Martyrdom in Missouri, Volume 1 (of 2)

by W. M. Leftwich

MEMORIAL OF THE HOLSTON CONFERENCE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH.

“To the Bishops and Members of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, at Chicago, Ills., May, 1868:

“The undersigned were appointed a committee at the session of the Holston Conference of the M. E. Church, South, held at Cleveland, East Tennessee, in October last, to memorialize your reverend body, and to set forth distinctly the wrongs which we are suffering at the hands of agents of the M. E. Church within our bounds; and also to entreat you to devise some means by which an end may be made to these outrages, for the honor of Methodism and for the sake of our common Christianity.

“Our churches have been seized by ministers and members of the M. E. Church, and are still held and used by them as houses of worship.

“To give the semblance of legality to these acts and of right to this property, trustees have been appointed by the authorities of the M. E. Church; and these churches are annually reported by your ministers in their Conference statistics.

“From these churches our ministers are either excluded and driven, or allowed only a joint occupancy with your ministers. From some of them our ministers in their regular rounds of district and circuit work are excluded by locks and bars, or by armed men meeting them at the doors; from others they are driven by mobs, and threatened with death should they attempt a return; at one a presiding elder and a preacher in charge of the circuit, at a quarterly meeting appointment, were arrested and marched fifteen miles amidst indignities and insults; at another, an aged and godly minister was ridden upon a rail; at another, the same man found at the door bundles of rods and nails, and also a written notice prohibiting him from preaching at the risk of torture; at another, a notice was handed to our preacher, signed by a class leader in the M. E. Church, in which was the following language: ‘If you come back here again we will handle you;’ and, true to the threat, on a subsequent round, not two miles from the place, this worthy minister, as he was passing to his appointment on the second Sabbath in February last, was taken from his horse, struck a severe blow upon the head, blindfolded, tied to a tree, scourged to laceration, and then ordered to lie with his face to the ground until his scourgers should withdraw, with the threat of death for disobedience. All this he was told, too, was for traveling that circuit and preaching the gospel as a Southern Methodist preacher; from another, the children and teachers of our Sabbath School were ejected while in session by a company of men, who were led by a minister of the M. E. Church.

“Our parsonages, also, have been seized and occupied by ministers of the M. E. Church, no rent having been paid to us for their use.

“Thirty-six hundred dollars, appropriated upon our application to the United States Government for damages done to our church at Knoxville during the war, were, by some sleight-of-hand movement, passed into the hands of a minister of the M. E. Church. This money is still, held from us.

“In other cases, school and church property of our’s on which debts were resting has been forced upon the market by agents in your interests, and thereby wrested from our poverty and added to your abundance.

“Members of the M. E. Church constitute, in part, the mobs that insult and maltreat our preachers, while ministers of the same Church, by words and acts, either countenance or encourage our persecutors. In no instance, so far as we are advised, has any one for such conduct been arraigned, or censured even, by those administering the discipline of your Church.

“We could specify the name of each of these churches, and the locality, were it necessary, in which our ministers and people are either permitted sometimes to worship, or from which they are excluded and driven by locks, threats, mobs and bloody persecutions. Their names are in our possession, and at your disposal. About one hundred church edifices are held in one or another of these ways, with a value of not less than seventy-five thousand dollars.

“Of this property, it should be added, some was deeded to the M. E. Church before 1844, and the rest, since that time, to the M. E. Church, South. That it is all claimed by the M. E. Church in East Tennessee we suppose to be true, or it would not be reported and received in their Annual Conference statistics. That it belongs to the M. E. Church, South, we suppose also to be true, inasmuch as all deeds since 1844 have been made to us, and all the remainder were granted to us by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Church suit; unless the ground be assumed by your reverend body that when Lee surrendered to Grant the M. E. Church, South, surrendered also to the M. E. Church all her property rights. Surely if the United States Government does not confiscate the property of those who are called rebels, the M. E. Church, in her highest legislative assembly, will hardly set a precedent by claiming the property of their Southern brethren.

“But it may, perhaps, be said that we have been sinners, rebels, traitors, touching our civil and political relations to the Government. If this be so, we are unable to comprehend by what authority we are to be punished by the M. E. Church, since for our moral obliquities we are responsible alone to God, and for our political crimes only to the United States Government.

