Peter Cartwright Grave

Born in Virginia, and raised in Kentucky, Peter Cartwright (1785-1872) was a carnal frontier adolescent. At 16, he attended a revival meeting was “soundly converted.”

To this meeting I repaired, a guilty, wretched sinner. On the Saturday evening of said meeting, I went, with weeping multitudes, and bowed before the stand, and earnestly prayed for mercy.

In the midst of a solemn struggle of soul, an impression was made on my mind, as though a voice said to me, “Thy sins are all forgiven thee.”

Divine light flashed all round me, unspeakable joy sprung up in my soul. I rose to my feet, opened my eyes, and it really seemed as if I was in heaven; the trees, the leaves on them, and everything seemed, and I really thought were, praising God. My mother raised the shout, my Christian friends crowded around me and joined me in praising God; and though I have been since then, in many instances, unfaithful, yet I have never, for one moment, doubted that the Lord did, then and there, forgive my sins and give me religion.

He became a circuit riding Methodist preacher. At 39 he moved to Illinois, a free state before the Civil War, because of his strong abolitionist views.

In 1832 he would beat Abraham Lincoln for a state legislative seat. In 1846, Lincoln would defeat Cartwright in a Congressional race.

The hero of 1812, General (later President) Andrew Jackson once entered late to his meeting. The local preacher whispered the news to Cartwright. Cartwright thundered, “And who is General Jackson? If General Jackson doesn’t get his soul converted, God will damn him as quickly as anyone else.”

Cartwright preached 15,000 sermons and baptized over 12,000 people.

His church is located nearby.

From Christian Hall of Fame

Peter Cartwright
1785 – 1873
Peter Cartwright was born in Amherst County, Virginia. His father was a colonial soldier in the War of Independence. Shortly after the war, the family moved to Kentucky. Peter Cartwright was reared in frontier surroundings, and like many of the young men in that primitive area, engaged in sinful practices. His mother, a devout Christian woman, opened their cabin home for preaching by the Methodist circuit preachers. As a young man of sixteen, Peter was convicted of his sins as a result of these meetings, and after several weeks of deep agony and contrition, he was “soundly converted” at an outdoor revival meeting. His new faith completely changed his life, and Cartwright immediately began to witness for Christ.

One year later he was licensed as an “exhorter” and began riding a circuit of his own. His appointments were few and far between, and he preached wherever people would open their homes, because “meeting houses” were few. This was the beginning of his long career as a circuit-riding Methodist preacher. Cartwright was a “hellfire and brimstone” preacher after the style of Wesley, and his character and personality often matched his sermons. Often he personally thrashed the “rowdies” who disturbed his camp meetings, after which he saw many of them “get religion.”

His fearlessness is described in an incident which took place in Nashville. As he was preaching, General Andrew Jackson entered the service. The local preacher whispered the news to Cartwright which prompted him to thunder, “And who is General Jackson? If General Jackson doesn’t get his soul converted, God will damn him as quickly as anyone else.” Jackson smiled and later told Cartwright that he was a “man after my own heart.”

In over fifty years of traveling circuits in Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, Cartwright received ten thousand members into the Methodist Church, personally baptized twelve thousand people, and preached more than fifteen thousand sermons. He was strongly opposed to easy religion, education and culture in the ministry. His equipment consisted of a black broadcloth suit and a horse with saddlebags, while his library was composed of a Bible, a hymnbook, and a copy of Methodist Discipline. He was the epitome of the Methodist circuit riders who firmly planted the “old time religion” in the frontier of the infant United States of America. (Christian Hall of Fame)

From Wikipedia:

Opposed to slavery, Cartwright moved from Kentucky to Illinois, and was elected to the lower house of the Illinois General Assembly in 1828 and 1832. In 1846 Abraham Lincoln defeated Cartwright for a seat in the United States Congress. As a Methodist circuit rider, Cartwright rode circuits in Kentucky and Illinois, as well as Tennessee, Indiana and Ohio. His Autobiography (1856) made him nationally prominent. (Wikipedia)

From BibleBelievers

In 1801, when I was in my sixteenth year, my father, my eldest half brother, and myself, attended a wedding about five miles from home, where there was great deal of drinking and dancing, which was very common at marriages those days. I drank little or nothing, my delight was in dancing. After a late hour in the night, we mounted our horses and started for home. I was riding my race-horse.

