It dealt with missionary work, and during the communal dinner that followed he revealed the sources of his surprising energy: 'In my freshman year at Union College back east I heard a call: "Sheldon, there are people overseas who do not know the Word of God. Go to them, take them My Holy Word."'
'You didn't go overseas. You said you worked in Arizona and Colorado.'
'When I graduated from Princeton Theological, I went before an examining board for the foreign missions, and their doctors said: "You're too frail and weak for service in foreign countries," so they sent me to Colorado and Wyoming and Utah, where I helped build church after church, and now I'm in one of the most demanding regions of all, Montana and Idaho.'
'What do you mean,' a young man asked, 'when you say "I heard a call"?' and Jackson replied with startling vigor: 'Sometimes to some people you're standing alone in a room or you've been praying, and Jesus Christ himself comes into that room and says in a voice so plain it sounds like a bell: "Sheldon, I want you for my work," and ever after your feet are headed in that direction and you are powerless to turn aside.'
No one spoke, so he ended: 'That voice called me to Deadhorse where Jesus Christ wanted one of His churches to be built, and with your help, not mine, it will be built.'
He was being too modest, for his contribution to the small log building was tremendous; he worked nine and ten hours a day at the most difficult jobs of construction, and sometimes the women laughed when they saw him coming down the road carrying one end of a log while some huge young fellow struggled with the other end. He was good with a hammer if he could have the help of one of the homemade ladders, but always on Sunday he was prepared for his sermon, and had the ones he delivered at Deadhorse been collected in a small booklet, they would have provided a logical exposition of the philosophy that underlay the missionary effort.
But what staggered the three local families was that in addition to his day's labor and his Sunday sermons, the little man spent most of his nights after supper writing voluminous copy for a popular religious journal he had started in Denver and for which he still felt responsible. As the work on the log church neared completion, the Trumbauers and their Presbyterian friends recognized Jackson as a true man of God, a Christian without a flaw, and they were pleased to have known him. Mrs. Trumbauer said, as the time approached for his departure for some town in Idaho that needed a church: 'I've never had a man in the house, not even my own father or Otto's, who caused me less trouble. Sheldon Jackson is a saint.' And then she added: 'Hadn't we better tell him? It might break his heart to find out later.'
The families held private discussions in another home and concluded that if one balanced the honorable with the practical, the best course would be to finish the church, have a big dedication ceremony, and then tell him, and that was the plan that was followed.
When the time approached for committing this church to the service of Jesus Christ, Jackson went humbly to the nonreligious families and pleaded with them to help in the dedication: 'It's for the good of the whole community, not just a few Presbyterians,' and then, stifling his pride and his convictions, for he waged unceasing war against Catholics and Mormons, he went to the Catholic families and invited them also to the celebration, using much the same arguments:
'I will be dedicating a church. You will be helping the community to take a step forward.' He was so persuasive that on the Thursday, a day of the week that he specifically chose so that the agnostics and the Catholics would feel free to participate, which they did, he preached a sermon that was a marvel of friendliness and devotion. All his customary exhortation was muted, and to listen to him, the Presbyterian church had not an enemy in the world nor was there any other Christian denomination with which it was at odds. Most earnestly he wanted this church to be a force for good in a community which he was sure would be a growing one.
And at the feasting he moved from family to family, all eight of them, assuring them that with the opening of this church, a new day was dawning in Deadhorse, and he was so convinced by his own rhetoric that when he saw tears in the eyes of the Presbyterian women, he assumed that they were the joyous tears of Christian triumph.
They were not, but it had been agreed by the three families that they would wait till Jackson was packed for his move into Idaho before telling him the painful news, but one night when he was busy in the Trumbauer dining room finishing a report for his Denver publication it dealt with the triumph of Jesus Christ's message in the town of Deadhorse, Montana, a settlement he refused to call a village Otto Trumbauer coughed and said: 'Reverend Jackson,' and when the little fellow looked up he saw the entire Trumbauer family ranged before him. Obviously, something of moment had agitated these good people, but what it was he could never have guessed.
'Reverend Jackson, we've tried every way on earth to avoid this, but there's no way out. Us and the Lamberts, we're movin' back to Iowa. Our families have farms for us to work there, and we can earn a livin', somethin' we can't do here.'
Jackson dropped his pencil, looked up, wiped his glasses meticulously, and asked for confirmation of the astounding news: 'Iowa? You're leaving here?'
'We got to. No future for our children here. Nor for us.'
For the first time since he was trapped in the growing blizzard, Sheldon Jackson allowed his shoulders to sag, but then he tensed them for the Lord's work: 'Why, if you knew you were leaving ...?'
'Did we stay to help build the church?' Mr. Trumbauer finished the question, but he was not allowed to give the answer; his wife did: 'We discussed that, all the families, and we decided that you were a true man of God sent to us on a special mission."She burst into tears, and it was up to her husband to add: 'We agreed that we would build the church and leave it as a beacon in the wilderness.'
