Category: Springfield, Illinois

When Springfield Stood Still: Billy Sunday’s 1909 Earthquake

Springfield, Illinois
February 26 – April 11, 1909

In the spring of 1909, something happened in Springfield that people would talk about for decades.

Not a political convention.
Not a legislative battle.
A revival.

For forty-five days, the capital city of Illinois — population 51,678 — was overtaken by a wooden tabernacle, a former professional baseball player turned evangelist, and what many believed was a visitation of God.

By the time it ended, nearly 5,000 people had walked the sawdust trail.

And Springfield would never quite be the same.

The Numbers — and the Scale

The statistics alone are staggering.

  • 4,729 reported conversions
  • 774 converts on the final day alone — the largest single-day total of Sunday’s career to that point
  • 607,000 total attendance over the course of the campaign
  • 35,000+ at the final Sunday service
  • $20,218 in total contributions
    • $10,734 to Sunday
    • $9,483 to campaign expenses

To put this in perspective: Springfield’s population was just over 51,000. Attendance over the campaign equaled more than twelve times the city’s population.

One hundred thousand people attended special weekday meetings.
35,800 participated in cottage prayer meetings.

This was not a tent revival on the fringe of town.

This was the town.

Even Governor Charles Deneen and members of his family were reported among the converts on the closing day, joining First Methodist Episcopal Church . When the governor walks the aisle, you know something seismic is happening.

And yet, remarkably, Billy Sunday himself was reportedly disappointed with the conversion numbers. He believed “personal work was not begun early enough.”

That was Sunday. Five thousand souls, and he still thought the church could have done more.

The Night Billy Was Horsewhipped

The campaign did not begin quietly.

On opening night, in front of 8,000 people, Sunday was assaulted.

A man named Sherman Potts rushed forward with a buggy whip and struck Sunday multiple times. The audience teetered toward panic. Women wept. Children screamed. Sunday leapt from the platform and knocked his assailant down. They rolled in the aisle before ushers and police subdued the attacker.

The papers reported that Potts had previously been declared insane and had been confined at Jacksonville. He claimed he acted in defense of women’s virtue, alleging that Sunday had criticized them.

What could have ended the revival instead amplified it.

Fred Fischer directed the choir to sing, calming the crowd. The meeting continued.

Springfield had just witnessed the kind of drama that headlines love — and revivals sometimes ride.

The “Judgment” Sermon and the Men

On one Sunday afternoon, 8,000 men packed the tabernacle to hear Sunday preach what was described as his “judgment” sermon.

Three hundred men responded.

Sunday’s masculine appeal — direct, confrontational, athletic — was reshaping revival culture. This was not sentimental religion. It was muscular, public, civic.

He preached like a ballplayer sliding into home — coat off, body leaning, words cutting.

And men came.

Mother’s Day: 9,000 White Handkerchiefs

One of the most remarkable moments came on Mother’s Day.

Sunday requested that every person wear a white flower or ribbon in honor of mother. If your mother was alive, do her an act of kindness. Write her. Telegraph her. Give her a gift. If she was gone, do something kind for someone else’s mother.

He invited businessmen to close their stores from 2–4 p.m. and pledged that an offering would go to the Woman’s Club for distribution to city charities.

Then it happened.

Nine thousand white handkerchiefs rose in the air in honor of mothers.

In an era before official federal recognition of Mother’s Day, Springfield became a tableau of white cloth and public gratitude.

It was revival fused with civic virtue. Sunday understood symbolism.

Inclusion: Deaf Mutes and Interpreted Sermons

Another remarkable feature of the campaign was the regular attendance of a large group of deaf men from Jacksonville.

Professor Frank Reed, Jr., of the State School interpreted Sunday’s sermons. Reports indicate that between thirty and forty deaf attendees were converted during the Springfield meetings .

When the offering was taken, the deaf men gave ten dollars — a meaningful sum in 1909. Sunday seized the moment: If men who could not hear a word of what I say were contributing to this extent, what ought some of you fellows down there do who hear it all?

