Emperor Norton vs. the Rev. Mr. Hammond
The Time the Emperor Defended Children Against Religious Manipulation
EDWARD PAYSON HAMMOND (1831–1910) arrived in San Francisco on 20 February 1875.
Hammond was a slightly older contemporary of the Christian “revival” evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody (1837–1899) and was in the same line of work — a Billy Graham of his day.
Born in Ellington, Connecticut — 15 miles northeast of Hartford — E.P. Hammond graduated from Williams College, in Massachusetts, in 1858. The following year, he attended Union Theological Seminary, in New York. Hammond continued his theological studies in Edinburgh — at the college of the Free Church of Scotland, an evangelical breakaway from the state Church of Scotland.
It was during this British sojourn, in 1860 and early 1861, that Hammond began his preaching career in earnest.
Within a year of returning to the United States in 1861, Hammond hit on what became his trademark: a focus on converting very young children. Indeed, by 1863, newspaper editors had branded Hammond as “the Children’s Evangelist.”
During the 5-year period from 1861 to 1866, Hammond cast an increasingly wide net that took him to Protestant pulpits in Boston, Portland (Me.), Montreal, Brooklyn, Rochester, Newark, Chicago, St.Paul, Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis and more.
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NEWSPAPER accounts suggest that, when E.P. Hammond returned from a two-year tour of Britain and continental Europe in 1867 and 1868, his evangelical zeal had acquired a harder edge. Full of his own success, Hammond increasingly was willing to pick public fights with liberal critics — who often came from the ranks of Unitarians and Episcopalians.
Still, Hammond continued to enjoy good press from reporters and editors, who seemed reluctant to go too hard on him — arguably mesmerized by the very phenomenon they were helping to create with their glowing reports.
Edward Payson Hammond (1831–1910). Undated carte de visite by Union Picture Gallery of Auburn, N.Y. Source: iCollector
When Hammond went to a city to preach, it rarely was just for a day or even a week. Rather, he typically established a kind of “residency” that often lasted for several weeks running. In each campaign, Hammond reported hundreds — even thousands — of “conversions.” These numbers were dutifully printed, stenographer-style, in the papers of the city he was leaving and — to build enthusiasm — in the city where he was due next.
Hammond’s numbers were heavily leveraged on his claims of “converting” hundreds and thousands of children — many of them preschoolers — everywhere he went.
By the time Hammond arrived on the Pacific Coast in December 1874, his fear-mongering tactics for securing these child “conversions” were beginning to draw serious scrutiny.
Hammond conducted a month-and-a-half of revival meetings in San Jose and Sacramento before arriving in San Francisco in February 1875. Ultimately, he was in the city for two months; this was followed by a month in Oakland, where enthusiasm for Hammond’s meetings was such that a circus tent capable of holding 4,000 people had to be pressed into service as a “tabernacle.”
The meetings were not weekend affairs. They took place nearly every day — often for 6 or 8 or even 10 years per day. Public services of preaching, storytelling, hymn singing and choral music — which often emphasized telling tiny, impressionable children that they were evil, lost sinners in danger of hellfire — were interwoven with prayer meetings and what were called “inquiry meetings.”
In a remarkable foreshadowing of the “evangelistic crusade” methods of Billy Graham and other modern revival preachers, those attending Hammond’s services who “walked the aisle” — including children — were met by ministers from sponsoring churches and other local volunteers, who would speak to each attendee, one on one, with the goal of persuading or possibly cajoling them into signing a “covenant card” that stated:
I, the undersigned, hope I have found Jesus to be my precious Saviour; and I promise with His help, to live as his loving child and faithful servant all my life.
At each service, adults and children who did not walk the aisle were strongly urged to stay afterwards for an “inquiry meeting” in a separate room, where — in an effort to extract more “conversions” — Hammond would join the local ministers and volunteers in a more urgent and forceful reprise of the “covenant card” process.
Signed cards were used as records and treated as evidence of conversions. The more cards signed at an E.P. Hammond meeting [trademark], the better.
