Walkabout: Reverend Talmage’s Tabernacle, Part 2

Read Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 of this story.

During the second half of the 19th century, the Reverend Doctor Thomas DeWitt Talmage was one of Brooklyn’s most famous preachers. Into his church, the Brooklyn Tabernacle, better known as “Talmage’s Tabernacle”, he brought passion, intelligence, wit, and not a little theatricality to his pulpit, and used those tools to persuade and cajole his audiences up to, and through, the gates of salvation.

In this endeavor, he joined Henry Ward Beecher, and a handful of other 19th century Brooklyn preachers, as the mega-church pastors of their day. Although there were, and still are, dynamic preachers who literally scare the hell out of people with fire and brimstone pronouncements, Rev. Talmage’s sermons were instead much more intellectual, had practical and worldly references, and appealed to his urbane and sophisticated audience of Victorian-era Brooklynites, resulting in huge crowds of people coming each Sunday to hear him preach.

The first Talmage Tabernacle was a cast iron clad hall built in a hurry on Schermerhorn Street, near 3rd Avenue. One Sunday morning, right before Christmas in 1872, it caught fire, and burned to the ground while arriving congregants stood helplessly by. Rev. Talmage vowed to rebuild on the ashes of the past, and by 1874, a new and larger Tabernacle rose in the same location, this one able to seat 5,000 people, and in no time, every seat was full.

People came to the Tabernacle to hear Talmage preach, but a good church service needs more, or else it’s just a fancy lecture. Music was an important part of the service, giving the congregation a chance to participate as well as listen, and Talmage was on record as saying that in his opinion, the only way to praise the Lord though music in his church was with an organ and a coronet blasting the music of God to the heavens.

The first Talmage Tabernacle featured a huge pipe organ that was bought from the Boston Coliseum. At its keyboards was Mr. George W. Morgan, one of the 19th century’s most accomplished organists.

Morgan was born and educated in England, and came to New York in 1853. A year later he was the organist for the prestigious St. Thomas Episcopal Church on 5th Avenue. Other important positions followed, as well as a successful teaching and performing career.

Mr. Morgan is mentioned many times in the papers during the late 1800’s, and is included in lists of the great organists of that century. He was hired by the Tabernacle specifically to play the National Peace Jubilee and Music Festival organ, a massive instrument built for the Peace Jubilee, a celebration of the restoration of the Union, held at the Boston Coliseum in 1869.

The Tabernacle purchased the organ and had it rebuilt in the church, downsizing its power only slightly, in the process. It was said to literally rattle the walls when Mr. Morgan pulled out all the stops. It must have been magnificent.

Morgan was handsomely compensated for his work, with a salary of $2,200 yearly, which was reduced in hard economic times, with Morgan’s approval, to $1,800 a year. Everything was in fine order, in spite of the fire in 1872, which destroyed the organ, along with everything else, then the move to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the interim, and then the move back to the splendid new church in 1874.

The new church organ was even bigger than the Peace Jubilee organ, with three keyboards, a 30 note foot pedal organ, 2 ½ octaves of bells, 43 stops and 42 ranks. This was a big, powerful musical instrument that needed a master organist, capable of reading a complicated score while playing three 58-note keyboards with his hands while simultaneously playing another full keyboard with his feet.

This was not the minister’s wife gamely plodding though a hymnal. Watching and listening to Morgan play was worth coming to church for, all by itself.

Well, with all this in mind: Talmage’s growing popularity, a packed church every Sunday, and a world class orator backed by a world class organist and musician, what in the world was the Brooklyn Tabernacle Board of Trustees thinking when they decided to fire George Morgan in 1875, and replace him with a Mr. Albert S. Caswell?

Rev. Talmage left the actual running of the affairs of the church to his Board of Trustees, a nine member group of men who took care of paying the bills, employing the various people who worked for the church, and other everyday business matters. It was summer, and both Rev. Talmage and Mr. Morgan were vacationing; Morgan was with his family in Newport, RI, staying with friends. When he came back on September 1st, he found out he was unemployed.

In no time, that particular situation was taken care of. Talmage was also back from vacation, and he promptly had a few conversations with the Board, and Morgan was reinstated. Poor Mr. Caswell, his replacement, generously and quietly retreated without argument or protest.

No one said a word, and the congregation never knew what was going on behind the scenes. All was well, until the next year, when the board tried it again. This time, it went public, and it got ugly. The Brooklyn Eagle was there to record it all.

In February of 1876, the Board sent Mr. Morgan a letter, telling him negotiations for his contract would commence. They wanted him to take another cut in pay, reducing his salary from $1,800 to $1,200 per annum. (All this while membership in the church was rising at the rate of 500 new people per month.)