“It may also be asked, what jurisdiction has your General Conference over these deeds of injustice? No civil jurisdiction, we are aware; but your reverend body does possess a moral power of such weight that, if brought to bear in East Tennessee, there would be an end to these acts of oppression and cruelty. A word of disapproval, even, from your Board of Bishops, or the publication in your Church papers of some of the above cited facts, with editorial condemnation, would have done much to mitigate, if not entirely to remove, the cause of our complaints; but we have neither heard the one nor seen the other. Why this has not been done is believed by us to be a want of knowledge of these facts, of which we now put you in possession. Familiar as we are with the condition of things in East Tennessee, and with the workings of the two Methodisms there, we are satisfied that your body could, by judicious action, remove most, if not all, of the causes which now occasion strife, degrade Methodism, and scandalize our holy religion. We, therefore, ask—

“1st. That you will ascertain the grounds upon which the M. E. Church claims and holds the property in church buildings and parsonages within her bonds in East Tennessee, as reported in her Holston Mission Conference statistics.

“2d. If in the investigation any property so reported shall be adjudged by you to belong of right to the M. E. Church, South, that you will designate what that property is, and where; and also instruct your ministers and people to relinquish their claims upon the same, repossess us, and leave us in the undisturbed occupancy thereof.

“3d. Inasmuch as your words of wisdom and of justice will be words of power, that you earnestly advise all your ministers laboring in this field to abstain from every word and act the tendency of which would be the subversion of good order and peace in the communities in which they move.

“In conclusion, allow us to add, that in presenting this memorial to your reverend body we are moved thereto by no other spirit than that of ardent desire to promote the interests of our common Redeemer by ‘spreading scriptural holiness over these lands.’

“E. E. Wiley,

“W. G. E. Cunnyngham,

“Wm. Robeson,

“B. Arbogast,

“C. Long,

“J. M. McTeer,

“George Stewart,

“Members of the Holston Conference of the M. E. Church, South.

“April, 1868.”

This memorial, so respectful and dignified, and upon so grave a matter, was referred, without being read or printed, to a select committee of seven. And though presented and referred early in the session, no further notice was taken of the it, and the committee did not bring in a report until the very last day of the session and just before the final adjournment. The report of the select committee was read amid great confusion, and passed without debate by a very small vote, but few of the members of the General Conference feeling interested enough either to listen or vote.

The Daily Advocate, of June 3, 1868, contains the following account of the affair, with the report of the special committee as adopted:

“The report of the committee on the memorial of the Holston Conference was presented and read, and, on motion, adopted.

“The report as adopted, is as follows:

“Your committee have had before them a memorial from a committee of seven appointed by the Holston Conference, of the M. E. Church, South, stating that our ministers and people within that region have seized the churches and parsonages belonging to said Church, South, and maltreated their ministers. The statements of the paper are all indefinite, both as to places, times and persons, and no one has appeared to explain or defend the charges. On the contrary, we have also before us, referred to our consideration, numerous affidavits from ministers and members of our Church, in various parts of this country, evidently designed to refute any charges that might be presented by this committee of seven. It seems from these papers that as soon as the federal power was re-established in East Tennessee whole congregations came over to the M. E. Church, bringing with them their churches and parsonages, that they might continue to use them for worship. It also seems that much of the property in question is deeded to the M. E. Church, it being so held before the secession of the Church, South. We have no proof that any in contest is held otherwise. The General Conference possesses no power, if it would, to divest the occupants of this property of the use or ownership of it, paid for by their means, and would be guilty of great impropriety in interfering at all at this time when test cases are already before the courts. If, however, we should proceed so to do, with the evidence before us largely ex parte, it is true, but all that, we have, the presentation of the memorialists can not be sustained. By personal examinations we have endeavored in vain to ascertain what foundation there is for the affirmation that our ministers and people encourage violence toward the ministers of the M. E. Church, South. We believe and trust there is no foundation for the charge, for if true, it could but meet our unqualified disapprobation. Our own ministers and people in the South suffer severely in this way, and sometimes, we apprehend, at the hands of our Southern brethren, but neither the spirit of our Master, the genius of our people, nor our denominational interest could allow us to approbate in any parties the practice. We are glad to know that our brethren laboring in that region had their attention early called to these matters, and we content ourself with repeating the sentiments of their address to the people. It was in effect as published in the Knoxville Whig, by authority of at least four presiding elders; and several other members of the Holston Conference, as well as often stated from our pulpits in the South, and through our Church papers in the North, that violence toward the preachers and people of the Church, South, is unwise, unchristian and dangerous. Our preachers and people in the South, so far as we are apprised and believe, have all and ever held this position on the subject. We recommend the following:

“Resolved, That all the papers connected with this matter be referred to the Holston Conference, believing as we do that this Conference, in the future as in the past, will be careful to do justly, and, as much as lieth in them, to live peaceably with all men.

