32. Peter Cartwright

One of the most remarkable men in the American ministry is Peter Cartwright, the "Backwoods Preacher." Sixty-seven years of ministerial labors have passed over his head, and yet he still continues in the field in which he has done such good service, and retains all the popularity and much of the fire of his younger days.

He was born in Amherst County, Virginia, on the 1st of September, 1785. His father had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War, and his mother was an orphan. Shortly after the close of the war, the Cartwrights removed from Virginia to Kentucky, which was then an almost unbroken wilderness. The journey was accompanied with considerable danger, as the Indians were not yet driven west of the Ohio, but the family reached their destination in safety. For two years they lived on a rented farm in Lincoln County, Kentucky, and at the end of that time removed to what was called the Green River Country, and settled in Logan County, nine miles south of Russellville, the county seat, and within one mile of the State line of Tennessee.

The portion of Logan County in which young Cartwright's childhood and youth were passed was the very last place one Would have cared to bring up a candidate for the ministry. It was called "Rogue's Harbor," and was thickly settled with fugitives from justice from all parts of the Union. They actually constituted a majority of the inhabitants of the district, and when the respectable citizens sought to bring them to justice they readily "swore each other clear," and thus set the law at defiance. They carried on such a course of outrage and violence that the respectable citizens were at length compelled to combine for defence against them by means of an organization known as the Regulators. Several fierce encounters took place between the desperadoes and the Regulators, in which many lives were lost, before the supremacy of the law was established.

"When my lather settled in Logan County," says Mr. Cartwright, "there was not a newspaper printed South of Green River, no mill short of forty miles, and no schools worth the name. Sunday was a day set apart for hunting, fishing, horse-racing, card-playing, balls, dances, and all kinds of jollity and mirth. We killed our meat out in the woods, wild, and beat our meal and hominy with a pestle and mortar. We stretched a deer-skin over a hoop, burned holes in it with the prongs of a fork, sifted our meal, baked our bread, eat it, and it was first-rate eating, too. We raised, or gathered out of the woods, our own tea. We had sage, bohea, cross-vine, spice, and sassafras teas in abundance. As for coffee, I am not sure that I ever smelled it for ten years. We made our sugar out of the water of the maple-tree, and our molasses, too. These were great luxuries in those days. We raised our own cotton and flax. We water-rotted our flax, broke it by hand, scutched it, picked the seed out of the cotton with our fingers; our mothers and sisters carded, spun, and wove it into cloth, and they cut and made our garments and bed-clothes, etc. And when we got on a new suit thus manufactured, and sallied out into company, we thought ourselves as big as any body."

Young Peter grew up in this rough country with a constitution of iron, and a fair share of Western courage, independence, and energy. He was sent by his father to a neighboring school, but the teacher was an indifferent one, and he learned merely to read and write and cipher imperfectly.

He was a "wild, wicked boy," he tells us, and grew up to delight in horse-racing, card-playing, and dancing. His father seems to have enjoyed having so dashing a son, but his mother, who was a pious woman, took his course seriously to heart, and wept and prayed over her boy as only a Christian mother can. She often talked to him, and moved him so deeply that he frequently vowed to lead a better life; but his pleasures were too tempting, and he fell back again into his old habits. His father presented him with a race-horse and a pack of cards, and he became known among his youthful companions as one of the most fearless riders and the luckiest fellow at cards in the county. The good mother wept and prayed all the more, and the boy hid his cards from her to keep her from burning them.

In 1801, when he was sixteen years old, a change came over him. He had been out with his father and brother to attend a wedding in the neighborhood. The affair was conducted with all the uproarious merriment incident to those days, and when Peter returned home and began to think over it, he felt condemned at having passed his time in such a manner. "My mother was in bed," says he. "It seemed to me, all of a sudden, my blood rushed to my head, my heart palpitated, in a few minutes I turned blind, an awful impression rested on my mind that death had come to me and I was unprepared to die. I fell on my knees and began to ask God to have mercy on me. My mother sprang from her bed, and was soon on her knees by my side, praying for me, and exhorting me to look to Christ for mercy, and then and there I promised the Lord if he would spare me I would seek and serve Him, and I never fully broke that promise. My mother prayed for me a long time. At length we lay down, but there was little sleep for me. Next morning I rose, feeling wretched beyond expression. I tried to read in the Testament, and retired many times to secret prayer through the day, but found no relief. I gave up my race-horse to my father and requested him to sell him. I went and brought my pack of cards and gave them to mother, who threw them into the fire, and they were consumed. I fasted, watched, and prayed, and engaged in regular reading of the Testament. I was so distressed and miserable that I was incapable of any regular business."

Several months passed away, during which time Peter had seasons of comfort and hopes of forgiveness, but during the greater portion he was wretched and miserable, filled with such a fear of the devil that he was almost convinced that Satan was really present with him to keep him from God. A camp-meeting, held in the vicinity of his father's house, in the spring of 1801, completed his conversion and gave him peace.

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