America Aflame (86 page)

Moody dispensed with aphorisms and politics and kept his message simple. Salvation and only salvation was his inventory. The stories he told, allegedly from real-life experiences, concluded with a punch line for salvation. Moody's revivals were slick commercial operations, with sales of his version of the Bible and various tracts and sermons guaranteed to snatch the reader from the everlasting jaws of hell. Moody mugs, kitchen utensils, prayer cloths, and gloves were also hawked before and after his appearances. John Wanamaker offered him a large railroad depot for one of his revivals, after which he turned it into one of the nation's largest department stores. Patrons scarcely noticed the change.

Moody returned to the United States in mid-1875 after a two-year mission to Great Britain. He set northern cities on fire, inspiring the
Cleveland Leader
to proclaim that “the United States is now in the midst of the throes of the third of [its] great Religious Awakening[s].” Judging by the sartorial splendor of the crowds, Moody's revivals were beneficial for Wanamaker and other retail entrepreneurs. Moody's message resonated with his urban audiences. It comported with the deepening belief that natural laws governed society, so there was no point worrying about how to fix its problems. “I have noticed,” he preached, “that when a Christian man goes into the world to get an influence over the world, he suffers more than the world does.” Here was Darwin's preacher.
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Moody also preached love, which is one reason why women flocked to his revivals. In addition to love, he also preached reconciliation. In Chicago in 1875 he proclaimed, “Let me tell everyone in this hall tonight that I bring good news … the Gospel of Reconciliation.” As whites were murdering blacks in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Moody told ten thousand rapt New Yorkers, “I love the South as well as I do the North.” It was a message Moody took south during the centennial year. As southern audiences embraced him, the
New York Tribune
rejoiced, “Denominational differences are forgotten, the Christian people, long separated by church barriers are coming together, and are thinking less of Creed and more of Christ.”
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There was, in fact, very little “creed” in Moody's sermons. He was not a biblical scholar. E. L. Godkin, a fan, conceded that very “little dogmatic theology or biblical exegesis” appeared in Moody's preaching. Moody's great talent was that he told stories. While Mark Twain traveled the lecture circuit, Moody traveled the revival trail. Instead of humor for a punch line, Moody delivered salvation. Walt Whitman, a religious skeptic, called Moody a “boss story-teller.” During his southern tour, his stories emphasized sectional reconciliation: “
We
had to give up
our young
men, both North and South, to death.” The war, not the respective causes, was the killer. Although Moody impressed Whitman, the poet confessed, “I do not believe in him. Nor his God … nor his stories which sound like lies.”
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On New Year's Eve 1875, with the centennial year just hours away and his southern crusade looming, Moody held a massive rally in Philadelphia. The guest of honor was the noted South Carolina Presbyterian minister William Plumer Jacobs. That night, Moody stressed the theme of reconciliation, of coming together as one people under God. He persisted in this theme throughout his southern crusade. On Confederate Memorial Day, he prayed for “broken-hearted ones, both North and South … who were mourning for friends lost in the late war.” He “had no sympathy at all with men in any section of the country who were continually seeking to stir up strife and embitter the people against each other.”
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As Moody traveled around the country in 1875 and 1876, he divined the great problem confronting America. It was not the unrest in the South, in the city streets, or out on the Plains. It was alcohol. “I fear,” he intoned, “unless a great temperance reform sweeps over our whole land, the Republic itself may be imperiled.” He was all for a sober Centennial. It was also a good business model. John D. Rockefeller was so smitten with Moody's temperance message that he donated liberally to his ministry. Moody articulated from the pulpit what middle-class Americans felt in their hearts, and just as importantly he never articulated what they did not want to hear. It is too much to say that Americans were nurturing a celebrity culture and individuals such as Mark Twain and Dwight L. Moody were the earliest examples, but since Darwin had nudged God from His pedestal, someone had to take His place.
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As the accolades poured down on Moody during his centennial tour of the South, Frederick Douglass took a different perspective: “Of all the forms of negro hate in this world, save me from that one which clothes itself with the name of loving Jesus.” Referring to Moody's crusade, a segregated affair, Douglass reported, “The Negro can go into the circus, the theatre … but he cannot go into an evangelical Christian meeting.” It is only fair to note that, toward the end of his life in 1895, Moody finally defied Jim Crow laws and physically removed the barriers separating the races at a revival in Houston.
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As Moody preached, Americans celebrated. On May 10, 1876, the International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures and Products of the Soil and Mine opened in Philadelphia. The nation marked its centennial by showing off its technological and artistic creativity, industrial prowess, and natural abundance. Americans invited the world. The fair's organizers did not believe that an exhibition heavy on economic development slighted the accomplishments of the Founders. Rather, it was the Founders' work, in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, that made the displayed wealth and genius possible. A decade after the Civil War, the exhibition provided an opportunity to demonstrate the progress of a united nation.
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The exposition rose in Fairmount Park on the western bank of the Schuylkill River. Exhibits occupied 450 acres with an additional 42 acres given over to displays of livestock and agricultural machinery. All together 167 buildings housing 30,000 exhibits covered the grounds. Thirty-seven foreign nations erected pavilions, with the British, German, Austrian, and French structures among the most impressive. Beer gardens, cigar shops, popcorn stands, and ethnic restaurants were scattered throughout the park. In Machinery Hall more than 1,500 exhibitors showed off their latest technologies. Here was the heart of the exposition. The organizers also erected a cultural building to show the works of contemporary American and foreign artists. The fair had its own lodging, the Continental Hotel, the largest in the country with over 1,300 rooms.

