"The Abolitionist Factory:" Northeastern Religion, David Nelson, and the Mission Institute near Quincy, Illinois, 1836-1844

Abstract

In 1836 the American Antislavery Society (AASS) agent David Nelson established the Mission Institute near Quincy, Illinois, on the east bank of the Mississippi River to prepare men, and later women, as evangelical missionaries and to upset slavery across the river in Northeast Missouri. The institute trained missionaries for evangelical work in foreign lands or to preach to enslaved persons and free blacks who had not been exposed to what Nelson referred to as the whole gospel.1 Institute missionaries continually confronted slavery in Northeast Missouri from 1836 to 1844, provoking violent reactions from Missouri slaveholders. Through their Underground Railroad activities, they also helped slaves run away from Missouri, thus making slavery insecure for their owners in the region. In western Illinois, they established relationships with African Americans and, in the process, suggested the radical possibility that there could be equal relations between white and black people in America.2 In establishing the Institute, Nelson and his supporters attempted to create a model evangelical community according to antislavery principles. They hoped it would serve as a contrast to what they perceived as the immoral, backward slave society across the river in Missouri. What made the institute unique was the extent to which its members became radical abolitionists, prepared to use extralegal means against slavery in Missouri. Nelson received support in the Quincy region to establish the Institute because Quinc/s founders were evangelical Protestants from New England who had absorbed the teachings of the Second Great Awakening.3 Because of their background before moving to Illinois and their proximity to slavery in Illinois, they came to define themselves and their values in opposition to those of slave owners and slavery supporters. Charles G. Finney, foremost preacher of the Awakening had taught two principles that challenged slavery, benevolent reform, and free moral agency. The former emphasized the millennium could only occur after the removal of sin from the nation, and the latter stressed that individuals had to be accountable for their own salvation. The institution of slavery was at odds with both of these teachings. It did not permit legal marriages, discouraged or even prohibited reading and preaching the Bible, and generally forced its victims to live in a state of sin and ignorance. Slaves could hardly seek their own salvation, and the owners of slaves by that very act imperiled theirs. Nelson, a follower of Finney's, made his missionary calling more explicitly anti-slavery. The central doctrine of Nelson's preaching was the equality of souls, according to which it was the mission of the American church to preach and expose all men and women to the whole gospel so that each person could achieve salvation.4 When Nelson had been a missionary in Missouri in the late 1820s and early 1830s, he had tried to preach the Finneyite message to slaves and their owners, but he was expelled from the state for his efforts. In establishing the Institute in Illinois, his primary emphasis was on reaching out to slaves and foreigners who had not been exposed to Christianity. Because the institution of slavery thwarted their missionary imperative of reaching every soul, Institute members became radical abolitionists. Implementing the equality of souls doctrine led Quincy evangelicals to attack slavery in Missouri and racism in Illinois. The Mission Institute's campaign against slavery is an especially vivid example of how northern evangelical methods used with the intention of uplifting both slaves and slaveholders, mostly succeeded only in provoking the latter. This reform, however well intentioned, contributed to sectional conflict between the North and South, a conflict which eventually led to the Civil War.5 The North, not content to develop its free labor and religious reform movements, insisted on exporting them to the West and South. …