Martyrdom in Missouri, Volume 1 (of 2)

by W. M. Leftwich

DECISION OF THE SUPREME COURT.

“William A. Smith, et al., vs. Leroy Swormstedt, et al.

“This was the appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Ohio, which dismissed the bill.

“This cause came on to be heard on the transcript of the record from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Ohio, and was argued by counsel. On consideration whereof it is ordered, adjudged and decreed by this Court that the decree of said Circuit Court in this cause be and the game is hereby reversed and annulled; and this Court doth farther find, adjudge and decree:

“1. That under the resolution of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, holden at the city of New York, according to the usage and discipline of said Church, passed on the eighth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-four (in the pleadings mentioned), it was, among other things, and in virtue of the power of said General Conference, well agreed and determined by the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America, as then existing, that in case the Annual Conferences in the slaveholding States should find it necessary to unite in a distinct ecclesiastical connection, the ministers, local and traveling, of every grade and office in the Methodist Episcopal Church, might attach themselves to such new ecclesiastical connection without blame.

“2. That the said Annual Conferences in the slaveholding States did find and determine that it was right, expedient and necessary to erect the Annual Conferences last aforesaid into a distinct ecclesiastical connection, based upon the discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church aforesaid, comprehending the doctrines and entire moral and ecclesiastical rules and regulations of the said discipline (except only in so far as verbal alterations might be necessary to or for a distinct organization), which new ecclesiastical connection was to be known by the name and style of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and that the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was duly organized under said resolutions of the said Annual Conferences last aforesaid, in a convention thereof held at Louisville, in the State of Kentucky, in the month of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-five.

That by force of the said resolutions of June the eighth, eighteen hundred and forty-four, and of the authority and power of the said General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as then existing, by which the same were adopted; and by virtue of the said finding and determination of the said Animal Conferences in the slaveholding States therein mentioned, and by virtue of the organization of such Conferences into a distinct ecclesiastical connection as last aforesaid, the religious association known as the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America, as then existing, was divided into two associations, or distinct Methodist Episcopal Churches, as in the bill of complaint is alleged.

That the property denominated the Methodist Book Concern at Cincinnati, in the pleadings mentioned, was, at the time of said division and immediately before, a fund subject to the following use, that is to say, that the profits arising therefrom, after retaining a sufficient capital to carry on the business thereof, were to be regularly applied toward the support of the deficient traveling, supernumerary, superannuated and worn-out preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church, their wives, widows and children, according to the rules and Discipline of said church, and that the said fund and property are held under the act of incorporation in the said answer mentioned by the said defendants, Leroy Swormstedt and John H. Power, as agents of said Book Concern, and in trust for the purposes thereof.

“5. That, in virtue of the said division of said Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, the deficient, traveling, supernumerary, superannuated and worn-out preachers, their wives, widows and children comprehended in, or in connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, were, are, and continue to be, beneficiaries of the said Book Concern to the same extent and as fully as if the said division had not taken place, and in the same manner and degree as persons of the same description who are comprehended in, or in connection with, the other association, denominated, since the division, the Methodist Episcopal Church, and that as well the principal as the profits of said Book Concern, since said division, should of right be administered and managed by the respective General and Annual Conferences of the said two associations and Churches under the separate organizations thereof, and according to the shares or proportions of the same as hereinafter mentioned, and in conformity with the rules and Discipline of said respective associations, so as to carry out the purposes and trusts aforesaid.

“6. That so much of the capital and property of said Book Concern at Cincinnati, wherever situated, and so much of the produce and profits thereof as may not have been heretofore accounted for to said Church, South, in the New York case hereinafter mentioned, or otherwise, shall be paid to said Church, South, according to the rate and proportions following, that is to say: In respect to the capital, such share or part as corresponds with the proportion which the number of the traveling preachers in the Annual Conferences which formed themselves into the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, bore to the number of all the traveling preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church before the division thereof, which numbers shall be fixed and ascertained as they are shown by the minutes of the several Annual Conferences next preceding the said division and new organization in the month of May, A. D. eighteen hundred and forty-five.

“And in respect to the produce and profits, such share or part as the number of Annual Conferences which formed themselves into the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, bore at the time of said division in May, A. D. 1845, to the whole number of Annual Conferences then being in the Methodist Episcopal Church, excluding the Liberia Conference, so that the division or apportionment of said produce and profits shall be had by Conferences, and not by numbers of the traveling preachers.

“7. That said payment of capital and profits, according to the ratios of appointment so declared, shall be made and paid to the said Smith, Parsons and Green, as Commissioners aforesaid, or their successors, on behalf of said Church, South, and the beneficiaries therein, or to such other person or persons as may be thereto authorized by the General Conference of said Church, South, the same to be subsequently managed and administered so as to carry out the trusts and uses aforesaid, according to the Discipline of said Church, South, and the regulations of the General Conference thereof.”

CHAPTER V.
FROM THE DIVISION OF THE CHURCH, IN 1845, TO THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR, IN 1861.

Provisions of the Plan of Separation—Time of Division—The Missouri a Border Conference—Vote on Adhering North or South nearly Unanimous—The Disaffected—Covenant Breakers—The M. E. Church in Missouri after the Division—Her Ministers and Members—How Regarded—Relative Strength of the Two Churches in Numbers and Property—Sympathy—Persecution—Tenacity in Spite of Opposition—Success the only Revenge—The Class of Northern Methodist Preachers—Their Connection with Clandestine Efforts to Free the Slaves—Their Condemnation and their Secret Service—Character of the Old Missourians—Their Vindication—Northern Methodists Condemned for being Secret Political Partisans, and not for Preaching the Gospel—The Anti-Slavery Element in Missouri Ten Years before the War—Lawful vs. Clandestine Means—“Underground Railroad” and other Nefarious Schemes to Run off the Slaves of Missouri—These Things Condemned by the Anti-Slavery Party—Public Meetings of Citizens in the Interest of Order and Peace.

The “Plan of Separation” adopted by the General Conference of 1844, to which attention is given in the preceding chapter, fixed the line of separation along the line of division between the free and the slaveholding States, for the most part, and provided as follows, to-wit:

“1. That, should the Annual Conferences in the slaveholding States find it necessary to unite in a distinct ecclesiastical connection, the following rule shall be observed with regard to the northern boundary of such connection: All the societies, stations and Conferences adhering to the Church in the South, by a vote of a majority of the members of said societies, stations and Conferences, shall remain under the unmolested pastoral care of the Southern Church, and the ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church shall in no wise attempt to organize churches or societies within the limits of the Church, South, nor shall they attempt to exercise any pastoral oversight therein: it being understood that the ministry of the Church, South, reciprocally observe the same rule in relation to societies, stations and Conferences adhering by vote of a majority to the Methodist Episcopal Church; provided, also, that this rule shall apply only to societies, stations and Conferences bordering on the line of division, and not to interior charges, which shall in all cases be left to the care of that Church within whose territory they may be situated.”—General Conference Journal, vol. 2, p. 135.

The Missouri Annual Conference was one of the Conferences “bordering on the line of division,” and the question of adhering North or South was thoroughly canvassed and decided almost unanimously in favor of the South. Those ministers favoring the North were allowed to adhere North “without blame,” by the “Plan of Separation.” They were seven out of one hundred and thirty-six.

Prior to the session of the Conference in Columbia, in the fall of 1845, when the vote was taken, the “societies and stations,” along the border particularly, were asked to decide by a vote of the members whether they would adhere North or South. The vote was so nearly unanimous in favor of adhering South that not a single “society or station” in the Conference gave a majority in favor of adhering North, and in very few of them was there a division at all. In a few societies along the border, such as St. Louis, Hannibal, Lagrange and some others, and a few scattering societies in the interior, there was a small minority in favor of adhering North. These were generally men recently from the Northern States, or mal-contents who rejoiced in the occasion thus afforded to seek notoriety or revenge in a contentious faction. Such persons are found, more or less, in every community, and unfortunately for the peace of society some sections of Missouri unwittingly offered special inducements to that class of immigrants, and received quite a large surplus of them from the older States. Amongst the few disaffected of Missouri Methodists who would not go with the majority in this division may have been some honorable exceptions, but they were few and far between, and only prove the general rule.

The vote to adhere South was so general in the State that no one thought of accepting the “pastoral care” of the ministers of the M. E. Church, North, until after that Church had pronounced the “Plan of Separation null and void,” and had proceeded to violate their plighted faith and disregard every “binding obligation in the premises.”

The right and authority of one party to set aside and declare “null and void” a solemn contract or covenant entered into by two parties, without the consent of the other party, is not debatable. The failure of the sixth restrictive rule, according to the decision of the United States Supreme Court, did not vitiate the covenant, nor had the M. E. Church, South, up to 1854, by act or deed, according to the same high authority, forfeited the covenant to the other party by any failure to comply with its provisions.

The assumption of authority, therefore, by the M. E. Church to set aside the conditions of the covenant, to violate what their Bishops had pronounced its “binding obligations in the premises,” to reject the fraternal messenger and ignore the claims of the Church, South, and proceed to “organize churches and societies within the limits of the Church, South,” could only exhibit to the world their utter recklessness of moral obligation and place them before the public as covenant breakers, “truce breakers and false accusers.”

In such light were they and their friends and abettors held in Missouri, after the Church in the whole State had decided so positively to adhere South. Indeed, so general was this decision, that for many years after the division the existence of the M. E. Church, North, in Missouri was scarcely suspected by the best informed.

There were but few places in the State where their presence was tolerated; not because of any religious or political proscription and persecution, but because their presence in Missouri was not only unauthorized, but in direct violation of the most solemn ecclesiastical compact, for which an instinctive sense of right in every community was disposed to hold the Northern Methodist preachers responsible.

All our best notions of religious toleration revolt at the idea of proscribing the largest liberties of any church in any country or community for any reasons. But, then, when a church deliberately proscribes herself and fixes her own limits of territory, transferring all her claims to property and privileges beyond her self-appointed boundaries to another and a “distinct ecclesiastical organization,” a decent respect for moral obligation and the covenanted rights of others demand that every enlightened community should hold every such church to the strictest accountability for every violation of her self-imposed obligations. Covenant breakers forfeit their claims to all the benefits of the covenant broken, if they do not forfeit their claims upon the confidence and protection of the community whose rights and privileges the broken covenant respected.

Communities whose sense of justice and moral right are outraged by religious teachers, to whom neither civil nor criminal law will apply, have recourse only to a public sentiment which can place the guilty under the ban of public condemnation. The Northern Methodist preachers who were trying to “organize societies” and “exercise pastoral care” in Missouri, from the division of the Church in 1844 to the beginning of the civil war in 1861, need not be reminded how terrible and general was this ban of public condemnation. It was not a proscription which they themselves had not authorized; nor could they claim the benefits of a persecution for righteousness’ sake without confessing to an indictment which truth and honesty found against them for obtaining said benefits under false pretenses. They raised the cry of persecution, but failed to enlist the popular sympathy due to such a cry, because the virtues and elements of a religious persecution were all wanting. They, nevertheless, managed to keep up a factious, feeble organization in some places in the State, sustained by missionary money from the North, which took advantage of every popular excitement against them to manufacture foreign sympathy, and, at the same time, furnished a convenient refuge for the disaffected, mal-contents, of the M. E. Church, South.

They sought, by maintaining a convenient proximity to the Southern Church, not only to catch the Methodist immigration from the North, but, also, to afford a convenient retreat for those who seek in prominence what they lack in piety, and to “beguile unstable souls” with the false plea of “Old Church” and “Old Methodism.” Thus, while serving all the purposes of factious agitation, and furnishing in themselves an example of covenant breaking for covetousness’ sake, which can never be reproduced and re-enacted, they have, also, served the purposes of peace and purity by receiving from other churches the contentious, the dissatisfied and the disaffected. It was an easy road to a miserable revenge, as it was often a happy riddance of a pestilent element, while the rule of loss and gain was reversed.

The relation of the two churches during that period to the people of the whole State will be seen in their statistics. At the time of the division the whole Church in Missouri numbered 26,310 members, served by 113 traveling preachers. In 1850 the M. E. Church, South, had 27,012 members and 126 traveling preachers in Missouri alone. In 1850 the M. E. Church, North, had 5,474 members and fifty-one traveling preachers in Missouri and Arkansas together.

The relative strength of the two churches in 1860 is seen in the following figures: The M. E. Church, South, had 48,797 members and 243 traveling preachers, and the M. E. Church, North, had 6,619 members and sixty-nine traveling preachers.

In church property there was a much greater difference. When the Church divided, all the property in churches, parsonages, cemeteries, colleges, Conference funds, and of every other description, passed into the hands of the M. E. Church, South, according to the “Plan of Separation.” Those who voted to adhere North were not strong enough in any one place to set up any claim to the Church property. The Church, North, was thus left without houses of worship or any other property possessions in the State. By common consent, as well as by the decision of the courts, the division of the Church extinguished the right and title of the M. E. Church to all property in the State of Missouri. The struggle for existence, under the circumstances, was a forlorn hope, and the erection of churches in communities where they were not in sympathy with either the masses or the moneyed people was a slow and doubtful enterprise. They had to rely, for the most part, upon private houses in obscure neighborhoods for places of public worship, for it was not always that they could even get the use of school houses for that purpose. In St. Louis they had one Church, Ebenezer, which had to supply them with church facilities for the whole State for many years. They built a small church in Hannibal in 1850. In 1856 they added Simpson Chapel, in St. Louis, to the list, and then, in 1858, they erected a small brick church in Jefferson City, for which they had help from abroad. These were all small churches, but amply sufficient for all their wants. They may have had a few other small churches in different sections of the State, but their number and resources were quite small, and their influence for good in each community was unfortunately counteracted by the spirit of contention and strife they created. In 1860 the whole of their Church property in this State and in Arkansas was estimated in their statistics at $36,400.

Under these circumstances it is not surprising if they made up in bitter, spiteful jealousies what they lacked in the true elements of success, and repaid the public disapprobation in a dogged tenacity that seeks revenge in success despite all opposition.

They had no friendly feeling for the Church, South, and gladly and freely employed every means to disaffect and disintegrate the Southern organization, especially in obscure neighborhoods. Nor did they scruple at the grossest misrepresentations of the facts concerning the division of the Church.

Their preachers traversed the State and visited every family that was suspected of being in sympathy with them; and wherever two or three could be gathered together of kindred sympathy they were organized into a society, regularly visited, and made a nucleus around which to gather the disaffected and disappointed of the M. E. Church, South.

The preachers engaged in this work were not of the class and style of men whose ministrations would reach and affect the intelligent and cultivated portions of the people. They were, for the most part, rough, uncultivated and illiterate, and hence their social and intellectual affinities were found among the lower classes and the ignorant. They were the kind of men to be doggedly pertinacious, and to know nothing amongst men outside of one idea, one purpose, one cause. They looked upon everything that did not favor them and their cause as wrong per se, and considered their mission unfulfilled until it was righted or removed.

They had more patience than charity. They could bide their time, but could not tolerate opposition. They could proscribe, and even persecute, others for opinion’s sake, but could not endure with fortitude the reflex influence of their own bigotry.

Public opinion and jesuitical policy required them to be discreet as ministers of the gospel in their public performances, but as partisans they were strangely indiscreet. They were sent into Missouri by the authorities of their Church distinctly and thoroughly indoctrinated in the belief that the success of the Church whose credentials they bore was in the success of the anti-slavery party; hence they were secret and earnest partisans out of the pulpit. They associated with abolitionists, and warmly espoused every measure for the abolition of slavery. Whether right or wrong, slavery existed then by the authority of the Constitution of the State and under the protection of her laws; and, like all other men, slaveholders could not surrender tamely their constitutional and legal rights to that species of property in which they had invested their money, much less could they look with indifference upon the presence and movements of men who were seeking by clandestine, “under-ground” methods to render insecure their property by means neither open nor honorable.