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Headlines of article, “Early Piety,” San Francisco Chronicle, 27 February 1875, p. 3. Source: San Francisco Public Library
AN ARTICLE that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle of 27 February 1875 — a week after E.P. Hammond’s arrival — gives a flavor of the wariness that already was afoot locally about Hammond’s targeting of children — and of how Hammond did, in fact, use children as props.
In the article subhead (see at right), “Infant” refers to little children — not babies.
Here’s an excerpt:
Excerpt of article, “Early Piety,” San Francisco Chronicle, 27 February 1875, p. 3. Source: San Francisco Public Library
“Dr. Stone” was Andrew L. Stone, minister of the First Congregational Church, then located at Mason and Post Streets. Stone served as something of a right-hand man for E.P. Hammond for the duration of Hammond’s San Francisco campaign, often hosting Hammond at his church and being on point as a platform speaker.
As one can see from Stone’s little rant here, the scapegoating of public school teachers as secularists who are hostile to religion is an old story.
But, the set-piece that Hammond tells as a follow-up to Stone’s complaint suggests that schoolteachers were right to be concerned.
In Hammond’s story, a 6-year-old boy is praised for reciting what obviously were memorized lines fed him by someone from Hammond’s team — Hammond’s use of the word “trained” is the tell. But, when asked the question that goes to the heart of why Hammond has told tiny children they need to be converted in the first place — “What sins did you commit? What did you do that was so wicked”? — the little boy’s answer — “I forget, sir?” — suggests that he simply had forgotten that part of the script.
Sizing up E.P. Hammond’s first week “on the job” in San Francisco, the San Francisco News Letter noted — on the same day as the Chronicle article: “the children have been corraled into the churches to be manipulated and frightened into hysterics by Mr. Hammond’s revival tactics; but the conversions have been few.”
Excerpt of “Droppings from the Sanctuary” (column), San Francisco News Letter, 27 February 1875, p. 12. Source: Genealogy Bank
There were those who — having observed Hammond’s rise over the previous decade-plus of his revival meetings in the East, Midwest, and Canada — long had viewed him as a charlatan.
Two newspapers in New York took the opportunity of Hammond’s San Francisco campaign to offer some choice words.
Drawing, in part, on the Chronicle’s account, the Watertown Daily Times weighed in with the following editorial, “Religionism Run Mad,” on 13 March 1875:
“Religionism Run Mad,” editorial, Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Times, 13 March 1875, p. 2. Source: Genealogy Bank
In “The Revivalists” — a more broadly scoped editorial published on 24 March 1875 — the New York World, based in New York City, took on Dwight Moody and other celebrity preachers, concluding with this damning indictment of Hammond’s preying on unsuspecting children:
Excerpt of “The Revivalists,” editorial, New York World, 24 March 1875, p. 4. Source: Genealogy Bank
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A WEEK OR SO before the Watertown editorial — and a couple of weeks after E.P. Hammond’s arrival in San Francisco — Emperor Norton weighed in with the following Proclamation published in the Oakland Daily Evening Tribune on 8 March 1875:
Proclamation of Emperor Norton about E.P. Hammond, Oakland Daily Evening Tribune, 8 March 1875, p. 3. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection
A slightly revised and expanded version of the same Proclamation appeared in the Pacific Appeal a few days later, March 13th:
Proclamation of Emperor Norton about E.P. Hammond, Pacific Appeal, 13 March 1875, p. 1. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection
It wasn’t common for the same — or substantially the same — Proclamation of Emperor Norton to appear in newspapers on both sides of the bay. But, it did happen. And, when it did, the sequence typically was as we see it here: Oakland first, San Francisco a few days later.
In early 1875, the Pacific Appeal still was the Emperor’s go-to paper in San Francisco. But, the Appeal was a weekly. His go-to in Oakland — the Tribune — was a daily.
One could surmise that, when Emperor Norton had something urgent to say that he thought was important enough for the residents of both cities to consider, he might have started with the Tribune, for a couple of reasons. For starters, the daily Tribune gave the Emperor better odds of getting his ideas into the stream more quickly. But, also: An Oakland paper was more likely to publish him if he wasn’t already published in San Francisco.