Morgan sent the Board a letter telling them he’d think about it. At the end of February, Reverend Talmage was getting ready to go out of town on a two week speaking tour. Morgan and Talmage had a short conversation about the salary, and Talmage told him to keep the matter open until he came back, and not to reply to the Board until his return. Morgan agreed. Talmage left town March 5th, 1876.

Right after that, Morgan received a letter in the mail from the Trustees, telling him that they could no longer wait for him, and he needed to give them an answer now. He wrote back, telling them that he had told Dr. Talmage that he would wait until Talmage came back before giving an answer.

He went on to say that whenever he (Morgan) needed the Trustees to get back to him in a timely manner, they were unavailable, but all of a sudden, now they were in a big hurry to resolve this. He ended his letter by saying, “Of course, if my long and faithful service, together with the extra duty I have performed, counts for nothing, you are at liberty to make other arrangements without giving me due time for consideration.”

He posted his letter, and must have thought about it, and decided it wasn’t worth the battle. On March 8, he wrote them again and told them he would take the contract for the next year at $1,200.

Two days later, he received this letter: “On receipt of your letter of March 6, the Board of Trustees of the Brooklyn Tabernacle commenced negotiations to obtain the services of an organist for the ensuing year, to wit, from May 1st, when your contract will expire, after which time your services will no longer be required.”

Morgan had played chicken with the Board, which had the power to hire and fire organists and other employees, and lost, big time. But it wasn’t over by a longshot. In fact, the battle had yet to begin, because the Rev. Dr. Talmage was coming back to Brooklyn.

On March 20th, Talmage came back from his trip, and was told about the decision. He immediately called for a meeting of the Board of Trustees and the Elders of the Church, at his home at 1 South Oxford Place. Only 4 of the 9 Trustees showed up, but all of the elders were there. What resulted was a very messy power struggle, and in the words of the Eagle, “the boys (Trustees) gave themselves away very badly.”

They thought the matter with Morgan was a done deal. He was gone. The elders, referred to as the Session, and Dr. Talmage thought differently, and after a lot of ecclesiastical wrangling, and probably some very un-Christian behavior, the Trustees had to back down, and re-hire George Morgan, at his present salary, as well as a Mr. Gulick, who led the congregation in singing, who had also been canned.

This whole process took about a week, during which time Dr. Talmage tried to smooth ruffled feathers and egos. The Board eventually complied, but it didn’t go over well with them at all.

The whole process was governed by the bylaws of the Presbyterian Church, of which the Tabernacle was a member. For all intents and purposes, Talmage and his Session of Elders totally re-wrote church law in order to keep Morgan, and this would have repercussions.

By April 2, 1878, all but two of the Board of Trustees had resigned, with the other two on the fence. A day later, it was a total loss, the entire board quit. The first thing they did was go to the Eagle and voice their complaints in the form of a very long letter explaining their actions.

They voiced their support of Rev. Talmage, in spite of his “grave errors in this matter”, and made reference to Mr. Morgan’s talents, in spite of his “faults”, which they had so generously overlooked the first time they fired him, but couldn’t overlook the second time.

They accused Morgan of wanting to use the church to give a concert for his own financial benefit, which they refused to do, and made mention of his “insolent nature”, and other serious problems, thereby justifying his reduction of salary, and eventual dismissal.

They said that they could have hired several good organists who cost much less than Morgan did, and as fiduciary agents of the church, were only doing their duty in getting the best deal for their money. They also said that in spite of what he was saying now, Rev. Talmage knew what they were up to, and told them that he would support them in whatever decision they made.

A separate letter from Mr. Pearsall, the Secretary of the Board, revealed even more dirt. He said that Mr. Morgan often came to the church intoxicated, and was drunk during services, so drunk he couldn’t walk.

He said that Talmage had complained about it often, but had also overlooked it, and said that Morgan was “a better organist drunk than any other organist sober”. Pearsall said he couldn’t countenance Mr. Morgan sitting in front of the Sunday school in such a condition for children to see, in spite of the fact that Rev. Talmage loved to have such excellent music in his services.

That was why he opposed Mr. Morgan, and that his re-instatement, achieved by tossing out the church bylaws, was why he, and the whole board, had quit.

They may have been morally justified, and they may have been right, but no one cared. Morgan was back in front of his organ, perhaps drunk as a lord, perhaps not, and Talmage was at the pulpit. Gulick was leading the congregation in song.

The church was still growing, and the new Board of Trustees and the Elders voted to give Talmage a substantial raise for 1879. However, back at Presbyterian Church headquarters, far above Rev. Talmage’s head, that sage body did not like their preachers ignoring church by-laws whenever they chose, no matter who they were.

In March of 1879, they handed down an indictment, accusing Rev. Dr. Talmage of charges of falsehood and deceit. The Brooklyn Presbytery would meet, there would be a trial, and THEY would decide his fate. The story continues…

Rev. Talmage’s Tabernacle, part 1