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Harriet Livermore, the Pilgrim Stranger: Female Preaching and Biblical Feminism in Early-Nineteenth-Century America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Catherine A. Brekus
Catherine A. Brekus
Affiliation:
Ms. Brekus is assistant professor of the history of Christianity at the Divinity School, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
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Extract

On a Sunday morning in January of 1827, “all the taste and fashion” of Washington, D.C., streamed toward the Capitol to witness one of the most remarkable events to take place in the gentlemanly preserve of the Hall of Representatives: Harriet Livermore, a devout evangelical and the daughter of a former Congressman, had convinced the Speaker of the House to allow her to preach to Congress. With crowds of eager spectators spilling out of the Hall and into the street, Livermore ascended into the Speaker's Chair, which served as a makeshift pulpit, and silenced a crowd of a thousand with a sermon on the text, “He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.” Included among her audience were congressmen, senators, and President John Quincy Adams himself, who sat on the steps leading up to her feet because he could not find a free chair. According to published reports, many in the audience wept quietly as she spoke. “It savored more of inspiration than anything I ever witnessed,” one woman marvelled. “And to enjoy the frame of mind which I think she does, I would relinquish the world. Call this rhapsody if you will; but would to God you had heard her!” Livermore's sermon was such a success that she was permitted to preach to Congress again in 1832, 1838, and 1843, each time to large crowds.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 65 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 389 - 404
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1996

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References

An early version of this essay was presented at the meeting of the American Historical Association in January 1993. The author would like to thank Karin Gedge, Randall Balmer, and Martin Marty for their comments.

1. See the accounts published in the National Intelligencer (9 January 1827), Newburyport Herald (19 January 1827), and The New York Commercial Advertiser (11 January 1827).Google ScholarLivermore published an impressive number of books during her lifetime: Addresses to the Dispersed of Judah (Philadelphia, 1849),Google ScholarThe Anointed Shepherd at the War Camp of Israel (1856),Google ScholarThe Counsel of God, Immutable and Everlasting (Philadelphia, 1844),Google ScholarAn Epistle of Love (Philadelphia, 1826),Google ScholarThe Glory of the Lord in the Land of the Living (New York, 1842),Google ScholarThe Harp of Israel, to Meet the Loud Echo in the Wilds of America (Philadelphia, 1835),Google ScholarA Letter to John Ross, the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation (Philadelphia, 1838),Google ScholarMillennial Tidings, no. 1 (Philadelphia, 1831),Google ScholarMillenial Tidings, no. 3 (Philadelphia, 1838),Google ScholarMillennial Tidings, no. 4 (Philadelphia, 1839),Google ScholarA Narration of Religious Experience (Concord, N.H., 1826),Google ScholarScriptural Evidence in Favor of Female Testimony in Meetings for the Worship of God (Portsmouth, N.H., 1824),Google ScholarThe Sparrow, vol. 2, 1 (Philadelphia, 1848),Google ScholarA Testimony for the Times (New York, 1843),Google ScholarThoughts on Important Subjects (Philadelphia, 1864),Google Scholar and A Wreath from Jessamine Lawn; or, Free Grace, the Flower that Never Fades, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1831).Google ScholarMany of these books are quite rare. I have been unable to locate copies of Millennial Tidings, no. 2 or no. 3, or The Anointed Shepherd. With the exception of two letters in the Abraham H. Cassel Collection (MSS 60, Juniata College, Huntingdon, Pa.), virtually all of her manuscripts have disappeared.Google Scholar

2. For a full discussion of these female preachers, see Brekus, Catherine A., “Let Your Women Keep Silence in the Churches: Female Preaching and Evangelical Religion in America, 1740–1845” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1993).Google ScholarSee also Billington, Louis, “Female Laborers in the Church: Women Preachers in the Northeastern United States, 1790–1840,” Journal of American Studies (Great Britain) 19 (1985): 369–394;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Sweet, Leonard I., The Minister's Wife: Her Role in Nineteenth-Century American Evangelicalism (Philadelphia, 1983), chap. 5.Google Scholar

3. Recent scholarship on women in American religion has been impressive. For a good overview, see Clark, Elizabeth B., “Women and Religion in America, 1780–1870,” in Church and State in America: A Bibliographical Guide, ed. Wilson, John F. (New York: 1986), 1:365–413.Google ScholarSee also Kern, Kathi Lynn, “The Woman's Bible: Gender, Religion, and Ideology in the Work of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1854–1902” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1991),Google Scholar and Sklar, Kathryn Kish, Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity (New Haven, Conn., 1973).Google Scholar

