Article date: Thursday, April 13, 1837
Article date: Thursday, April 27, 1837
With print newspaper production and readership currently on a steady decline in the United States, it’s hard to imagine a time when small denominational religious newspapers could have attracted a large subscriber base. The readership of the
Cincinnati Journal and Western Luminarywas perhaps relatively small, but it was devoted to its paper. In this letter, the writer strongly defended his choice to continue paying for the
Journal:“Neither corn nor wine; neither the smiles of my wife, nor the prattle of my children, make me more glad, than the weekly visit of a neat, richly laden newspaper.”Download a PDF of this letter.
Article date: Thursday, January 12, 1837
Comments on the General Assembly from the June 22, 1837 edition of the paper.Lyman Beecher’s call for unity in May 1837 (see “Lyman Beecher’s Statement of Facts,” above) was going unheeded. The debates between the New School and Old School factions stemmed from a multitude of causes. The traditionalist Old School Presbyterians were more concerned with adherence to Church doctrine. They were also firmly against the kind of religious revivals that characterized the Second Great Awakening, and they didn’t believe in discussing matter that weren't strictly theological at general assemblies—specifically, they were unwilling to discuss slavery, while many New School Presbyterians were eager to explicitly condemn the institution.
A split was not far off: the last straw came at the 1837 General Assembly, when members of the Old School used their majority to rescind an earlier Plan of Union that had brought some Congregationalist congregations into the Presbyterian Church, arguing that doctrinal purity was at stake. Members of the New School were unhappy with this decision, but at the next year’s Assembly, they were prevented from even taking their seats to argue the issue. The Church was effectively divided. The New School and Old School each later separated once more over the issue of slavery, this time along geographical lines. Eventually, all the northern groups reunited as the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) and the southern groups reunited as the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS), but the PCUSA was never again in one piece.
The magnitude of this split was deeply felt in the newspaper, with pages of each edition for months devoted to the 1837 Assembly and its ramifications. The front page of every paper was devoted to a “Ladies’ Journal,” and in the July 13th edition of the paper, this element included a sort of non-apology for the recent space allotted to the General Assembly: “we would gladly have avoided it, but recent events left us no option.” The
Journalcondemned the actions of the Old School, claiming that the abrogation of the Plan of Union and the events of the General Assembly “would endanger all our institutions both civil and ecclesiastical.”
Download a PDF of the Ladies' Journal article on the split.
Thursday, July 13, 1837
Download a PDF of comments on the controversy from October 1837.Article date: Thursday, October 26, 1837
Read the proceedings of the 1837 General Assembly online at the Internet Archive.
JournalLetters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of WomenSpectatorJournal “If both the sexes are to occupy the same spheres, with the single exception of bodily labor, and, of course, to be engaged
in the same employments so far as physical strength will permit, there would remain no advantages from the formation of
different sexes, but the mere continuance of our race.—An iron age would come upon the world, destroying every earthly joy,
and making existence in this world, amidst the outbreakings of unrestrained and impetuous passions, but the prelude to the
madness and woe of the world of despair.”Download a PDF of this article.Read the completeLetters on the Equality of the Sexes at the Internet Archive.
As illustrated by the clippings above, the
Journalfrequently included content and judgments on controversial issues of the day in its pages. Indian Removal—the infamous “Trail of Tears” of eastern Native Americans forced to relocate to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma—was no exception. Here the newspaper reprinted a strongly-worded letter originally published in the
Journal of Commerce(a publication that exists to this day). This particular writer condemned the removal and expressed great empathy for the Native peoples, stating that
“no portion of our American history can furnish a paralel [sic] to the misery and suffering at present endured by the emigrating Creeks.” This perspective was relatively unusual for the time period, but one should not be too surprised to find it in this Presbyterian publication. Many Christians had always strongly opposed the Indian Removal Act, the 1830 law that originally allowed the President (then Andrew Jackson) to “negotiate” with Native tribes for their removal.
"The American people, it is presumed, are yet unacquainted with the condition of these people, and it is to be hoped
when they do become acquainted with the facts, the philanthropic portion of the community will not be found wanting
in their efforts to alleviate, as far as practicable, their extreme suffering."Download a PDF of this article.Article date: Thursday, April 13, 1837
Comments on the General Assembly from the June 22, 1837 edition of the paper.