No class of men were more favorably circumstanced for the prosecution of such a work than these Northern Methodist preachers, and they were considered by the abolition party as indispensable to final success.

It was in the character of partisans, and not ministers, that they were put under the ban of public sentiment. The fact that they were ministers of the gospel, and that they used the privileges of their profession to further the objects of a party that sought by unlawful and disingenuous means the extirpation of slavery, made their presence, character and work the more offensive to the people of the State. The common opinion among men who cared less for the institutions of Christianity than for the institutions of the State was that the Northern Methodist preachers in this State were wolves in sheep’s clothing. Only by an unseemly torture of facts could they make it appear that they were opposed and persecuted because they were ministers of the gospel.

When ministers of the gospel become political partisans, and expect their high calling to protect them in a sinister attempt to abolish the institutions and laws under which the rights of property are protected, they should not complain if honorable men detect and denounce the hypocrisy.

The spirit of reckless insubordination that animated these fanatical preachers has often, of late, found emphatic utterance through their Church papers. This is its language: “We must teach people to make better laws, or trample upon such as are made, if we expect to meet God in peace.”

But in those days the utterance was in the signs and symbols of secret societies, and the execution was in the by-ways, around the corners, in “Uncle Tom’s cabin,” in occasional doses of poison and midnight arson, with the aid of butcher-knives, axes and “under-ground railroads.” For such work true ministers of the gospel are never held responsible; but when it is incited and aided by those calling themselves such, the verdict of double guilt can not be escaped.

It would be as unfair to say that all Northern Methodist preachers in the State engaged in this nefarious business as to say that none of them were respectable, Christian gentlemen. Suspicion rested upon all of them, because the grounds of suspicion were too strong and the evidence of guilt too general to make wholesale exceptions. Nor did the masses of the people know or care to discriminate.

It is true that very few men of worth, of ability, or of standing in the M. E. Church could be had for this work. They looked upon it as involving much toil, sacrifice, suffering, and perhaps martyrdom, for which they were not candidates. But men who had broken down in other fields, and were no longer wanted in other Conferences, and men who had despaired of distinction in the more honorable fields of competition with their brethren, embraced the opportunity thus afforded to win notoriety.

The men who could consent to do such work for a political party while they wore the cloth of a holy calling were the pliant tools of the John Browns and others who were prominent leaders in the great crusade against the institutions of the South.

It is due to the truth of history to state that the old settlers of Missouri and the slaveholders of that day were high-minded, honorable, intelligent men, who would scorn to proscribe and persecute men for opinion’s sake, or protect and harbor men who would secretly and treacherously use the hospitality of the slaveholder to reach the slave and poison his mind against his master, and inspire him with the hope of freedom by the torch and the dagger.

Missourians were not hypocrites, nor would they abuse a generous hospitality, betray either public or social confidence, or seek by underhanded, sinister means the destruction of the rights of property and the guarantees of domestic and social order. However they may be characterized by ugly epithets and maligned by partisan hirelings, they will stand vindicated on the pages of history as humane, generous, peaceful, prosperous, intelligent, honorable and high-minded citizens, who could neither perpetrate a mean act nor tolerate, even in so-called ministers of the gospel, the abuse of confidence or domestic treachery.

In illustration of the abuse of hospitality to secret abolition purposes, one instance in a thousand must suffice.

In the spring of 1856 Mr. Thomas E. Thompson, of Palmyra, Mo., was returning home late on Saturday evening, when he found a stranger by the road side preparing to camp in a corner of the fence, with his wife and child. He had unharnessed his team and stretched his wagon cloth on the fence over them for a shelter from the inclement weather.

Mr. Thompson stopped and inquired why the stranger did not go into the city and obtain better accommodations; and when informed that he had no money, and thought of spending not only the night but the following Sabbath there, and that the stranger was a Northern Methodist preacher trying to get to Kansas, he told him it would not do, invited them to his house, and offered them a generous hospitality, which was accepted. The child had never seen negroes, was much alarmed at the sight, and would not remain in their presence.

During the night the preacher got to talking to one of the colored women, tried to persuade her that she was free, and that he would assist her to reach Illinois. She reported the facts to Mr. T.; and on Sabbath afternoon he overheard the preacher talking with the husband of this woman in the stable, telling him that he was not only a free man, but that he would do right in taking Mr. T.’s horse, or anything else by which he could gain his freedom. The negro told the preacher to go off and let him alone, that he had a good master, a good home and everything in plenty, and he did not want to be free. Mr. Thompson ordered the preacher to leave, telling him that he could not protect him from violence if the community were apprised of the facts. He let him depart in peace.

If Northern Methodist preachers were condemned, it was not for preaching the gospel and trying to save the souls of men, but for a palpable violation of plighted ecclesiastical faith, and more particularly for their partisan services in the cause of emancipation.

Let it be understood, also, that Missourians did not so much oppose the emancipation of their slaves as they did the means used to accomplish it. For thousands of slaveholders believed that the abolition of slavery would be a blessing both to the slave and the master, if it could be done in a lawful and peaceable way. Many of them were laboring to reach the result through a political organization, by open-handed, lawful means.

For ten years before the war it was a foregone conclusion with the more intelligent classes that slavery would be abolished in Missouri, and a system of free labor adopted that would be more successful in developing the resources of the State. But they looked for it to be done by a change of the Constitution and the necessary legislation; and, while they expected this result to be reached in a lawful way, they heartily detested the secret organizations and treacherous agents that were seeking to decoy the slave from his master, and furnish facilities for his escape from bondage, and his protection from the legal claims of his owner.

This was against law, in contravention of law, and in flagrant violation of constitutional guaranties, which all the courts and officers of the country were sworn to protect and enforce; and hence it was considered by the people and the courts—by the law and the gospel—a crime against the peace and dignity of the State. But it was one of those crimes which either could not be covered by statutory enactments, or in the commission of which the statute could be evaded or the guilty party concealed.

Legal processes could not be served; the law could be set at defiance while the mischief was being done; and the only recourse left to the people was in such protection as they could devise outside of the law. Some carried their slaves into the Southern States and disposed of them. And in some communities, where forbearance with these disturbers of domestic tranquillity had ceased to be a virtue, the citizens assembled together in a peaceable and lawful way, interchanged views, and devised the only lawful means left them to protect themselves and secure the public peace. They adopted resolutions, stating publicly and openly their grievances, and warning the abolition emissaries to desist from intermeddling with their property and their rights, and if they could not settle down and become peaceable, law-abiding citizens, then to leave the country for the country’s good. In a few counties of the State these public meetings were held, and in no instance was there any indignities or outrages committed on the person or property of any man by such public assemblies or by their authority.

CHAPTER VI.
From 1845 to 1861, Continued.

Responsibility of Ministers, Editors and Publishers—Perversion of Facts, a Double Guilt—Public Meetings—Presses Mobbed—Fabius Township Meeting in 1854—Rev. Mr. Sellers—Review of the Preamble and Resolutions—Meeting at Rochester, Andrew County—Three Facts Affirmed of these Meetings—The Best Citizens Controlled Them—What the Author of the Fabius Township Resolutions Says—Jackson Seminary in Cape Girardeau County—The Jefferson City Land Company and the Great Northern Methodist University—The Transaction Transparent—Resolution of Missouri Conference of 1858—A. Bewley—The True Facts in his Case—That he was Hanged at Fort Worth, Texas, not for being a Minister of the Gospel, but for Complicity in the most Horrible Crimes—The Facts Analyzed—The Bailey Letter—Bishop Morris—Dr. Elliott—Truth is Mighty—Correct View of the Relation of the M. E. Church to the People of Missouri prior to the War.

When historical facts are perverted, or so detached from each other as to destroy their connection, and false impressions are made thereby, and bad feelings created in the interest of designing men, the moral wrong is twofold, and the perpetrators are doubly guilty—falsehood reaches its result on the credit of truth, and Christ, the truth, is fatally wounded in the house of his friends. Ministers of the gospel, editors and publishers are accountable to men and God for the most potent of all responsibility. They are a savor of life or a savor of death, and through them peoples and countries have peace or war.

The uses made by them of the public meetings of citizens held in various parts of this State prior to the war did much to aggravate the spirit of animosity between the Northern and Southern people in Missouri, and to embitter the scenes of war. Some papers were so severe upon certain classes of citizens as to provoke mob violence, when party feeling was at blood heat, and a few printing offices were visited by an insulted populace, and type, press, cases and fixtures thrown into the streets, or made to settle accounts at the bottom of the river, while the editors and publishers were driven off. Public meetings were called in many places by the best citizens, to prevent mob violence and promote the public tranquillity. This was their object.

Much has been said in the Northern press and pulpit about a meeting of the citizens of Fabius Township, Marion county, Mo., held February 18, 1854, just after fifteen slaves had walked off to Canada from that township. It was alleged by these preachers and papers, and the statement is reiterated by Dr. C. Elliott, in his book called “Southwestern Methodism,” that the said “meeting was held by the citizens of Fabius Township for the purpose of carrying out a scheme to expel Rev. Mr. Sellers, a minister of the M. E. Church, from the country”—p. 39; and a great hue and cry was raised over the persecution of this Mr. Sellers by the aforesaid citizens. And all the cheap capital was made out of this heroic victim of pro-slavery malice of which the utmost torture of the facts was capable. But, after all, it is rather surprising to find that neither in the long preamble nor in any one of the five resolutions is the name of Mr. Sellers so much as once used; nor do they contain so much as a personal allusion to him or any other individual man. They refer to a class of men, and are directed against a dozen others as much as against Mr. Sellers.

The preamble sets forth, amongst other things, as follows: “And, Whereas, there is in our community considerable excitement, arising from the belief upon the part of many of our citizens that the ministers of the Northern division of said Church, who have for some time past been preaching in Fabius Township, are the representatives of a body whose sentiments upon the subject of slavery are decidedly hostile to our interests as slaveholders and dangerous to our peace; and that the leading object of their mission here is the destruction of slavery by the propagation—in any manner not inconsistent with the safety of their persons—of doctrines calculated to array against the institution the weak-minded and fanatical among us, and to create discontent, dissatisfaction and insubordination among our slaves; therefore,” &c.

No one will doubt that these utterances were directed against the Northern Methodist preachers as political partisans, and not as ministers of the gospel, and that the cry of persecution for righteousness’ sake failed of its sympathy where it failed of the truth.

The first resolution advises these men to “desist from visiting and preaching among us.”

The second is a declaration of rights, and amongst them the following: “When the law fails to protect, we claim to have the natural right, as a community, to resort to the use of such means as will afford us protection.”

The third affirms that “Northern fanatics have forced the question of slavery into all the churches,” and claims protection under the Constitution and laws of the United States government for the institution of slavery thus endangered.

The fourth affirms the unity of Methodist doctrine and worship, the validity of the Plan of Separation, and “protests against the M. E. Church, North, sending ministers among us, and respectfully requests such ministers to make no more appointments in this vicinity.”

The fifth is as follows: “That, as we are situated contiguous to Quincy, a city containing some of the vilest abolition thieves in the Mississippi Valley, and as we have already suffered so much at the hands of these incendiaries we regard it as absolutely necessary to the protection of our slave interests that we close our doors against abolition and free-soil influences of every character and shade, and that we shall, therefore, esteem it highly improper for any citizen hereafter to countenance or encourage the preaching or teaching in this community of any other minister or teacher, person or persons, the representatives of, or in any way connected with, any church or churches, any association or society, whether religious or political, or of any character whatsoever, who have heretofore or shall hereafter take ground, directly or indirectly, expressly or impliedly, against the institution of slavery.”

That resolution is both special and general. It may apply to Mr. Sellers, and it may apply to Dr. Elliott, and a hundred others, as abolitionists and not ministers, or as abolitionists and ministers.

A similar meeting was held in Rochester, Andrew county, in June, 1856, at which resolutions of a similar character were passed. In a few other places, too, the people assembled peaceably and expressed their disapprobation of their course and asked them to desist. But whatever may be said to the contrary in partisan publications, the page of unerring history will affirm three facts of the people of Missouri in these meetings:

1. That the M. E. Church, South, as such, had nothing whatever to do with them; while her members, as citizens, were only equally interested and implicated in them with the members of other churches.

2. Whenever these meetings denounced the preachers of the M. E. Church, North, it was not because they were ministers of the gospel, as such, but because they abused the privileges of their profession, and were secret, active political partisans and abolition emissaries.

3. Mob violence was never instigated by these meetings, but prevented. No man suffered in person or property from them in Missouri.

In confirmation of this position it is only necessary to state the fact that the best class of citizens were the prime movers in these public meetings, and, indeed, they were only called when it became apparent that the peace and safety of the community demanded it; for in every community there are passionate, reckless men, who are ready to take the law into their own hands and vindicate their rights, at whatever danger to the public safety. But the best men of the country, and those who had the deepest interest in its peace and security, entered the most heartily into these meetings, as peace measures, and they now, and will ever, believe that such meetings were necessary to prevent mob violence and insure the general tranquillity.

The author of the Fabius Township resolutions, a distinguished citizen and lawyer of Marion county, and a colonel commanding a regiment of Missouri Militia in the Union army during the war, not only authorizes the above statement, but affirms freely that, though he had been an anti-slavery man for many years, and rejoices in the emancipation of the slaves as he does in the restoration of the Union, yet he endorses that meeting and those resolutions to-day, and would conscientiously pursue the same course again should a similar state of things exist in the community to demand it. An old citizen of Missouri, a member of no church—friendly to all—a Union man from first to last, speaking, working and fighting to restore and preserve the supremacy of the Federal government, he would make affidavit to-day that, to the best of his knowledge, the three facts above stated are fully vindicated in the Fabius Township and all similar meetings held for similar purposes in Missouri. Thousands of the best citizens of the State are ready to affirm the same facts and vindicate the good people of Missouri against the aspersions of the Northern press.

Similar meetings to that of Fabius township were held in Andrew county, in Independence, Jackson county, in Cass county, and perhaps other places, and with similar results. In no single instance was the M. E. Church, South, implicated. In no single instance were the ministers of the M. E. Church, North, mobbed or murdered, and in no single instance was mob violence against the “vilest abolition thieves” counseled or countenanced; and with all honest people who know the facts the hue and cry raised in certain quarters about religious intolerance, mob violence, persecution of ministers, and the martyrdom of innocent and holy men is as gratuitous as it is contemptible.

When the lower House of the Missouri Legislature, in February, 1855, refused, by a vote of sixty to thirty-six, to charter what was called the Jackson Seminary, in Cape Girardeau county, for the Northern Methodists, it was not because the representatives of the people opposed the establishment of literary institutions, or wished to proscribe any form of religion, but because, as then stated, the Northern Methodist preachers were the emissaries of abolitionism, and by encouraging them in establishing institutions in Missouri they encouraged their purposes and organization to subvert the lawful institutions of the State, which the lawmakers did not hesitate to affirm would be encouraging a cowardly, clandestine treason against the laws and government of the State. Four years later the Legislature refused to charter a university at Jefferson City for the Northern Methodists, for the same reason.

The “Jefferson City Land Company,” to encourage immigration, build up the city and enhance the private fortunes of its members, proposed a liberal grant of land to the Northern Methodists, or any others, who would build up and endow, with foreign capital, a university at the State Capital. Though many of the members of this Land Company were slaveholders, and some of them large slaveholders, they believed that the introduction of free labor into the State would greatly facilitate the development of her material resources, by building railroads and opening her vast beds of coal, and lead, and iron to the markets of the world. They conceived the idea of inviting and encouraging free labor from the Northern States through the active agency of the Northern Methodist Church.

The class of immigrants they desired were opposed to negro slavery, and the Northern Methodist Church was opposed to negro slavery. Methodist ministers, more than any other ministers, were in sympathy with the anti-slavery surplus populations of the Northern and Eastern States, and could influence them more. Hence the alliance.