“Your committee have also had before them a letter, published in various Southern journals, and signed by S. F. Waldro, being dated from Chicago, and presuming to state the objects and intentions of the Methodist Episcopal Conference in the prosecution of its Southern work. We are also informed that several similar letters have been published in the South. No effort that we have been able to make has enabled us to discover any such person in this city. Certainly no such person has a right to speak in our behalf or declare our purposes, much less does he declare them correctly. We recommend that the paper be dismissed as anonymous and unworthy of our further consideration.

“L. Hitchcock, Chairman.

“J. M. Reid, Secretary.”

The War Department at Washington issued an order similar to the “Stanton-Ames Order,” in the interests of the “American Baptist Home Mission Society,” requiring all houses of worship belonging to the Baptists in the military departments of the South, in which a loyal minister did not officiate, to be turned over to the agents or officers of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, and ordering Government transportation and subsistence to be furnished such agents and their clerks. Dated Jan. 14, 1864.

This was a new mode of warfare, and will ever stand upon the historic page as humiliating to enlightened Christian sentiment, as it is forever damaging to the spirit and genius of American institutions and the true interests of Messiah’s kingdom on earth.

While American citizens are generally unwilling to be instructed in the higher civil and religious interests of this country by foreigners, yet it will not be denied that many of the finest, shrewdest and wisest journalists of the country are from foreign lands.

As a befitting close to this part of the subject, and a wise warning to the politico-religious fanatics who think little of the effect of their reckless disregard of the sacred relations of Church and State, an extract from the St. Louis Anzeiger, a German paper of much character and influence, will be appropriate.

It is upon the general subject of the Administration running the Churches, as developed in the order from the War Department creating Bishop Ames Bishop of a Military Department, and authorizing him to take possession of the Methodist churches of Missouri, Tennessee and the Gulf States. It says:

“Here we have, in optima forma, the commencement of Federal interference with religious affairs; and this interference occurs in cities and districts where war has ceased, and even in States, like Missouri, which have never joined the secession movement.

“Doubtless the Federal Government has the right to exercise the utmost rigor of the law against rebel clergymen, as well as against all other criminal citizens; nay, it may oven close churches in districts under military law when these churches are abused for political purposes; but this is the utmost limit to which military power may go. Every step beyond this is an arbitrary attack upon the constitutionally guaranteed right of religious freedom, and upon the fundamental law of the American Republican Government—separation of Church and State. The violation of the Constitution committed in the appointment of a Military Bishop—one would be forced to laugh if the affair were not so serious in principle—is so much the more outrageous and wicked, as it is attempted in States which, like Missouri, have never separated from the Union, and in which all the departments of civil administration are in regular activity.

“This order of the War Department is the commencement of State and Federal interference in the affairs of the Churches. It is not a single military suspension or banishment order, which might be exceptional and for a temporary purpose. It is not the act of a General who, sword in hand, commands the priest to pray for him, as we read of in times long ago. It is far more. It is an administrative decree of the Federal Government, appropriating Church property, regulating Church communities, and installing Bishops. A similar order has been issued for the Baptist Church of the South.

“If this is the commencement, where will the end be? The pretense that it is merely a proceeding against disloyal clergymen will deceive nobody. Bad actions have never wanted good pretenses. With the same right with which the Secretary of War makes Bishop Ames chief of a Church in the South he may also interfere in the affairs of all other Churches, or even dissolve any Church at pleasure. We ask again, Where is the end to be? and what principle of American constitutional law will remain if freedom of religion and of conscience is at the mercy of any commander of a military post?”

CHAPTER XV.
MARTYRDOM—REVS. J. M. PROCTOR, M. ARRINGTON, J. M’GLOTHLIN AND JAMES PENN.