4. Davis, Rebecca, Gleanings from Merrimac Valley (Portland, Me., 1881), p. 15.Google ScholarFor more on the Livermore family, see Livermore, Samuel T., Harriet Livermore, the “Pilgrim Stranger” (Hartford, Conn., 1884);Google Scholarand Stackpole, Everett S., History of New Hampshire (New York, 1916), 2:285–287. There has been very little twentieth-century scholarship on Harriet Livermore, but a number of valuable sources exist.Google Scholar For a contemporary account of her, see “Harriet Livermore,” Southern Literary Messenger 7 (02 1841): 156.Google ScholarSee also Chase, C. C., “Harriet Livermore,” in Contributions of the Old Residents' Historical Association 4 (Lowell, Mass., 08 1888): 17–23;Google ScholarDavis, R., Gleanings from Merrimac Valley;Google ScholarLong, Harvey L., “Harriet Livermore: Guest of the Brethren,” Brethren Life and Thought 24 (Autumn 1979): 220–224;Google Scholar and Hoxie, Elizabeth F., “Harriet Livermore, ‘Vixen and Devotee,’” New England Quarterly (03 1945): 39–50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarLivermore is also the subject of a recent, excellent doctoral dissertation by Jurisson, Cynthia, “Federalist, Feminist, Revivalist: Harriet Livermore (1788–1868) and the Limits of Democratization in the Early Republic,” (Princeton Theological Seminary, 1994).Google Scholar

5. , Livermore, Narration, p. 20.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., pp. 31, 15–16. Both Hoxie and Davis claim that she experienced conversion after being jilted by a man that she had hoped to marry;Google Scholarsee , Hoxie, pp. 40–41;Google Scholarand , Davis, Gleanings.Google ScholarLivermore, Samuel argues persuasively that this story was an exaggeration if not pure fabrication;Google Scholarsee his Harriet Livermore, pp. 15–16.Google Scholar

7. , Livermore, Harp of Israel, p. 4.Google ScholarSee also Millennial Tidings, no. 4, pp. 53–54.Google ScholarOn primitivism, see Hughes, Richard T. and Allen, C. Leonard, Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America, 1630–1875 (Chicago, 1988).Google Scholar

8. , Livermore, Narration, p. 144. Livermore visited Danforth in 1824;Google Scholarsee Narration, pp. 209, 15.Google ScholarLivermore often expressed her willingness to martyr herself for the glory of God; for two examples, see Narration, p. 7;Google Scholarand Harp of Israel, p. 6.Google Scholar

9. , Livermore, Narration, pp. 289, 209;Google ScholarHarp of Israel, p. 4;Google ScholarHoxie, p. 44;Google Scholarand , Livermore, Counsel of God, p. 285.Google Scholar

10. Letter from Harriet Livermore to Edward St. Loe Livermore, 24 January 1826, quoted in Livermore, Samuel, p. 73. For descriptions of Livermore in the pulpit, see Newburyport Herald (19 01 1827);Google Scholar and Richards, William C., Great in Goodness; A Memoir of George N. Briggs, Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, From 1844 to 1851 (Boston, 1867), p. 109. For her religious celebrity, see Samuel Livermore, p. 93.Google Scholar

11. On Wilkinson and Lee, see Wisbey, Herbert A. Jr, Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend (Ithaca, N.Y., 1964);Google Scholar and Stein, Stephen, The Shaker Experience in America (New Haven, Conn., 1992).Google ScholarIn this quote, Livermore was referring to female preachers for the Osgoodites, a radical sect known for its ecstatic dancing and faith healing. See the letter from Harriet Livermore to Abigail Cheese, 17 May 1823, MSS 60, Abraham H. Cassel Collection Juniata College Library, Huntingdon, Pa.;Google Scholar and Scott, Kenneth, “The Osgoodites of New Hampshire,” New England Quarterly 16 (1943): 20–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On radical sectarian groups, see Marini, Stephen A., Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England (Cambridge, Mass., 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. , Livermore, Narration, pp. 192–193.Google Scholar

13. , Livermore, A Wreath from Jessamine Lawn, 2:172.Google Scholar

14. , Livermore, Thoughts, p. 135;Google Scholarand Counsel of God, pp. 101–102. See also Glory of the Lord, pp. 8–11.Google Scholar

15. , Livermore, Narration, pp. 147, 160.Google ScholarOn populist preachers in the early republic, see Hatch, Nathan O., The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, Conn., 1989).Google Scholar

16. , Livermore, Narration, p. 202;Google Scholarand Addresses, p. 113.Google Scholar

17. , Livermore, Addresses, p. 23.Google Scholar

18. For Livermore's comments on Paul, see Scriptural Evidence, pp. 93–100.Google ScholarFor similar interpretations by other female preachers, see Miller, Rebecca, “Female Improvement,” Christian Palladium (Union Mills, N.Y., 1841), 10:36;Google Scholar and Peirce, Deborah, A Scriptural Vindication of Female Preaching (Carmel, N.Y., 1820), p. 13.Google Scholar

19. See , Livermore, Addresses, pp. 114, 22.Google Scholar

20. , Livermore, Narration, p. 13. She was quoting from Luke 8:1–3.Google Scholar