That’s classic Sunday — sharp, public, convicting.

The Ushers, the Machinery, the Organization

Photographs from the campaign show massive ranks of ushers — disciplined, suited, organized.

Springfield was not spontaneous chaos. It was structured revival.

This was the era when Sunday’s campaigns became logistical marvels:

  • Massive wooden tabernacle
  • Coordinated prayer meetings
  • Choirs
  • Personal workers
  • Cottage gatherings
  • Financial accountability

The revival was both spiritual movement and operational achievement.

Sunday was not merely a preacher. He was building a machine.

“A Good and Great Man”

After the campaign, C. C. Sinclair, pastor of Stewart Street Christian Church, offered this assessment:

“A good and great man, mighty in word and in deed; a prophet, and more than a prophet… The church has been purged and strengthened, and Springfield is being turned to God. It is such a revival of religion as comes to a community but once in a generation.”

That language is not casual.

Once in a generation.

Springfield’s churches reported strengthening and purging — language that suggests repentance within the church as much as conversion outside it.

Revival, for Sunday, was not merely altar calls. It was institutional recalibration.

Why Springfield Mattered

Springfield 1909 was a hinge moment.

  • It proved Sunday could sustain massive attendance over weeks.
  • It demonstrated his appeal to political and civic leadership.
  • It showed that controversy could fuel momentum.
  • It fused patriotic symbolism, moral reform, and evangelical urgency.
  • It revealed a revival model scalable to larger cities.
1909 postcard of Springfield, Illinois. Color-corrected. Author’s collection.

In many ways, Springfield was the rehearsal for the metropolitan campaigns to come.

And for a city of 51,000 to generate 607,000 in cumulative attendance? That’s not ordinary religious enthusiasm.

That’s a cultural event.

The Artifact That Survived

I own a 60-page souvenir booklet titled Rev. W. A. Sunday Meetings at Springfield, Illinois (c. 1909). When it arrived in November 2025, the bottom left corner throughout the entire booklet had been ripped away and was missing from the package .

It’s fragile. Imperfect. Scarred.

But so is revival history.

What Springfield experienced in 1909 was messy, dramatic, organized, emotional, public, controversial, generous, patriotic, and deeply evangelical.

It was America before the Great War.

It was Protestant civic religion at full throttle.

It was Billy Sunday in ascent.

And for forty-five days, Springfield stood still —
while thousands walked forward.

Mother’s Day, 1909

ONE of the most impressive and successful days in the great campaign was Mother’s Day, as suggested by Rev. Mr. Sunday. The following request was published:

Every person is requested to wear a white flower or ribbon to-day in honor of mother. If your mother is alive do her an act of kindness. Telegraph or write to her, or give her a gift to express your love. If mother is not alive, perform an act of kindness to somebody else’s mother. The services at the tabernacle will be for mothers, although everybody is invited. Businessmen are invited to close their places of business from two to four o’clock, or at least to let as many employees off as possible. An offering will be taken at the tabernacle to be given to the Woman’s Club to be distributed to the charities of the city as the club deems best.

 W. A. Sunday

Source (text above): 1909 Springfield, Illinois souvenir booklet

Who is Billy Sunday c. 1909

The Billy Sunday campaign published a souvenir booklet in 1910 that summarized the Springfield, Illinois campaign (Feb 26 – Apr 12, 1909). The following narrative shared much about the Rev. William A. ‘Billy’ Sunday

Rev. W. A. Sunday

WILLIAM ASHLEY SUNDAY is the best beloved and the most abused, the simplest and the most misunderstood, the most soulful and the most like a vaudeville performer, the most powerful in oratory and the least appealing to the emotions, the most persuasive and the most controversial, the most scholarly and the plainest, not to say coarsest, the greatest poet in essence and the greatest scrapper, of any man on the forum, the platform, or the stage of the world today.