Philosophy of Martyrdom—Living Martyrs—Names Made Immortal by Persecution—Martyrs of Missouri—Difference Between Martyrs for the Testimony of Jesus, only Questions of Time and Place—The Spirit the Same Everywhere—Causes—Explanatory Remarks—Rev. James M. Proctor Arrested Coming out of the Pulpit—Connection with the M. E. Church, South, his only Offense—Kept in Prison for Weeks, then Released—Rev. Marcus Arrington—Chaplain—Insulted—Kept in Alton Prison—Rev. John McGlothlin—Petty Persecution and Tyranny—Rev. James Penn—Meeting Broken Up—Driven from His own Churches by a Northern Methodist Preacher Leading an Armed Mob—Persecution—Prayer.

Men die, but truth is immortal. The workmen are buried, but the work goes on. Institutions pass away, but the principles of which they were the incarnation live forever. The Way, the Truth and the Life “was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”

Incarnate Innocence was “despised and rejected of men.” The Manger, the Garden, the Cross, are but different aspects of the life and light of men, and illustrate the history of the “Man of Sorrows.” The disciple is not above his Lord, nor the servant better than his Master, and if such things were done in the green tree, what hope is there for the dry?

There are many living martyrs. Death is not necessary condition of martyrdom. The souls of man martyrs have not yet reached their resting place “under the altar.” They have met the conditions of martyrdom in the garden of agony without reaching the cross. Some men, who still live, have suffered more for Christ and his Church than many who have ended their sufferings with their lives. Not the nature but the cause of suffering imparts to it the moral quality and the virtues of martyrdom. “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Many suffer and die, but not “for righteousness’ sake,” and very many “are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” who still live. The grave does not limit the roll of martyrs. Robinson and Headlee, and Glanville and Wollard may have suffered less for righteousness’ sake than Cleavland, Breeding, M‘Anally, Penn, Duvall, Spencer, Rush and many others who still live to bear witness to the truth. True, it is something to sacrifice life for a principle and a cause—to seal the testimony with the blood. Moral heroism can reach no higher form, nor express itself in a more exalted type. Its purest fire goes out and its sublimest consecration culminates in the life blood of the martyr. Many a noble spirit has been offered up in the sacrifice and service of faith, and, like Isaac, bound hand and foot upon the altar, with the fatal knife glittering and gleaming in the upraised hand of the executioner, yet has been rescued by the interposing voice, when perfect faith stood vindicated in the complete consecration. “Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works when he had offered Isaac, his son, upon the altar?” As much so as if the knife had been driven to his heart and the fires had consumed his body. Yet Abraham’s faith was vindicated by his works, and Isaac lived to perpetuate the story of his offering. St. Paul says: “For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” And again: “I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.” He was a living martyr, and many Apostles and righteous men have, like him, been “killed all the day long” and “die daily.”

Historical facts in support of the position taken are neither wanting nor few, and the roll of living and dead martyrs in Missouri, now to be recorded in these pages, will vindicate the position and illustrate the annals of religious persecution with a chapter but little removed from the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, and the persecutions of the Vaudois Christians and Waldenses under Francis I., Henry II., Catherine De Medicis and other notable instruments of power in France, which culminated in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Many names have been given a fame as enduring as the virtues they were made to illustrate, by the force and fire and fact of persecution, which otherwise would have perished from the earth. And the cause for which they were persecuted has been given a sanctity in the hearts and a power over the lives of men which otherwise it could not have received. A name however obscure, and a character however humble, become illustrious despite of history when associated with persecution, suffering and death, for a principle and a cause which invest humanity with the purer and higher types of intellectual, moral and religious life. Around such names the divinest principles crystallize, and by such characters the deepest and purest fountains of humanity are touched. Hampden, and Russell, and Howard, and Sidney, and Eliot, and Brainard, and Wilberforce, and Martin, and others who sacrificed all for the political, mental and moral enfranchisement of their race, have made themselves immortal, as their names are enshrined in the deepest heart of our nature. They will live forever in the cause for which they suffered. So, too, many of less note have been given a fame as enduring as columns of brass, and they will be handed down to posterity without the factitious aid of monuments of marble or pyramids of granite.

Profane history, philosophy and poetry may treat the martyr for the truth cavalierly or ignore his claims altogether, while they panegyrize his executioner. Yet he will live in the hearts of men, ennoble the virtues of men, illustrate the heroism of men, and thrill the purest souls of men with life and immortality after the names of those who despised and rejected him have perished in eternal forgetfulness.

