John Bachman was an American Lutheran minister, social activist and naturalist.
Background
John Bachman was born on February 4, 1790 in the village of Rhinebeck, Dutchess County, the youngest son of Jacob Bachman, a farmer. The Bachman family is traditionally supposed to have come to Pennsylvania with William Penn seven generations earlier, though this is not a matter of precise record.
Education
It is said that he entered Williams College at an early age, and that his close application to study resulted in a menacing collapse of health which forced him to leave his college work uncompleted. For some time he lived out-of-doors, studying the Bible and Luther. His first contact with men of science was his meeting in Philadelphia with the ornithologist, Alexander Wilson, who gave him an introduction to the great explorer and naturalist, Baron von Humboldt, then visiting this country.
Career
Bachman taught school at Ellwood, and later in Philadelphia, and in 1813 he was licensed to preach in the Lutheran Church. His first charge was "Gilead Pastorate, " composed of three churches near Rhinebeck. He was ordained in December 1814. His call to the Lutheran pulpit of St. John's in Charleston brought him in 1815 into what was, for his time and denomination, a religious frontier, and at the same time it threw him in with the group of naturalists gathered about the old medical school of Charleston in the first half of the nineteenth century.
For many years he was tireless in building up his congregation, giving especial attention and benevolence to the Negroes. He initiated the Lutheran Synod of South Carolina, was its first president, and founded South Carolina's Lutheran theological seminary.
As a naturalist, Bachman was very modest about his attainments. His celebrated association with Audubon, the great ornithologist and painter, began in October 1831, when Audubon spent a month under his roof. His letters to Audubon often reveal rather more scientific caution and acumen than Audubon himself sometimes showed, and his judgment of the two great rivals, Audubon and Wilson, was kind yet discerning and candid. At first too busy with religious duties to give much attention to natural history, by 1835 he had begun to show himself of indispensable service to Audubon by his collections of southern animals and his trustworthy studies of their habits and habitats. He wrote monographs on squirrels and hares, and took, besides, a warm interest in botany and agriculture.
The Civil War and the approach of the evolutionary controversy gave great disturbance to Bachman, personally, intellectually, morally. His book The Unity of the Human Race (1850) was a criticism of and exegetical retort to Nott and Gliddon's Types of Mankind. As against his opponents, he maintained that humankind is all of one species, a point of view now upheld by the best anthropologists. In dignified terms, by no means devoid of good scientific thinking, he tried, unsuccessfully, to reconcile Scripture and Science. Throughout the war he was a soldier of mercy, giving his entire time to the sick and dying. Much against his will he was persuaded to escape from Charleston by the last train before the evacuation of the town, as his part in the Secession meetings marked him for Northern hatred. He did not escape indignities and loss of property. His death by paralysis occurred in Columbia. Thousands came to view his body, especially Negroes who had known his kindness, and hundreds of children were lifted to kiss the face of a leader especially beloved. In person he was at once simple and urbane.
Achievements
Religion
Religious matters were one of his main interest. His chief religious tract was A Defense of Luther and the Reformation (1853), brought forward in answer to alleged attacks by local Catholics. His sermons when re-read even today, appear liberal, as well as gracefully eloquent and forthright.
Politics
During the Nullification agitation he was noted for his Unionist views, yet when at last South Carolina met to enact an ordinance of secession it was he who opened the meeting with prayer.
Views
As against his opponents, he maintained that humankind is all of one species, a point of view now upheld by the best anthropologists.
Personality
As a religious leader he was undoubtedly a persuasive figure, swaying an adoring congregation and known to every one of all creeds throughout his state.
Connections
In 1816 he married Harriet Martin, daughter of a German Lutheran minister of Charleston.