Tears of Contrition, John Maffitt 1821. This book is titled “Tears of Contrition: Or Sketches of the Life of John N. Maffitt: With Religious And Moral Reflections To Which Are Appended Several Poetic Effusions. Written By Himself”, the book was written by John N. Maffitt and printed in New-London in 1821 by Samuel Green. The book has six horizontal gilt bands and a red label with gilt lettering on the spine, brown boards, blank endpapers, two names inscribed on the front flyleaf (one is Nathan Canon and the other is hard to read), the title page, a copyright page saying the book was deposited in the District of Connecticut in March 1821(“in the forty-fifth year of the Independence of the United States”), a five-page Introduction by John Maffitt also dated March 1821, and 260 pages of text, followed by 39 pages of “Original Poetry” by J. N. Maffitt. Some people believe Maffitt was an officer in the Confederate States Navy during the Civil War, but he was actually an Irish-born itinerant revivalist who delivered sermons as "ornate as the tail of a peacock” and had a penchant for women, who found this "Beau Brummel of preachers" compelling. He was a Methodist, and by 1841, his appointment as chaplain to the House of Representatives underscored his prominence: he seemed to develop a more refined evangelical faith acceptable to a leadership position, yet critics wondered why he paid such lavish attention to female converts, and fellow Methodists found him eccentric. His career in the 1820’s, despite impressive revivals, suffered from indiscretions: his strained marital relations resulted in divorce by the 1830’s. Yet Maffitt flourished, commanding national attention, until additional scandals in 1846 prompted Manhattan Methodists to investigate. Maffitt challenged their authority and threatened to sue; under attack, his preaching license was suspended, so he fled to Arkansas to join the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, before dying in 1850. And this John Maffitt was not the same person who was a Naval Commander in the Confederacy. The Methodist Maffitt was born on December 28, 1794 in Dublin, Ireland, according to his own words, in the very first paragraph of the text. The Confederate naval hero was born on board a ship in 1817 and died in 1886, so they are very different people, and biographers have been laboring under a false assumption for many years. All they had to do was check the dates of birth to see they were different Maffitts, and alas, that never happened. If Maffitt died in 1850, it was impossible for him to be in the Civil War, and he had a storied career as a naval officer in the Confederacy, but this Maffitt is not he. The Naval commander was a slave owner who evidently had compassion for slaves, he served on the USS Constitution, and after the Civil War broke out, he was a blockade runner who earned high praise from his fellow Southerners, but he was not a Methodist minster who died in 1850. Wake up and check your facts, folks, before you start making claims that are not true, and especially before you start writing and parading your facts in public. The book has personal recollections of Maffitt's life and reflections on his religious and moral beliefs, and the last part of the book includes a number of Maffitt's poems. The book measures 6 1/2 x 4 1/2 in. wide, with a tight binding, but it has browning and offset or toning throughout, the gilt has faded on the spine, there’s modest rubbing on the covers and at the tips and a couple of tips are turned in, a few pages have corner creases, and the endpaper at the rear is torn, but a fascinating story about a minister that people thought was a naval hero for a long time, and the minster was actually a ladies’ man who didn’t know when to stop and paid the price for it. For all his moral preaching, his marriage suffered, and in many ways he died in disgrace. #224 #4994