The proposition to donate so much land for a university, even at a fictitious value, was a splendid prize for that church in Missouri, backed, as it was, by the names and influence of some of the first men of the State, and located at the seat of political power—the State Capital.

On the other hand, the promise of the most extensive and efficient agency in the world actively working throughout the dense populations of the older States to put into operation a system of emigration that would fill up the State with industrious laborers, absorb the surplus lands and enrich the centers of settlement, was a tempting premium upon the cupidity of the “Jefferson City Land Company,” for which they could afford to give up their slaves and their former principles.

The inevitable logic of facts does not compliment either the benevolence of the Land Company or the religion of the Church. The members of the Land Company may have been anti-slavery from principle, and their benevolent donation may have been unselfish: if so, they were unfortunate in their schemes; if not so, they were unskilled in dissimulation.

They succeeded in this much, at least, in making the impression pretty general that their creed was a policy, and their policy was simply a question of loss and gain. Not that they loved slavery less, but that they loved money more; not that they loved the Northern Methodist Church more, but that they could use that Church better: while the success of the other party resolved itself into a question of deception; either deceiving themselves or deceiving others—possibly both.

Residing in Jefferson City at the time, and being personally acquainted with each member of the Land Company, as well as cognizant of all the facts, the author feels justified in thus making transparent the shrewd scheme about which so much was said at the time. The only motive for this expose is a vindication of the truth of history and an analysis of the spirit of the times before the war.

After the failure of the “Jefferson City Land Company” and the M. E. Church, North, to build up a Cambridge or a Harvard at the State Capital the Land Company subsided, and the Church directed attention to other expedients and sought a footing in Missouri through other agencies. Public sentiment was against them; political prejudices and social barriers denied them access to the people. All other religious denominations were unfriendly to them; their best preachers left them, and either went into the M. E. Church, South, or returned home. The better class of Northern immigrants, even from their own Church at home, found it to their interest to seek other church connections.

A suspicion followed them into the domestic, the social and the business relations of life, which manifested too clearly the instinctive sense of moral justice and religious fidelity in the public mind to be either mistaken or escaped by them as covenant breakers, false accusers and clandestine enemies to the property and peace of the State. It was natural for them under such circumstances to long for redress, and gladly embrace and use every means in their power to effect their purpose. They had a lively conception of the horrors of slavery, and more skill than conscience in magnifying them for the Northern press and the Northern public. By this means the Northern mind was misled, and many a victim of their misrepresentations was undeceived only on coming to Missouri and seeing for himself the system of slavery, not as it existed in a blinded imagination, but as it existed in the homes and on the farms of slaveholders; and abandoning their deceivers, they vindicated both the system and the people from the false impeachment of unscrupulous fanatics. This made against them and exasperated them, and when they found that they were not sufficiently successful in deceiving the public mind to secure even the letters with their bearers from their own Church in the Free States, the Missouri Conference, in 1858, uttered complaint in the following resolution:

“Resolved, That we hereby earnestly and affectionately request our brethren of other Conferences, in dismissing from their charges, by letter, members who intend immigrating to Missouri, that they be at pains to inform them that, under the blessing of the great Head of the Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church in this State is living and thriving, and urge upon them the propriety of attaching themselves to our Church here immediately on their arrival.”

Several Quarterly Conferences took action on the subject, and set forth more fully the grounds of complaint, which even Dr. Elliott could not escape or overlook in his “Southwestern Methodism.”

Perhaps no event in the history of those times furnished them more food for comment and capital than the hanging of the Rev. Anthony Bewley by the citizens of Fort Worth, Texas, in September, 1860. Out of this event the strongest system of falsehood was manufactured by designing men to fire the Northern Methodist heart against the Southern people, especially the Southern Methodists.

It was at a time when the country was convulsed with political excitement from one end to the other, and partisan politics, more or less, colored every report of the affair. It was almost impossible at the time to get a true history of the event, as the most extravagant statements were put in circulation to influence the Presidential election the following November. The reports in the papers made at the time, and under the pressure of the most exciting and embittered political campaign known to the history of this country, must be received with great allowance and heavy discount. After the heat of political excitement, when every ballot stood for a thousand bullets, and the fire and blood of the civil war that followed have all passed away, when passion and prejudice can no longer serve the purposes of party, the following facts appear upon the surface and bear the imperial image and superscription of truth:

1. That the Rev. Anthony Bewley, a minister of the M. E. Church, North, was hung at Fort Worth, Texas, September, 1860.

2. That the said Bewley had been living in Texas but a short time, operating when he could as a minister of his Church, but connected with an extensive secret organization for the purpose of freeing the slaves, at whatever risk to the peace, the property, and the lives of citizens.

3. That he was implicated in a nefarious plot to poison wells, fire towns and residences, and, in the midst of conflagrations and death, to run off the slaves. This fact rests upon much oral and documentary evidence.

4. That a Vigilance Committee had been formed to ferret out the plot, capture the guilty parties and bring them to justice.

5. That this Committee had cause to suspect Mr. Bewley, ascertaining which he fled the country and made his way to Missouri, whither he was pursued by them, captured, and taken back to Fort Worth.

6. That the evidence was so strong against him that neither the Vigilance Committee nor the officers of the law could protect him from the outraged and enraged populace, and about midnight he was taken by force and hung.

7. That if there was a member of the M. E. Church, South, on the Vigilance Committee, or in the mob that hung him, the evidence does not appear.

8. Neither the extremest torture of facts nor the most distorted construction of collateral circumstances can implicate Bishop Pierce, or any other Bishop, minister, or member of the M. E. Church, South, as such, in the murder of Bewley.

9. With all due respect to the character of the Northern Methodist publications of this affair, and to Dr. Elliott in his “Southwestern Methodism” in particular, it may be asked with some degree of consistency, “Was Bishop Ames Bewley’s hangman?” Bishops Janes and Ames are responsible for Bewley’s appointment to Texas; the latter for his re-appointment, after Bewley had made him acquainted with all the facts existing there that would prevent his usefulness and endanger his life. The Bishop sent him upon a missionary appropriation of $400, for which he pledged the Missionary Society of the Church. Bewley and Willet were sent to the Nueces country with specific instructions “not to organize societies next summer, but to correspond with the Missionary Board.”

10. The evidence upon which he stood convicted in the public mind of complicity in the bloody plot to poison wells, burn towns, and, through fire and blood and insurrection, free the slaves, convicted others also, who were not ministers of the M. E. Church. It can not be made to appear, therefore, by any legitimate construction, that he suffered because he was a minister of that Church; but because he was a ringleader in the clandestine scheme of fire and murder, that was too diabolical to discriminate even in favor of women and children, but doomed all indiscriminately who might drink of the wells, or be the victims of midnight conflagrations, or in any way be exposed to the wide-spread negro insurrection thus instigated. For this cause, and not for preaching the gospel, he was hanged.

11. The following letter, written by one Rev. W. H. Bailey, addressed to Rev. A. Bewley, and acknowledged by him to have been received and subsequently lost, was the principal evidence upon which he was convicted. Bewley acknowledged to his brother-in-law, Mr. John Cook, that the latter was genuine, and had been received by him and lost. The letter was dated, “Denton Creek, Texas, July 3, 1860,” and was found by the Vigilance Committee, authenticated, and extensively published by the secular and religious papers of the country, and is as follows:

“Denton Creek, July 3, 1860.

“Dear Sir: A painful abscess in my right thumb is my apology for not writing to you from Anderson. Our glorious cause is prospering finely as far South as Brenham. There I parted with Brother Wampler; he went still further South. He will do good wherever he goes. I traveled up through the frontier counties—a part of the time under a fictitious name. I found many friends who had been initiated, and understood the mystic Red. I met a number of our friends near Georgetown. We had a consultation, and were unanimously of the opinion that we should be cautious of our new associates; most of them are desperate characters, and may betray us, as there are some slaveholders among them, and they value the poor negro much higher than horses. The only good they will do us will be destroying towns, mills, &c., which is our only hope in Texas at present. If we can break Southern merchants and millers, and have their places filled by honest Republicans, Texas will be an easy prey, if we only do our duty. All that is wanted for the time being is control of trade. Trade, assisted by preaching and teaching, will soon control public opinion. Public opinion is mighty and will prevail. Lincoln will certainly be elected; we will then have the Indian nation, cost what it will; squatter sovereignty will prevail there as it has in Kansas. That accomplished, we have but one more step to take—one more struggle to make—that is, free Texas. We will then have a connected link from the Lakes to the Gulf. Slavery will then be surrounded, by land and water, and will soon sting itself to death.

“I repeat, Texas we must have, and our only chance is to break up the present inhabitants—in whatever way we can—and it must be done. Some of us will most assuredly suffer in accomplishing our object, but our Heavenly Father will reward us in assisting him in blotting out the greatest curse on earth. It would be impossible for us to do an act that is as blasphemous in the sight of God as slaveholding.

“We must have frequent consultations with our colored friends. (Let our meetings be in the night.) Impress upon their clouded intellects the blessings of freedom; induce all to leave you can. Our arrangements for their accommodations to go North are better than they have been, but not as good as I would like.

“We need more agents, both local and traveling. I will send out traveling agents when I get home. We must appoint a local agent in every neighborhood in your district. I will recommend a few I know it will do to rely upon—namely, Brothers Leak, Wood, Evans, Mr. Daniel Vicry, Cole, Nugent, Shaw, White, Gilford, Ashley, Drake, Meeks, Shultz and Newman. Brother Leak, the bearer of this, will take a circuitous route and see as many of our colored friends as he can. He also recommends a different material to be used about town, etc. Our friends sent a very inferior article—they emit too much smoke, and do not contain enough camphene. They are calculated to get some of our friends hurt. I will send a supply when I get home.

“I will have to reprove you and your co-workers for your negligence in sending funds for our agents. But few have been compensated for their trouble. Our faithful correspondent, Brother Webber, has received but a trifle—not so much as apprentice’s wages; neither have Brothers Willet, Mungum and others. You must call upon our colored friends for more money. They must not expect us to do all. They certainly will give every cent if they knew how soon their shackles will be broken. My hand is very painful, and I close.

“Yours truly, W. H. Bailey.”

Should any one be tempted to doubt the genuineness of this letter, his attention is directed to what critics call internal evidence, to the testimony of witnesses on the spot, and the acknowledgment of Bewley himself to Mr. Cook, his brother-in-law, and others.

The disclosure of such a diabolical plot, to be executed simultaneously in all parts of the country, with these preachers and others in secret league and clandestine confederation, extending, perhaps, all over the South, and involving a negro insurrection with all the horrible crimes of St. Domingo intensified and aggravated a thousandfold, could not fail to enrage the populace and fire the passions of men to an uncontrollable point.

Upon such provocation Bewley and Bailey were both hung. And with all the efforts made to hold the Southern Methodist papers, Bishops and members responsible for the crime, no papers and no men more deeply regretted and more heartily condemned the act.

How the venerable Bishop Morris, of the M. E. Church, could write—“One of our godly and inoffensive ministers, A. Bewley, was hung by a Texan mob, for no other crime but connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church,” it is difficult to conceive unless we assume that he was kept in ignorance of the facts. Surely the good Bishop would not suffer his prejudices to blind him to the true state of things as they will ever stand out in the history of that deplorable event.

Dr. Elliott says: “Mr. Bewley was suspended upon the same limb and tree upon which several negroes and a Northern man named Crawford had been hung.” Were these negroes and this “Northern man named Crawford” hung “for no other crime but connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church?” and yet, so far as the facts appear, they were hanged for the same crime of which that “godly and inoffensive minister, A. Bewley,” was convicted.

We could excuse the above declaration from the pen of Dr. Cartwright or Dr. Elliott; we could palliate it somewhat had it come from Bishop Ames; but from Bishop Morris! the astonishment can scarcely surpass the mortification.

“Truth is mighty and will prevail” and from all the rubbish of falsehood and all the coloring of distorted facts the true history of this event will finally reach posterity, and vindicate Southern Methodism of every aspersion made by a subsidized press, and tear the martyr’s crown from the victim who expiated his crimes upon “the Crawford limb.”

This whole chapter will furnish the reader with a correct view of the relation of the M. E. Church, North, to the people, the property, the laws and the institutions of the State between the division of the Church, in 1844, and the breaking out of the civil war, in 1861. But this is subordinate to the prime object, which is to show, at least, one reason for the conspicuous and efficient agency of Northern Methodist preachers in the vindictive persecution of the ministers of the M. E. Church, South, the seizure and use of Church property, etc., under the constructive association of the latter with slavery, secession, rebellion, treason, &c., &c., during the civil war. A vindictive spirit put many of them in Missouri and in the army during the war. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”

CHAPTER VII.
CHARACTER OF THE STRIFE IN MISSOURI.

Conflict of Sentiment—Party Spirit—New England and Missouri Fanatics—Fraternal Blood—“Houses Divided—Three against Two and Two against Three”—Organized Armies and Predatory Brigands—Bull Run, Seven Pines, The Wilderness, Gettysburg and Vicksburg Reproduced on a small scale in every County and Cross Roads in Missouri—War upon Non-Combatants—The Bloodiest Records—Ministers of the Gospel—Their Troubles and Perplexities—Peculiar Trials and Persecutions—Military Fetters put upon the Conscience—Disloyal Prayers and Military Orders.

The mixed population of Missouri, presenting such diverse types of domestic and social life, and such different casts of political and religious belief, could not fail to be turbulent, contentious and almost self-destructive in any civil revolution. The people were not homogeneous, and could not unite upon any principles or policy, civil or ecclesiastical; but, on the contrary, each shade of political and religious faith stood out upon the face of society sharply defined, firmly set and fully armed for both offensive and defensive warfare. Party leaders were bolder, party spirit ran higher, party blood waxed hotter and party strife raged fiercer than in any other State.

When the Northern fanatics adopted a platform and announced a line of policy, the Missouri fanatics of the same school would not only fall into line, but glory in their excess of fanaticism, and push the extremest measures of their Northern masters to the most reckless results. Likewise the Southern fire-eaters, so-called, could always find in Missouri politicians the champions of their extremest measures. Hence it was a common “cant” saying among the politicians that “when the New England fanatics took snuff the Missouri fanatics would sneeze,” and, indeed, some times the sneezing was done before the snuff was taken, and in all that was revolutionary and reckless in politics and religion they could “out-herod Herod.”

The extremists, North and South, whether religious or political, found the heartiest supporters in Missouri; and that which brought the two sections together in organized warfare brought the citizens of the same neighborhood in Missouri, and even members of the same family, into the sharpest personal conflict. The great battles of Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, the Wilderness, Seven Pines and Gettysburg were reproduced on a limited scale in a thousand places in Missouri. The brush, the prairie, the glen, the road side all over the State sheltered concealed foes, and often witnessed the deadliest combats between neighbors and brothers. Here “houses were divided, two against three and three against two,” “a man was set at variance with his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man’s foes were they of his own household.” There was in many instances a literal fulfillment of the prediction that “the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child, and the children shall rise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death;” and the spirit of contention was too rife to confine itself to the hostile armies, or even the lawless bands of armed men, who, in the name of one party or the other, satiated their diabolical hatred and inordinate cupidity by robbery, plunder, pillage and depopulation with fire and sword.

It is no marvel that the most relentless and inhuman spirit of the war found encouragement, if not protection, and expended its force and fury upon the non-combatant and helpless population of Missouri; for this State furnished the bravest men for the armies and the most dastardly cowards for “home protection.” While her brave sons fought and fell upon the fields of honor, making the very blood and death of battle illustrious by an unchallenged heroism, the warfare at home presented scenes of outrage and horror unsurpassed by anything in the annals of civilized warfare, if, indeed, there can be such a thing as civilized warfare, for every thing about it is intensely savage.

