Russell Salmon Cook

Russel(l) Sturgis Cook (1811–1864) was an American Congregationalist minister, and a secretary of the American Tract Society from 1839 to 1856. He was known also as Russell Salmon Cook, and built up colportage as basic to the Society's business model. Early life Cook was born at New Marlborough, Massachusetts. He attended Auburn Theological Seminary from 1832. In 1836 he was ordained, and became pastor at Lanesborough, Massachusetts. American Tract Society Cook encountered in New York in November 1838 William Allen Hallock (1794–1880), a minister and one of the founders of the American Tract Society (ATS). Cook shortly became Visiting and Financial Secretary of the ATS in New York. In 1841 he pioneered a new approach to the existing colporteur system, sending recruits to Indiana and Kentucky. By 1851 800 were employed in this way as tract sellers. At an extended ATS fundraiser in 1842 at the Broadway Tabernacle, Cook softened the anti-Catholic campaigning of the period with a comment that Americans were probably no less sinners, in matters such as drunkenness and Sabbath-breaking, than Catholic immigrants. After the Compromise of 1850, Cook defended the Society's policy of not circulating abolitionist material. He did so on the grounds that by its constitution, the Society could only promote views that reflected the consensus of "evangelical Christians"; and that on slavery that consensus did not exist. William Jay, an ATS director, criticised that line of argument. Jay dropped his financial support for the ATS, explaining his reasoning in an open letter to Cook.