He has been styled, the polygonal preacher, because he has so many sides, each a complete, finished, forceful fact. A character picture of the man, to be complete, must be a description of each of these baker’s dozen sides of his personality, none of which is much more important than any other one. The most that can be done within a small space—or indeed within any limitation of space—is to sketch in broad lines the mere outlines of this evangelist who is preaching the gospel of peace on earth and fighting the devil with the hottest of fire at the same time.

His father was killed in the civil war. The little boy was sent to the Iowa home for soldiers’ orphans. Later he made his own living at a youthful age, and his school teacher of that time says she would often watch him on the playground and wonder whether he would be the greatest crook or the greatest power for good in America—she was even then sure he would be one of the two. The boy took the right hand road.

When a young man he was a locomotive fireman on the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad and lived at Marshalltown. This was also the home of the famous A. C. Anson, captain of the old Chicagos, who watched Billy Sunday play baseball on corner lots while at home in Marshalltown. Anson took him to Chicago, discovered in him a great baseball player, and Sunday held the record for base running for years, a record which he still holds; was the second man chosen on the All-American team to tour the world—an accident to his knee kept him from making the tour—and was a popular idol of the fans.

An old time catcher for the Louisville team says that in those days when en route the rest of the men would play poker in the Pullman, but Billy Sunday was always back on the cushions with a book. He has kept close to books ever since. He has a remarkable faculty of choosing the very best and most authoritative writing on any particular subject and reading that only—and hence the range of subjects upon which he is thoroughly and accurately informed, includes almost everything from histology to astronomy and from bacteriology to history—it is a little interesting to notice that chemistry is the one topic unmentioned in his sermons. Three medical college professors who met at the end of his sermon which includes a half hour of the deepest microscopical pathology, agreed that William A. Sunday is the only layman they ever heard or read who was accurate in all he said about medical science.

One night a bunch of baseball players strolling along a Chicago street ran into a curbstone evangelist and stopped to be amused. Sunday stayed after the others went on. He went from there to the Pacific Garden mission, where he was converted. He kept on playing baseball, and nobody who ever heard it will ever forget his own description of how the others of that famous Chicago team approved his home run into Christianity.

A little later he was employed by the Chicago Young Men’s Christian Association at a small salary, only part of it paid during the panic of 1893, and refusing offers of $500 a month to return to the diamond. As a part of his work, he addressed groups of men—he always did know men, because of his early life and hard struggles. The addresses became longer and stronger with the growth of the work and experience in it. That great evangelist, Wilbur F. Chapman, took Sunday away from the Chicago Y.M.C.A. to be his assistant. Sunday learned the art of evangelizing and after learning it thoroughly treated it as Napoleon treated the art of war—he re-made it for himself, so that its old practitioners hardly recognize it, and at the same time made it produce victories hitherto undreamed of. The William A. Sunday methods of campaigning for Christ are unlike any others; they include the best of those of the past and many things unique; probably only Sunday could use them successfully in all their details; but it seems certain that they have factors not found in most others which really are the corner stones of successful work in evangelism. Some of the chief parts of the art of evangelism, as practiced by William A. Sunday, are these: Absolute accuracy in every statement made, whether one of the essential parts of the argument, or merely an illustration; hew close to the line that Jesus Christ laid down, regardless of the falling chips, and wherever that line leads; use language that everybody can understand, never talk down to an audience, but be lucid to the most ignorant while you are talking up to the most scholarly persons before you; avoid sectarianism; demand united work from all the evangelical churches in the city, and push united work by all the members of those churches; roast the skin of vice and sin in all its forms, from backsliding and carelessness to murder and adultery, rub salt into the burnt flesh, and then apply a healing balm that causes the object of the criticism to leave the tabernacle chastened in spirit, but loving the rod that smote him; avoid all fads and fancies, all tangential movements of society, but do a common thing in a most unusual way; and—many others. Starting with small towns and a few hundred converts at each series of meetings, the same plan of campaign has been used for all the years involving campaigns in cities of all sizes, and the first meetings years ago were, so far as Mr. Sunday is concerned, almost exactly like the meetings in Springfield. Of course, some minor modifications have been made, but these are few. Always there are the first sermons to get the church members back out of the world into the influence of Christ and to get the public to come to the tabernacle—the public seems to find its greatest attraction in hearing church-member hypocrites and Pharisees skinned like eels. Always the strenuosity of the sermons almost imperceptibly lessens gradually until the preacher who preaches as man never preached before is less athletic and more rhetorical about the middle of the series. Then, to the amazement of people who judged the man from his first pulpit stunts, the Reverend William Ashley Sunday preaches like the great orator that he is, the scholar that he is, the poet-philosopher that he is. This many sided man cannot be even sketched within a hundred pages. There is competent authority for saying of him these superlatives as being strictly true: He understands the minds and feelings of men as few men ever have done. He is one of the greatest orators the world has ever seen—and this is proved by the results of his work.