Between the “jayhawkers” of Kansas and the “bushwhackers” of Missouri some whole counties were plundered, some were desolated by fire and sword, and some were almost depopulated. Widows’ homes were pillaged and burned, delicate mothers and daughters were captured, taken to camp and compelled to cook and wash for ruffian bands of armed men, to say nothing of nameless indignities and the most horrible crimes. Churches and dwellings were seized, converted into barracks for soldiers, stables for horses, and often burned to the ground in wanton destruction.

It was often heard in boast that the track of armies, or more properly predatory bands, should be lighted through entire counties by the glare of burning buildings, and the threat was too often witnessed in all the midnight glare of faithful execution by the pallid and panic-stricken old men, women and children in mid-winter. But the heart sickens at the recital, as the enlightened conscience revolted then at the reality. These statements must suffice to recall the scenes which were enacted and the men who educated and then hardened the public conscience for the crimes committed during the war, against God and his chosen ministers and church, and for the subsequent legislative proscription of ministers of the gospel, as a class, and Christianity as an institution.

The attitude of ministers of the gospel in Missouri toward the issues of the war, and how far they participated, on the one side or the other, in its fatal scenes require notice here.

At the first, and, indeed, for two years and more after the war commenced, the sentiment of the State was so equally divided between the contending sections that ministers who did not propose to forsake their high calling and become active participants in the strife were very cautious in their expressions of sympathy. But as the Northern or Southern feeling predominated in any given locality it became so intolerant as to demand from ministers, as well as all others, an unequivocal avowal of sentiment, which always subjected the minister to the severest criticism and the most unsparing censure when he chanced to think differently from the majority. The people of opposite sentiments denied him access to them for good, withdrew their encouragement and support, and thus forced him either into the army or into exile. The people were so prejudiced and intolerant as to believe that a man of opposite political faith was unfitted, by that fact, to minister to them in holy things—that sectional sympathy disqualified men for the ministry, and that the men who would preach Christ must either dry up the fountains of human sympathy, surrender all the rights of citizenship, or subordinate the message of life and salvation to the dictum of the leaders and representatives of the intolerant spirit of anti-Christ that prevailed. In this shape the persecution of ministers of the gospel commenced in Missouri with the first breaking out of the war. Ministers were forced to give up their pulpits and abandon their congregations where the two were not in sympathy upon the issues of the war.

Many an old man who had been settled for years in one pastoral charge, where his children had grown up and some of them had died, and where all the tenderest and dearest associations known to the sacred relation of pastor and people had ripened and matured around the fireside, in the sick room, the funeral scene, the homes and hearts of grief, and around the bridal and sacramental altars, suddenly found himself and his family proscribed, maligned and friendless in the very homes and hearts in which aforetime their pre-eminence was unchallenged. A bitter necessity forced him often to give up his home and his pulpit, leave his flock in the wilderness and seek protection and support either in the army or among strangers. In this way many ministers, old and young, were driven to a course which they did not elect, and forced into a position which was neither of their own choosing nor consistent with their sense of ministerial propriety and ministerial obligation.

And yet for a position forced upon them by the proscriptive intolerance of their former friends they were held responsible, and even severely censured by the public.

Many went into both armies—not willingly, but by constraint—not of choice, but of necessity—not to fight the living with carnal weapons, but to save the dying with the power of salvation, and to fight the battles of the Lord of Hosts with the spiritual weapons that are “mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”

Some ministers of the gospel entered the army as soldiers to fight the battles of the country, and no doubt did it conscientiously, believing it to be a high patriotic duty. They claimed nothing on the score of their profession, but accepted in good faith the issues of war and the arbitrament of the sword. Those who survived the war claim no undue credit, and those who sacrificed their lives for a principle and a cause deserve no censure.

Those who entered either army voluntarily, either as chaplains or soldiers, did it understandingly and, perhaps, conscientiously, and accepted the penalty or reward due to such a position only. As a soldier the preacher claimed no exceptional privileges, and as a preacher the soldier claimed no exemption from duty on the field or punishment at home. But it is a notorious fact that preachers who were in the Southern army as soldiers, and who survived the war and returned to their homes in Missouri, no matter how gladly, gracefully and loyally they accepted the situation, have not met the consideration nor received the treatment in all cases meted out to other Confederate soldiers; nor have preachers from the Union army in all instances been treated as other Federal soldiers who returned from the same regiments and to the same counties. Charity at least demands the belief that this is due rather to the instinctive disapprobation in the public mind of ministers bearing arms at all than to any studied maliciousness; and the belief is just as grateful as it is warranted by the facts. But if it should fall out in the subsequent facts to be presented in this book that a studied malice and a methodical madness have done more than the anti-war sentiment, then, however ungrateful, we must accept the facts as the best interpretation of the anti-christian spirit which has exhausted itself upon the ministers of the gospel in this State.

Under this kind of pressure many pastors were without churches and many churches without pastors; and, in many parts of the State, the churches were disorganized and broken up, and the flocks scattered in the wilderness, like sheep having no shepherd. It is true, some ministers refused to be driven, but remained faithful to their trust, in the midst of many discouragements, much threatening, much murmuring, and not a little persecution. Such men, pursuing the even tenor of their way, neither turning to the right or left, reviled, but reviling not again, “counting not their lives dear unto themselves,” nor “conferring with flesh and blood,” deserve the most honorable mention; and with those who know the pressure of sentiment brought to bear upon them they will ever be revered as the finest models of moral heroism and ministerial fidelity. This class of men were not confined to any one church, but have their representatives in all the churches which, by construction, were considered unfriendly to the ruling powers of the State. Many of them were faithful men of God—men of one work—seeking the souls of men, and continuing “steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord,” through all the storm and shock of war; and this, too, at no little cost.

It was a time of wide-spread iniquity with almost all classes. Crime, in every conceivable form, reveled without shame, and hesitated at no atrocity. The officers of law and the courts were alike powerless to punish crime and protect innocence; “and because iniquity did abound the love of many waxed cold,” and the man of God who could be faithful to the souls of men without fear or favor had nerve, courage, faith.

His home was at the mercy of lawless bands whose nameless crimes his last sermon rebuked, and his head was a target for the assassin’s bullet whose cowardly heart felt the sting of conscious guilt under the searchings of God’s truth—a guilt, too, of which the minister was wholly ignorant. More than one faithful watchman, during those “times that tried men’s souls,” went from his pulpit to find his home in ashes, his wife and children shelterless in the storm, and breadless and friendless in the world; and more than one, who did not know that they had an enemy in the world, were called from their beds at midnight to be shot down like dogs, or butchered like hogs in the very presence of their families, without warning, without any known provocation, and without knowing their murderers.

Some of the brightest and purest lights of the Church went out at midnight—suddenly, appallingly—and their “souls were under the altar” many long, weary hours before the news of their murder could pass beyond the family threshold, and often days before it could even reach the family itself. Many of these murders are wholly unaccountable upon any other hypothesis than that intimated above, as the victims hereafter to be named had kept themselves from strife, and had pursued, with “singleness of heart as unto the Lord,” their one calling; they had taken neither part nor lot in the war, one way or the other, and, indeed, were not all of one political faith; their sympathies were—some for the Union and some for the South.

The men who stood faithful amid the faithless were not rash and reckless, but prudent and cautious, as it well becomes those who stand up for the truth in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Some ministers, by a prudent, consistent course, ministering to all alike, and keeping their political views and sympathies to themselves, conquered, in a measure, the respect and confidence of the leading men of both parties, after so long a time, and they were henceforth pretty secure. But many had to abandon the ministry for the time being and seek a support in other pursuits.

For some reason, no part of the minister’s public exercises were looked to with more interest or scrutinized more closely than his extemporaneous prayers. Military officers, partisan leaders, and all men of strong sympathies either way, watched with more vigilance than devotion the objects, the subjects, the language and the sentiment of the extemporaneous prayers of the pulpit. They were supposed to show the drift of the minister’s sympathies and reflect his political sentiments, and many people felt much more interested in that than in any supplications he might make for the pardon of guilt and the salvation of the soul. Post Commanders and Provost-Marshals would not unfrequently send written orders to the officiating minister whose sympathies were suspected, commanding him to pray for Mr. Lincoln, for the flag, for the success of the army in crushing out the rebellion, or for the destruction of all traitors, or something else of the sort as a test of loyalty. And often a minister’s bread, his home, his liberty or his life were suspended upon and determined by the shade of meaning given to a word or phrase in his prayer. The effort was made to force the conscience at the point of the bayonet, and convert the prayer into blasphemy, or get from it a pretext for executing a malicious purpose already formed, and for which there existed neither cause nor occasion.

CHAPTER VIII.
ANOMALOUS CONDITION OF THE STATE—GREAT EXCITEMENT.

Border Slave State—Missouri State Convention—The Last Hope—Virginia Convention—Missouri would not Secede—Rights in the Union—Disappointment—Anomalous Position—Governor Jackson and General Price—Great Excitement—Ministers Embarrassed—One False Step Fatal—The Sword vs. Sympathy—Why the Innocent and Helpless Suffered more in Missouri than Elsewhere—Constructive Sympathy—Predatory Bands—Hon. Luther J. Glenn Commissioner from Georgia—The Effect of the Fall of Fort Sumter and President Lincoln’s Proclamation—The State Officers, Legislature and Militia Adhere South—Assemble at Neosho, Pass an Act of Secession, Elect Delegates to the Confederate Congress, etc., etc.—Preparations for War—Union vs. Price’s Army—State Convention Meets Again—Its Acts and Doings—Two State Governments—Sympathy, Property and Plunder—Ministers Again—Their Course—Days of Fasting and Prayer—Conferences—Meeting in St. Charles—Resolutions—Prudence and Prayer—The Press—Anti-Christ Abroad—Central Christian Advocate and a few Facts—Rev. Mr. Gardner—“Men and Brethren Help”—State Convention again in October—The First Oath for Ministers.

The people of Missouri contemplated the possibilities of civil war with the peculiar interests of a border State, fearing that when it came the border slaveholding States would be the main theatre of strife. They looked with the deepest solicitude to every plan for the peaceful adjustment of the troubles, and not until the failure of the “Crittenden Compromise” did they consider the result inevitable. The much talked of “Border States Convention” inspired hope in the less informed, but when nothing came of it the last hope perished.

The Missouri Legislature, by an act, “approved January 21, 1861,” called a State convention “to consider the then existing relations between the Government of the United States and the people and Government of the several States and the Government and people of Missouri, and to adopt such measures for vindicating the sovereignty of the State and the protection of its institutions as shall appear to them to be demanded.”

This convention assembled in Jefferson City February 28, 1861, and organized and proceeded to the work for which it was called.

By the time of its session no less than seven of the Southern States had, by their conventions, adopted ordinances of secession, declaring themselves separated from the Government of the United States, and organized for themselves a distinct national confederation. Other States were in a greatly disturbed condition, had called State conventions, and would inevitably follow their sister Southern States. War was imminent and preparations for it were active—alarming.

Many still clung to the delusion that the national difficulties would be settled without bloodshed, and that the very preparations for war would prevent it.

Virginia, “the mother of Presidents,” had a State convention then either in session or about to assemble, and the deepest anxiety was felt throughout the whole country as to the course that sturdy old State would take. It was believed that the action of Missouri and Virginia would either prevent or precipitate war, by determining the true position of all the border slave States; consequently, every act of these conventions, and every sentiment uttered in them, was watched and weighed with an interest and eagerness never before known in the history of the country.

In Missouri the liveliest interest was taken by all the people in the debate on the report of the committee on Federal Relations, and not until it became an ordinance of the Convention could the majority of the people in the rural districts believe that the State would not secede from the Federal Union and unite her fortunes with the Southern Confederacy. The simple fact that Missouri was a slaveholding State was sufficient in the minds of many to determine her Federal relations, or at least the policy of secession. Rights in the Union were considered possible by the few; rights out of the Union were considered the only hope by the many.

The fact that the State officers and Legislature, elected just the fall before, were so nearly unanimous in their Southern sympathies that they could, and did, secede in a body without disorganization, and without taking the State with them, shows how strong must have been the Southern feeling at the time of their election. Sectional issues were as clearly and distinctly made in the State as in the Presidential election, and with a unanimity rare in the history of elections the people endorsed the pro-slavery party.

The action of the State convention in February, 1861, put the State in an anomalous condition. The effect was to detach the State government from the State and vacate the several departments of the State government without a vacating ordinance. The representatives in the State Legislature found themselves without a Constitution and the people without representatives. It was soon evident that neither Governor C. F. Jackson and his cabinet nor the majority of the General Assembly were in sympathy with the action of the Convention. The President of the Convention, Hon. Sterling Price, and a respectable minority dissented in their feelings from the action of a majority, and conscientiously believed that the true interest of the State was in political and commercial alliance with the Southern Confederacy.

Notwithstanding the majority of the people were loyal to the Federal Government when the delegates to the State Convention were elected, in January, 1861, yet the course pursued by Governor Jackson, General Price, and those high in authority who were associated with them, very greatly unsettled the people of the State in their political faith, and produced such general excitement amongst all classes, that the greatest fears were entertained from the first of an intensity and bitterness of strife in Missouri to which other States would not be subjected.

No one not then residing in the State can fully appreciate the condition of things which this complication of public policy developed. Ministers of the gospel and other non-combatants wore not prepared to meet the novel exigencies arising out of such an anomalous state of things, in consequence of which many of them were placed in very embarrassing circumstances, and not a few found themselves forced into positions which their cooler and better judgment afterward condemned. The pride of some kept them in positions where their indiscretion had placed them, and from which their sober judgment would fain extricate them; and in this way many non-combatants were made combatants, and many were forced from their families, their homes, their property and their country. The people were all unused to civil revolutions and inexperienced in the art of adjustment and adaptation. One false step in youth may be fatal to all the objects and aims of life, blast all its hopes and promises, and cause all its plans and purposes to miscarry—may be irretrievably disastrous. So in the first stages of civil revolutions, a mistake may be fatal; and fatal mistakes are common. Men who were not secessionists found themselves fighting for secession, and men who were not Union men were forced by a combination of circumstances to fight for the Union. A man’s sword often cut through his sympathies, and his sympathies often formed the scabbard for his sword; while the “aiding and abetting” was as often by constraint and coercion as by choice. Even the regimental colors of opposing armies did not always and faithfully reflect the true sentiment of field and staff, rank and file. Sympathy was too confused and policy too unsettled to admit of either infallible prescience in choice or fidelity in the execution in all cases. Hence many good men suffered for principles not their own, and sacrificed life and all for a cause with which they were not in sympathy.

Popular excitements are never favorable to deliberate prejudgment or right action, and in Missouri more than elsewhere the intensity of excitement at this time dethroned judgment and defeated action. It is believed that much suffering and many of the most shocking features of the war could have been prevented by the party leaders on both sides in Missouri.

It is confidently believed that when a true history of the war is written, it will appear that, in its recklessness of life and wantonness of destruction, and in all its most shameless, and revolting, and nameless crimes perpetrated upon the unoffending, the innocent and the helpless, the non-combatant population of Missouri has suffered more than any other class of people in any State. And much of the sufferings of this class of people is justly chargeable to those into whose hands the conduct of the war in this State was first placed. The just judgment of posterity and the just retributions of eternity will hold to a righteous accountability those who, under whatever pretense, made war upon ministers of the gospel, unoffending old men, and helpless women and children, dragging them to prison and to death, while the pretext for it was found only in the hasty expression of sympathy, or the constructive connection with one side or the other based upon church affiliations.

For instance, Southern Methodists, and Southern Baptists, and Southern Presbyterians were by the Union men and forces constructively identified with secession and rebellion, and put in sympathy with the Southern cause. The first from the beginning, the last two after the virtual disruption of those respective churches.

Under the heat of party passion many innocent victims suffered the spoiling of their goods, and often the loss of life itself, only upon this constructive evidence.