21. See the poem Livermore included in Addresses, p. 46.Google Scholar

22. , Livermore, Counsel of God, pp. 13–38.Google Scholar

23. , Livermore, Wreath, 1:58;Google Scholarsee also 1:118. On nineteenth-century gender stereotypes, see Welter, Barbara, “The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820–1860,” American Quarterly 18 (1966): 151–174;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Rotundo, Anthony E., American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York, 1993).Google Scholar

24. , Livermore, Millennial Tidings, no. 4, pp. 51–52.Google Scholar

25. , Livermore, Scriptural Evidence, p. 120.Google Scholar

26. , Livermore, Narration, p. 15.Google Scholar

27. one example, see , Livermore, Counsel of God, p. 37.Google Scholar

28. , Livermore, Addresses, p. 24.Google Scholar

29. On the religious roots of the nineteenth-century women's rights movement, see Isenberg, Nancy Gale, “‘Coequality of the Sexes’: The Feminist Discourse of the Antebellum Women's Rights Movement in America” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin—Madison, 1990);Google Scholar and Brekus, Catherine A., “‘Restoring the Divine Order to the World’: Attitudes Toward Religion and the Family in the Antebellum Woman's Rights Movement,” forthcoming in Religion, Feminism, and the Family, ed. Carr, Anne and Van Leeuwen, Mary Stewart (Louisville, Ky. 1996).Google Scholar

30. On the Federalists, see Elkins, Stanley M. and McKitrick, Eric L., The Age of Federalism (New York, 1993);Google Scholarand , Livermore, Thoughts, p. 100.Google Scholar

31. On the transformation of these groups from “sects” to “denominations,”Google Scholarsee , Hatch, Democratization, pp. 193–209;Google Scholarand Bordin, Ruth O., “The Sect to Denomination Process in America: The Freewill Baptist Experience,” Church History 34 (1964): 77–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32. , Livermore, The Glory of the Lord, especially pp. 8, 13, 16;Google Scholarand Harp of Israel, p. 24.Google Scholar

33. , Livermore was influenced by the ideas of the missionary Joseph Wolff;Google Scholar see her Millennial Tidings, no. 1. On Wolff, see Marcus, Jacob Rader, United States Jewry 1776–1985 (Detroit, Mich., 1989), 1:545.Google Scholar

34. Most Protestants were post- rather than pre-millennialists; see Moorhead, James H., “Between Progress and Apocalypse: A Reassessment of Millennialism in American Religious Thought, 1800–1880,” The Journal of American History 71 (12 1984): 524–542.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Doan, Ruth Alden, The Miller Heresy, Millennialism, and American Culture (Philadelphia, 1987).Google Scholar This copy of Counsel is at the Library of Congress.

35. On Christian missions to Jews, see , Marcus, United States Jewry, 1:543–548Google Scholar

36. , Livermore, Narration, p. 204;Google ScholarCounsel of God, p. 1;Google Scholar and Addresses, p. 17.Google Scholar

37. , Livermore, Narration, p. 276.Google Scholar

38. These reports were refuted by Samuel Livermore in his biography, Harriet Livermore. Nevertheless, Hoxie contends that some may have been at least partially true;Google Scholarsee Hoxie, pp. 47–48.Google Scholar

39. Livermore, Samuel, p. 91.Google Scholar He was quoting a letter from a man who had briefly known Livermore. See also the letter from Mrs. D. L. Miller to Miss A. J. Herbert, Philadelphia, 26 March 1894, in MSS correspondence of Moody Kent to Alma Jane Herbert, 1854–1866, New Hampshire Historical Society.

40. Adams, Charles Francis, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams (1877), 12:10.Google Scholar

41. Livermore had given her power of attorney to his lawyer, Thomas Havens, and apparently he considered her too “imbecile” to manage the money. Despite her threats of legal action, she never received a single cent of her brother's bequest. See the letter from Harriet Livermore to Thomas Haven, December 1866, MSS 60, Abraham H. Cassel Collection, Juniata College Library, Huntingdon, Pa.Google Scholar

42. , Livermore, Addresses, p. 235;Google Scholarand Thoughts, pp. 17, 85, 117, 124.Google Scholar

43. See the letter from Livermore to Mrs. Amanda Thomas, 26 April 1866, MSS 60, Abraham H. Cassel Collection, Juniata College Library, Huntingdon, Pa.Google Scholar

44. Whittier, John Greenleaf, Snow-Bound: A Winter's Idyll (Boston, Mass., 1867), pp. 39–40.Google Scholar

45. See Cassel's copies of the obituaries that appeared in The Cornhill Monthly and Literary Recorder (15 September 1868) and The Revolution (1868), MSS 60, in the Abraham H. Cassel Collection, Juniata College Library, Huntingdon, Pa. See also Samuel Livermore, p. 87.Google Scholar