A few minutes after we had put up the horses, and were sitting by the fire, I began to reflect on the manner in which I had spent the day and evening felt guilty and condemned. I rose and walked the floor. My mother was in bed. 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 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 that 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 racehorse 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.

My father was greatly distressed on my account, thinking I must die, and he would lose his only son. He bade me retire altogether from business, and take care of myself. Soon it was noised abroad that I was distracted, and many of my associates in wickedness came to see me, to try and divert my mind from those gloomy thoughts of my wretchedness, but all in vain. I exhorted them to desist from the course of wickedness which we had been guilty of together. The class-leader and local preacher were sent for. They tried to point me to the bleeding Lamb, they prayed for me most fervently. Still I found no comfort, and although I had never believed in the doctrine of unconditional election and reprobation, I was sorely tempted to believe I was a reprobate, and doomed, and lost eternally, without any chance of salvation.

At length one day I retired to the horse-lot, and was walking and wringing my hands in great anguish, trying to pray, on the borders of utter despair. It appeared to me that I heard a voice from heaven, saying, “Peter, look at me.” A feeling of relief flashed over me as quick as an electric shock. It gave me hopeful feelings, and some encouragement to seek mercy, but still my load of guilt remained. I repaired to the house, and told my mother what had happened to me in the horse-lot. Instantly she seemed to understand it, and told me the Lord had done this to encourage me to hope for mercy, and exhorted me to take encouragement, and seek on, and God would bless me with the pardon of my sins at another time.

Some days after this, I retired to a cave on my father’s farm to pray in secret. My soul was in an agony, I wept, I prayed, and said, “Now, Lord, if there is mercy for me, let me find it,” and it really seemed to me that I could almost lay hold of the Saviour, and realize a reconciled God. All of a sudden, such a fear of the devil fell upon me that it really appeared to me that he was surely personally there, to seize and drag me down to hell, soul and body, and such a horror fell on me that I sprang to my feet and ran to my mother at the house. My mother told me this was a device of Satan to prevent me from finding the blessing then. Three months rolled away, and still I did not find the blessing of the pardon of my sins.

This year, 1801, the Western Conference existed, and I think there was but one presiding elder’s district in it, called the Kentucky District. William M’Kendree (afterward bishop) was appointed to the Kentucky District. Cumberland Circuit, which, perhaps, was six hundred miles round, and lying partly in Kentucky and partly in Tennessee, was one of the circuits of this district. John Page and Thomas Wilkerson were appointed to this circuit.

In the spring of this year, Mr. M’Grady, a minister of the Presbyterian Church, who had a congregation and meeting-house, as we then called them, about three miles north of my father’s house, appointed a sacramental meeting in this congregation, and invited the Methodist preachers to attend with them, and especially John Page, who was a powerful Gospel minister, and was very popular among the Presbyterians. Accordingly, he came, and preached with great power and success.

There were no camp-meetings in regular form at this time, but as there was a great waking up among the Churches, from the revival that had broken out at Cane Ridge, before mentioned, many flocked to those sacramental meetings. The church would not hold the tenth part of the congregation. Accordingly, the officers of the Church erected a stand in a contiguous shady grove, and prepared seats for a large congregation.

The people crowded to this meeting from far and near. They came in their large wagons, with victuals mostly prepared. The women slept in the wagons, and the men under them. Many stayed on the ground night and day for a number of nights and days together. Others were provided for among the neighbors around. The power of God was wonderfully displayed, scores of sinners fell under the preaching, like men slain in mighty battle, Christians shouted aloud for joy.