The principal portions of the State were always held by the Union forces, and their subordinate officers and independent, predatory bands were either commissioned to make war upon these innocent and defenseless people or they did it without commission. Certain it is that it was done, and done, too, relentlessly and indiscriminately. How far this state of things is due to the converse action of the legitimate State Legislature and the legitimate State Convention—the one elected in November, 1860, and the other elected in January, 1861, and both assuming to reflect the will of the people—and how far it is due to the course pursued subsequently by Governor Jackson, General Price, and the whole State Government, with the legislative branch thrown in, adhering South, may be determined by others. The people of the State, who were not accustomed to a long search after remote causes, were free—and many of them are still free—to attribute these most inhuman features of the war to those who were put in command of the Federal forces in this department, the officers and men of the State militia, and the “Kansas Redlegs,” as they were generally called.

The first session of the State Convention did very little more than discuss and determine the Federal relations of the State. The State of Georgia had an accredited commissioner present in the person of Hon. Luther J. Glenn, a distinguished citizen of that State, asking Missouri to secede and join the Southern Confederacy. The Convention heard him respectfully, but, after due deliberation, rejected the proposition, and resolved to remain in and try to preserve the integrity of the Union.

The Convention also appointed a Commission to attend the “Border States Convention,” and adjourned to await results.

The people of the State were still in much of a dilemma until after the fall of Fort Sumter, the proclamation of President Lincoln, and the capture of Camp Jackson. Then it was discovered that the State Government, with Governor Jackson at the head, was in sympathy with the South, and would adhere South in defiance of the Convention. It was also discovered that the “Missouri State Guard,” which had been raised, officered, armed and equipped by the Legislature the previous winter, would adhere South, with General Sterling Price in command. These revelations excited and alarmed the people all over the State, and presented new difficulties and embarrassments, which were greatly complicated and enhanced by the simultaneous appearance in different parts of the State of the U. S. forces equipped for war. Indignation and consternation alternated in the public mind, until some definite line of policy was disclosed and the people knew what to expect.

Governor Jackson fled the capital of the State with his officers and army, taking the great seal of State and the official records of the several State Departments with him, as far as it could be done. He convened the Legislature in Neosho, organized and put into operation the several Departments of the State Government. “An Act of Secession” was passed by the General Assembly; delegates were elected to the Confederate Congress; a proclamation was issued to the people of Missouri, and many other things were done to force the State out of the Union and commit her destinies to the fate of the Southern cause. This meant war; and the wisest men abandoned for ever the idea of a peaceful adjustment of the difficulties, and prepared for that which neither the counsels of the prudent nor the prayers of the good could avert.

For the next few months the preparations for war on both sides were active and general. Plows were left standing in the furrows; wheat stood unshocked and ungarnered in the fields; mechanics and artisans closed their shops and exchanged hammers and saws for guns and swords; merchants dismissed their clerks and manufacturers their hands, and all prepared for the war; saddleries, foundries and gunsmiths were pressed out of measure with work, and the country was ransacked for mules and horses for service. The policy was, “He that hath no sword, let him sell his coat and buy one.”

President Lincoln’s call upon Governor Jackson for the quota of troops from this State to help the Federal Government put down insurrection and rebellion had been promptly and curtly declined by that official, and yet ten times more than the President asked for stood ready to respond to the call in defiance of Governor Jackson.

The cities and towns along the railroad lines especially turned out a heavy surplus population for the Union army, while the river towns and rural districts supplied men and material for “Price’s army,” as it was familiarly called.

The state of things thus presented made it necessary to convene the State Convention again, which was done by the Committee appointed for that purpose at its first session. In pursuance of the call of a majority of said Committee the State Convention assembled again in Jefferson City, July 22, 1861.

A very different state of things existed now in the State, and the Convention had to meet new questions and provide for new exigencies. The Governor of the State, the president and many members of the Convention, and the Legislature that originated and provided for the Convention, had all cut themselves loose from the Convention and the people represented by the Convention.

The State was virtually without a Governor, and the Governor was without a State. The Convention did not hesitate in meeting these novel exigencies promptly and decidedly. On the seventh day the Convention passed “An Ordinance providing for certain Amendments to the Constitution,” which ordinance vacated the offices of Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, Secretary of State and members of the General Assembly, provided for the election of the first three by the Convention immediately, and then ordered a general election the following November. Hon. Hamilton R. Gamble was elected provisional Governor, Hon. Willard P. Hall Lieutenant-Governor, and Hon. Mordecai Oliver Secretary of State. Henceforth the people of the State had two State Governments, and the divisions and strifes were distinct and complete.

The effect of this state of things was to unsettle the people more than ever, and the lines were clearly drawn. The policy of the Federal and State authorities was more positive and decided. “He that is not for us is against us” was not only of frequent utterance, but of dogged application. It was assumed that all men had sympathies for one party or the other, and an expression of them in any way was sure to provoke the hostility of those who assumed the guardianship of human sensibilities. Property belonging to persons of opposing sympathies was confiscated and appropriated to the use of the officers and men taking it; and at this stage of the war the effort was made to force the sympathies of men through their property. Many a well stocked farm was stripped of everything that could be carried off and the dwellings burned to the ground, because it was said the family had Southern sympathies; and many a helpless man and woman, too, had to prove themselves innocent of crimes of which they were assumed to be guilty to save them from an uncoffined grave.

Armed brigands came down from Kansas and Iowa, and over from Illinois, to plunder and rob the rich farmers of Missouri, and many of the poor ones, too, in the name of the Union, and to preserve the Constitution. They carried away wagons, horses, mules and stock of every description, plundered houses of silver plate, jewelry, beds and bedding, carpets, clothing of men, women and children—even the mementoes of ladies and the toys of children—everything that could gratify their cupidity or vex and mortify the original owners. All this for the preservation of the Union, by enriching the houses and pockets of men who cared for no higher distinction.

Ministers of the gospel suffered in common with others, especially those of the Southern Methodist Church, and others who were suspected of disloyal sentiments. Many of them had to “take the spoiling of their goods joyfully,” or otherwise, and were wholly broken up and reduced to penury and want, and yet many of them were honestly and earnestly laboring to abate the feverish excitement, allay the bitterness of feeling and promote “on earth peace and good will toward men.”

The Annual Conferences of the M. E. Church, South, in the fall of 1860, recommended to all Christian people the observance of a “day of fasting, humiliation and prayer” for the peace of the country and the amicable adjustment of existing difficulties. This had been generally observed throughout the State the week before the Presidential election, and, doubtless, did much good in humbling the Church before God, and in directing the hearts and faith of the people to the only “refuge and strength and present help in time of trouble.”

After actual hostilities had been in progress a little more than one month a number of ministers of different churches assembled in St. Charles, Mo., May 21, 1861, and, after prayer and deliberation, adopted the following:

“Whereas, In the Providence of God our country is now involved in a civil war, which has already brought upon us many calamities, and still threatens to introduce a state of ill will, discord and desolation utterly inconsistent with our condition as a Christian land; therefore,

“Resolved, 1. That we meet together on this day in the fear of God, and with a firm reliance on his divine Providence as a Christian people, communicants of the respective churches in this city, to observe such means as will at least tend to promote good will among ourselves during the continuance of this war.

“2. That we regard all war as a sore calamity, contrary to the spirit and teaching of the gospel, and more especially a civil war, as revolting to our Christian teaching, unnatural, abhorrent to all our Christian instincts, and subversive of the cause of Christ, whose blessed mission was to establish peace on earth.

“3. That, as ministers of the Christian churches, irrespective of our private opinions, we do hereby pledge ourselves, one to another, ministers and people, to abstain as far as possible from all bitter and exciting controversy upon the questions now agitating the public mind, but will, each within the sphere of our influence, endeavor to promote a spirit of brotherly love, and by calm and judicious counsel, animated by the Spirit of Christ, our peaceful Master, suppress every act among ourselves which may have a tendency to increase the present difficulties.

“4. That we call upon the Christians of our land to band together to stay, if possible, the further shedding of fraternal blood, etc., etc.

“5. That we will not forget our best refuge—prayer—and therefore humble ourselves before God and supplicate our Heavenly Father to quell the madness of the people and put away from us all bitterness, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, and animate us with the gentle spirit of peace on earth and good will toward men.

“6. That, with trustful resignation and humble faith in the strength of the Lord of Hosts, we do cordially recommend to all Christian churches to set apart Thursday, June 6, 1861, as a day of private and public supplication, with fasting, humiliation and prayer,” etc.

Similar meetings were held in other places to avert the calamity of war, or to abate some of its bitterness, and promote peace and good will amongst neighbors and non-combatants.

Very few ministers, comparatively, espoused actively the cause of either party, but pursued with a singleness of purpose their legitimate calling, ministering to all alike, and seeking only to make the gospel the “power of God unto salvation.” Individual ministers and ecclesiastical bodies felt deeply the importance of prudence, quietness and ministerial fidelity to the Church of Jesus Christ, over which the Holy Ghost had made them pastors; that the ministry be not blamed, that the cause of the Master be kept above reproach, and that a pure Christianity might always conserve the public peace.

Notwithstanding the good intentions and laudable efforts made by the ministry of Missouri generally to promote the public peace, the press of the State, both secular and religious, did very much to break the force of their well-meant endeavors, and seemed determined either to drag the Church into the most ultra partisan support of the war, or, in case of failure, to place both under the suspicion and surveillance of the military authorities.

The spirit of anti-Christ, which had been increasing and spreading for years in Missouri, now assumed a boldness and a defiance that hesitated not to use the party hatred of religious editors and preachers to make a bold advance upon the doctrines and services of those who represented a pure, non-political, unsecular Christianity. It was not uncommon for the plainest facts to be perverted, if, by so doing, the cry of persecution for loyalty’s sake could be raised and the most reckless passions of men could be fired. In this kind of business the Northern Methodist preachers and papers were more expert than others, and the hope of wreaking a mean vengeance on the M. E. Church, South, supplied sufficient motive. Such a declaration should not be made unless demanded and supported by the plainest facts. Unfortunately they are not wanting, and a few only must be selected from the many.

The Central Christian Advocate, published in St. Louis for the M. E. Church, North, and edited by Dr. C. Elliott, seized every event that could be tortured into an occasion for an inflammatory article against the ministers and members of the M. E. Church, South.

Some time in September, 1860, the Northern Methodists held a camp meeting not far from Utica, in Livingston county, North Missouri. The preacher in charge was one Rev. Mr. Gardner, who had already rendered himself obnoxious to the people by intermeddling with politics, tampering with slaves and unministerial conduct in the social circle. This camp-meeting was broken up on a Monday without service and in great confusion. The cause was no matter of conjecture, nor of its authenticity were the people permitted to doubt.

The Rev. Mr. Gardner had, the night before, been found in the wrong tent, from which he was summarily ejected by the ladies. The public indignation was too intense the next day to allow services to be held, and the crime of the preacher was made too apparent by the separation of a man and wife, the latter of whom had made herself rather conspicuous by her great zeal in the service of Gardner and the Church.

The Central Christian Advocate published it as a “great outrage,” and made the breaking up of that meeting do good service in the persecution of the ministers of the M. E. Church by the ministers and members of the M. E. Church, South. The editor of that paper said so much about it that good, honest, reliable men went to the place and investigated the matter. It was afterward ventilated through the public prints, to the infinite humiliation of the profession which the man disgraced and the reproach of the cause which he shamelessly belied.

Many other things of similar character did much good service for the party and the Church during the following winter and spring, doubtless designed to manufacture prejudice against the people of the State, and especially the Southern Methodists.

The Central, of May 15, 1861, contained the following:

“Men and Brethren, Help!

“One of our preachers, last Sabbath week, some thirteen miles from this city, was struck down, his meeting broken up, and members of the M. E. Church, South, had oversight of the assault, which was conducted under their superintendence. So said Bro. Miller, the preacher, and a member of our Church, a Missourian, whose father and mother were buried in Missouri, and in which he proposes to be buried, whether killed by others or dying in the natural way.”

While the editor should be excused for writing a paragraph so awkward and bungling, the real object will not be mistaken. It is only necessary to state that an intelligent gentleman who was present pronounces the whole thing utterly false. The meeting was not broken up, the preacher was not knocked down, and there was but one member of the M. E. Church, South, present at the service, and he left before the trouble, which occurred outside of the church after services were closed, and grew out of some insulting language used by the preacher to a gentleman present, which was resented with only one slight blow which scarcely reached the reverend offender. They were separated before any damage was done, and left the Central to do all the damage.

In this case, as in the Gardner case, the Southern Methodists were not implicated; but for these and many other things of which they were wholly innocent they had to suffer deeply and grievously, as these pages will show.

During the summer of 1861 a number of ministers in different portions of the State were robbed of all that they possessed of this world’s goods, some were driven into exile, and some arrested and put into military prisons. But more of these hereafter.

The State Convention assembled again, October 10, 1861, in St. Louis, passed several vacating ordinances, and provided for the more efficient prosecution of the war and the establishment of a more reliable sympathy between the State and the Federal Administration. Amongst other things it was ordained that all the civil officers of the State should take, subscribe and file with County Court Clerks an oath of allegiance or loyalty to support the Constitution of the United States and of the State of Missouri, and not to take up arms against the Government of the United States or the Provisional Government of this State, nor give aid or comfort to the enemies of either, and maintain and support the Provisional Government established by the State Convention of Missouri. This oath of allegiance was required of ministers of the gospel, as such.

CHAPTER IX.
THE PULPIT AND PRESS ON THE SITUATION IN MISSOURI.

Ministers of Peace—Course Pursued by the St. Louis Christian Advocate—Rev. Dr. M‘Anally its Editor—Candid, Truthful, Honest—The Cause of its Suppression, and the Imprisonment of the Editor—Ministers of the M. E. Church, South. Labor and Pray Earnestly for Peace—Days of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer—Ministers who became Political Partisans had no use for such days-“Breathing out Threatening and Slaughter”—Spirit of the Northern Methodist Press—False Publications for a Purpose—One Mr. John Stearns and the Western Advocate—Glaring Falsehoods—Excitement in St. Louis and Throughout the State—Persecution of Ministers in Kansas and Reign of Terror along the Border—Rev. W. H. Mobly and Rev. John Monroe in Southwest Missouri—Systematic Efforts to Break up the M. E. Church, South, and Disperse her Ministers—Editorial in St. Louis Advocate—The Central Again—Impressions Abroad—Baptists and Presbyterians Implicated—“Religion in Missouri”—Missouri Conference at Glasgow—St. Louis Conference at Arrow Rock and Waverly—Conference Stampeded by the Rumor of a Gunboat—Author Arrested.

That the ministers of the gospel in Missouri did not commit themselves to the strife of war, but sought to promote peace and good order in the State, may be learned from the frequent counsel given to their congregations to remain at home, and “as much as lay in them live peaceably with all men.”

Many a young man was prevented from going to “Price’s army,” or any other, by the timely advice of these men of God, and many a wife and mother rejoice to-day in the life and love of husband and son only through the godly admonition of faithful pastors. Some few ministers, it is true, were led astray by popular excitement, or forced to quit their homes and flocks by causes heretofore mentioned, and then they preached privately what they practiced publicly. But such cases were too rare to involve the whole ministry as a class, even by the weakest implication. Neither were the ministers of the gospel as a whole, nor the ministers of any one Church in Missouri, disloyal to the Government of the United States or the Provisional Government of this State. But the very Churches and ministers that had to suffer the most direful penalties, in the destruction of property, the persecution, imprisonment and murder of ministers in the subsequent years of the war, were now doing more than any other in the State to prevent the war and promote the public peace and tranquillity.

The St. Louis Christian Advocate, edited by the Rev. D. R. M‘Anally, D. D., contained a series of very able editorials, running through April and a part of May, 1861, on “The Times,” “The Duty of Christian Men,” “The Time for Prayer,” “To the Ministers and Members of the M. E. Church, South, in Missouri and Kansas,” “The Times—A Word to our Patrons and Friends,” and kindred topics, in which the people were warned of the character of the danger that threatened, advised to remain at home, cultivate their lands and pursue the avocations of peace and piety in the fear of God, as the best means of promoting good order in the State, and at least mitigating the horrors of war.

