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Pioneers of Freethought in North
Carolina
Charles Alfred Human, Jr.
The Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century signaled the near-completion
of the rippled, muscular statue of American individualism. During
this time, Europeans and Americans alike cast their thought and conduct
with a die shaped by reason and unblemished by the burrs of civil and
ecclesiastical authority. In politics, adopting this die meant throwing
off the despotism of kings and upholding man's natural,
rationally-discovered rights as a basis for a strictly limited
government. In religion and philosophy, adopting the die of reason meant
throwing off the dogmatism of churches and upholding the creed of Deism,
a creed which sought to hold man's rational mind as his sole means to
truth and his sole guide to life.
But few know that many North Carolinians helped cast and fill the
die of reason in the 18th century and on into the 19th century.
These North Carolina freethinkers left their mark all over the Good
Old North State, from Chapel Hill to the Appalachians and beyond
into Tennessee. In so doing, these freethinkers gave North
Carolina a little-acknowledged (and perhaps previously
unpraised) place in the history of the Enlightenment and in the
history of individualism.
Philosophical Background
Discovering North Carolina's freethinkers requires an understanding of
the 18th century creed of Deism and how Deism radically differed
from the more common belief in Christianity.
The fundamental tenet of Deism is the supremacy of human reason
over faith and revelation. Applied to the question of God's
existence, this tenet meant that Deism held that God does exist,
but that only reason can prove God's existence or God's design of the
universe. This tenet was anathema to the Christian acceptance of
God solely or ultimately on faith.
According to Deism, God created and designed the universe to
operate by natural law and then afterwards left the universe
alone. To Deism, the supernatural and the natural were two
separate, mutually exclusive realms. As a consequence, Deism denied
and clashed with Christianity almost point for point. Deism denied
the following Christian tenets:
Deism also rejected claims that religious texts were divinely inspired.
Deists frequently delighted in finding contradictions in religious texts
and also condemned these books' atrocities. Some Deists even denied life
after death.
The deistic disdain for the supernatural, applied to social questions,
meant active opposition to tyranny and injustice on Earth rather than
waiting for an illusory divinely-appointed justice. This outlook led the
Deists to oppose both government suppression and government
establishment of religion.
With knowledge of Deistic theory and practice kept well in mind, the
search for North Carolina's freethinkers becomes much easier.
Pre-Revolutionary Freethinking
Perhaps the first recorded incident of freethinking activity in North
Carolina occurred during the opposition to the colonial government's
establishment of the Anglican Church. This establishment occurred
through the Vestry Act of 1701, final establishment in 1715, the set-up
of a government-financed ministry in 1732, and government support for
the Anglican's Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. While the
Presbyterians, Baptists, and Quakers were the most well-known opponents
of the Anglican Establishment, bitter opposition also came from North
Carolina's unchurched majority. Virginian William Byrd wrote of this
unchurched majority in 1728, saying that North Carolina's colonists
"were not troubled with any religious fumes" and "did not
know Sunday from any other day, any more than Robinson Crusoe
did.''1
A 1760 correspondence from colonial governor Arthur Dobbs to the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel indicates that explicit, conscious
Deists made up at least some of the unchurched opposition to the
Anglican establishment. To quote Dobbs:
I shall send the other parcels to the other Missionaries, Stuart, Read,
& (sic) Earle, by the first opportunity by sea from hence, as the
carriage by land will be expensive to them & (sic) shall distribute
the valuable books the Society has sent to them or to the other clergy
or gentlemen qualified to read them, as we have some deists (sic) sprung
up in this province.2
In 1761, John MacDowell, a minister for the Society, complained about
North Carolina's freethinkers: "One of them declared that the money
he is obliged to give to a minister, he would rather give to a kind
girl."3 MacDowell goes on:
another believes there is neither Hell nor Devil, and there is here
one gentleman of fortune in particular;) he is not of the vestry, but
strives to influence them as much as he can, whom I heard myself declare
he could not believe in Jesus Christ & he despised the holy
sacrament of the Lord's Supper. To him, with two (sic) other gentlemen
in the St. James Parish, a young physician (sic) who was reputed to be
an Atheist and (sic) who died since I came here, left Lord Bolingbroke's
works. What can a minister of God expect from these?4
MacDowell further condemned not only the prevalence of freethinking in
North Carolina but liberty itself:
I am sorry there should be any (freethinkers) in a Christian country.
