The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1850-02-23
PAUL BENTON:
Uh,
The Texas Camp-meeting.
BY CHARLES sUMMERFIELD.

In Eastern Texas. | employ the epIthetI
{" successful, +" because several previous fail
ures had apparently rendered all efforts of a
like kind perfectly hopeless. Indeed, the me-
ridian, at the period was most uncongenial
to religious and moral enterprise. The coun-
try bordering on the SABINE, had been occupi-
ed. rather than settled, by class of adventur-
ers almost as wild as the savages whom they
had scarcely expelled, and the beasts of
prey which still dissipated their domain of
primeval forests. Professional gamblers re-
fugees from the Jail, absconded debtors, out
laws from every land forgers of false coin,
thieves, robbers and murderers, interspersed
among a race of uneducated hunters and
herdsmen, made up the strange social mis-
cellany; without courts or prisons or church
es, or schools, or even the shadow Of civil
authority or subordination-as sort of Unprin-
cipled pdndenlOniHn1, where fierce passion
sat enthroned, waving its bloody sceptre, the
naked bowie knife! Let no one accuse me of
Iexaggeration, for the sake of dramatic effect
am speaking now of Shelby county-that
home of the Lynchers-the terrible locale,
where ten years later, forty persons were
poisoned to death at a marriage supper!
Il will be obvious that, in such a communi-
ty, very few would be disposed to patronize
Icamp-meetings and accordingly a dozen diff
ferent trials, at various times have never col
ected a hundred hearers, on any single oc-
casion. But even these were not allowed to
worship in peace uniformly, the first day or
night, band otadesperadoes, headed by the
notorious Watt Foeman. chief Judge and exc
cutioner of the Shelby Lynchers, broke into
the altar and scattered the mourners or as
Icended the pulpit and treated the preachers
to gratuitous robe Of tar and feathers =
Hence, all prudent evangelists soon learned
to shun the left bank of the Sabine, as if it
had been infested by a cOhort of demons i
land two whole years elapsed without any
new attempt to erect the cross in so perilous
la field
At length, however, an advertisement APP
peared promising another effort in behalf of
the gospel. The notice was unique, perfect
backwood's curiosity, both as to its tenor
and mode of publication. Let me give it
Uerbatim ct hteratim:
Barbecue Campaigning.
There will be Camp-Meeting, to COM
mence the last Monday of this month, at the
Double Spring Grove, near Peter Brinson's
in the county Of Shelby.
zine exercises win open with a splendid
barbecue. Preparations are being made 10
suit all tastes there will be a good barbecue,
better liquor, and the best of Gospel!
paul DENTON,
Sept. l, 1886. Missionary M. E. c."
This singular document was nailed to the
door OF every public house and grocery it
was attached to the largest trees at the inter
Isections of all cross roads AID principal trails
and even the wandering hunters themselves.
found it in remote dels of the mountains,
miles away from the smoke of a human habi-
tation.
| At first many regarded the matter as a
hoax played of by some wicked wag, in rid
icule of popular credulity. But this hypo-
thesis was negatived by the statements of
Peter Crimson, proprietor of the Double
Spring Grove" who informed all inquirers
that he had been employed and paid, by a
stranger calling himself Methodist mission
airy, to provide an ample barbecue, at the
period and place advertised"
But the liquor-the better liquor-are
you to furnish the liquor too 2" was the in
variable question oil each visitor.
THE missionary said he would attend to
that himself replied Crimson.
"He must be precious original, was the
general rejoinder. A proposition which most
of them afterwards had an opportunity to
verify experimentally.
| need hardly add that an intense excite
ment resulted. The rumor took wings: flew
on the wind turned to storm--a storm of ex-
aggeration-every echo increased its sound,
Till nothing else could be heard but q the Bar
becue Campaigning" it became the focus OF
thought. the staple Of dreams. And thus
the unknown preacher had insured one thing
in advance, congregation embracing the
entire population Of the country, which was
likely the sole purpose of his stratagem.
| was travelling in that part of Texas at
the time, and my imagination being inHamed
by the common curiosity, l. took some trouble
and attended. But although my eyes wit
messed tee extraordinary scene, | may well
despair OF the undertaking to paint 1.-THE
pen of Homer, or the pencil of Hogarth,
twere alone adequate to the sublimity and
burlesque Of the complicated task. may
only sketch the angular outlines.
A space had been cleared away immedi-
ately around the magnificent Double spring.
which boiled up with orce sufficient to turn
a mIlI-wheel, In the very centre of the ever
green grove. Here q pulpit had been raised
and before it, was the inseparabls altar for
mourners. Beyond these at the distance of
| fifty PAGES, q succession planktables extend
ed in the form Of a great circle, or the pc
rimeter of a poygon, completely enclosing
the area about the spring. An Odoriferous
steam, of most delicious SAVIOR, diHused ltse If
through the air; this was from the pits in the
adjacent prairie, where the fifty slaves of
| Peter Brinson, were engaged i'll cooking the
promised barbecue.
i The grove itself was literally alive tenn
ing, swarming, running over, with strange
| figures in the human shape. men, women,
and children, in every variety of Outlandish
costumes. All Shelby county was there