That paper was candid and earnest in warning the public of the magnitude of the rebellion and the unprecedented unanimity and courage of the Southern people, and when the Northern press generally represented the boasted strength of the rebellion as too puerile and insignificant to involve the National Government in any serious trouble or protracted war, that paper sought truthfully and conscientiously to disabuse the public mind, and thereby prevent the many disastrous blunders committed by an underestimate of the military resources and strength of the South.

How much of suffering might have been prevented, and how many thousands of valuable lives might have been spared to the country, to say nothing of the millions of treasure, had the advice of that paper been taken and the timely warnings of its honored editor been heeded. But, like all gratuitous counsel that is unpalatable, because truthful, it was contemned, the motive of its author suspected, and the existence of its medium considered dangerous.

Very many of the religious papers of the border States had already been suspended, and the continuance of this one was a doubtful problem for many months before its suppression.

Dr. M‘Anally’s ideas of right and wrong, of truth and error, of justice and righteousness, were derived from the old standards. He had no patience with the new standards of virtue that grew out of party fanaticism and war expediencies; new fangled notions, dissimulations, prevarication and moral travesty “he could not away with.” He had not so learned the responsibilities of public journalism, and hence his simple-hearted appreciation of right led him to expose the wrong wherever it existed. His honesty required him to denounce the wide-spread dishonesty of the times. His simple love of truth caused him to make honest and truthful reports of the “News of the Week” according to the actual facts, without reference to the interest of this party or that party, this army or that, this commanding officer or that. In this his paper presented such a contrast with the press generally that it was sought and read by thousands of both parties, and accepted by the unprejudiced as the most reliable paper then published.

But because it was truthful, and honest, and candid, and popular, and reliable, it was pronounced disloyal and dangerous; and because it would not serve the cause of cruelty, confiscation, conflagration, desolation and destruction, and with the venom of a viper hound on the barbarous hordes with fire and sword to the commission of the foulest deeds of war; nor with sanctimonious hypocrisy sanctify the implements and instruments of blood and death, and canonize the vilest thieves, and robbers, and murderers; for these reasons the paper was set down by the enemies of the M. E. Church, South, as in the interest of treason and rebellion, and by them the military authorities wore induced to suppress the paper and arrest and imprison its editor. Of his arrest and long confinement in the Myrtle Street Military Prison, St. Louis, the reader will be more fully informed hereafter.

That the ministers of the M. E. Church, South, who suffered more than others during the war in Missouri, did not provoke the strife nor enhance its malignity, but, on the contrary, labored earnestly and prayed fervently for the return of peace to our distracted country, take the following from the St. Louis Christian Advocate, of June 18, 1861:

“Fasting and Prayer.

“To the Ministers and Members of the M. E. Church, South, in the Missouri and St. Louis Conferences.

“Dear Brethren and Sisters: Whereas, our once happy and prosperous country is now involved in the calamities of civil war, which threatens ruin to all our cherished hopes and interests; and whereas, God alone, in the exercise of his sovereign and gracious dispensations, can avert the terrible evil; and as he has promised to be inquired of by those that fear him, and to interpose for those who reverently and submissively supplicate his mercy and seek his Divine interposition, it therefore becomes to every Christian community both a high privilege and a solemn duty, in such times of serious and alarming trials, humbly and reverently to prostrate themselves before the mercy seat and supplicate that aid and deliverance which God only can afford.

“And, as I have been requested by many ministers and laymen of both Conferences (in view of my seniority as a minister) to designate and recommend a day of fasting and prayer, I would, therefore, most respectfully recommend that Wednesday, the third day of July, be set apart and observed for this solemn purpose, and that appropriate religious services be held in all our places of worship; and, in accordance with the expressed wishes of many, and, as I think, in accordance with manifest propriety, I tender most cordially, in behalf of the whole Church, an invitation to all Christian people of the State to unite with us on that day, humbly and devoutly to supplicate, in behalf of our common country, that God, who can turn the hearts of men as the streams in the south, would forgive our sins and in his merciful providence hasten the return of peace to our country—our entire country.

“Andrew Monroe.

“Fayette, Mo., June 5, 1861.

“The undersigned do most cordially approve the above proposition, and earnestly recommend its observance throughout the State.

“Joseph Boyle,

“E. M. Marvin,

“H. S. Watts,

“P. M. Pinckard.

“St. Louis, Mo., June 12, 1861.”

In compliance with this recommendation the churches of the State were generally well filled with devout worshipers, and the prayers of tens of thousands of earnest Christians ascended to the Lord of Hosts that his anger might be turned away, that “our country—our whole country”—might be spared the further calamities of war, and that “we might lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.”

These public calls to “humiliation, supplication and prayer” were frequent in occurrence and general and fervent in response; and the unpolitical ministry in those days presented a spectacle of touching moral sublimity, in their fidelity to the Church and their unselfish devotion to the cause of peace and righteousness in the midst of universal strife and war, that deserved a higher consideration and a better fate, while it prepared them for the scenes of suffering and the thrones of martyrdom that yet awaited them in the not distant future.

It has not escaped the observant, however, that the ministers who committed themselves and their pulpits to the purposes and prosecution of the war had more days of feasting than fasting; more seasons of glorification than humiliation; more days of thanksgiving than supplication; more banners and bonfires than confessions of sin and prayers for peace. If any of them observed a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer in the proper spirit, during the whole war in Missouri, the fact has wholly escaped the author’s mind. Their prayers, for the most part, consisted in “breathing out threatenings and slaughter,” and in inflaming the dangerous passions of men by the most unblushing blasphemies and the most envenomed imprecations.

The scenes and services which dishonored the gospel and disgraced the pulpits and those who occupied them in certain quarters during the war can not now be recalled without the most painful sense of humiliation and shame. It would be an outrage upon public decency and taste to reproduce even the best specimens of them in these pages. We have oblivion for the facts and pity for the fanatics; and if a faithful record of the sad history we have made should require any further allusion to such scenes, it will be made with mingled shame and commiseration.

While the ministers in Missouri were striving manfully and humbly to allay the bitterness of strife by frequent calls to public humiliation and prayer, and by wise and godly counsels of peace and quietness, designing men who had left the State, and some even who remained in the State, were at work, through the different media of reaching the public mind, trying to arouse the suspicions and inflame the passions of those in power against the only real “peace-makers” in the State. Specimen extracts have already been given from the Central Advocate of Missouri, and it may not be out of place to insert one from the Western Christian Advocate, of Cincinnati, of June 12, 1861:

“’Methodist Episcopal Church, South,’ Missouri.

“We had a call from Mr. John Stearns, late a resident of Miller county, Mo. He was formerly of Pennsylvania, but for some years had resided in Missouri, and has been a member of the M. E. Church over thirty-five years. He gave us the names of two of his neighbors who had, been hung for their Union sentiments, and for being members of the ‘so-called’ Northern Methodist Church. The leaders of the mob hanging these men were members of the M. E. Church, South. Mr. Stearns says further that he was informed through a friend that he himself was to be hung Saturday, June 1st, but that he defeated the attempt by escaping the previous night. The man who led on the mob of Jefferson City in riddling the Methodist Episcopal Church there, of which the expatriated Rev. Z. S. Weller was pastor, was the son of Claiborne Jackson, the Governor of Missouri. Mr. Stearns tells us that but for the M. E. Church, South, there would be no secessionism in the State. The preachers and members of that denomination see that the triumph of Unionism is their death knell, and hence the fury and despair which characterize their fight.”

It will not be unkind to say now that such stories were manufactured to order and published for effect. The war has come and gone, and passion and prejudice have been measurably displaced by peace and order; and yet, to this day, the hanging of two of Mr. Stearns’ neighbors, in Miller county, Mo., has only come to the knowledge of the people of Missouri through the Western Christian Advocate, and upon the authority of one Mr. Stearns, “formerly of Pennsylvania.”

But that this assertion is not made without good authority, read the following extracts from two letters, as only a sample of many others on hand:

“Pleasant Mount, Miller Co., Mo., July 4, ’61.

“Mr. Editor: I see in your issue of June 20th a statement from one Mr. John Stearns, who says he has been a citizen of Miller county for some years, and that two of his neighbors were hung for their Union sentiments, and for being members of the M. E. Church, North; that he himself barely made his escape by starting the night before.

“Now, as to the hanging part, Mr. Stearns has grossly misrepresented the people of Miller county. There has never been any person hung in the bounds of the county, under any pretext whatever, much less for their political or religious creed; and Mr. Stearns knew when he made the statement that it was false. In fact, I doubt whether there has ever been such a man in Miller county, at least I have found no one who has ever known such a man, and I have inquired of the Sheriff of the county, and the Clerk of the County Court, as well as of a number of citizens who have lived here ever since before Miller county was organized, and none of them have ever known such a man as John Stearns; and if it were necessary I could get hundreds of the most reliable men of this county to bear testimony to the truth of the above, &c., &c.

“(Signed) Thomas J. Smith.”

Another letter, written by Wm. M. Lumpkin, July 2, 1861, says:

“I was born and raised in this (Miller) county, and can safely say there never was a man hung in this county to my knowledge. I have served a good time in this county in the capacity of Deputy Circuit and County Clerk, and County School Commissioner, and I have never heard of such a man before as Mr. John Stearns,” &c.

The statements were denied at the time, and means instituted to ascertain their truth or falsity, but up to this time no information of such hanging has come to light. But the article served its purpose, and, like one that appeared a short time before in the New York papers, about the hanging of a Rev. Mr. White near St. Charles, Mo., where no such man had ever been seen, known, or heard of, and many others of a similar style, character and purpose, it passed away much sooner than the prejudices and passions it excited, and which were left to expend their fury upon those who made no “fight,” and whose “death knell” was not heard in the triumph of Unionism, except only as it was uttered from the pulpits and pens of “false prophets.”

About this time there was intense excitement in St. Louis, especially over the capture of Camp Jackson, the burning of bridges on the Pacific Railroad, and the retreat of Governor Jackson and General Price from Jefferson City. This excitement was greatly increased by the soldiers firing into promiscuous crowds of citizens along the streets, in which a number of citizens, with some women and children, were killed and wounded; and also the battle of Boonville, in which it was reported in the Missouri State Journal and other papers that Gen. Lyon’s forces had been badly cut to pieces, but which the knowledge of the facts afterward modified to some extent. The small engagement between the Federal and State forces at Rock Creek, near Independence, Mo., about the same time, added somewhat to the general excitement, which by this time had spread throughout the State.

Along the border of Kansas the people of the State were kept in constant alarm by the depredations of what were called at that time “Kansas Jayhawkers.” Many families were robbed, houses burned and preachers forced to fly for safety, as the following extract from a letter to the St. Louis Christian Advocate, from the Rev. N. Scarritt, a highly esteemed minister and a presiding elder then laboring in Kansas, will show:

“In addition to this, some of our preachers in the southern portion of the Conference have been compelled to quit the field and leave their work for the present, on account of the violence of civil strife so prevalent in that section.

“Our preachers there have taken no part in the political questions that are involving the country in so much trouble. They have been peaceable, law-abiding citizens, leaving politics alone, and devoting themselves exclusively to the peaceable work of preaching the peace-making gospel of the Prince of peace.

“Yet, though this has been their known and acknowledged character, it has not been sufficient to protect them from the rage of fanaticism and outlawed violence. Several of them have had their horses stolen from them by the Jayhawkers. Repeated threats of hanging, shooting, &c., have been made against them by the jayhawking tribe, though no attempt, so far as we know, has been made in the form of any overt act to execute these threats.”

In Southwest Missouri several of the ministers of the M. E. Church, South, were robbed and otherwise maltreated, amongst them Rev. W. H. Mobley, now gone to rest, and Rev. John Monroe, one of the oldest ministers of any Church in Missouri. These occurrences began to attract attention by their frequency and atrocity, and it was soon discovered that a systematic effort was being made to so annoy, and harass, and persecute the Southern Methodist ministers that they would have to abandon the State, and leave their churches and flocks to be seized and absorbed by others.

The following editorial in the St. Louis Christian Advocate, of July 25th, indicates but too plainly the condition of things then being forced upon us at this early period of the war:

“Traveling Preachers.—We are sad, sad indeed, when we think of the privations and sufferings of many of the traveling preachers of our Church in Missouri during these troublous times. The treatment some of them have received has been severe, not to say cruel. Bad men have sought to implicate them in measures with which they had nothing to do, and have them annoyed and distressed merely that private piques and personal animosities might be gratified. A number have literally been driven from their work, either by the malice of their enemies or by pressing want. Some, it may be, have acted imprudently—have become partisans in the strifes now going on, and thus, in part at least, were the authors of their own troubles. We have, at present, only a word to say. We hope that the preachers will remain at their work as generally as possible, that they will devote themselves to their work to the fullest possible extent, reproving, exhorting, comforting, etc., with all long suffering and kindness. In these times we must all suffer, more or less, and let us suffer with our people, and be sure that we suffer for righteousness’ sake and not as evil-doers. God rules, and they that serve him in spirit and in truth shall find him a very present help in time of trouble.”

The purpose to destroy the M. E. Church, South, in Missouri, was not only formed, but expressed also, and the Northern Methodist papers were then earnestly engaged in the effort to convince those in authority, and to fasten it upon the public mind, that but for the Southern Methodists treason and rebellion could not exist in Missouri. Such declarations as the following, taken from the Central Christian Advocate, of August 7, ’61, were of weekly publication in the most conspicuous places in their papers, and industriously circulated in the centres of military power:

“A Ruined Church.—An excellent brother, for the present a local elder of the M. E. Church, South, in Missouri, under date of July 27th, writes to us as follows: ‘I shall endeavor to advance the interests of the Central; I have no Christian fellowship with traitors and treason. Dr. M‘Anally has ruined the Church in this country, and I hope to see the time when a loyal Church will occupy this entire ground.’”

This, also, may be of a piece with the Gardner, the Miller and the Stearns stories, but it was none the less effective in its object on that account; and the license given to bad men to commit worse crimes by such publications was only equaled by the malicious motive that conceived it, and its influence upon the army, officers and men.

To further show what impressions were made at home and abroad upon the public mind by false publications, let the following item, taken from the Philadelphia Banner of the Covenant, of nearly the same date, be noted:

“Religion in Missouri.—The Baptists in Missouri, the largest denomination, are about unanimous in favor of secession. The M. E. Church, South, the same, with but few exceptions. The Presbyterians, the third in numbers, are about equally divided. The M. E. Church, North, the fourth in size, are unanimous and earnest in favor of the Union. Half of their membership and one-third of their ministers have been driven from the State.”

But for the exceptions in the M. E. Church, South, another paragraph in the same paper would reveal the author of the above information. It is as follows:

“Rev. Mr. Shumate, of Missouri, having been appointed to the chaplaincy of a regiment, asked leave of absence for a few days, made a flying visit to Indiana, and returned with two companies which he had recruited for the regiment.”

The papers were filled with statements designed to prejudice the authorities and the public against the old ministers of Missouri, which had much to do in bringing upon the ministry and Church the peculiar character of persecution which distinguishes the history of those times. Henceforth the Baptist ministers of the State will have to share largely in the persecutions and trials of their less fortunate Southern Methodist brethren, and not a few of the Presbyterian ministers were implicated in the same way, and had to suffer for being in Missouri.

Tho Missouri Annual Conference, M. E. Church, South, had been appointed to meet in Hannibal, Mo., in September, 1861, but on account of the general excitement in that portion of the State, and the deep prejudices created by false statements against the ministers of that Church throughout the State, it was deemed by them unsafe to attempt to hold the Conference session in Hannibal, and it was removed to Glasgow, on the Missouri river.