But true it is too true (sic) that there are many such, not only here,
but in all other parts of America, and what can we expect here, where
ev'ry one (sic) can do that which is good in his own eyes?
5
A "Coterie of Infidels"
The late Reverend William Henry Foote points to a post-revolutionary
example of North Carolina's freethinking presence. In some portions of
Mecklenburg County during the early 1780s, according to Foote,
"A debating society — and debating societies for political
purposes were common in these days — was formed in the region of
the county embracing a part of Sugar Creek, Steele Creek, and Providence
and furnished with a circulating library, replete with infidel
philosophy and infidel sentiments of religion and morality."6 According to the late Charlotte, North
Carolina historian Harriet M. Irwin, the membership of this
"coterie of infidels," as she called it, included Ezekiel
Polk, the grandfather of President James K. Polk; Charles Polk, son of
Colonel Thomas Polk;
Charles and Ezra Alexander, two signers of the famous Mecklenburg Declaration
of Independence of 1775; Moses Winslow; and James Brandon.
7 This debating society spread the thoughts and works of the
Deistic thinkers Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon, Hume, and Paine. The late Dr.
J. B. Alexander's History of Mecklenburg County from 1740 to 1900
has it that this debating society "called in question everything
connected with the Bible" and "The burning question discussed on all
occasions was whether the Bible or reason would be the guide of human
conscience."8 Alexander wrote with
displeasure that the debating society "embraced men of wealth and
talent" and as a result of the society "part of Mecklenburg
(Steele Creek) became so infested with intemperance, infidelity, and
universalism, that a large part of Steele Creek and the adjoining counties
ceased to attend church."9
Mecklenburg County's Deist debating society and library continued to question
ecclesiastical authority until about 1802. Membership declined due to three
factors: one, the deaths of Charles Alexander in 1798 and of Ezra Alexander
in 1801; two, the conversion of many Deists during the Great Awakening
revivals of 1802; and three, Ezekiel Polk's move to Tennessee. (Polk's will
was probated in Tennessee and in it, he left works of Gibbon and Hume plus 77
other unspecified works, possibly the circulating library.)
Freethinkers in Government and Academia
Even with the setback of Mecklenburg County's freethinkers, freethinking
continued to prevail in North Carolina through the early 19th century.
Post-revolutionary North Carolina Governor Willie Jones was a freethinker and
stipulated in his will that no one was to insult his body by mumbling
religious words over it.10 Orange County
Presbyterian Reverend Eli Caruthers complained that "Men of education and
especially young men of the country thought it a mark of independence to
scoff at the Bible and the professors of religion.''
11 Minister Joseph Caldwell lamented that "in North
Carolina, particularly that part that lies east of us, everyone believes that
the first step he ought to take to rise to respectability is to disavow, as
often and as publicly as he can, all regard for the leading doctrines of the
scriptures.''12"In 1809 a resident of
Edenton wrote sorrowfully to the village paper that he had heard men of
respectable standing in the town declaiming against religion in the presence
of their children as if infidelity were meritorious.''
13
North Carolina academia was an obvious place to find freethought. At the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (opened 1795), co-founder William
Davie brought Continental ideas of dancing and polite society as well as
religious skepticism. Dr. David Kerr, a Fayetteville Presbyterian minister,
became a passionate republican and skeptic upon accepting a professorship at
Chapel Hill. Another Chapel Hill professor, Delvaux, was a skeptical French
ex-monk. Still another, Professor Richards, had held a profession hated by
Puritanical Protestants: the profession of a strolling actor! But the most
controversial infidel professor at Chapel Hill was Samuel Allen Holmes The
thoughts of Professor Holmes anticipated the modern philosophy of
Deconstructionism. The nihilistic Professor Holmes held that honesty and
integrity were "deceptions and injurious pretenses" and incited a
riot on campus in 1799. Several professors were beaten in the riot.
