Young JQA and the preacher who hated dancing
Hoofing in Haverhill
More than fifty years before he became an outspoken crusader against slavery, 18-year-old John Quincy Adams was an unlikely champion for the right to boogie.
As a young boy in Paris, Johnny studied the fine art of dancing until his father had his focus shifted to Latin, Greek, and French “which will be more useful and necessary” in his home country. The elder John Adams turned out to be right but too late – when Johnny came home to interview at Harvard he was rejected because his Greek and Latin weren’t good enough.
Harvard agreed to test him again if he beefed up his skills, so he was shipped off to live with his auntie and uncle in Bel-Air Haverhill, Massachusetts in the winter of 1786 for some hardcore tutoring. The boy used to hobnobbing with European elites soon found out Haverhill was no Paris. It did have one thing going for it, though – dances.
The frequent dances gave Adams many opportunities to mingle with the town's young ladies before going home to do one of his favorite things – making chauvinistic judgments in his diary. His brutally honest entries read like a snotty male counterpart to Jane Austen:
The frequent dances gave Adams many opportunities to mingle with the town's young ladies before going home to do one of his favorite things – making chauvinistic judgments in his diary. His brutally honest entries read like a snotty male counterpart to Jane Austen:
“Miss Fletcher appears to be about twenty… but unfortunately she is in love, and unless the object of her affections is present she loses all her spirits, grows dull and unsociable, and can be pleased with nothing…. And as I found she could talk only in monosyllables, I was glad to change my partner. Miss Coats is not in love, and is quite sociable. Her manners are not exactly what I should wish for a friend of mine; yet she is agreeable. I am not obliged with her both to make and support the conversation; and moreover, what is very much to her favour, she is an only daughter and her father has money.”
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| 28-year-old John Quincy Adams proposed to Louisa Johnson less than 50 miles from where 19-year-old Jane Austen was writing Pride and Prejudice at the same time, but the two never met. |
Reverend Buzzkill
Dances helped John Quincy Adams practice his pride and prejudice and break up his tedious studying. For him, they made Haverhill habitable. There was just one problem: the town’s imposing Baptist preacher who was “violently opposed to dancing” and wanted it banned.
Reverend Hezekiah Smith was a fiery reform Baptist preacher and former chaplain in the Revolutionary War who had the distinction of having preached in every colony. He was described as both genteel and intimidating, sometimes in the same breath. One person who saw him preach called him “a son of thunder to the wicked, and a son of consolation to the saints.” Another said, “His preaching caused my very soul to tremble.”
This soul-shaker was “a man of venerable appearance and stately form," his looks "white as wool, his eye-brows retaining their natural dark hue; his face full and fair, bearing almost the flush of youth, and beaming with intelligence and good-will.” That good will did not extend to dancing.
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| I couldn't find any portraits of Hezekiah Smith, so here are some possible lookalikes. |
He then launched into a long fervent prayer that moved the crowd to tears. “Many, who, to that hour, had been immersed in the gay and dissipating pleasures of this life, now resolved to break off their sins by righteousness, and seek a more solid and substantial good.” He prayed the will to dance right out of them, and when the preacher returned to the same town months later he found it transformed into a bastion of the “genuine virtues of Christian character.”
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| Couples engaged in the gay and dissipating pleasures of this life. |
The story of Reverend Buzzkill sounds too good to be true, but we know from church records that Smith considered dancing as a nearly unforgivable sin, especially for women.
One young woman, Miss Morrill, was excommunicated from the church for the “sin of dancing.” They told her the “glory of God and the interests of religion have much suffered by your wickedness, in which if you continue you may justly expect the wages of sin.” The wages of sin, by the way, is death, according to the Bible. Apparently Hezekiah believed God was so fragile that his glory was threatened by Miss Morrill’s milkshake, and God’s best bet was to kill her.
In his diary, Adams wrote that Mr. Smith considered dancing such a “heinous sin” that he preached against it and even handed out printed copies of his anti-dance sermon. “There are many people, here, so warped in Prejudice that they are really perswaded, they should incur the divine displeasure, as much by dancing, as by stealing, or perhaps, committing murder.”
In his diary, Adams wrote that Mr. Smith considered dancing such a “heinous sin” that he preached against it and even handed out printed copies of his anti-dance sermon. “There are many people, here, so warped in Prejudice that they are really perswaded, they should incur the divine displeasure, as much by dancing, as by stealing, or perhaps, committing murder.”
Dance Dance Evolution
Hezekiah Smith’s opposition to dancing was a throwback to New England Puritanical efforts to control women's bodies going back over a hundred years. In 1684, Increase Mather wrote a tract called An Arrow Against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing, drawn out of the quiver of the Scriptures. In it, Mather rails against “gynecandrical” or mixed (between men and women) dancing. He explains that dancing is just generally whorish, was invented by the devil, and “cannot be tollerated in such a place as New-England without great sin.”