This Conference, by formal resolution, deprecated the calamities of civil war, and affirmed its loyalty to the Government of the United States and the Provisional Government of Missouri, attended to its regular minute business, with Rev. W. G. Caples presiding in the absence of a bishop, made the appointments of the preachers and separated to their several fields of labor, all with as much dignity, quietness and decorum as ever characterized a body of consecrated divines. Many of them met in Conference, worshiped and wept together for the last time. Before they could convene again a number of them had ceased at once to suffer and to live, and had gone to mingle with the blood-washed and white-robed beyond the flood.

The parting scenes of the preachers at this Conference were truly touching and solemn. Many of them seemed to be impressed that the trying scenes through which they were yet to pass would not only “try men’s souls,” but consign many of their bodies to the grave and send their souls “under the altar.” What names were on the “death roll” no one could divine, and yet the general fact was scarcely concealed from them, “that in every city bonds and afflictions awaited them.”

The St. Louis Annual Conference had been appointed to meet in Warrensburg, but for the same reasons that influenced the Missouri brethren to go to Glasgow the St. Louis Conference session was moved to Arrow Rock, Saline county. The Conference convened September 25, 1861. After organizing, with D. A. Leeper in the Chair and W. M. Prottsman Secretary, and transacting some little committee business, the Conference adjourned to Waverly, believing that more preachers would meet them there, and that they would be less likely to be disturbed in their deliberations. How much the report of a gunboat coming up the Missouri river, or a military transport with reinforcements for the army at Lexington, influenced this movement to Waverly, statements differ. A Methodist Conference stampeded by a rumor, and fleeing for very life across a whole county, scattering Bibles, hymn books and saddle-bags in their flight, was quite a novelty; and whether it occurred or not the report of it was enough for the malicious on the one hand and the mischievous on the other. The very thought of it was so novel and ridiculous that it inspired some youthful poet to immortalize the scene in song, and his failure was due rather to the absence of the genuine muse than to the existence of some basis and a persistent attempt at clever rhyme.

The author himself was spared the novelty and notoriety of the occasion only by the untimely interference of a small detachment of Colonel Nugent’s command, then posted at Kansas City.

I had announced on Sabbath to my congregation that I would start to Conference the next day, stating where it would be held, and about how long I expected to be absent.

On Monday morning early, in company with Mr. H. B. Conwell, a brother-in-law and a steward in the Church, I started for Conference. Just as we were passing out of the city on the main road to Independence we discovered a small squad of soldiers riding slowly about half a mile ahead of us. To avoid molestation and detention we took a by-road that would intersect the Westport and Independence road, on reaching which we discovered the soldiers still ahead of us, and began at once to conjecture some designs upon us. They had halted by a peach orchard and were helping themselves when we drove up. They very politely gave us of their peaches and requested us not to go ahead of them.

We traveled on behind them for some distance, when the officer in command stopped to talk with a farmer by the road side who knew me well, and asked when we drove up if I was on my way to Conference.

“What Conference?” asked the officer.

“The Conference of the M. E. Church, South, at Arrow Rock,” I replied, quite indifferently.

“What, that secesh concern? I’ll see to that. No such body of traitors can meet in this State.” And with the last words he spurred his horse up with his command and detailed four men to put us under arrest and guard us to Independence.

With “two behind and two before” we were ordered to “drive.” Thus we traveled until we reached Rock Creek, two miles from Independence, when an orderly was sent back who dismounted and ordered us to “halt.”

“I want you men to get out of this,” he said.

“For what,” I asked, mildly protesting against the proceedings.

“I want to send this buggy and horse back to camp,” he replied. “We have use for such things sometimes to ride our wives and children out a little.”

“Where is your camp?” was asked by Mr. Conwell, at the same time declaring that the horse and buggy belonged to him. And when informed that their camp was in Kansas City, at Col. Nugent’s headquarters, he asked—

“Then why can’t you send us back to Kansas City in the buggy, under guard if you like? We live in Kansas City.”

“No,” said he; “no use talking. If you are loyal men you can afford to walk ten miles for the sake of the Government; and if you are disloyal, we are not round hauling rebels. Get out!”

We did not wait for another invitation, but got out; and when we found that it was not us but our’s they wanted we felt somewhat relieved, took a luncheon to stay the appetite, and then the roof of the stage an hour after, which safely landed us back whence we started.

Mr. Conwell soon obtained his horse and buggy, and a message to me, that if I would stay at home and attend to my own business I would not be molested; but it would not be well for me to make another attempt to go to Conference.

The preachers in the city of St. Louis and in Southeast Missouri could not reach the Conference. The session was short, the minute business only receiving attention, and the presiding elders left to make the best disposition of the preachers in their respective districts that the circumstances would allow. The preachers separated to their several homes and fields of labor with about the same feelings and in about the same spirit that characterized the parting scenes at Glasgow two weeks before. Many of them to pass through scenes of trial, persecution, suffering, desolation, blood, and fire, and death, ere another Conference could be held.

Looking back now upon those perilous times, it is “marvelous in our eyes” how that these faithful men of God “endured hardness as good soldiers,” “not counting their lives dear unto themselves so that they might finish their course with joy, and the ministry which they had received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.” The history of the Church furnishes few such instances of moral heroism as these men exhibited, even in that early period of the war troubles; and when, afterward, the Baptists, Presbyterians and Catholic priests became our fellow-sufferers, and augmented our moral strength, the moral heroism was complete, sublime. The spirit of consecration to Christ and his cause was equal to the extremest perils of property, health and life.

CHAPTER X.
PILLAGE, PLUNDER, BLACK-MAIL—MURDER OF THE REV. J. FEWEL—3,050 NEW ENGLAND CLERGYMEN.

Indiscriminate Robbery, Pillage, Arson and Murder—Banditti and Revenge—Black-Mail and Espionage—Panic, Depopulation and Plunder—Demoralization—Virtue Sacrificed—Some who Would not Bow the Knee to Moloch—God had an Altar and Israel a Priest—Persecution, Arrest and Imprisonment of Revs. J. Ditzler, J. B. H. Wooldridge and D. J. Marquis—Many others Suffered in Like Manner—Rev. James Fewel Arrested, Cruelly Treated, and Died from the Effects of Inhuman Treatment, aged Seventy-two Years—Many such Victims—The True Office and Work of the Ministry—Its Spirit and Mission—Any Departure Unsettles the Public Mind—A Sad Day for the Country, Church and State—Relations and Dependencies—Three Thousand and Fifty New England Clergymen Before Congress—A Solemn Protest and its Effects—Then and Now—Ecclesiastical Bodies on the “State of the Country”—Ecclesiastical Bummers—A Settled Policy to Drive the Old Ministers out of the State—General Halleck’s Order.

The events of 1861 had a very decided moral effect upon the public mind. Several severe battles were fought in the State during the year, and the armies and armed bodies of men were largely recruited. Men who, at the first, had no thought of entering either army found themselves forced, by circumstances, to take up arms in what was, by construction, called self-defense—that is, by constant annoyance from armed men, by harassing fears, from threats and rumors of mischief to person and property, frequent arrests, pillage, plunder, etc., many a peaceable, quiet, orderly citizen was tormented into the necessity of taking up arms.

Armed bands appeared in every part of the State—some on one side and some on the other, some with authority and some without, but all subsisting as they could, and but few caring how. These bands, many of which were irresponsible brigands and marauders, usually “foraged” on the citizens whose sympathies were on the opposite side. They did not always stop at the necessary supplies for subsistence, but were robbers of houses, and many of them indiscriminate and general thieves, taking horses, mules, cattle, wagons, corn, hay, flour, bacon, fruit, blankets, quilts, feather beds, carpets, clothing of every kind, from elegant silks, furs and shawls to children’s shoes and toys; money, watches and jewelry were often taken from the persons of ladies. These highwaymen would often put the torch to dwelling houses at night and take a fiendish pleasure in seeing the awakened inmates make their escape or perish in the flames. Men were shot down by them on the highway, in the fields, the woods and at the doors of their houses as though life was of little value, and its appreciation was about equal to the effect of one bootless, midnight murder upon the great question of Union or division. At all events, after the battle of Lexington, September 21, 1861, and the rapid movements of armies which followed, human life was at the caprice of the armed banditti that multiplied so rapidly over the State.

Many defenseless citizens suffered such indignities and insults from them, in addition to the loss of all they had on earth, that they fled to the army for protection, or to the brush and banded together for revenge. Men, whose houses were destroyed, and whose wives, and daughters, and sisters had been worse than insulted by inhuman ruffians, swore the direst vengeance, and with unsparing recklessness scattered desolation and death in their tortuous track. For their deeds military commanders of posts would hold defenseless communities responsible, levy black-mail upon them, sometimes to the full value of their property, and institute a system of espionage that would put an eavesdropper under nearly every man’s window and a detective in every social circle and public assembly. Property and life were thus put at the mercy of unprincipled detectives and spies, selected often from the lowest and most unscrupulous classes of men and women. With such a system of military despotism no man’s life was safe, and indeed many men were accused, arrested, imprisoned, tried, convicted and put to death without ever knowing the charges against them.

It is not difficult to conjecture the effect of this state of things upon the public mind. To say that the people in some whole counties along the borders of Iowa and Kansas were seized with panic and consternation is not more than the truth. Men and families broke up, and taking what they could with convenience and safety fled for life and protection, some North, some South, some to Canada, some to California, some to the army, some to the large cities, and some to the brush. Some men ordered and some frightened their neighbors away, and then, to furnish them means to travel, bought their stock and lands at a nominal price—in some instances for a mere song. What a farmer, or mechanic, or merchant left behind in his flight was seized as lawful prey by the first that found it and appropriated to private use. Indeed, in one instance a whole county was depopulated outside of the towns, by military order, and devoted to pillage and plunder, and that the third county of the State in population and wealth.

It was even worse, if possible, in the track of large armies and in those parts of the country upon which they subsisted.

No part of the State suffered more than the Southwest, extending from a line that would strike Rolla, Sedalia and Fort Scott, in Kansas, to the State of Arkansas. Many parts of that section of the State were literally laid waste, and made a desolation by fire and sword. The breath of war, like the simoon, swept over the country, leaving a wide waste of desolation and death, which the benignity of peace and the hand of industry can not reclaim and rebuild for many long years.

To say that public sentiment in the State was demoralized by such scenes before the end of 1861 is an expression too tame to reflect adequately the real fact. The moral forces of society were paralyzed, social restraints were broken down, and even religious character was powerless either for protection or public good. The old standards of virtue, integrity, honesty and right principle were borne down and swept away, and men became reckless of the laws of God and man. In the fury and fire of partisan strife, and amid the familiar scenes of blood and death, men trampled upon right, crucified truth, murdered innocence, loved vengeance, despised virtue, abandoned principle, forgot their loves, left their dead unburied and their buried uncoffined, and hung upon the bloody war path like avenging furies.

In the midst of such fearful and wide-spread demoralization God preserved only a few thousand who would not bow the knee to the bloody Moloch. Israel was not without an altar, and the altar was not without an acceptable sacrifice; but the spirit of anti-Christ seemed the more embittered and enraged by that fact, and the persecution became more general and unrelenting throughout the State.

Many congregations of quiet worshipers were dispersed; many societies were broken up and scattered; many churches were burned, and many ministers arrested, silenced or banished—not in the cities so much as in the country.

Amongst the first arrests was that of the Rev. J. Ditzler.

In 1860 and ’61 Rev. J. Ditzler was stationed in Jefferson City, in charge of the M. E. Church, South. He was also chaplain to the lower House of the General Assembly.

After Governor Jackson and General Price had evacuated the State capital and the United States forces under General Lyon had taken possession, Mr. Ditzler remained as a non-combatant, supposing that he would not be molested. In this he was mistaken. He was not allowed long to remain in his quiet study at the Ferguson House or to attend to his pastoral duties. An “orderly,” with a guard of seven men, called on him at the Ferguson House, arrested and marched him through the city, and put him with others in an old meat (smoke) house. He was taunted and sneered at by his guard—the Dutch—through the cracks of the old log house. Mr. Ditzler talked back at them in German, Italian, Spanish, French, Greek and Hebrew, quoting freely from Schiller, Goethe and other German authors of note, for his own relief and their amusement, until he was reported to Col. Boernstein, Post Commander, and by him unconditionally released, solely upon literary grounds. No charges were preferred against him, nor could he ever find out why he was imprisoned. His father fought at Tippecanoe, in 1812, and his grandfather at Valley Forge, under Washington, and this treatment was not borne without some little indignation.

Brigadier-General Brown succeeded Col. Boernstein, and Mr. Ditzler was apprised of the purpose to re-arrest him. He was advised by his friends to flee, and accordingly took the train late Saturday night for St. Louis; and at noon the next day (Sabbath) a posse of ten armed soldiers entered his church to arrest him, but he was gone. They followed him to St. Louis only to find that he had taken a train on the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad and made his escape.

The Rev. J. B. H. Wooldridge, the Rev. D. J. Marquis, and other ministers, were arrested and imprisoned about the same time, and without cause. Indeed, it became so common for ministers to be arrested that by the last of the year 1861 it ceased to be a matter of surprise to any. The only novelty was in finding a minister out of the army who had not been arrested by one party or the other, and the most that could be hoped was that life and liberty to non-political and non-juring ministers would be exceptional.

If he lived out of the track of large armies, he would not escape the marauding bands; and if his home should be so secluded and retired that he could not be reached by the public highway, or easily found, there were always unprincipled men in every neighborhood who, to seek revenge, gain favor with the authorities, or to make an opportunity to pillage and plunder from the sheer love of it, would go to the nearest military post, inform on the quiet “parson,” and volunteer their services to guide the ruffian soldiers to the home of the innocent victim. From such causes many an innocent man suffered both in property and person.

When ministers of the gospel happened to fall into the hands of regular army officers or those lawless brigands they were treated with a severity and cruelty that was not often visited upon others, and which indicated with alarming certainty the policy that would be pursued toward the enemies of all unrighteousness.

Amongst the many instances of cruelty to ministers of the gospel who had committed no offense whatever against the peace and dignity of the State, it is sufficient here to mention the case of the Rev. James Fewel.

This venerable servant of the regular Baptist Church, who had lived and labored in Henry county, Mo., for many years—known, respected and honored as a peaceable, upright, good and useful citizen—was found and arrested near his own residence and taken off as a political prisoner to Sedalia, thence to St. Louis, where he lay in prison more than a month, and until death came to his relief.

His death was due solely to the cruel treatment he received from his captors and persecutors. He had never taken up arms against his country, had never committed a crime of any sort—not even what irresponsible persons call treason—and had never been engaged in lawless acts of any kind; but, then, he was a minister of the gospel, and the parties who arrested him, and those who afterward guarded him, had commiseration neither for his profession nor gray hairs. He lacked only three days of being seventy-two years old when he died.

He was arrested by Capt. Foster’s company of Col. Hubbard’s regiment, Missouri State Militia, in the latter part of December, 1861, near his own residence, in Henry county. The weather was cold, and when the old man found that he would be taken off he begged permission to go to his house for more and warmer clothing. This was refused him. He then asked the natural privilege of sending a message to his aged companion, to inform her of his condition and obtain at least a blanket to protect him from the weather. Even this poor boon was denied the old man, and he was torn from his home and hurried away to Sedalia. The weather turned bitterly cold, and the freezing December blasts swept mercilessly across the extended prairie the livelong night, while this old man was kept in an open railroad car, shelterless, bedless, blanketless and comfortless. His very prayers and tears seemed to freeze on the chilly night air as he thought of home and his long years spent in the service of God for the good of his race. But he had to suffer this cruel treatment and trust the God of Elijah to prepare him for what was still in store for him. The morrow came, and with it still further and severer trials. The weather did not moderate, neither did the severity of his persecutors. With others he was placed in a common stock car and sent to St. Louis. With no better protection, no better accommodations, than the horned beasts who had been temporarily displaced by them, and even with insufficient supplies of food, they were kept traveling and stopping all that day and night. Chilled through and through, hungry and half dead, this old man reached St. Louis and was hurried off to the military prison, in which he soon fell a victim to pneumonia, and lingered—without accusation, without trial, and without even permission to be seen by his friends—until February 1, 1862, when death came to his release and found him ready to “depart and be with Christ, which was far better.”