The sweet-spirited Cowper has anticipated this fact and put his more than poetic conception into the most expressive and poetic language:

“A patriot’s blood may earn indeed,

And for a time insure to his loved land

The sweets of liberty and equal laws;

But martyrs struggle for a brighter prize,

And win it with more pain. Their blood is shed

In confirmation of the noblest claim—

Our claim to feed upon immortal truth,

To walk with God, to be divinely free,

To soar and to anticipate the skies.”

The martyrs of Missouri, though unknown to fame and unambitious of distinction, have, in their humble, unostentatious, quiet way, suffered as keenly and as severely as any others. They have taken the spoiling of their goods as joyfully, “counted all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord,” “counted not their lives dear unto themselves so that they might finish their course with joy and the ministry which they have received of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of God,” and in all their sufferings for righteousness’ sake have entered as fully into the spirit of the Master, even in sealing their testimony with their blood, as did John Calos, Nicholas Burton, Paul Clement, John Huss, Jerome of Prague, Bishops Latimer and Ridley, Archbishop Cramner, or any other of the long roll of distinguished martyrs.

The martyrs of Missouri may not occupy a place as high as others on the scrolls of fame, yet it is only a difference of time and country. It is the meridian of the nineteenth, instead of the fifteenth, sixteenth or seventeenth century. We are in Missouri, one of the United States of America, instead of Madrid, the valleys of Piedmont and Savoy, or Paris, or Italy, or Bohemia, or Turin, or London, or any other country or place where the blood of the martyrs has been shed for the testimony of Jesus. The spirit of persecution is the same, and the high sense of consecration to God and fidelity to Jesus that led the old martyrs to the rack and the stake have not been wanting in the ministers of the gospel in Missouri. The spirit, the heroism, the faith, the zeal, the devotion, were all here; and but for the remaining sense of enlightened Christianity that had been so long fostered by the genius of our free institutions, and the power it still exercised upon the public mind, the rack, the stake and all the horrible fires of the Inquisition would have been here also. The absence of these and other instruments of torture from the history of martyrdom in Missouri is due to other causes than the spirit and design of the authors and agents of religious persecution. The spirit was willing, but the cause and the occasion were wanting. Mobocracy sometimes invented a cause and made an occasion. The victim was found and offered without an altar. In such cases brutal cruelty was scarcely softened by religious refinement.

Some suffered for intermeddling with party politics; some for declining to take the oath of loyalty to the Government, as ministers; others for refusing to preach under a flag; others because they did not pray for the destruction of all rebels; others for expressing sympathy for one side or the other; others because they were born and brought up in the South; others, still, for declining to sanction the wrongs and outrages committed upon defenseless citizens, and helpless women and children, and still others because they were ministers and belonged to a certain ecclesiastical body.

How far these various considerations were only pretexts or occasions can not now be determined, other than by the analysis of the state of society heretofore given and the real animus of these persecutions.

The following instances of persecution are furnished, in substance, as they came into the hands of the author. Nothing is added, and nothing material to the facts is omitted. In some instances the phraseology is a little changed, more to secure a uniform tone and spirit throughout the work than to alter the sense; but material are nowhere sacrificed in the narratives of others, even to the author’s taste. Where it can be done, the language of each one’s own history is retained; but where only the facts and dates have been furnished, they are put up with the strictest regard for truth and consistency. The reader will see from the narratives themselves that it is impossible to observe chronological order. And, indeed, the classification of subjects makes it necessary to break the narrative of individual persecutions where it can be done, that each individual may illustrate the several stages of this remarkable history. For instance, some men were persecuted during the continuance of the war, and then again under the application of the “test oath” of the new Constitution. These, it is true, are but different aspects and stages of the same system of proscription and persecution, yet the nature and bearing of events require separate treatment where it can be done. The purposes of history can only be served by proper classifications and distinctions. The following narratives of persecution are fully authenticated by official records and responsible names.

The trials and persecutions of ministers of the gospel varied somewhat with the locality. In some parts of the State ministers were partially exempt from the influence and power of lawless men, while in other sections property, liberty and life were all at the mercy of irresponsible mobs.

The following statement is furnished by the minister himself. He has long been a faithful, earnest, exemplary member of the St. Louis Annual Conference, M. E. Church, South. Few men have stood higher in the ranks of the itinerant ministry in Missouri or done more faithful service than