Free Locust by Jeffrey A. Lockwood Page B

regard was rather nominal. Moreover, a tough-love minister might rationalize that withholding material handouts would foster moral growth, self-reliance, and responsibility—but refusing to offer prayers was beyond even the most harshly judgmental preachers. So religious leaders attempted to intercede with God on behalf of the suffering farmers.
    For the most part, the clergy walked the careful line that had been drawn six centuries earlier based on the contention of Thomas Aquinas that animals, including locusts, were not culpable for their misdeeds. From here, Christian orthodoxy had eventually come to the standard position that the proper response to a troublesome swarm was to call upon the populace to repent and humbly entreat an angry God to remove the scourge. Although there are few records of what was said in church services about the Rocky Mountain locust, the prayers offered by state officials likely reflect the cautiously compassionate tone of the religious leaders.
    Under pressure from the churches, Missouri’s governor was the first to seize on the political and theological advantages of a call for public prayer on behalf of the farmers. He managed to allude to the locusts without specifically mentioning these creatures. Perhaps the seeming absurdity of setting aside a day of prayer concerning an insect outbreak was deemed inconsistent with the dignity of the governor’s office. And so, in May of 1875, Charles H. Hardin somewhat obliquely proclaimed:
    Whereas, owing to the failure and losses of our crops much suffering has been endured by many . . . and if not abated will eventuate in sore distress and famine; Wherefore be it known that the 3rd day of June proximo is hereby appointed and set apart as a day of fasting and prayer that Almighty God may be invoked to remove from our midst those impending calamities and to grant instead the blessings of abundance and plenty; and the people and all the officers of the state are hereby requested to desist during that day, from their usual employments, and to assemble at their places of worship for humble and devout prayer, and to otherwise observe the day as one of fasting and prayer.
    Many years later, Leland Ossian Howard, the fourth chief entomologist to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, revealed that the timing of Hardin’s “day of fasting and prayer” was not arbitrarily chosen. Rather, the governor had consulted with the state entomologist, who advised Hardin that the locusts would begin to fly from the infested regions in early June. So Hardin’s timing for an appeal to divine intervention was rather more ecologically sophisticated and politically cynical than the merely fortuitous delays of the ecclesiastical courts in earlier centuries. And this locust prosecution didn’t have the grinding officiousness of an ecclesiastical trial. Whether through the power of science or that of religion, within a few days of the time dedicated to prayer the swarms departed. Not since Saint Magnus, Abbot of Füssen (Germany), repulsed a locust swarm using the staff of Saint Columba in 666 had the Church been able to lay claim to such stunning and immediate entomological efficacy. And just as locusts bred more locusts, the people hoped that success—even if miraculous—might breed further success.
    Following the locust invasions of 1876, various groups had pressured the governor of Minnesota to issue an official call for a day of prayer. In March 1877, churches turned up the political and theological heat. Urgent requests poured into the capital from religious leaders across the afflicted counties. Some took matters into their own hands: Catholics near Cold Springs pledged to offer prayers to the Blessed Virgin for fifteen years and to construct a chapel in her honor
if she would intervene with the Almighty to lift the scourge. A few pragmatic petitioners advocated that the governor declare a “day of work,” with the attendant wages going to alleviate the suffering