Alaska (69 page)

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 421

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 422

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

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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 recalled 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 424

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.

In this abrupt and unauthorized manner Jackson carried the Word of God and the salvation of Jesus Christ to darkest Alaska, and it was a curious fact that for the first seven definitive years of his mission he received not a penny of aid from the Presbyterian church, which was outraged by his insolent behavior. He paid the huge expenses of the Alaskan experiment, one of the most successful in American missionary efforts, solely from the funds turned over to him by adoring women whom he visited each winter on hortatory expeditions. At a time when he was accomplishing miracles in the frozen north, he spent half of each year back in various states imploring women's groups for help, or in Washington hectoring Congress for better laws and more money for Alaska.

He became the close personal friend of almost everyone in government who was destined for spectacular promotion, especially those who were Republican or Presbyterian, which was how he attached himself early to the coattails of Senator Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, who was both, and who, when he became President, would look to Jackson for counsel as to what should be done in Alaska. At a mere five feet two, with the stubby legs of a child, this Presbyterian minister had transformed himself into a giant.

WHEN DR. JACKSON ARRIVED IN ALASKA, ILLEGALLY HIS opponents said, he put his tremendous ingenuity to work, and achieved two brilliant successes: he persuaded his friends in Congress to grant him the resounding title of General Agent for Education for Alaska, which carried no salary and for the early years no government funds, but which did empower him to have impressive calling cards made which he used to bully anyone opposing his plans; and he hectored the Treasury Department into assigning him free passage aboard any of its revenue cutters that were sailing to any point that he wished to visit in the execution of his duties. With these' assurances in his pocket and with the continued financial support of the women's clubs back home, he was prepared to

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set forth on his life's work: the humanization and education of Alaska.

In these beginning years Jackson led a frenetic life. During the spring and summer months he jumped aboard any available cutter to explore the arctic seas, engage in battle against alcohol, arrest malefactors, help dispense law, visit Siberia, plan the development of Alaska, and with his own money provide many of the services which the government should have funded. Then, for the six months of fall and winter, he would be back in Washington or New York or Boston, lobbying and lecturing on the future of Alaska. During one typical twelvemonth period he traveled 37,624 miles, and a fellow clergyman guessed that in that time he had given not less than two hundred lectures on behalf of Alaskan education: 'Sheldon's ready to launch into a lecture if he can find an audience of six.'

But whenever he was on the verge of achieving some improvement, he found himself frustrated by the fact that the United States still refused to provide Alaska with any kind of government or adequate tax base, and in his frustration he would roar back to Washington, breathing fire, to bombard Congress. It was there, with his traditional foresight, that he formed his close acquaintanceship with the promising senator from Indiana, Benjamin Harrison, grandson of the ninth President. The senator listened to his pleas for a law that would enable Alaska to govern itself, became convinced by Jackson's moral force, and in 1883 began to work in the Senate for such a law.

In 1884, spurred vigorously by Jackson, Senator Harrison finally maneuvered through Congress an Organic Act, giving Alaska a civil government of sorts, with one judge, one district attorney, one clerk of court, one marshal four deputies to bring law and order to an area of more than five hundred thousand square miles. It was pathetically inadequate, but a step in the right direction.

Jackson, of course, had hoped for self-governing territorial status, but Congress would not concede this, for it would have implied that sooner or later the territory would become a state, as all the other emerging sections of the United States were doing, and that, ranted the lawmakers, was preposterous: 'That icebox will never have enough people to become a state.' 'Self-government? Hell, the entire area has only nineteen hundred people, I mean white people of course.' 'If the Army don't govern it, the Navy should.'

But not even Jackson appreciated the almost fatal inadequacy of the bill he and Harrison had helped pass; he learned, however, when he returned that spring to Sitka, for he had not been in his summer home two hours before he was visited 426

by an irate Carl Caldwell, the former lawyer from Oregon and now a leading citizen of Alaska: 'What did you allow Congress to do, Dr. Jackson?'

'We didn't allow it. Harrison and I forced it.'

'But the Oregon bit? That nullified everything.'

'Now wait,' Jackson said defensively. 'Congress refused to give us territorial status.

Best we could get was that we should be governed by the same local laws as Oregon.'

At this, Caldwell leaped from his chair: 'If it was the laws of Oregon, it would be all right. What you gave us are the ancient laws of the territory of Oregon. It became a state in

1859. You're taking us back to the way Oregon was in 1858,' and when he spelled out the monstrous limitations this placed on Alaska, Jackson sat with mouth agape: 'We can't have jury trials in Alaska because Oregon territorial law said that to be eligible, jury members must be taxpayers.'

'Sensible rule,' Jackson said. 'Provides responsible men for jury duty.'

'But we have no taxes in Alaska; therefore, no juries.' When Jackson gasped, he continued: 'Many of the best laws in Oregon Territory related to counties, but we can't have any of those laws because we have no counties.'