Church in Kansas City.
In the fall of 1862 Rev. M. M. Pugh, then stationed at Kansas City, was forced by persecution to abandon his church and charge and flee for protection to a neighboring military post. Mr. Pugh was watched by enemies and warned by friends. The threat, oft repeated, of arrest and imprisonment did not deter him. But to know that his steps were dogged, that detectives were on his track, that his life was threatened, and to be told by military officers that they could not be responsible for his life any night, and to be advised that there were lyers-in-wait to assassinate him, put his life in too great peril to remain with his people. He fled.
As soon as his absence was known the Northern Methodists took possession of the church and held it under military protection. They organized a society composed of a few Northern fanatics and a few renegade and weak-kneed Southern Methodists. They pronounced the M. E. Church, South, dead and beyond the hope of resurrection, tried to get possession of the church records and declare all the former society of Southern Methodists members, nolens volens. When they found that but few would accept the transfer, they pronounced the rest disloyal, and threatened them with confiscation. “But none of these things moved them,” and they maintained their fidelity to the Church of their choice notwithstanding all the abuse, and slander, and threatenings, and slaughter, that these religious loyalists could bring to bear upon them.
After the occupancy of the church for some months they became conscious of wrong-doing and of guilt, and in shame and humiliation turned the property over to the rightful owners. They found that military orders did not confer letters of administration. If the Church, South, was dead and buried, what right had they more than others to administer on the estate?
In the St. Louis Christian Advocate, of May 31, 1866, a correspondent from Kansas City makes the following statement:
“But the Church. During the war our Church passed through sore trials—had ‘fightings without and fears within.’ She was ‘persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.’ Rev. M. M. Pugh remained with the Church in Kansas City until the latter part of 1862, attending to his legitimate business in his own quiet way—preaching Christ and his cross to perishing sinners—when the presence of blood-thirsty Northern Methodist preachers and their willing tools, threatening his life on the streets and dogging his steps, hounded him off to safer quarters where he could rely upon the protection of military power. The Northern Methodists then took possession of the church, organized a society, composed in part of a few blinded fanatics and weak-kneed renegades from the M. E. Church, South, who at once imagined themselves possessed of other people’s property, began to abuse and traduce Southern Methodists, pronounced the Church dead, and proceeded to administer on the estate.
“But ‘military necessity’ did not confer upon them letters of administration, and they reckoned without their host. It is true, the General Conference of the M. E. Church, North, enacted a political test of membership for all persons everywhere who seek admission to her pales; and I submit whether or not they make the repeal of the eighth commandment, also, a test of membership for the province of Missouri. For it seems that no sooner do people get into that Church than they proceed to take and to hold, to possess and to use, property for which others have paid, and houses which others have built, supposing that membership in that Church invests them, under the operation of a ‘higher law,’ with rights and titles above warranty deeds and Supreme Court decisions.”
In the same paper, of June 13, 1866, the following statement appears upon the same subject:
“After Brother Pugh was run off the Church was occupied for some time by the Northern Methodists, who assumed that the Church property was theirs, to have and to hold, with all the appurtenances thereto belonging, to them and to their successors forever. They abused Southern Methodists roundly, threatened them much, and with all the prestige of power assaulted the gates of our Zion until they became so offensive that all true friends of our Church and of the Government gave them a wide berth and left them alone in their shame.
“Some who in name had been with us, but were not in heart of us, went out from us to take shelter under their political banner, prove their loyalty to the Government, and—as they were told—save their property and their lives, and be fitted, as it proved, to enjoy the product of others’ labor and the spoils of pious conquest.
“The faithful of our Church pursued the even tenor of their way, and when refused their own house of worship met in private houses for worship, and when denied this means of grace they kept up the sewing circle and mite society, and in this way the ‘faithful women not a few’ preserved an organization, a name and a life. While their harps were upon the willows they often sat down together and wept when they remembered their Zion, once so beautiful for situation—the joy of all hearts. They suffered all that the betrayal of Judas and the denial of Peter could inflict upon them. Yet, believing truth and right, though nailed to the cross and buried in the tomb, would, like the divine Redeemer, rise again leading captivity captive and conferring gifts upon men, they waited patiently and hopefully till their change should come. And it did come, and that by a way they knew not. They were, like their Lord, ‘despised and rejected of men,’ yet their faith failed not. They had confidence in the Church and the pledges of her risen Head. Their faith grew sublime as the darkness increased and the troubles multiplied about them. ‘The gates of hell shall not prevail against it,’ they heard in the thick darkness, and bowing to the storm they sheltered themselves within the clefts of the everlasting Rock ‘until these calamities be overpast.’
“There were some men in authority who loved the right and hated the wrong. There were, also, ‘good men and true’ in the Church, whose loyalty to the Government was only equaled by their fidelity to the Church, and neither could be shaken by all the libels and slanders of ecclesiastical hirelings. When such men have the adjustment of the rights of property, truth and righteousness will at last prevail, and justice will be reached in the end. To such are we indebted for our Church property in Kansas City.”
These extracts show the purpose and the plan of these ministers and members of the M. E. Church. The virtues of super-loyalty claimed for themselves, and the cry of disloyalty and treason against Southern Methodists, were not to go unrewarded. It may be uncharitable to suspect the motives of others, but it is not uncharitable to record their acts and doings when the cause of truth and righteousness will be served and the truth of history vindicated thereby.