Jackson squared his shoulders, rose, and grasped in turn the hands of all the Trumbauers:
'You were right in your decision! God always directs us in the right path! I started six, maybe eight churches in the Colorado mountains that never took hold, but there they stand, as you say, beacons in the mountains to remind those who will come later that Christians once labored here.' But then his indomitable optimism manifested itself: 'But this town will never become a wilderness! I see expansion, families moving here from the Dakotas, and when they arrive, there'll be your church waiting for them, for no collection of houses is ever a town without a church at its center.'
He left Deadhorse in a state of positive euphoria, a little man with a big pack, eyeglasses that collected mist and dust, and a conviction rooted in rock that the work he was doing was ordained by God and supervised by His Son Jesus Christ, but the judgment which Mrs. Trumbauer voiced as he departed' Reverend Jackson, you're a saint without a flaw' was far from true, for he had another side to his nature which had not had an opportunity to reveal itself during his constructive visit to Deadhorse.
ON THE SNOWY DAY THAT SHELDON JACKSON LEFT Deadhorse, Montana, to push westward, an informal gathering of the board which governed Presbyterian missions convened during a retreat in a rural setting overlooking the Hudson River in New York. A tall, worried clergyman, who obviously wanted to be fair, started the afternoon's discussion with an announcement which brought discomfort to all who heard it: 'As your chairman it's my duty to be scrupulously just in what I say, but I must advise you that our dear and respected friend Sheldon Jackson has done it again. We don't know where he is or what he's up to. After we took him out of Colorado, where he, as you know, was pursuing his own ways, he obeyed our orders for a while, taking proper steps to develop the area we assigned him.'
'Which was?' a minister asked.
'The Northern states and territories west of the Mississippi, but not including Dakota, the state of Oregon or the territory of Washington.'
'That's a vast area, even for Jackson. Where's he supposed to be?'
'We directed him to work in Montana. Where he actually is, who can guess.'
'Isn't it about time,' an impatient clergyman in his
sixties asked, 'that we discipline this young man?'
'He's not so young, you know. Must be in his forties.'
'Old enough to behave himself 'That he will never do,' the chairman said as he produced a single sheet of notes.
'But before we take any action regarding this little hurricane, I want to bring before you eight aspects of his behavior, for he is consistent, and the first three refer to the finest attributes any missionary could exhibit.
First, he is a born missionary. From his earliest days at Union College he had a specific calling to Christ, and whereas he is not loath to challenge the veracity of your calling or mine, he never doubts the authenticity of his. He is therefore by his definition a better missionary than you or I, and he is not afraid to point this out.
Second, he has, from early childhood, been a committed Presbyterian. He believes without question that ours is the world's superior religion, and the doubts that assail the rest of us from time to time, the great debates about the nature of God and the paths to salvation never touch him. The two Johns, Knox and Calvin in that order, settled it for him!'
The clergymen discussed this second point for some time, and one man spoke for several:
'To have a faith as solid as that... maybe I envy him,' but another minister from New York cautioned: 'You may have used the wrong word, Charles. Not as solid as that, as simple. He knows what he's for and what he's against.'
'For example?' Charles asked, and the speaker ticked off his response: 'He's for Jesus Christ and against Catholics, Mormons and Democrats.' Charles did not laugh:
'I wish I knew even ten things for sure ... no questions, no doubts. Jackson knows ten thousand.' And the second speaker said: 'And he's convinced that you and I don't know even three.'
The chairman continued: 'Out of this rock-solid conviction comes the third attribute you've all noticed, his remarkable gift for persuading others to listen to him attentively.
Small, contentious, single-minded, you'd expect him to turn people away, but it's just the opposite. He attracts them the way honey attracts flies, and they'll listen to him discuss the basic principles of religion and particularly the work of missionaries.'
At this point the discussion stopped, and the clergymen reflected on the positive attributes of their difficult colleague; all granted him his piety, dedication and surprising ability to cooperate with the other Protestant denominations, but most had felt the lash of his venomous tongue, and after a pause, which included the nodding of heads in agreement with what had been said so far, the analysis continued:
'Fourth, and this fault had better be admitted up front, for it accounts for many of the problems we've had with Jackson and will have in the future. For a devout Christian, which he certainly is, and a man who has devoted his life to missionary work, he displays a singular skill in going for the jugular of anyone whom he considers an enemy. This accounts for the fact that if you take a hundred of his acquaintances in either Colorado, Washington or the church in general, you find fifty of them revering him as a saint, fifty reviling him as a serpent.'
This called for a show of hands among those present, and the score was saint three, serpent fourteen, with many of the latter eager to relate how Jackson had battled with them over points not worth the effort. But these same men nodded in agreement when one sagacious elder pointed out the fundamental fact about Jackson's place among the Presbyterians: 'He is our front-line general in the fight against darkness. He's the one, above all others, who ensures that our efforts in the field equal those of the Baptists and Methodists. Like him or not, he is our man.'
