Hardshell Baptists

See quot. 1842.

1842.  The Baptists [in Macon, Georgia] are of the order called here “Hard-shelled Baptists,” a phrase which was new to me; and which was given to them, as I understood, from being so impenetrable to all influences of a benevolent kind, and so hostile to all the auxiliary aids of missions, &c…. They are accordingly given to the pleasures of the table without restraint; and one of their veteran preachers here is said to have declared from the pulpit that he would never submit to be deprived of his “worldly comforts” by the fanatics of modern times; and among those comforts he numbered his “honey-dram before breakfast,” and his “mint julap or sling, when the weather required it.”—J. S. Buckingham, ‘Slave States,’ i. 197.

1848.  The old hardshell laid about him like rath,… and whenever he stopped for breth, two or three of the others was down on him like a Yankee thrashin-machine…. Bimeby the old hardshell caved in for want of breth, and all the rest of the way he was hockin and hemin, and tryin to git the dust and sinders out of his wind-pipe.—W. T. Thompson, ‘Major Jones’s Sketches of Travel,’ p. 30 (Phila.).

1854.  His grandfather, the Rev. Jedediah Suggs, was a noted divine of the Anti-Missionary or Hardshell Baptist persuasion in Georgia.—J. G. Baldwin, ‘Flush Times,’ p. 122.

1856.  Somehow I ollers tuck amazin’ likin’ tu the Baptists, specially tu the hard shells.—Weekly Oregonian, May 3.

1860.  See HALF HORSE, HALF ALLIGATOR.

1860.  I have been called an old hard-shell Baptist preacher.… I am a hard-shell Baptist, though not a hard-shell Baptist preacher.—Mr. Cobb of Alabama, House of Repr., Jan. 27: Cong. Globe, p. 615.

1871.  The “Hardshell Baptists,” or, as they are otherwise called, the “Whisky Baptists,” and the “Forty-gallon Baptists,” exist in all the old Western and South-western States.—E. Eggleston, ‘The Hoosier School-master,’ p. 102.

1877.  A full, husky, explosive voice, used imperfectly, often in a sing-song tone, like a “hardshell Baptist” preacher, yet powerful.—Providence Journal, May 5 (Bartlett).