| Pioneers of Freethought in North Carolina
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.)
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, an 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
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.
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