Paradise Lost

BRIAN: This is BackStory with the American Backstory hosts. I’m Brian Balogh, 20th Century Guy.

ED: I’m Ed Ayers, 19th Century Guy.

PETER: And I’m Peter Onuf, 18th Century Guy. Our show today is all about the history of doomsday in America– prophecies and proclamations about what comes next, if anything.

ED: It’s hard to separate talk of the apocalypse from talk of religion. The very term apocalypse is most often associated with the New Testament book of Revelation. It means an uncovering or a revealing. Back in the 1830s and 1840s, America was experiencing a wave of religious fervor.

The Second Great Awakening, as it’s come to be known, was a time when many Americans thought the Second Coming of Christ was eminent. And so they threw themselves into reformed movements like temperance and abolition. They wanted to make America a fitting place for the coming kingdom of God, scrubbing out the sins of this world to pave the way for the next. It’s in this context that one particular end times prophecy caught fire and became remarkably mainstream. Jess Engebretson tells the story.

VOICE-OVER FOR WILLIAM MILLER: I’m fully convinced that sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844 Christ will come and bring all His saints with him.

JESS ENGEBRETSON: This particular prophecy was the work of a small town Vermont farmer named William Miller. Miller had become convinced of Christ’s imminent return back in the 18 teens, after applying some complicated arithmetic to the book of Daniel. But he was a cautious man, and didn’t want to spread the extraordinary news until he was quite sure he’d gotten it right.

He had dashed off a couple newspaper articles in the 1830s, but they didn’t get much attention outside New England. If he was really going to spread the good news, he needed someone a little more media savvy on board. Enter Joshua Hines, a Boston pastor who met Miller in 1840.

Hines started publishing a paper called Signs of the Times that extolled Miller’s predictions. He sent pamphlets to post offices in one of America’s earliest direct mail campaigns. Here’s a response from one Ohio postmaster.

VOICE-OVER FOR POSTMASTER: The papers which you forwarded came to hand last evening. In half an hour they were distributed in every part of this town. A general rush was made to the office to obtain the papers. Can you not send me another such roll?

JESS ENGEBRETSON: Other Millerite papers popped up in New York, Philadelphia, Rochester, Cleveland, Montreal. Nearly 50 different papers, all told. In the early 1840s, some five million pieces of Millerite literature were distributed, one for every four people in the US. And people responded.

Around 100,000 Americans joined the movement. In some Northeastern cities, Millerite groups became so large that they couldn’t find buildings big enough to hold their meetings.

VOICE-OVER FOR LC COLLINS: The midnight cry must yet be made to ring and ring through every valley, and over every hilltop.

JESS ENGEBRETSON: This is LC Collins, one of many Millerites who left home to travel the country and spread the good news.

VOICE-OVER FOR LC COLLINS: A crisis must come before the door of mercy is everlastingly shut against them. They must be made to feel that it is now or never.

JESS ENGEBRETSON: That sense of now or never got an unexpected boost in February 1843. A huge comet appeared in the sky, so bright it could be seen in broad daylight. Sure, Miller’s prediction hadn’t said anything about a comet, but people managed to work it into the prophecy, anyway.

Remember, Miller had said Christ would return between March ’43 and March ’44. The comet’s timing was spot on. The beginning of that window was just a few weeks away. March 1843 arrived and nothing happened. But the Millerites were unphased. They kept up with their proselytizing, Miller worked his way through the East Coast cities on a last lecture tour.

In December, he called in one more burst of publishing might, a million new tracks to be distributed in the final months. The year wound down and the window was about to close. After all the work, anticipation had reached a fever pitch.

Finally, March of 1844 rolled around. The New York Herald reported that a few of the more extreme believers jumped off roofs and tree branches, hoping to time their leaps to coincide with Christ’s return. But Christ didn’t return and some fell to their deaths. Newspapers had a field day teasing the disappointed Millerites. Here’s one Boston headline.

VOICE-OVER READING HEADLINES: What? Not gone up yet? We thought you’d gone up. Aren’t you going up soon? Wife didn’t go up and leave you behind to burn, did she?

JESS ENGEBRETSON: A couple weeks later, Miller publicly acknowledged his mistake. One follower did some quick calculations and found an error in Miller’s math. The movement recalibrated and seized upon a new date, October 22 of that year. Once again, many believers left their homes and professions letting their crops rot in the fields. A young woman named Olive Rice was one of many who crisscrossed the country, preaching to the unconvinced.

VOICE-OVER FOR OLIVE RICE: I could not conscientiously return to my studies in North Wilberham to prepare for future usefulness when a few months, at the longest, must close not only my labors in this world, but those are all mankind. I was compelled by a solemn sense of duty to go and warn my fellow men to prepare for Christ’s second coming and the solemn scenes of judgment.

JESS ENGEBRETSON: Shopkeepers shuttered their windows and hung polite notices from their doors.

VOICE-OVER FOR SHOPOWNER: This shop is closed in honor of the King of Kings who will appear about the 20th of October.

JESS ENGEBRETSON: But on October 22, again, Christ did not return to Earth. The blow was devastating to followers. It became known as the Great Disappointment.

VOICE-OVER FOR MILLERITE: I waited all Tuesday and dear Jesus did not come. I waited all the forenoon of Wednesday, but after 12 o’clock I began to feel faint.

VOICE-OVER FOR MILLERITE: You have no idea the feeling that seized me. If the earth could have swallowed me up, it would have been sweetness compared to the distress I felt.

VOICE-OVER FOR MILLERITE: Our fondest hopes and expectations were blasted. And such a spirit of weeping came over us as I never experienced before. It seemed that the loss of all earthly friends could have been no comparison. We wept and wept till the day dawned.

JESS ENGEBRETSON: People regrouped as best they could. Some slunk back to their old churches. Those who remained faithful to Miller’s teaching splintered into smaller sects, depending on how they made sense of the Great Disappointment. The belief that Christ’s return was eminent slipped out of mainstream thinking. And the great hopeful this at the 1830s and ’40s began to wane.

As debates over slavery tipped into open violence, the idea that America had been on the verge of ushering in the kingdom of God looked naive, even delusional. For many Americans, optimism had become outdated.

ED: Jess Engebretson is one of our producers.

[MUSIC – NANCY SINATRA, “END OF THE WORLD”]