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| Shockingly, Increase and his son Cotton Mather were both involved in the Salem Witch Trials. |
Reverend Johnson knew the high school’s supply of booze and women had to be protected from roving gangs of prom crashers. And he knew that dancing was just the tip on a slippery sin slope: “When boys and girls hold each other, they get sexually aroused. You can believe what you want, but one thing leads to another.”
If he couldn’t keep prairie Vikings from invading the high school, how could he possibly prevent the junior and senior classes from devolving into a writhing Bacchanalia with their rock and roll music barely covering the sounds of their lustful grunts, the tearing of taffeta, and the squeaking of dress shoes on the freshly waxed gym floor? That's what happens when kids dance, so best to nip it in the bud. Not today, Satan!
The Elmore City school board voted 3 to 2 in favor of allowing the prom, and it went off without a hitch – no pillaging and no spike in teen pregnancy. The strict religious prohibitions against dancing were simply no match for the power of the 1980s, the decade that taught us that kids are going to dance.
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| Narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and slanty is the title font which leadeth to the busting of moves. |
Since then, attitudes about dancing have continued to evolve. We’ve stepped up, stomped the yard, gotten served, and still have plenty of room to evolve as a society. And as individuals.
Speaking personally, until not that long ago I looked at pole dancing as an intentionally tawdry strip club activity – not so far off from what Increase Mather might call promiscuous and profane dancing. I laughed at the line from Crazy Stupid Love, “The war between the sexes is over. We won the second women started doing pole dancing for exercise.” Since then I’ve learned a little about it thanks to a friend involved in the pole community. Now I understand that it's a way for women to own their bodies and eroticism, and I appreciate that it’s a much more artistic, athletic, competitive, and empowering way than I ever realized for dancers to get gnarly bruises.
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| If there’s room for ping pong and race walking at the Olympics, there’s definitely room for pole dance. |
Haters Gonna Hate
Two hundred years before Footloose debuted, John Quincy Adams pondered, “How one of the most innocent and rational amusements that was ever invented can find so many opposers is somewhat mysterious.” He concluded that “there are many who do not participate of the diversion and are envious to see others amusing themselves.” He concluded the haters were jealous and the solution was to ignore them: “The Subscribers wisely take no notice, of all these things, but go on, their own way, and despise all these senseless clamours.”
The details have changed, but Adams's basic struggle still resonates today, as does his response which boils down to "This isn't wrong and it doesn't effect you, so mind your own business." His message to the "old-womanish people in town" was to keep their noses out of his balls. He was feeling hella good so he just kept on dancing.
His diary from that winter is filled with passages of staying out dancing until three or four in the morning, or later. One time he wrote that a “number of lads, after conducting their women home, retained the music, and went a serenading all over the town till day-light.”
The details have changed, but Adams's basic struggle still resonates today, as does his response which boils down to "This isn't wrong and it doesn't effect you, so mind your own business." His message to the "old-womanish people in town" was to keep their noses out of his balls. He was feeling hella good so he just kept on dancing.
His diary from that winter is filled with passages of staying out dancing until three or four in the morning, or later. One time he wrote that a “number of lads, after conducting their women home, retained the music, and went a serenading all over the town till day-light.”
He partied so hard he had to take breaks:
“We drank and smoked and sang there till nine o’clock; but, notwithstanding a forced appearance of hilarity was kept up, there was no real mirth. All were fatigued by the last night’s siege, and unable to bear another, such as the inexhaustible spirits of Amory would have relished. At nine therefore we retired, and not long after I got home, I went to bed.”Thanks for summing up my twenties, Quincy.
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| An 18th century hangover. Detail from William Hogarth's "Francis Matthew Schutz In His Bed," which would be the best name for a painting ever if Francis Matthew were the subject's full name. |
No preacher or anyone else could convince him dancing was a sin because for him it was a fact of life. Like Voltaire, Adams firmly believed, "Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world." And like Kevin Bacon in Footloose, he felt in his soul that "this is our time to dance."
Sources:
John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life by Paul Nagel
The Life, Ministry, and Journals of Hezekiah Smith by John David Broome
Chaplain Smith and The Baptists or Life, Journals, Letters, and Addresses of the Rev. Hezekiah Smith, D.D., of Haverhill Massachusetts by Reuben Aldridge Guild.
People Magazine, “You Got Trouble In Elmore City That’s Spelled With a T Which Rhymes With a D and That Stands For Dancing.”
History of the Dance in Art and Education by Richard Kraus
History of the Dance in Art and Education by Richard Kraus
