Benjamin M. Palmer

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Benjamin Morgan Palmer (January 25, 1818 – May 25, 1902), an acclaimed orator and Bible-based theologian, was the first moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America. As pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans, his Thanksgiving sermon in 1860 had a great influence in leading Louisiana to join the Confederate States of America. After 1865 he was minister in the Presbyterian Church in the United States.

Palmer was born in Charleston, South Carolina, to Edward Palmer and the former Sarah Bunce. He was educated at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, from 1832 to 1834. He taught school for two years and then attended the University of Georgia at Athens, from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1838. He then attended from 1839 to 1841 the Presbyterian-affiliated Columbia Theological Seminary, then in South Carolina but later in Decatur, Georgia, near Atlanta. In 1841, he married the former Mary Augusta McConnell of Columbia. In 1852, he received the doctor of divinity degree from Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. Much later, in 1870, he received the LL.D. degree from Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania.

He pastored the First Presbyterian Church in Savannah, Georgia, from 1841 to 1842. He was called to First Presbyterian in Columbia, the South Carolina capital, a post that he held from 1843 to 1855. He also taught in the Columbia Seminary, his alma mater from 1853 to 1856, while he was pastoring in Columbia. In 1856, he accepted the pastorate of First Presbyterian in New Orleans, his terminal position which he held for forty-six years.

In the Thanksgiving sermon coming just days after the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. president, Palmer defended slavery and endorsed secession. This was also just days before South Carolina became the first of the eleven states to secede from the Union established under ther United States Constitution. When federal troops invaded New Orleans, and military rule was imposed under General Benjamin Franklin Butler of Massachusetts, Palmer sent his wife and children to her father's plantation in South Carolina. He spent the remainder of the war preaching primarily to Confederate soldiers, the diaries of many having extolled Christian principles.

An eloquent, vigorous, indefatigable speaker, even in his later years, Palmer's opposition on moral grounds to the Louisiana Lottery, operated by former Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard helped to doom that institution as a means of raising state revenues.

He preached the opening sermon and was elected the first moderator of his denomination on December 4, 1861. When the Synod of Louisiana was formed in 1901, a year before Palmer's passing, he was elected the first moderator of that body as well.

Palmer's writings include a life of the eminent Presbyterian minister and Columbia Seminary theologian James Henley Thornwell (1812–1862). Palmer also wrote volumes of sermons and theological treatises, including Theology of Prayer, The Broken Home, or Lessons in Sorrow, and Formation of Character.

Mrs. Palmer died in her husband's arms on November 13, 1888, an apparent victim of gastritis, for which she had been taking quinine. Palmer said that he never recovered from her untimely death. Palmer himself died under ununusual circumstances. He was struck by a street car in New Orleans on May 5, 1902. He died twenty days later from shock, rather than wounds from the accident. The Palmers are entombed in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans.

One of the Palmer daughters married John Caldwell, the curator of Tulane University in New Orleans. Palmer himself established Southwest Presbyterian Seminary in Memphis. The institution is now known as Rhodes College, and there is a Palmer Hall in his honor. Palmer's papers are in several locations, including Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and the Presybterian Historical Foundation in Montreat, North Carolina.

In its obituary of Palmer, the Christian publication The Interior reflected as follows:

Dr. Palmer served God and his generation as a symbol of the immutability of the great essentials of our religion. His faithful witness to Jesus Christ in the word of his preaching and the example of his ministry gave him such power in New Orleans as few of the Lord's ambassadors have ever wielded in any age of the church. By all consent he was acknowledged for years to be the most influential man in that city, and he was so brave and outspoken that he made for righteousness not only in the private lives of men but in the civic life of the community.

[edit] References

• "Benjamin Morgan Palmer", A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, Vol. 2 (1988), p. 627
• Ministerial Directory of the Presbyterian Church, U.S., 1861 - 1941, (Austin, Texas: Press of Von Boeckmann-Jones Co., 1942), p. 551
• Information on Palmer from Creole Gardens, a Bed and Breakfast in Palmer's former house