Pardee Butler: An Amos in our Family Tree

Pardee Butler (1816-1888) is not a name often introduced to new students of the Stone-Campbell Movement. His name is not even mentioned in Earl West’s encyclopedic Search for the Ancient Order. He is overlooked by James North’s Union in Truth. He did not make the cut for Richard Hughes Reviving the Ancient Faith. His name appears James DeForest Murch’s Christians Only. We get a better introduction to Butler in Leroy Garrett’s Stone-Campbell Movement and David Edwin Harrell’s Quest for a Christian America. But for students who are often wondering what “use” is their history then including men like Butler is a step forward.

Butler’s story is fascinating and inspiring. His family was early converts to the reforming ways of Alexander Campbell. Pardee himself was baptized in 1835 and he desired to preach. He hoped to attend Bethany College but was never able to afford formal education. Thus he spent his time herding sheep and literally memorizing the New Testament.

Pardee Butler probably never knew what God had in store for him. In 1855 he moved to Kansas to evangelize and to vote with his body against the evil of slavery. He started the first Stone-Campbell congregation in Mt. Pleasant.

Shortly after his arrival in Kansas life became rough for Butler. During his ministry he was mobbed twice. He was tarred and feathered (actually “cottoned”). And he was “rafted.” Pardee had objected to an editorial in the Squatter Sovereign in Atchison. The next night a group of 30 or 40 men presented him with a series of pro-slavery resolutions and demanded that he cease his anti-slavery sermons. He was accosted and threatened with various punishments, including hanging. When Butler refused to be intimidated the mob deliberated and decided that he would be rafted. Two cottonwood logs were fastened together, Butler was placed aboard this craft in the middle of the Missouri river. A huge “R” was painted on his forehead to signify that he was a rogue. His vessel was commissioned with a flag which portrayed Butler as a “nigger thief” on a galloping horse with a black lady on behind. The flag read: “Eastern Aid Express Rev. Mr. Butler agent for the underground Railroad. Greely to the Rescue I have a nigger.” Butler’s response to these men as they towed him away from the bank was “Gentlemen, if I am drowned I forgive you; but I have this to say to you: If you are not ashamed of your part in this transaction, I am not ashamed of mine. Good-by.” 

News of Butler’s rafting quickly spread throughout the “west.” But things could have been worse for Pardee. Kelly a newspaper man for Atchison wrote of the event “We have just finished ‘tar and feathering’ the Rev. Pardee Butler … He escaped hanging by only one vote. Butler, you know, is a rank abolistionist, and was promised this treatment should he visit our town. In the event of his return, he will be hung.”

Butler was not deterred by mob violence. He continued to preach in Kansas and part of his preaching was Acts 10 that God taught it was wrong to regard any man as “unclean.” In 1858 he sought support from the American Christian Missionary Society of which Isaac Errett was secretary. Errett was anti-slavery in word but not deed. He placed a stipulation on support for Butler that he could not agitate against slavery because it would cause trouble in the Southern churches. Errett wrote “As an anti-slavery man, I sympathize much with you. I share your feelings, but in the missionary work I know nothing of slavery or anti-slavery.”

Pardee Butler was enraged by ACMS’s position. He replied that the brethren in Kansas had made no stipulation on him. Further he insisted that “this matter of slavery is a Bible question – a question of justice between man and man – of mercy and humanity. For myself, I will be no party, now or hereafter, to such an arrangement as that contemplated in your letter.” 

Ben Franklin, legendary editor of the American Christian Review, joined Errett’s attempt to stymie Butler. Franklin thought Butler and other abolitionists were extremists and divisive. Franklin thought he could silence Butler by refusing to publish his reports in ACR and even publicly calling him down. But the man who refused to back down to the mob in Kansas refused to be intimidated by the powerful Editor Bishop. He wrote a booklet called Reply of Elder Pardee Butler to Attacks by Elder Isaac Errett and Benj. Franklin in Recent Numbers of the American Christian Review. His accusers had claimed he was not preaching the gospel. He responded by saying they were compromising moral right for economic convenience and he asked “what is the gospel.” To this he answered:

“What is the gospel? … ‘Thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself.’ Is the slave traffic in harmony with this law of love? Now, Brother Franklin, the point is not that you and I differ in our answer to a question of Christian morality, but it is that you dare not answer at all. If you affirm, you lose your popularity in the North; if you deny, you lose your popularity in the South. You, therefore, very prudently say let no answer be given.”

Butler continues, sounding like a 19^th century Amos,

"I would not make this ‘Reformation of the nineteenth century’ a withered and blasted trunk, scattered by the lightnings [sic] of heaven, because it took part with the rich and powerful against the poor and the oppressed.”
Butler continued to work for the gospel of the kingdom in Kansas for another thirty years. He baptized. He challenged. He set the captives free. He was mocked. He was attacked. He bore on his body the marks of Jesus. And if his own fellowship did not celebrate him, others did. At his death the Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church wrote: “I am moved to lay a wreath of tribute upon the grave of an old hero. He was a man of most invincible courage … Here lies one who never feared the face of man. Mr. Butler was a John Knox sort of man.” 

We need stories like Pardee Butler's. We need to know that “we” as a people have heroes who can inspire us to face the anti-kingdom forces of this world with faith. Oh, how I wish I would have learned of Pardee Butler in my college days. He is an Amos. He is a hero. I am proud to have such a man in my family tree. Father, may you raise up others with like Brother Butler to lead the way toward your kingdom.

P.S. One of my prized possessions is The Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler With Reminiscences by His Daughter, Mrs Rosetta B. Hastings, and Additional Chapters by Eld. John Boggs and Eld. J.B. McCleery (1889). And the picture at the top of this post is the actual flag used when Butler was "rafted."