On opening day, nearly a hundred thousand people crowded the front gate. A smaller contingent of invited guests, including President Grant and Dom Pedro II, the emperor of Brazil, filed into the Main Exhibition Hall, the largest building in the world, covering twenty acres and built with Andrew Carnegie's iron and steel. Once seated, they heard the symphony orchestra break into an enthusiastic rendition of Richard Wagner's “Centennial March.” The Rev. Matthew Simpson, a Methodist bishop, blessed the fair. A choir sang a hymn written by John Greenleaf Whittier for the occasion and a cantata composed from the words of southern poet Sidney Lanier, who had become a northern favorite in the years after the war. President Grant then stepped to the podium and delivered a brief speech. Noting that the first hundred years of America's existence were devoted to building the infrastructure of a civilization, Grant declared it was time for America to rival “older and more advanced nations in law, medicine, and theology, in science, literature, philosophy, and fine arts.” America had built; now it would soar. The president pronounced the exhibition open, and the choir and orchestra struck up the “Hallelujah Chorus,” accompanied by a peal of chimes, the blasts of cannon, and the unfurling of the largest American flag in existence. These latter additions were not in Handel's original score, but everyone agreed they added great emphasis to the music.
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The procession of dignitaries made its way into Machinery Hall, at the center of which, mounted on a platform that resembled an altar, stood the giant Corliss steam engine, forty-five feet tall. The president and “my brother the Emperor” mounted the platform. Why Grant invited Dom Pedro II, absolute monarch of the only nation in the Western world where slavery still prevailed, is unclear. Commercial interests, more than exhibitions, were probably on Grant's mind as he escorted the emperor around the grounds. George Corliss, the proud inventor of the iron colossus, greeted the two leaders and stationed the president at the left throttle-valve and the emperor at the right, where they awaited their orders from this former grocery store clerk. Only in America. “Are you both ready? Then your Majesty will turn that handle.” Suddenly, the sound of rushing steam filled the hall. “Now, Mr. President, yours.” The sound multiplied and parts of the metal monster began to move, brought to life by a mere handle turn. The engine reached 2,500 horsepower and powered fourteen acres of machinery in the hall engaged in various activities such as sawing logs, shaving metal, and printing newspapers. Yet, other than the initial rush of steam, the engine emitted barely a sound. One young lady who watched the engine reach its climactic power wrote home, “Dear Mother, Oh! Oh! O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!!!!!!”
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The Corliss engine was the ultimate masculine symbol of the fair. William Dean Howells called it “an athlete of steel and iron with not a superfluous ounce of metal on it.” He marveled at the pistons thrusting downward and the “vast and almost silent grandeur” of its silhouette. A mechanic sat at the base of the giant, quietly reading a newspaper. Every so often, he would ascend a narrow stairway and lubricate “some irritated spot on the giant's body with a drop of oil.”
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The mighty Corliss engine at the Centennial Exposition, 1876, with President Grant on the left and Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil next to him, both waiting to turn their handles to set the giant machine into motion. The engine symbolized American ingenuity and might. (Courtesy of Jeffery Howe, Boston College)

Small houses representing the states dotted the grounds, though only seventeen of the thirty-nine states participated. State exhibitors received strict instructions not to make any political statements or “offensive” references to the Civil War. The federal government occupied the largest of these American buildings. Officials designed the exhibits to “illustrate the functions and administrative facilities of the Government in time of peace, and its resources as a war power, and thereby serve to demonstrate the nature of our institutions and their adaptations to the wants of the people.” The displays were as dull as the introduction. Exhibits demonstrated the operation of various federal agencies, including a functioning post office, a wonder in itself. The building also contained an array of military hardware.
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The building also housed an exhibit on the American Indian. It included tepees, which fairgoers could enter, tools, pottery, weapons, and life-size wax figures of the indigenous people. It was as if the Indians were a vanished race, ancient primitive precursors to the European. Custer's encounter with Sitting Bull in late June doubtless colored visitors' experiences, reading into the exhibit their contemporary impressions of Native Americans. “The red man, as he appears in effigy and in photograph in this collection, is a hideous demon, whose malign traits can hardly inspire any emotion softer than abhorrence,” wrote one visitor. Another reported, “Novelists with subdued fancies may sit in their cozy back parlors, and write pretty little stories of the noble red man, but let them once see the wax figures of those red gentlemen with … small, cruel, black eyes,… coarse, unkempt locks,… and large animal mouth,” and they would surely write something different.
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There was also a Women's Pavilion on the grounds, where the ladies exhibited their needlework and the latest household appliances. In keeping with the apolitical theme of the fair, there was no mention of woman's suffrage, and the pavilion's exhibitors ignored the July 4 protest by Susan B. Anthony and her followers.

The exposition displayed several firsts, chief among them Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. Heinz ketchup and Hires root beer also made their debuts. The Japanese pavilion offered a momentous gift to the American South. The emperor had sent over some samples of a plant reputed to prevent soil erosion. The Japanese called it kudzu. Eventually, it would conquer the South in a more lasting and comprehensive way than Sherman's army.

Scientific explanations for virtually any phenomenon being in vogue, the Declaration of Independence came in for its share of empirical analysis. Mostly these interpretations adopted a racial tone. Experts viewed the Declaration as the natural evolutionary offspring of the Magna Carta, and the Magna Carta, in turn, of “old Teutonic traditions from which English political civilization emerged.” America owed its unique existence, then, not to God but to those prescient knights in a long-ago dark forest in Germany. The Declaration “was but an extension of that assertion of individual independence which is instinctive in the English race.… And this anniversary shows what the political genius of a race has accomplished in a century.”
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