To this meeting I repaired, a guilty, wretched sinner. On the Saturday evening of said meeting, I went, with weeping multitudes, and bowed before the stand, and earnestly prayed for mercy. In the midst of a solemn struggle of soul, an impression was made on my mind, as though a voice said to me, “Thy sins are all forgiven thee.” Divine light flashed all round me, unspeakable joy sprung up in my soul. I rose to my feet, opened my eyes, and it really seemed as if I was in heaven, the trees, the leaves on them, and everything seemed, and I really thought were, praising God. My mother raised the shout, my Christian friends crowded around me and joined me in praising God, and though I have been since then, in many instances, unfaithful, yet I have never, for one moment, doubted that the Lord did, then and there, forgive my sins and give me religion. (Autobiography)

Andrew Jackson was better known for his attendance at duels than at church, but on a particular Monday in October of 1818, he decided to visit a revival service in Nashville where the controversial Peter Cartwright was scheduled to speak. As it happened, the General entered as the preacher was reading his text, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36) With all the seats already occupied, the famous Indian fighter and war hero was content to stand, gracefully leaning on the middle post. At the sight of his stately appearance, the host pastor, a certain “Brother Mac,” became nervous in the extreme. Seated on the platform directly behind the pulpit, he tugged on Cartwright’s jacket, whispering, “General Jackson has come in, General Jackson has come in.” Cartwright was aghast at the pastor’s double standard:

I felt a flash of indignation run all over me like an electric shock, and facing about to my congregation, and purposely speaking out audibly, I said, “Who is General Jackson? If he don’t get his soul converted, God will damn him as quick as he would a Guinea negro.” (2) The preacher tucked his head down, and squatted low, and would, no doubt, have been thankful for leave of absence. The congregation, General Jackson and all, smiled or laughed right out, all at the preacher’s expense.

When the congregation was dismissed, my city-stationed preacher stepped up to me, and very sternly said to me: “You are the strangest man I ever saw, and General Jackson will chastise you for your insolence before you leave the city.” “Very clear of it,” said I, “for General Jackson, I have no doubt, will applaud my course, and if he should undertake to chastise me… there is two as can play that game.”

Next morning, very early, my city preacher went down to the hotel to make an apology to General Jackson for my conduct in the pulpit the night before. Shortly after he had left I passed by the hotel, and I met the General on the pavement, and before I approached him by several steps he smiled, and reached out his hand and said: “Mr. Cartwright, you are a man after my own heart. I am very surprised at Mr. Mac, to think that I would be offended at you. No, sir, I told him that I highly approved of your independence, that a minister of Jesus Christ ought to love every body and fear no mortal man. I told Mr. Mac that if I had a few thousand such independent, fearless officers as you were, and a well drilled army, I could take Old England.” (3)

Acknowledging that Jackson was “no doubt in his prime of life, a very wicked man,” Cartwright relates the following story to illustrate the General’s “great respect for the Christian religion, and the feelings of religious people, especially ministers of the Gospel”:

I had preached one Sabbath near the Hermitage, and, in company with several gentlemen and ladies, went, by special invitation, to dine with the General. Among this company there was a young sprig of a lawyer from Nashville, of very ordinary intellect, and he was trying hard to make an infidel of himself. As I was the only preacher present, this young lawyer kept pushing his conversation on me, in order to get into an argument. I tried to evade an argument, in the first place considering it a breach of good manners to interrupt the social conversation of the company. In the second place I plainly saw that his head was much softer than his heart, and that there were no laurels to be won by vanquishing or demolishing such a combatant, and I persisted in evading an argument.

This seemed to inspire the young man with more confidence in himself, for my evasiveness he construed into fear. I saw General Jackson’s eye strike fire, as he sat by and heard the thrusts he made at the Christian religion. At length the young lawyer asked me this question: “Mr. Cartwright, do you really believe there is any such place as hell, as a place of torment?” I answered promptly, “Yes, I do.” To which he responded, “Well, I thank God I have too much good sense to believe any such thing.”

I was pondering in my mind whether I would answer him or not, when General Jackson for the first time broke into the conversation, and directing his words to the young man, said with great earnestness: “Well, sir, I thank God that there is such a place of torment as hell.” This sudden answer, made with great earnestness, seemed to astonish the youngster, and he exclaimed: “Why, General Jackson, what do you want with such a place of torment as hell?” To which the General replied, as quick as lightning, “To put such [expletive] rascals as you are in, that oppose and vilify the Christian religion.” (4) (Bible Believers.com)

 

Photo Robert Lawton, CC 2.5