14
Despite the one bad forbidden apple Holmes, North Carolina's freethinkers were
in the main good forbidden apples who did many great things. In addition to
signing the Mecklenburg Declaration (said by some to be the basis for the
American Declaration of Independence), in addition to fighting in the
American Revolution and imparting knowledge to students. North Carolina's
freethinkers played many roles in local society. Joseph Gales, and early
19th-century Deist, was a leading newspaperman in the state, owning The
Raleigh Register and having a controlling interest in The National
Intelligencer.15 During the North
Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1835, the state's restriction of public
office to Protestants was challenged. One challenger, the Deist statesman
Nathaniel Macon, said that if a Hindu were to come to North Carolina and
aspire to an office to which merit would entitle him, his religion should not
be a bar.16
Through the efforts of Macon and others, the Convention opened public office
to Catholics and set the precedent for further opening of citizenship
privileges to persons of all faiths and none. Even with religious tests for
public office still in place, the avowed Deist Christopher Dudley served
seven times as State Senator for Onslow County and according to a Chapel
Hill professor Elijah Mitchell, other freethinkers, wherever found in
North Carolina, usually played a prominent role in the community.17 North Carolina's early freethinkers, despite
opposition, contributed much to the rich history of freethought and its
renaissance today. They stand as an inspiration to all who are
independent in thought, word, and deed.
Footnotes
1. William K. Boyd, William Byrd's History of the
Dividing Line (Raleigh, NC, 1929.) p. 72. cited in Louis B. Wright, The
Cultural Life of the American Colonies, (Harper & Row, New York,
NY, 1957.) p. 88.
2. Colonial Records,
ed. William L. Saunders, (24 Vols[?] Joseph Daniels, Printer to
the State, 1888.) XVI, p. 222.
3. Ibid. p. 556.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Foote's Sketches of North Carolina, ed. and with introduction by Harold James Dudley, (Robert Carter, 1846.) p. 248.
7. Harriet M. Irwin, History of Charloffe, North Carolina
(Home Democrat, Charlotte, NC,1882.) p. 29.
8. J. B. Alexander, History of Mecklenburg County from 1740
to 1900, (Observer Printing House, Charlotte, NC, 1902.) p. 282.
9. Ibid. p. 289.
10. W. E. Dodd, "The Role of Nathaniel Macon in Southern
History' American Historical Review, Vll, p. 665. (July, 1922.) Cited
in Clement Eaton, The Freedom-of-Thought Struggle in the Old South,
(Duke University Press, Raleigh, NC, 1940.) p.15.
11. Guion Griffis Johnson, Ante-Bellum North Carolina:
A Social History, (The University of North Carolina Press, Raleigh, NC, 1937.)
p. 331.
12. Dudley, p. 548.
13. Johnson, p. 332.
14. Eaton, p.15.
15. William S. Powell, North Carolina Through Four
Centuries, (The University of North Carolina Press,1989.) p.
235.
16. Eaton, p. 309.
17. Ibid. p. 304.
Acknowledgement — I would like to thank everyone at the
Mecklenburg County Public Library and at the historic Hezekiah Alexander
House for their gracious research assistance.
Charles Alfred ("Al") Human, Jr. is a freelance writer
in North Carolina with an eclectic variety of interests, including local
history, philosophy, politics, and technology. This article is used with
permission; although he is not a member of American Atheists he is
definitely a long-time and knowledgeable supporter of the cause of
church-state separation, and freedom in general. He may be reached at:
freedomluver2000@yahoo.com (As of 1/25/2004,
Al's email address is unknown).
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