If any charges were ever preferred against him they never came to light.

This is only one of the many instances of cruelty that occurred during the latter part of this year, in which ministers of the gospel were persecuted and imprisoned, and some of them died of their treatment, not because they had been in rebellion, or because they were trying to save the Union, but because they were ministers trying to save the souls of men.

We have been accustomed to look upon ministers of the gospel as the divinely commissioned ambassadors of Heaven, sent forth with a dispensation of the gospel of peace, preaching “Jesus and the resurrection,” and “praying men in Christ’s stead to be reconciled to God;” that their one work was to preach the gospel, build churches, devise ways and means for the furtherance of the kingdom of grace, project schemes for the enlargement of the borders of Zion and for the diffusion of the power and spirit of Christianity; to plant the gospel standard where it is not, and build up the waste places; to do the most possible good to the greatest number, and to do this work of love in the spirit of the divine Master, by “being an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity,” “by pureness, by knowledge, by long suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned.” In this way and in this spirit to spread “scriptural holiness over these lands,” and promote “peace on earth and good will to men.” These ideas of the spirit and work of the gospel ministry have become so deeply rooted in the hearts of men, and so thoroughly interwoven with their thoughts, that any departure from that work as thus understood creates surprise, suspicion and distrust in the public mind.

When ecclesiastical bodies assemble it is assumed that they meet to deliberate upon the legitimate interests of the Church of Jesus Christ—how that form of it committed to them may be made more efficient in bringing men to a saving knowledge of Christ Jesus, the Head of the Church, and how their plans and polity may be improved and vitalized.

It was a sad day for this country when the gospel ministry first departed from this work and began to legislate upon questions purely secular and political; and if our free government should ever be broken up and our free institutions destroyed—if our religious liberties should ever pass away, and a political and ecclesiastical despotism be established in this land—the philosophic historian of the future, whose melancholy task it will be to chronicle the “decline and fall” of the greatest republic of the world, will linger with painful interest upon that sad event as the beginning of the catastrophe.

The separate but mutually dependent relations of Church and State, the support of the Church and her ministry by the voluntary contributions of the people, liberty of thought and speech, the freedom of worship and the rights of conscience, are almost peculiar to our country and form of government. In these things our institutions are distinct from, and in contrast with, the Church establishments and ecclesiastical hierarchies of Europe and Asia.

They constitute the soul and centre of our free Republican government. The very genius of our institutions resides in them, and the ægis of liberty shields and protects them. The State may not restrict or control them, and the Church dare not intermeddle with the affairs of State.

Tho two may exist together, but can never coalesce. They must be distinct and separate in their laws, their government, their administration, their spirit, their agencies and their objects, while they have the same subjects. So long have Church and State existed separately in this country, and so widely different in their spirit, agencies and objects, that it is both natural and philosophical for the public mind to be disturbed and alarmed by every attempt of the one to intermeddle with the legitimate affairs of the other.

Few events in the history of this country caused greater alarm for our peace and safety in the minds of reflecting men than the appearance before the Congress of the United States of three thousand and fifty clergymen of New England in the following protest against the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, in 1854:

“To the Honorable, the Senate and House of Representatives, in Congress assembled:

“The undersigned, clergymen of different religious denominations in New England, hereby, in the name of Almighty God and in his presence, do solemnly protest against the passage of what is known as the Nebraska bill, or any repeal or modification of the existing legal prohibitions of slavery in that part of our national domain which it is proposed to organize into the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas. We protest against it as a great moral wrong, as a breach of faith eminently unjust to the moral principles of the community, and subversive of all confidence in national engagements; as a measure full of danger to the peace and even the existence of our beloved Union, and exposing us to the righteous judgments of the Almighty: and your protestants, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

“Boston, Massachusetts, March 1, 1854.”

This pretentious protest—“in the name of Almighty God”—was the first open and bold attempt of the clergy in this country to influence national legislation; and while Messrs. Mason, Douglass and others in the United States Senate administered to these officious clergymen a severe rebuke for thus intermeddling with the affairs of the National Government, good men were justly alarmed for the result, and the whole country was appalled by this bold advance of the Church toward the control of the affairs of the State.

Then the finest model of ecclesiastical polity in the world trembled and the wisest frame work of civil government felt the shock. Then the work of our fathers—combining the wisdom of the ages and the religion of the gospel in one grand structure of civil and religious liberty—the glory of Washington, the pride of every American, the dread of tyrants and the admiration of the world, began to reel upon its throne and totter to its fall. Then the deadly virus was injected, and the veins and arteries of national life carried the poison to every part of the body politic, and from that day forth “death was in the pot.” Then the axe was laid at the root of the fair tree of liberty, whose roots had been fastened deep in the national heart, and whose branches already spread over a continent and toward heaven, under which the oppressed of every nation found shelter, and the down-trodden of every clime sought repose, peace, liberty and life. Then the religious and political waters mingled, and the whole stream of national life was corrupted and hastened on in turbulent commotion to the “blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke” of ’61.

Ministers contented themselves then with a firm and solemn protest; they afterward made imperious demands. They sought then to prevent the enactment of “a measure full of danger to the peace and even the existence of the Union;” they afterward demanded, in the name of Almighty God, the enactment of laws, the conduct of the war, the election of men to office, the success of party measures, manhood suffrage, and any other purely political matter, as though the union of Church and State was an accomplished fact and they were the constituted vice-regents to supervise and control the legislation of the country.

At the beginning of the war, and during its continuance, when ecclesiastical bodies met, about the gravest matter before them for deliberation was the “State of the Country,” and how they could deliver themselves so as to effect in any particular direction either the course of Congress, political elections or the movement of armies. This was true in an eminent degree of the M. E. Church, the Presbyterian Church (Old and New School), Congregational, Unitarian, and some Baptist associations of the Northern and Eastern States.

Nor wore these deliverances confined to the larger representative Bodies of these Churches, but the primary church courts, ministers’ associations, conventions and Conferences made themselves conspicuous by such unwise interference with matters purely secular and political.

Secret conclaves were held in Missouri by ministers and others professing to be disciples of Christ, in which plans were devised and projected to persecute, by proscription, robbery, arrests, imprisonment and confiscation, if not by means still severer, ministers of the gospel in this State who would not stultify themselves nor disgrace their profession by falling in with them and joining the hue and cry for blood and death.

Consultations were had and schemes devised by which the military authorities could be used to oppress and persecute ministers whose loyalty was questioned by these politico-ecclesiastics, and whose only crime was that they possessed property and stood high in the confidence of the people whom they had served faithfully for many years.

Revolutions never go backward, and it was a part of the forward movement of these scheming adventurers who followed the army to keep out of danger, and who served post and field commanders as volunteer aids for the uses they could make of them in taking possession of churches, persecuting and running off ministers and foisting another ministry on the people.

It was a settled purpose to drive the old ministers out of the State. Those who had planted the Church and grown up with her institutions, and whose long and useful lives were identified with the early and heroic history of the Church, had now to give place to newcomers, whom the people did not want, or yield to the pressure of the new order of things. These ecclesiastical bummers had influence at military headquarters, and could use the officers of the army to accomplish their purpose; and it was doubtless through their influence that so many orders were issued from the Headquarters of the Department of Missouri bearing directly upon ministers as a class. Not enough to affect them as citizens in common with other citizens, but as ministers.

The following order may suitably close this chapter:

When Major-General Halleck was in command of the Department of Missouri he caused to be issued an Order, under date of February 3, 1862, called “General Orders No. 29,” requiring the “President, Professors, Curators and all other officers of the University of Missouri to take and subscribe the oath of allegiance prescribed by the sixth article of the State Ordinance of October 16, 1861,” or failing to do so within thirty days their offices will be considered vacant, and “in order that its funds should not be used to teach treason or to instruct traitors, the authorities of the University should expel from its walls all persons who, by word or deed, assist or abet treason.”

The offices of railroad companies, Government contractors, agents, clerks and Government employees, and all military officers were required to take either the same oath or the one prescribed by an act of Congress, approved August 6, 1861.

This long military order closes as follows:

“V. It is recommended that all clergymen, professors and teachers, and all officers of public and private institutions for education, benevolence, business and trade, and who are in favor of the perpetuation of the Union, voluntarily to subscribe and file the oath of allegiance prescribed by the State Ordinance in order that their patriotism may be made known and recognized, and that they may be distinguished from those who wish to encourage rebellion and prevent the Government from restoring peace and prosperity to this city and State.”

Or, in other words, “mark them that company not with us.”

CHAPTER XI.
SEIZURE OF CHURCHES—CHURCHES IN KANSAS CITY AND INDEPENDENCE.

Church Property—Can the War Revive or Create Titles—Church Property on the Border—Maysville, Kentucky—Legal Rights of Property—Attainder—Honest Inquiry—Eighth Commandment—The Truth of History—Church in Kansas City—North Methodists—Faithful Ladies—What was Said at the Time—Some who were with us Went out from us—Their loss our gain—Church in Independence—How they Got it and Why they Kept it—The Former Pastor—Why he left—Battle of Independence—“Black Thursday”—A Rev. James Lee—How he got Possession of the Church—Rev. Mr. DeMott—How he got Possession of the Parsonage—A Poor Widow Turned Out by Military Order—Strategy—Rev. M. M. Pugh Demands the Property—Why Refused—Recourse to the Civil Courts—Statement of the Case by Counsel—Side Scenes—Extracts from the St. Louis Advocate—This Property in the Statistics of Northern Methodism—Action of the Missouri and Arkansas Conferences, M. E. Church, on the Subject—Reflections.

The fact has been stated elsewhere that the division of the Methodist Church in 1844 extinguished all right and title to the Church property in this State that inhered in the M. E. Church, North. After the Missouri Conference voted, in the fall of 1845, to adhere South, and by that act became an integral part of the M. E. Church, South, according to the “Plan of Separation,” the other wing of the Church became, in fact and in law, dispossessed of all the Church property in the State. By the decree of the Church and of the civil courts the right and title of the M. E. Church, North, to all species of Church property was so effectually extinguished that no claim was ever set up and no effort made by that Church to gain possession of any church, parsonage, or other property in this State, from the vote of the Missouri Conference in 1845 to the beginning of the war in 1861. That Church accepted the situation, acquiesced in the decision, and yielded her claims to the decree of Missouri Methodism.

If any claim was ever set up to any species or piece of property, or any suit in any civil court was ever instituted to gain possession of any property during this period of seventeen years, the author is to this day ignorant of the fact. A residence in the State of nearly twenty years has failed to bring the fact to his knowledge. It is, therefore, of no minor significance that these facts stand in the records of history, and must enter largely into the consideration of subsequent facts now to be put on record. Let them be duly considered and they will color with deepest significance the acts and doings of that Church during the war.

It may be that the decision of the Church in Missouri was too nearly unanimous, and the force of public opinion was too strong in its endorsement of the Plan of Separation and the vote of the Conference; and, then, it may be that the few scattered preachers and members whose sympathies were with the Church, North, were in themselves too feeble at any given point, or had the sense of justice and right too strong at every point, to encourage any attempt to gain possession of property that rightfully belonged to others. If their complete acquiescence can not be accounted for upon either of the above hypotheses, then it rests with the fact that in other States the rights of property would be settled by the civil courts; and in Missouri they preferred to await the decision of courts in those States where the Northern claimants would not be put at such great disadvantage.

While the property question was in an unsettled state several churches along the border of Kentucky and Virginia were put through the sharpest litigation.

Prior to the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the great “Church Property Case,” appeals were made to the civil courts in several places to decide the rights of property, of which that for the Church in Maysville, Ky., was among the earlier and most noted.

In this Church, out of a membership of two hundred and fifty-six, ninety-seven voted to adhere North. This minority had a preacher sent to them from Ohio and sued for possession of the Church property. The case was carried to the State Court of Appeals, and that distinguished jurist, Chief Justice Marshall, in decreeing that the property rightfully belonged to the M. E. Church, South, among other things, said:

“There are now two distinct Churches in the place of the M. E. Church of the United States—the one the M. E. Church, North, the other the M. E. Church, South—these two differing from the original and from each other only in locality and extent; each possessing in its locality the entire jurisdiction of the original Church.”

Wherever the right of property was referred in any given locality to the civil courts the decision was the same as that above, and the Northern Methodists of Missouri acquiesced in the extinguishment of their right to all the property formerly owned by the original Church, and its legal confirmation to the M. E. Church, South.

Now, it may well and significantly be inquired how the civil war of 1861 could revive the title to property that had been extinguished, in fact and in law, by the will of its legal owners in 1845? Laws may be repealed, altered and amended, but not so as to affect the previous rights of property. Nothing is more sacredly guarded by civil legislation than the rights of property. Laws may change, but justice and equity remain the same; and courts of equity not unfrequently pronounce upon the equity of legislation in respect to the rights of property. Hence the strongest rights are those founded both in law and equity.

If the rights of property were revived by the civil war it must have been done in one of two ways: either by legislation or attainder. It was never claimed to have been revived by legislation, which, to say the least, was a doubtful expedient, and conferred a doubtful right, if any at all. It could not have been done by attainting the blood of the lawful property holders, except by due process of law and for cause. This was never even attempted.

Then we fall back upon the original inquiry, how the civil war revived property rights that had been extinguished nearly twenty years? What virtue in armies, in battles, in fire or blood to resuscitate extinguished titles? What virtue in martial law, in military occupation and orders, or in drum-head courts-martial, to set aside the legal and moral rights of one Church and set up the legal claims of another Church? Was it the right of might, and the might of arms? Could bullets and bayonets set aside or substitute warranty deeds? How could the battle of Springfield, fought August 10, 1861, affect the title of Church property in Springfield secured by deed of conveyance, dated October 11, 1856, to certain gentlemen as trustees of the M. E. Church, South, to hold in trust for the uses of said Church? Or how could the battles of Boonville or Lexington destroy the rights of property in those cities which inhered in the members of the M. E. Church, South?

If the ministers and members of the M. E. Church sought, under cover of military orders and with the support of bayonets, to gain possession of the property of others, was it not prima facie evidence that their claims would not be recognized in law or equity? and was it not a confession to the mean purpose of obtaining by force that to which they had no shadow of right in law? If they obtained Church property by unfair and clandestine means, under the covert sanction of the military authorities, wherein do they differ from others who break the eighth commandment? Can military orders suspend Divine commands and confer a moral right to take possession and appropriate the property of others? Let these questions, and all others of a kindred nature which the curious casuist may be disposed to ask, be answered in the light of the foregoing and the forthcoming facts. Put that and this, then and now, together, and let the conscientious verdict of an enlightened public judge between us.

The truth of history requires a record now, and a detailed statement of historical facts, that for the sake of common honesty, the plainest equity, the humblest scale of justice, and the lowest stages of our common Christianity, should forever be buried with the dead past and lie forgotten “as a dream when one awaketh.” But truth and justice demand many things which a common charity, and even a common decency, would consign to oblivion. A diluted charity should never make the pen hesitate in the presence of important, though unpalatable, truths. History must be worthy of its theme, and the pen must be equal to the utmost demands of the history. “Naught extenuate, and naught set down in malice.”

In 1862 and ’63 there was a movement—so general over the State that the conviction that it was concerted and simultaneous can not be escaped—to seize, possess and hold for their own use, by the Northern Methodists, the churches belonging to the M. E. Church, South. Persistent efforts for this purpose were made in almost every county in the State; and if the whole history could be brought to light it would be seen that there was held, at some place or places, a secret conclave of ministers in which the purpose and the plan were agreed upon. It will not be necessary to specify the particulars of every case of church seizure, but the following more prominent cases will be sufficient: