 12 and which was published shortly afterward.¹⁹⁵ In a stirring but analytical oration, he cautioned, “Not everything that is good belongs in the pulpit; not every great moral reform, yea, not any, has a right to monopolize the supreme attention of the Christian church.”¹⁹⁶

“I believe in prohibition, and shall vote for prohibition, whenever I may have an opportunity to do it and not throw my vote away. But I do not believe I have a right to preach prohibition, as I have lately been requested to do, by printed circular. Upon this, and all other political measures, all church members have rights and obligations that are inalienable, but they belong to the sphere of citizenship, not church membership.”¹⁹⁷ He hoped that all members would sign the pledge then being circulated, but he explained that the greatest force against intoxication, more powerful than any promise of sobriety, is Jesus Christ.

William postulated “the triple law of wave succession,” a scientific principle applying to the oceans of human life as well as to the wide Atlantic. “In a strong wind, few there are who have been upon the waters, and not seen how uniformly the great waves come three at a time. So through the centuries has it been in all religious, moral and political reforms.¹⁹⁸ One recent wave was the abolition of slavery in America. A second was the triumph of Protestant forces over Catholic in Europe. The third would be the success of temperance on both continents.

Lucy was proud to say her mother had raised her to be “a thorough temperance woman,”¹⁹⁹ and the deep involvement of her Cleveland church in the woman’s crusade gave her strong connections to the national movement.²⁰⁰ Two ladies of Providence, Miss Phebe Jackson and Mrs. Emma Berg, called upon other women to join with them in creating an organization to parallel the Rhode Island Temperance Union, which was dominated by men. The Woman’s Temperance Union was founded March 10, 1874, and Lucy was elected its first president.²⁰¹

Whenever she travelled, she made personal contacts that strengthened the national network of temperance women. She frequently visited her father in Cleveland, and in June 1874 went one state further to Indianapolis for the wedding of her younger brother, Charles, with Carrie Athon, step-daughter of a wealthy physician and surgeon, Dr. James S. Athon.²⁰² A newspaper writer rhapsodized, “The vast auditorium of St. Paul’s Cathedral was filled by one of the most fashionable and brilliant audiences that has ever assembled within its walls.” The Episcopal Bishop of Indiana himself presided, assisted by the rector of Grace Church, with Professor Smith at the organ.²⁰³

Lucy's fascination with death took her to the slaughterhouse of the Thomas D. Kingan company, said to be the largest in the world, processing twenty-two hundred hogs a day. She described this Indianapolis wonder to the readers of the Providence Journal: “In seven minutes from the time the poor hog reaches the end of the chute or inclined way, he is killed, washed, cleaned, cut up and sent down to be cooled off and salted down.

“I had always supposed that the killing was done by a blow upon the head, but I found it a much more merciful process. One man stands at the end of the chute, and fastens a chain to the leg of the hog. It is instantly suspended before another man who stabs right to the heart, with a long sharp knife, of each animal as it is placed before him. Another takes it down, then dead, and pushes it into a large tank of scalding water. Others lift it from that out to a table, where men are constantly cleaning off the hair. Further on the entrails are taken out. Again the hog has the knife used on his back and neck, and the next man with cleavers cuts the bones, and Mr. Hog goes down the trap door and is hung up to a rest in the cold regions of salt and ice below. After some days he is taken out, cut up into the proper pieces and packed away in salt in a cold room, and after weeks here, the pork is boxed and shipped to England.”²⁰⁴

In Cleveland, Lucy joined “the crusade” of The Women’s Temperance League, an anti-drink organization with five hundred members, marching twice against saloons.²⁰⁵ Each Sunday, a group gathered at the docks where boats to Detroit were tied up. “After the singing of a hymn, the audience were assembled, quiet and attentive. About three hundred men and boys from the captain to the lowest deck hands of the various vessels in port, rough, dirty men, listened for an hour and a half to the simple presentation of gospel truth as it was given by the ladies in prayer, singing and earnest pleadings with them as a mother would plead with a wayward boy. Many of them endeavored to join in concert in the Lord’s prayer, and the meeting quietly broke up, each man accepting a paper or tract pertaining to temperance and Christianity.”²⁰⁶

On January 20, 1875 at Central Baptist in Providence, Lucy presided over a meeting to expand her own temperance group to include the entire state and affiliate with the national group. “The object of this Union shall be to enlist the women of this State in the promotion of the cause of temperance, by creating a healthy, public sentiment — the circulation of the pledge of total abstinence, the formation of juvenile societies, and the use of all other possible means for the overthrow of the liquor traffic.”²⁰⁷ A debate arose over the name, some feeling that inclusion of “Christian” would bar some women who otherwise might make useful contributions, but Mrs. Freeborn Johnson of Providence argued that this word must not be omitted. Thus was born the Rhode Island chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, with Lucy as president.

Many speakers from other states addressed the throng, including Mrs. Annie Wittenmeyer of Philadelphia, president of the national Union. At the height of enthusiasm, the convention voted to present a petition to the United States Congress prohibiting alcohol in the territories under its jurisdiction. Lucy appointed a committee of four ladies to obtain signatures on this petition, and nearly all present signed it. In the evening, Lucy led a hymn and proclaimed the responsibility of parents to raise their children in the paths of temperance and virtue. After more singing and speeches, they intoned the doxology, and William closed the convention with a benediction.

In May, the ladies came together again for their first annual meeting, singing “Nearer My God to Thee.” Lucy again presided but declined re-election, saying she “could not attend to the duties another year,” and she appointed a committee to nominate her successor. In return, the group made Lucy permanent representative to the national conventions. The Rhode Island WCTU “was shot out upon society with all the rapidity and brilliancy of a meteor, and with all the power of an earthquake.”²⁰⁸

Lucy’s campaign enlisted property owners, grocers, druggists, physicians and housekeepers to collect temperance pledges. Her group had collected 3,500 names locally, and with the help of the women of Newport, Pawtucket, Portsmouth and Tiverton, they were able to give the state legislature petitions signed by fully ten thousand. The appearance of fifty respectable ladies at the Rhode Island legislature bringing bushels of petitions boosted passage of state-wide prohibition.²⁰⁹ The male-dominated Rhode Island Temperance Union praised the work of Lucy’s women, calling it “the hand-writing of God on the walls of gin-palaces.”²¹⁰ Despite “difficulties and discouragements” their Society survived “through summer’s heat and winter’s cold.” Among the failures was a campaign to form a “juvenile temperance army” through the Sunday schools. More successful was the attempt to convince churches to substitute grape juice for wine in Communion services.²¹¹
Church Conflicts
The morality of congregants was a serious concern for the Central Church, and sometimes they rose up in a body to exhort a wayward member to reform. One October, Deacon James Butler and Brother Edward Ide Ham accused Brother Henry Young of intemperance, neglect of church obligations, and gross immorality.²¹² Another time, a committee denounced a sister of the church for being an habitual fornicator. The big church disharmony of early 1872 was between the organist, who liked a certain few tunes and chose to play them regardless of the hymns the choir was supposed to sing, and Deacon Hartshorn who sought unsuccessfully to make the choir sing the tune on the same page as the hymn.²¹³

Often Lucy and William leapt into the midst of other people’s troubles, sometimes at risk to themselves. One case, Lucy admitted, did not turn out well. “Some of us were trying hard to get a man committed to the State Farm, who would not work, and relied upon his sick wife and benevolent friends to support his children. But we failed; and why? Because he was able to keep a steady head all the way from the saloon to his miserable tenement house, where he would tumble into his bed, boots and all, and snore the liquor off for a day or two, and then get up to try it all over again.”²¹⁴

This drunkard, whose name was Gilman Spalding, commanded the sheriff to arrest William and the courts to make William pay him a thousand dollars damages, “in an action of trespass, for that the said defendant at said Providence, on to wit, the 7th day of March A.D. 1876, with force of arms caused the plaintiff to be arrested, and illegally detained, and deprived of his liberty for a long time, contrary to law, and other enormities, the said defendant then and there did treat plaintiff against the peace.”²¹⁵ Spalding lost, having to pay the court costs, but then appealed and kept pressing his stale case for four years.

Early in 1876, William entered public controversy by attacking Reverend Adolphus Julius Behrends, who came to Providence to interview for a Congregationalist pastorate. The problem, William said, was that Behrends was a Baptist preacher, not a Congregationalist. Because the Baptist faith was the correct one, to take the job Behrends would abandon the true religion.

A newspaper correspondent writing under the pen name of “Rhody” reported: “The coming of Mr. Behrends, as a candidate to the Union Congregational Church of this city, was announced with great flourish of trumpets in the two leading papers of Saturday. Their many readers were fully advised that Rev. Mr. Behrends, who was to preach, was the identical Mr. Behrends who had suffered so much from the intolerance of the Baptists. The good people of the twelve Baptist churches of our city bore the accusation with due meekness. Naught was said publicly except in the one instance of the reply of his fellow-student and class-mate, the pastor of the Central Baptist Church, who upon Sunday evening reviewed the published reasons given by Mr. Behrends for leaving the Baptist denomination.”²¹⁶

William began his denunciation at the Central Church just half an hour before Behrends defended himself at the Union, and Rhody said a crowd rushed back and forth. “On the busy street, in parlors, it is Bainbridge versus Behrends. ‘Have you heard Mr. Behrends?’ is upon every lip. ‘What do you think of Mr. Bainbridge’s reply?’” If we believe Rhody, the Bainbridge-Behrends dispute was the top news of the week. The truth is, however, that Rhody was not a dispassionate observer. Rhody was Lucy!²¹⁷

The connections between Behrends and Lucy’s family were many. Not only had he been a classmate of William at Rochester, but Behrends had served as pastor of the Seaman family’s church in Cleveland, which graciously recalled only Behrends’s fine points when it wrote up its history a few years later: “He was a man of strong, large nature, and great earnestness, energy, independence, and moral courage.”²¹⁸

Writing as Rhody, Lucy quoted Dr. Wolcott, a Cleveland Congregational minister, “When Mr. Behrends went to Cleveland and took upon himself the pastoral charge of the First Baptist Church, he was as good a Congregationalist as he is now.” She then wondered if Behrends might be merely pretending to be a Congregationalist, as he had earlier pretended to be a Baptist.

With bitterness wrapped in irony, Lucy contemplated the handsome offer Union Congregational tendered to her husband’s rival. “If Mr. Behrends should accept, it is very natural to suppose that arrangements would soon be made for the christening of his children, and he may soon have some asking to be admitted to his new flock, who will not be satisfied anything short of immersion. No doubt Mr. Bainbridge will be ready to relieve his brother of embarrassment, and lend him the use of his baptistery and robe as he has done before to the pastor of another leading Congregational church of the city.”

William’s arguments were to no avail, and Behrends became pastor, with a salary of $5,000 a year, nearly twice what William was earning.²¹⁹ His congregation was ecumenical, and it had been formed only five years earlier through a union of the Richmond Street Church and the High Street Church, each contributing exactly 292 members to the merger. The minister who followed Behrends in its pastorate, J. Hall McIlvaine, later became a Presbyterian. Behrends told the Union congregation: “I saw that I could not honorably remain where I was, that my convictions allied me most nearly to the churches of your order; and I deemed honesty and honor of more account than success.”²²⁰

What was the difference between Baptists and Congregationalists? In the time of the Behrends-Bainbridge debate, both denominations were conservative. Both had a congregational form of government, giving great authority to the local congregation, but only the Baptists placed great stress on the cleansing ritual of adult baptism.

Under William's guidance, the members of Central Baptist formally had adopted fourteen articles of faith. The first three articles affirmed a single god, the mystery of the Trinity, and divine foresight of sin. Hellfire blazed in the fourth article: “We believe God created our first parents righteous and holy, and entered into a covenant of life with them, upon condition of personal, perfect and perpetual obedience; but they being left to the freedom of their own will, ate of the forbidden fruit, by which they lost the divine image; defiled their whole nature; brought themselves and their whole posterity under the wrath and curse of God; became dead in trespasses and sins, and liable to eternal torment in hell.” The last article of faith looked beyond this world of woe: “We believe in the fellowship or communion of the saints; the separate existence of the soul after death; the resurrection of the dead; and life everlasting for the righteous, and eternal punishment for the wicked.”²²¹

Soon after taking the Union pastorate, Behrends published a manual giving the Congregationalist beliefs of the Union church. They say nothing about God having foreseen human sin, and they portray man’s fall in less vivid terms: “You believe that man was created holy; that he fell from that state by transgression; and that, in consequence of the fall, mankind are by nature destitute of holiness, and, in all their moral actions, sinners against God.”²²² In the place of adult baptism, Behrends wrote mildly of the advantages of repentance of sin, and said, “it is the privilege of believing parents to dedicate their children to God in Baptism.”

Like Lucy, Hattie Behrends became active in women’s organizations, but she selected ones higher in social status from those a Baptist woman might be expected to join. Lucy never became a member of the Women’s Christian Association, but Hattie did. Its aim was “to aid all virtuous young women who are endeavoring to obtain an honorable support, by providing them with a comfortable, pleasant ‘Boarding Home,’ and by surrounding them with such moral and religious influences as shall guard them from evil, and best promote their temporal and eternal welfare.”²²³ Hattie, but not Lucy, was a life member of the Women’s City Missionary Society, which sought “to assist the poor in efforts to help themselves, and to engage in general missionary work in the city, providing homes for those women who desire to reform, where they may be fitted to earn an honest livelihood, and aiding young girls in indigent circumstances and exposed situations to procure respectable homes and employment.”²²⁴