Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Garrett students and faculty once prided themselves on the story that one of their early presidents, Bishop Matthew Simpson, had gone to Washington and had persuaded President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. This was a standard part of Methodist lore and it had special meaning at Garrett Biblical Institute, since Simpson had been Garrett's president at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation and later when Simpson preached the eulogy for the slain president at his burial in Springfield. The fond story about Simpson's role in the Emancipation Proclamation, however, was debunked in 1956 with the publication of Robert Clark's Life of Matthew Simpson. Clark pointed out that Simpson was traveling on the West Coast the whole year before the proclamation was released. The story was shared at a community meeting in the spring when Alva Caldwell told it, noting Clark's debunking but pointing out that Simpson did influence Lincoln on the issue, but less directly. It turns out, however, that there may be more than a grain of truth in the claim that a Garrett president was directly influential in convincing Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

Our director of financial aid, Margaret Hallen, sent me an article from the Evanston Roundtable last spring about Evanston and the Civil War. The article mentioned that John Dempster, who had served as Garrett's first president from 1853 through 1859, had gone to Washington in 1862 with a Chicago delegation to present a “memorial” (petition) to the President calling for the abolition of slavery. At first I thought that this must have been a variation on the old Matthew Simpson story. I asked one of our reference librarians, Elaine Caldbeck, to check on this, and she and librarian David Himrod found a letter dated September 21, 1862, published in the Chicago Tribune for September 23, 1862. In this letter John Dempster and a Congregational minister, William W. Patton, described their trip to Washington to meet with Lincoln. Dempster and Patton represented an interdenominational group of Christians who in a meeting in Chicago on Sunday evening, September 7, 1862, had adopted a petition calling on the president to free all slaves.

Patton and Dempster traveled to Washington to take the petition to Lincoln and were received by him on September 13. The two men presented their petition, and their letter recalls in detail Lincoln's cautious response, agreeing in principle with the idea of emancipation but laying out practical reasons why such a proclamation might not be effective. Dempster and Patton and others who pressed Lincoln on this issue must have been effective, however, because the headline for the Tribune on the day their letter appeared read “EMANCIPATION OF SLAVES: Proclamation by the President of the United States.” Lincoln had issued the first and preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, nine days after Dempster and Patton had visited the White House.

The story about Matthew Simpson, then, appears to be a corruption of the original story about Dempster. Simpson had indeed been Lincoln's friend and confidante, and it's easy to understand how a subsequent teller of the tale, knowing Simpson's strong abolitionist views and his familiarity with Lincoln, might have substituted his name for that of Dempster. In any case, it is clear that both Dempster and Simpson had influenced Lincoln's decision to issue the proclamation, the one by carrying the appeal from Chicago Christians along with William Patton, and the other by his longstanding friendship with Lincoln. Dempster was Garrett's first president, Simpson was Garrett's second president.

A historian must hasten to add that the Emancipation Proclamation did not actually call for the freedom of all slaves, as Dempster and Patton and their petition had demanded. The proclamation freed slaves only in counties and parishes loyal to the Confederacy, not (ironically) in areas loyal to the Union or under Union control. But Lincoln did support a constitutional amendment ending the institution of slavery and the Emancipation Proclamation was a critical step towards the goal of full emancipation. We cannot overemphasize Dempster's and Simpson's influence in this regard; they were clearly part of a wide movement of Christians who sought the abolition of slavery. But when we say that “prophetic participation in society” is one of our three core values at Garrett-Evangelical, we are certainly not enunciating a radical new idea from the 1960s. The engagement of Presidents Dempster and Simpson with President Lincoln shows that “prophetic participation in society” had been part of the ethos of Garrett Biblical Institute from its early years.

As I have begun to reflect on my own work as president of Garrett-Evangelical, I am deeply humbled at the thought that for the last four years I have been able to serve in the position held by John Dempster and Matthew Simpson. Their engagement in efforts to abolish slavery stands as a cardinal illustration of the progressive Evangelical spirit out of which Garret Biblical Institute, Evangelical Theological Seminary, and the Chicago Training School all emerged. As I move from this place in the next few months and as a new president takes this position, I will bequeath to my successor the memories of our predecessors in this office, and I will continue to pray that the seminary will be faithful to this spirit as we seek “to know God in Christ and, through preparing spiritual leaders, to help others know God in Christ.”

by Ted Campbell, President, 2001-2005