He is one of the most remarkable stylists in literature, his perfect imitation in one hour of the styles of Carlyle, Gibbon, Ingersoll, and several other writers of individual styles being an unprecedented feat.

He is said by scientists to be the most—and indeed the only—perfectly accurate preacher in matters of science. And a large part of his sermons deal with science.

He appeals entirely to the reason of the people, and rarely or never to their emotions, and in this he is the greatest of evangelists in the opinion of many people.

In numbers of converts, dramatic height of scenes, and wonderful stirring of the audience, several of his meetings have eclipsed anything in the history of evangelism since pentecost—and the most of these have been meetings for men.

Who is Hellen ‘Ma’ Sunday? c. 1909

The following is a biographical sketch of Helen Sunday, wife of Billy Sunday. Part of the 1909 Springfield campaign souvenir.

Mrs. W. A. Sunday

THE biographer who omits to study the wife of his subject certainly will miss the key to his problem of investigation. The world talks of the influence of the mothers upon its men; but it, curiously enough, generally omits appreciation of the strong influence of the wife upon any man; and perhaps more men have been made and unmade by their wives than by their mothers, when heredity is omitted from the matter.

Mrs. William A. Sunday was a girl of great strength of character when she was Miss Helen A. Thompson, the daughter of a Chicago business man. She married a famous baseball player and found herself the wife of one of the greatest of evangelists—and she not only made the revolutionary change with him but is one of the chief causes of William A. Sunday being what he is in the eyes of the world. She was a church worker, a shining exception to the rule of the results of marrying a man to make him better. She upheld the hands of her husband when he was in poverty and the poorly paid worker of the Chicago Y.M.C.A., writing letters declining, for seven times his salary, to return to the baseball field. When William A. Sunday was starting out as an evangelist along entirely new lines of endeavor which merged into In his entirely unprecedented lines of achievement, his wife helped greatly to keep up his courage, keep him along the line he had chosen, and keep him as much as possible free from worries. Mrs. Sunday complements her husband perfectly—they are not at all similar, and she is strongest where he is weakest and weakest where he is strongest. If he had a helpmeet like himself, Mr. Sunday might be plunging into hot water every month and every year. Luckily for him, his wife guides him around and over most obstacles, keeps his fingers out of the fire, and does what Mr. Sunday never thinks of doing—looks after his own interests.

The wedding of Mr. and Mrs. William A. Sunday was not the kind one finds pictured in Paul and Virginia by any manner of means; it was a twentieth-century marriage of two distinct individuals joining as helpmeets, without either submerging a personality in the other—certainly not the old kind of entire submergence of the wife in the husband. They disagree about as many things as other people do, but each knows in what things the other is best informed or strongest, and the one best qualified always decides the question. The result is that they are more free from actual, important disagreements—the kind called love spats or marital troubles—than most people. This is a match of brains as well as of hearts, of sense as well as of souls, and of respect as well as of love.

Mrs. Sunday does what she can in public during a series of meetings conducted by her husband, but the most important thing she does is to keep her husband able to do the great things he accomplishes in every city in which he works. She is a perfect wife for a very remarkable man.

“BILLY” SUNDAY ASSAULTED.


Page 2 of The Britt News, published in Britt, Iowa on Thursday, March 4th, 1909
Horsewhipped by Religious Zealot at Springfield.

Rev W. A. Sunday, better known as “Billy” Sunday, a former baseball player, who is now an evangelist, was horsewhipped Friday night by a religious fanatic at the Sunday tabernacle in Springfield, Ill., where, in the presence of 8,000 persons he was conducting the opening meeting of a religious revival.

The evangelist had just made his opening remarks and was leaning against the pulpit while a hymn was sung by Fischer and Butler, his choral leaders, when a powerful man who says his name is Sherman Potts ran forward with a buggy whip and struck Sunday several terrific blows.

Sunday leaped from the platform and dashed at his assailant, whom he knocked down. The audience was on the verge of a panic, with women weeping and children screaming while Potts and Sunday rolled and tumbled in the aisle.

Mr Fischer directed the choir and the audience to sing, and in a few moments the entire audience was calmed Several men seized Potts and held him until policemen came and took him to jail.

Mr Sunday suffered several painful bruises from the whip The prisoner said his home was near Lexington, Ill According to his statements at the jail he was once declared insane and committed to the Jacksonville asylum, whence after a brief confinement he was released.

He made the attack he said, in defense of the virtue of women which he declared had been criticized by the evangelist The police say that Potts is a religious fanatic.

  • Page 2 of The Britt News, published in Britt, Iowa on Thursday, March 4th, 1909.

Springfield, Illinois (early 1909)

Billy Sunday Comes to Springfield, Illinois (February–April 1909)

From February 26 to April 11, 1909, Springfield, Illinois became the center of one of Billy Sunday’s most significant early urban revivals.

This campaign followed a string of highly successful meetings in 1908, including his powerful revival in Bloomington, Illinois. By the time Sunday arrived in Springfield, he was already becoming a nationally recognized figure — a former baseball star turned evangelist whose name drew crowds, controversy, and intense public attention wherever he preached.

For six weeks, a massive wooden tabernacle dominated 2nd Street between Monroe and Capitol. Built specifically for the meetings, the structure was simple in design but enormous in scale, capable of holding thousands of people at a time. Night after night, it filled with hymn singing, prayer, and Sunday’s unmistakable blend of humor, blunt moral challenge, and urgent appeals for personal decision.

Tens of thousands attended over the course of the campaign. Families came together, churches cooperated, and people traveled from surrounding towns to hear the most famous preacher in America.

By the end of the revival, newspapers and church leaders reported that 4,729 people had made public commitments to Christ. These were not just momentary emotional responses; many went on to join local congregations and participate in community life.

One of the most lasting outcomes of the Springfield meetings was the founding of Washington Street Mission. Born out of the spiritual energy of Sunday’s campaign, the mission was created to serve the poor, hungry, and vulnerable in the city — and it continues that work to this day, more than a century later.

The timing of the revival made it especially meaningful.

Only a few months earlier, Springfield had been shaken by the 1908 Race Riot, one of the most violent racial conflicts in Illinois history. Tensions still lingered when Sunday arrived. His sermons, which emphasized repentance, moral reform, and personal responsibility, resonated deeply in a city searching for healing and stability.

While Sunday did not directly address political or racial issues in the modern sense, his call for transformed lives and renewed community carried special weight in a town still recovering from turmoil.

The Springfield campaign marked a turning point in Billy Sunday’s ministry. It was one of his first major city-wide revivals and helped launch a decade in which he would preach in America’s largest urban centers — from New York to Los Angeles.

More than just a revival, Springfield in 1909 was a milestone. It showed that Sunday could move beyond small towns and regional fame to shape the moral conversation of the entire nation.

For six weeks that spring, Springfield was not just the capital of Illinois — it was the pulpit of America.