Benjamin M. Palmer

Benjamin Morgan Palmer (January 25, 1818 – May 25, 1902), an orator and Presbyterian 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.

Benjamin M. Palmer
Born	Benjamin Morgan Palmer (1818-01-25)January 25, 1818 Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.
Died	May 25, 1902(1902-05-25) (aged 84) New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
Nationality	American
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Palmer was born in Charleston, South Carolina, to Edward Palmer and the former Sarah Bunce. He was educated at Amherst College from 1833 to 1834. He taught school for two years and then attended the University of Georgia from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1838. At Georgia he was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society. From 1839 to 1841 he attended the Presbyterian-affiliated Columbia Theological Seminary, at that time located in South Carolina. In 1841 he married the former Mary Augusta McConnell of Columbia. In 1852 he received the doctor of divinity degree from Oglethorpe University near Milledgeville, Georgia. In 1870 he received the LL.D. degree from Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.

He pastored the First Presbyterian Church of Savannah, Georgia, from 1841 to 1842. He was called to First Presbyterian in Columbia, the South Carolina capital, a post 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 1856, he accepted the pastorate of First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans, his terminal position which he held for forty-six years. He and his family lived at 1415 Prytania Street, in the lower Garden District neighborhood of New Orleans, and the mansion has been authentically restored and turned into part of the Creole Gardens Hotel.

In his personal copy of Rev. Moses Stuart's Hebrews Commentary, seminary student Wallace H. Stratton identifies "B. M. Palmer DD. Didactic" as a faculty member of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Columbia, S. C., in the year 1863.

In his Thanksgiving sermon just days after the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. president, Palmer defended slavery and endorsed secession, saying that it was the South's "providential trust" to preserve the institution of slavery.[1] This was only days before South Carolina became the first of the eleven states to secede from the Union. When federal troops invaded New Orleans and imposed military rule under General Benjamin 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.

An older Benjamin M. Palmer.

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 his death, he was elected its first moderator.

Palmer's writings include a biography of 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.

Palmer's wife died in his arms on November 13, 1888, apparently from gastritis. Palmer said that he never recovered from her death. Palmer was struck by a streetcar in New Orleans on May 5, 1902, and died twenty days later. The Palmers' remains are entombed in the city's Metairie Cemetery.[2]

One of the Palmer daughters married John Caldwell, the curator of Tulane University in New Orleans. Palmer himself established the Southwest Presbyterian Seminary (now Rhodes College). Palmer Hall at Rhodes College was named after him but renamed to Southwestern Hall on April 12, 2019 by the Rhodes College Board of Trustees after recommendations by the Palmer Hall Discernment committee review found that Palmer "...the principal legacy of Benjamin Palmer, which was found to be fundamentally at odds with our college Vision.".[3] Palmer's papers are in several locations, including Louisiana State University and Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. An orphanage named for Palmer was started in 1895 in Columbus, Mississippi; Palmer Home for Children is "a Christ-centered home, Where Hope Still Grows." Palmer Avenue and Palmer Park in uptown New Orleans were both named for him.[4][5]

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.