This particular Proclamation was published in Oakland on a Monday — which happens to have been the day every week when Emperor Norton usually visited the city. One can imagine the Emperor’s drafting the Proclamation over the weekend — possibly even on the Monday morning ferry — with the Tribune as his first stop after stepping onto the dock.
Worth noting, too, is the placement of this Proclamation in the Pacific Appeal. Almost always, Proclamations of Emperor Norton appeared at the bottom-left or, more often, bottom-right corner of the front page. But, here, the Proclamation was the lead item — at the top of the first column, immediately under the masthead. As far as I know, this was unprecedented and was never repeated. It is a testament to how important the Appeal’s editor, Peter Anderson, thought the Emperor’s subject matter was.
In fact, the Appeal ran an editorial about E.P. Hammond on page 2 of the same issue. The editorial — almost certainly penned by Anderson — was in response to a report in the San Francisco Evening Post that Hammond had told a story from the pulpit, in which he referred to a Black person as an “old darkey”:
“Rev. Dr. Hammond, the Revivalist, and the “Old Darkey,” editorial, Pacific Appeal, 13 March 1875, p. 2. Most likely written by the Appeal’s proprietor and editor, Peter Anderson. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection
In effect — and with all due caveats about the accuracy of the original report — Anderson here is calling Hammond a racist and — on that account — is calling his Christian credentials into question.
As to the Proclamation…
The introductory poetic couplet may be a quote. But, I don’t find it elsewhere — so, it could be original from the Emperor:
Take three little ropes, red white and blue
And they will hang Catholic, Protestant or Jew
One observer calls this “somewhat mordant.” Certainly, it’s inscrutable on a first reading.
The key that unlocks the couplet may be the Emperor’s judgment, later in the Proclamation, that “Rev. Mr. Hammond” is “slandering God” by “sowing the seeds of bigotry” into children.
Peter Anderson was talking about racial bigotry. And, Emperor’s Norton’s use of the word “bigotry” may have provided Anderson with an opportunity to boost that signal by placing the Emperor’s Proclamation at the top of the front page.
But, arguably, Emperor Norton was talking about bigotry of a different sort. The Emperor’s suggestion that religious bigotry lay at the heart of Hammond’s program — an idea that seems not to have made its way into this period’s other “take-downs” of the evangelist — may have been the most perceptive critique of all.
Contemporaneous accounts of E.P. Hammond’s “revivals” indicate that Hammond sought “conversion” of people not just to Christianity — but, to his particular brand of Christianity.
Hammond saw professing Jews, professing Catholics and even professing liberal Protestants as targets of his evangelistic campaigns — and as people in need of “conversion.”
This group included people who regarded themselves as having already been “converted” to Christianity. But, for Hammond, no “conversion” was good enough that did not come with a Hammond-branded covenant card.
Emperor Norton writes that the “three little ropes, red, white and blue” that “will hang Catholic, Protestant and Jew” also can be used to “make a beautiful Flag…that blesses and protects all who live under it.”
One way to interpret the Emperor’s message…
Religious tolerance and unity is a key to national tolerance and unity — and this is a lesson that children need to learn early.
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AS E.P. HAMMOND’S two-month stand in San Francisco was coming to a close in mid April 1875, the San Francisco correspondent of the Marin Journal filed the following report, writing: “[A]s to frightening little children with stories of an angry God and hell, I am not so well settled. And I do not like this Hammond as an instrument. He is certainly below par in intellect and mental culture; and rumor says that he is not any too honest and truthful.”
Excerpt of San Francisco correspondent’s letter, Marin Journal, 15 April 1875, p. 2. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection
By late July 1875, Hammond had left California and was nearing the end of a 7-week campaign in Oregon. By way of a “good riddance,” one observer in Oregon lowered a New York-style hammer on Hammond, in the form of the following op-ed that was published in the State Rights Democrat of Albany, Ore.
“Rev. E.P. Hammond Discussed,” op-ed by “W.L.,” State Rights Democrat (Albany, Ore.), 23 July 1875, p. 3. Source: Genealogy Bank
Like the anti-Hammond editorialists of the East and West Coasts, Emperor Norton was in the minority on Hammond.
But — also like these editorialists — Emperor Norton showed that smelling the shit and shining a light are two sides of the same coin.
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