'I was coming to that,' said the chairman, who had been repeatedly savaged by Jackson, 'for he does have his virtues. Fifth, early in life, for reasons not easy to explain, he developed a conviction that if he wanted something, he should go right to the top. Have you ever visited Washington with him when he wants something important? He slams his way into someone's office congressman, senator, cabinet ministers, the President himself. He told me once after having lectured a senator: "These are good men, but they need guidance," and he's ready to offer it anytime, anywhere, on any subject. I've often wondered why a man so small, so insignificant, can bully a senator six feet tall, but he does.'
Several men testified to Jackson's extraordinary power in Washington, and one said:
'He's made himself the voice of morality, especially Presbyterian morality, and that counts for something.'
The chairman now came to one of the fundamental talents of Sheldon Jackson: 'Sixth, his power stems from his capacity to convince large numbers of women church members to support whatever program he's fostering at the moment. They'll write letters to Washington and, most important, contribute large sums of money for his various projects, like that extraordinary church newspaper he still publishes in Denver, although he hasn't been there for years. He depends upon these women, beseeches them for funds, and thus places himself somewhat beyond our control.'
A choleric minister who had often been the subject of Jackson's vituperative attacks said: 'I watched him address a group of women in Maine whom he'd never seen before, and he was using the approaches that he'd found productive in Western states like Colorado and Iowa. He warned them about the dangers posed by the Catholic church, but they'd heard enough of that in Massachusetts and Maine. He saw he wasn't getting anywhere, so he switched to a hard-hitting expose of the Mormon church in Utah, but most of them had never heard of the Mormon church, so that fell flat. Obviously agitated I could see he was perspiring he suddenly launched into a heartrending account of guess what? Out of the blue, with no preparation whatever, he gave them a tearful account of how Eskimo girls in Alaska were being seduced at the age of thirteen by rascally goldminers, and his pictures were so vivid and lamentable that even I had tears in my eyes. Now, he's never been to Alaska, knows nothing about it, but he convinced those good Presbyterian women that unless they contributed heavily to the mission work he was planning for Alaska ...'
'Who said we're sending him to Alaska?' an irate clergyman shouted, and the informant said: 'He did. That is, he didn't actually say we were sending him. He said he was going.'
Surveying the group almost belligerently, the chairman asked: 'Did anyone here mention Alaska to him?' and one clergyman said: 'The last place on earth we'd want him meddling.
That's Oregon territory. Tell him to mind his own business,' and several members mumbled: 'Amen.'
So the chairman returned to his bill of indictment, but before he could speak to the next point he was interrupted by chuckling- coming from the group's oldest member.
'Did I say anything improper?' the chairman asked, and the man said: 'Heavens, no!
I was just recalling that I was on the committee that interviewed Jackson years ago when he wanted to be one of our overseas missionaries. I read him our verdict: "You're too frail for the hard work of an overseas post."' When the gross inaccuracy of this prediction struck the meeting, everyone joined in the laughter.
'Seventh,' resumed the chair, 'he's displayed an insatiable appetite for publicity. From the first he's appreciated the power that can come to a man, particularly a clergyman, if he's seen by the press to be an agent for good. He saw early that this would protect him from bodies like ours who might not want to support his more outrageous plans.
And he was never willing to leave good publicity to chance; as you know, he started or had others start some four or five religious newspapers or journals in which his good works are extolled and in whose columns it is always he who accomplishes things and not the hardworking missionaries who work in silence. Since he acquired that honorary degree from that little college in Indiana, and I have reason to believe he initiated it, he always refers to himself in his journals as Dr. Sheldon Jackson, and nine-tenths of the people who work with him are convinced that he really earned a doctorate in divinity.'
The board members discussed the little man's remarkable ability at promoting himself, and there were notes of envy as they r
ecalled one illustrated article after another which spoke of his heroic efforts, but then the meeting closed with an almost irrelevant comment, Item Eight:
'Jackson has always been an ardent Republican who believes that when the United States government is in such hands, God smiles upon our nation, and that when Democrats come into power, the forces of evil are set loose. This outspoken devotion aids Presbyterianism when the Republicans are in control of the nation, as they have been for so long, but it could damage us if the Democrats ever took over.'
In the discussion that followed, it was agreed that since the Democrats were not likely to assume national power in the foreseeable future, the Presbyterians might as well run the risk of allowing Jackson to continue as their spokesman in Washington, but all were firm about the resolution which the board passed at the end of their meeting:
Resolved: that the Reverend Sheldon Jackson be complimented on his new missionary successes in Dakota, but that he be admonished to keep this Board informed of any future movements before he makes them. He is specifically directed not to move into Oregon or Alaska, since those areas are the domain of the Oregon church.
But even before these stern directions could be handed to a secretary for transmission to Jackson, a messenger arrived at the retreat with a communication from distraught church leaders in Oregon:
The Reverend Sheldon Jackson appeared in our midst without warning and proceeded to infuriate everyone. After creating a great disturbance, he left us for Seattle and Alaska. When we warned him that the latter was Oregon's responsibility, he told us bluntly that he read his commission to include everything from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean and that it was time someone attended to Alaska. We informed him that our church already had missionaries in place in Wrangell, but he retorted: 'I mean a real missionary,' and he sailed north.